Judge Tells Microsoft To Pay Up In Bristol Case

downset writes: "Back in the courts again, and Microsoft are on the receiving end of another guilty verdict. Using the old tactics that we are all used to by now, Microsoft have been found guilty of using 'bait and switch' tactics in promises to divulge Windows technologies to continue developing Windows to Unix conversions. The courts announced that Unix has Microsoft running scared ... anyone surprised?"

Comments

Re:Surprised? No. Diasppointed? Yes.

[ackthpt]

The sad part for the updstart Football League was that they filed for damages of $1B, the NFL was found guilty of monopolistic practices as well of colusion with TV networks, yet were awarded something pitiful, like $1. I hope the courts get this right this time.

Vote Naked 2000

Re:WTF?!?

[Thagg]

It's not uncommon to award $1. The USFL, in it's antitrust suit against the NFL, won the case -- and was awarded $1. They promptly went out of business.

They jury decided the amount of actual damages. What the judge has added here are punitive damages; damages to make the guilty party think twice before doing it again.

That said, $1M means about as much to Microsoft as $1.

thad

Running Scared?

[Slashdot Cruiser]

I'll tell what I'm running scared from -- I'm running scared from funky green paint and "1m 1337" personalized plates on the Slashdot Cruiser.

Good lord, that thing is fugly. I mean judge-judy-should-make-bill-drive-it-as-punishment fugly.

Re:*boggle*

[KahunaBurger]

In both cases, the court is full of it when they choose to believe FUD over Fact. And in both cases, we listen to the court when they choose to go with Fact over FUD.

While I may well agree with you on DMCA, be a little honest. You listen when they choose your FUD and facts over the other FUD and facts. They are "full of it" and often accused of being bought off when they happen to make a legal decision that doesn't match your FUD, or your spin on the facts.

Pretty common way of judging the "competence" of the courts.

-kahuna Burger

Re:Microsoft running scared?

[Jeff Mahoney]

While I realize that this may come as a shock, modern commercial UNIX platforms are no more a 30-year old system than Linux, FreeBSD, or anything of the ilk is.

The idea that UNIX hasn't evolved at all over the last thirty years isn't just wrong, it's a position dangerously close to ignorance for a computing professional to take.

Many of the features that Linux and the *BSD's still lack are features that have been standard in commercial UNIX for years. Even with the growing number of Linux servers out there hosting web sites, most major e-commerce sites out there aren't using it. In the enterprise computing arena, the competitors are mainframes, UNIX (solaris, digital unix, hp/ux, etc), and (unfortunately) Windows NT/2000. It's a battle that Linux simply isn't mature enough to take part in yet.

Now, this isn't to say that Linux won't get there -- far from it. Linux, with the freight train of momentum it's got these days, will probably have a comparable feature set in a few years. However, decisions aren't made on vapor -- they're made on what can be rolled in today.

Competition in the desktop arena is also an area where Linux is ill-suited to compete. Microsoft completely dominates this market, and for most users, Windows is it. At this point, Linux can't compare to the user friendliness that Windows provides. [*]

Now, I'm a UNIX geek -- I earn my living running enterprise UNIX servers. I've also been running Linux at home and on my workplace desktop since mid 1995. Professional decisions aren't made on personal preferences (unless the technology involved is comparable) -- they're based on usability and technical merits. Linux, at this point, is mostly suited for the technical users' desktop, or the low to low-midrange server market.

-Jeff

[*]: Technically - yes, stability is part of user friendliness, but for most desktop users it's not a primary concern.

Re:Microsoft running scared?

[Jeff Mahoney]

I've posted articles on the missing features of Linux for a while. Most of them seem to be beyond the search threshold that Slashdot offers.

Hopefully, when I get some free time, I'll get the chance to attempt an implementation of any one of these. In the meantime, however, other people may benefit from a bulletted list. :)

• 
  So, here goes:
  
  
• Advanced high availability clustering.
  
  • Many people, when they see the word "clustering" automatically think of Beowulf, get all defensive, and miss the point completely. Clustering, in this context, is a enterprise necessity. When there are thousands of users depending on mission critical applications, clustering is the way to go. I spent a week in California recently training on
  • DEC's (gah, Compaq) TruCluster product. Now, granted, DEC has had over a decade of practice on VMS clustering to implement this, but it's what clustering should be.

Re:Microsoft running scared?

[Jeff Mahoney]

NOTE: I accidentally hit submit instead of preview, so a snippet of this comment was posted prematurely. Please moderate the original down into oblivion.

I've posted articles on the missing features of Linux for a while. Most of them seem to be beyond the search threshold that Slashdot offers.

Hopefully, when I get some free time, I'll get the chance to attempt an implementation of any one of these. In the meantime, however, other people may benefit from a bulletted list. :)

• 
  So, here goes: Some of the features below, when read, will obviously require special hardware to support them. However, the hardware is useless without proper operating system support. Remember that this post is addressing features that commercial UNIX has and Linux doesn't. The details for the average developer obtaining the appropriate hardware to develop for and test on is irrelevant to this discussion.
  
  
• Advanced high availability clustering.
  
  • Many people, when they see the word "clustering" automatically think of Beowulf, get all defensive, and miss the point completely. Clustering, in this context, is a enterprise necessity. When there are thousands of users depending on mission critical applications, clustering is the way to go. I spent a week in California recently training on DEC's (gah, Compaq)
  • TruCluster product. Now, granted, DEC has had over a decade of practice on VMS clustering to implement this, but it's what clustering should be. The filesystems are shared, and the systems can redirect network I/O internally. The filesystems are shared, but still involve a "director" of sorts, a member of the cluster to coordinate access. This is not to be confused with NFS, because the individual cluster members can write to the disk directly, rather than proxied through the "director" node.
    
  
  
• An advanced, multivolume, dynamically resizable, journaled filesystem
  
  • IBM's JFS (which I realize is being ported -- but vapor != implementation) and DEC's AdvFS both offer dynamically resizable, journalling filesystems. I'm not sure if JFS allows multiple volumes, but AdvFS does. Basically what this accomplishes is the ability to add and remove disks from a live filesystem as it is running.

  • Most people know the benefits of a journalling filesystem, but for those who don't: When your system is writing something to disk, even though the program you're using eventually boils down to calling a write() system call to get it done, the OS actually has to perform many steps. All a disk is capable of guarenteeing is a single atomic write of a single block. Now, if you're writing out a file, this consists of many block writes for the data, but also writes for the meta-data. Meta data is the stuff associated with files, such as timestamps, permissions, links, but also stuff that the user never sees that maintains filesystem integrity. If your system crashes, loses power, etc during the middle of a meta-data write, you can lose an entire filesystem. At the very least, you'll end up with a potentially lengthy fsck(8) when you reboot. A journally filesystem essentially uses a "staging" area, where all writes to disk are queued up -- also on disk. A file and associated meta data can be guarenteed to be written or not written -- but not half way. If the operation did not complete, the operation can be completed when the system comes back up. This is called a replay, and it uses the journal to do this. Filesystem recoveries take seconds, instead of minutes or even hours on huge filesystems. Going into more detail is really beyond the scope of this post, but you get the idea.

  
  
• Dynamic hardware reconfiguration
  
  • On large systems, including mainframes and high end UNIX servers, you can remove and add hardware
  • including processors and memory while the system is up and running. Solaris, for example, offers the ability to shutdown processors in mid execution so you can remove and replace them. Some Dell servers, running Windows NT or Windows 2000 also allow this, and add the ability to add and remove PCI cards on-the-fly.
  
  
• System auditing
  
  • One of the major features that many sites
  • require is system auditing. This is very much more that system logging. The major difference is that, for example, I can set up auditing on my Digital UNIX servers so that any time any user calls the "socket" system call, I have a record of it, which arguments where used, when it was called, and by whom. I can restrict things even further so that I only see the record when user "joebob" called socket(), etc.
  
  
• Others.
  
  • There are other features that come to mind, beyond the scalability issues that the post I'm replying to mentioned, but I'm hungry, and want my dinner. :)
  
  I hope this clears up some of the clouds surrounding this sort of thing. I noticed that my original post was moderated down by someone ambitious as a "troll", when in fact it was not meant to be one at all. One of the major weaknesses of the Linux/BSD/Open Source community, and this has been mentioned before by people more known to the public eye than myself, is the inablility to look at the faults. No OS, including Linux, is perfect. The ability to see the imperfections, the flaws, the faults, and the missing features is what can enable the Open Source community to improve their software even more. Turning a blind eye to real issues does nothing other than stoke the fires of corporate ignorance as well as being self-fulfilling FUD.
  

Comments welcome. :)

-Jeff

Re:Jury of one's peers...

[KahunaBurger]

It isn't feasible to create a jury of one's peers for a lot of people. Think about the OJ Simpson case. Who were his peers? Rich black athletes/actors? World record holders who were told as a child that they'd never be able to run again?

Or if you think purely in terms of income or social stata, is it actually good to have a jury of ones peers, especially if the crime you are accused of is against a "non-peer"? If (to steal a story idea from LA law) a bunch of rich guys are accused of sexually assaulting the entertainment at a drunken bachlors party, do we really want them tried by a jury full of rich guys who like drunken bachlors parties? Or to take it from the other direction, if a poor townie is accused of murder because he got in a fight with a preppy college kid slumming around the neighborhood, do you want a jury of poor young townies deciding how serious a crime it was?

-Kahuna Burger

Re:WTF?!?

[NMerriam]

Now you can tell me she didn't know the coffee was hot?

I've spilled hot coffee on myself before without burning myself. I had solid rocket fuel ignite in my hand once, and got second-degree burns from it that took a week to heal.

Third degree burns from coffee? That's boiling oil hot. In fact, it's so hot that it's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for a human being to drink it without being burned. And if you sell a food product that's not safely consumable by human beings, that's against the law.

It was so hot, in fact, that McDonald's had an entire filing cabinet of letters from individuals who had been burned.

So when she was burned and had to go to the burn ward at the hospital to have emergency skin grafts, it seemed McDonald's could have at least said "we're sorry" and paid thre medical bills (all she asked for). But they preferred to tell her it was HER fault that their coffee was served at 180 degrees farenheit.

In fact, it was not the victim (who asked for medical fees) but the JURY who decided that punitive damages were necessary -- they were appalled at the arrogance of McDonalds' attorneys and management during the case.

And of course, the judge reduced the punitive damages to a measly $400,000 (about 6 hours worth of McDonalds' coffee profits) the day after the jury spoke. But I guess that didn't make the front page...

I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.

Bait and switch tactics are Microsoft norm

[pemerson]

"The courts announced that Unix has Microsoft running scared ... anyone surprised?"

I'm not surprised. Bait and switch? Why, just the other day, I installed Office 2000, and this paper clip came up and asked to help me out. Bait me with a word processor, switch me to a paper clip. It happens all the time.

Re:Whee.

[webword]

Right, right, right. But that isn't the point. The point is that they were found guilty. It is minor in terms of money, but that is fine. It makes them look bad, and that is the interesting point. It is bad press, that some folks might be able tweak in the news. To let the world know how Microsoft (sometimes) operates.

John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability.

Re:WTF?!?

[Alternity]

Could it be just a type? It must be $1M and they forgot the M... I can't believe someone would award so such a compensation.

Re:WTF?!?

[aibrahim]

>a federal jury found that Microsoft had violated Connecticut's unfair-trade practices act, but awarded Bristol damages of just $1
>Thats right the jury awarded just one dollar. It was the judge that set the $1 million, at a later date (after appeal?).
>There something weird going on here, and I'm not sure I like it. What makes a jury award such a small amount of compensation that a Judge has to overule it later down the line.

This is a reminder of one problem in dealing with Microsoft: They have a GOOD image. People think about what they see of MS, and they see mostly good things. Most of the features in MS products were unknown to Joe average User before MS stuck it into windows. The average user doesn't care about uptime, and doesn't know all the things Linux can do that Windows can't.

So we have a jury of MS users who are not geeks and they say, "Yeah MS was bad, but they are getting a real bad rap...lets give them a break."

Re:Umm....what?

[fish500]

Maybe he means that M$ is running an application called Scared. It's a program that tracks all M$ lawsuits and outputs the appropriate appeals for the courts, spin for the media and other misinformation for the public.

Re:Misleading conclusion from the article

[afc]

What everybody really wants to know is: if you think /. is sooo biased against your beloved Microsoft why don't you either:

• Quit reading, and specially posting to it;
• Just filter out the MSFT stories that offend you so much, damn it;

Because, son, unfortunately we have no way to killfile you... Yet...
--

Re:Misleading conclusion from the article

[MrNixon]

Freedom of Speech is all well and good... if done honestly. But if you start lying for the purpose of destroying someone (or something), then there are moral issues to be considered (not to mention the fact that is slander).

One more thing... it's obvious you don't like MSFT. Do you really want to "stoop down to their level" by lying they way you (and the judge) say they do? If you want to win this battle, stick to the higher moral ground.

Re:WTF?!?

[KahunaBurger]

Maybe the difference is that MS has never actually given an old lady third degree burns that left her bedridden. And been proven that they knew all along it was happening and did nothing about it...

Ok I have to comment on this. First off the lady took the lid off the cup and put it between her legs. Now you can tell me she didn't know the coffee was hot? Also state laws require food to be certain temperatures, for coffee it's a minimum of 140 degrees F.

1) if your final comment was true, they would not have recieved warnings already on burns.

2) If I'm going to be putting something in my mouth, no I don't expect it to be litterally scalding (capable of causing burns that need skin graphs in a matter of seconds)

3) you miss the overall point, which is that in mc'd case there was a measurable injury with measurable costs. The lady could say "I paid this much money in medical bills, spend this much time in pain most people never imagine and was disabled for this long." What the jury in this MS case seemed to hear was "well, if they hadn't interfered, we might have had a glorious IPO and all be multimillionares now.... or I guess we might have also flopped on our own..." Compensating for an actual injury is much easier than guessing the loss of potential revenues.

On that note, lets not forget that the "potential revenues" line is exactly what is being brought against Napster. If you mock the RIAA for talking about what their sales figures could have been, there is no reason to assume that MS owes these people anything except an apology, cause they might have sucked anyway.

-Kahuna Burger

Re:Nice, But...

[ackthpt]

The money is nothing to M$. Losing, thus establishing the pattern of behavior, is everything. As Microsoft loses case after case, for their temerity, they build the antitrust case against them. Megabusinesses (AOL/TW, BofA, etc.) need pay attention to their business manners. Clearly the early days of personal computing and the internet were exciting times, with a lot of inexperienced, aggressive people growing empires. The value of experience is in knowing when you are about to step on someone's toes, so you can avoid or tread no harder than you need to.

Bill Gates isn't the only one who scrambled to the top of the heap with hobnail boots on, crushing tender feet along the way. He's just very visible because of his success. It would be good to take M$ down a few notches, perhaps with a more intelligent breakup than that proposed by US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. It would be bad to destroy M$, because something as bad would probably take their place. (Such a lucrative market!)

Vote Naked 2000

Cheap music distribution being easier for indies

[Chris Johnson]

That can happen, but it's dependent on certain technological breakthroughs. Currently, the avenues for getting publicity for artwork are controlled by the industry- if you want to be in record stores you need to stick to maybe a couple local ones just so you can say you have a record bin with your name on it- if you tried to social-engineer your way into a _lot_ of record stores your costs of interacting with all those stores would _rapidly_ overwhelm any income you might get from it. You can't talk your way into being a 'Billboard top 10'- you can't have that no matter how much you sell unless you're an RIAA label.

On the Internet, it becomes possible to ignore distribution completely- get a bunch of CDs made, order up a bunch of little CD mailers and you're ready to go. You might or might not want to be asking similar prices to what the industry asks- after all you're hand-packaging everything- but your problem is recognition and publicity, again. Free mp3s might help- but then you might get hit with a $15,000 fee for use of the format (see www.mp3licensing.com) making it damned risky, and you've got to maintain a website with a decent amount of storage and bandwidth. Napster is almost useless- it doesn't link the listener very closely to you, they may have quite a bit of searching to do to hunt you down, particularly if the ID3 tags aren't helpful.

The one technological development that could drastically change all this has already been covered by Slashdot- it's the 'audio fingerprinting' concept. This basically takes a very broad imprint of audio and reduces it to a digital recognition code- it's _not_ watermarking. It could be sold to the RIAA labels as copy authentication, which it is- ignoring the fact that they have _never_ needed such authentication to file suit on someone's infringings- but the true usefulness of the technique comes when the database of 'fingerprints' starts to get really huge and includes countless prints from indie artists' songs, even audio doodles recorded by kids in those loop-mixing programs (some of which would end up as already taken by another kid, of course).

At that point it becomes part of cultural expectations to be able to hear any snippet of any song and _immediately_ look it up given only a bit of digital audio of it. The selling point for consumers would be 'instantly look up any tune you hear and like', curiosity value and ability to buy the CD or whatever- curiosity value is quite a good bait all by itself. The mechanism would be like a search engine, something that's already culturally accepted and understood. The kicker is, ANY audio creator suddenly becomes searchable and traceable, as long as they have their 'prints' on file. When you consider that the purpose of this 'tracing' is 'where can I buy that CD?' and the result can be 'from me directly, for $12 including shipping and handling and I keep ALL of the profit, none of it goes to the RIAA', it starts to look very exciting.

The fact is, without an ability to cross-reference and deliver such information, proliferation of free 'music samples' isn't that useful. I've sold many tapes at a loss with lots of information on them about websites- but some of that becomes irrelevant- for instance, I still have the mp3.com site but don't expect to be adding any music to it from now on, as they have changed their contract unacceptably and I don't accept their new contract. Relying on the information printed on the tape means being pointed to mp3.com and airwindows.com, only one of which is truly current, and that one doesn't have music hosted on it. If you could consult the 'print' database it becomes trivial to have any 'searchers' directed to the most current information- you just update it if there's a change. If I ditched mp3.com I'd be able to just update that to whatever new music site I used- and you could download a tune from mp3.com, 'print' it, and use that to learn my new site. The fluidity of this is terrific! That, not Napster per se, is what would fragment the RIAA control. Napster does not direct people to a musician's page. This would (at which point Napster and its ilk would take on their real role of proliferating those 'pointers' to the musician's page widely)

This is a troll (Meta-post)

[donutello]

This post is NOT insightful. It tells someone who disagrees to go away because the poster doesn't care for a dissenting opinion.

I'd hate to see Slashdot become a fascist society where dissent is not permitted. The parent is a troll. Please moderate accordingly.

Re:Misleading conclusion from the article

[Malcontent]

Hey maybe you can go to the public.microsoft.* newsgroups and complain to them they are biased against linux. That would be fun maybe I'll do that every time anybody says a dispraging word about sun, oracle, sybase, linux, open source, or other enemies of microsoft.

A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

$1 Million to Fund New IPO

[Col. Panic]

Bristol, based in Danbury, Conn., makes software that helps developers rewrite Windows programs for the rival Unix software. The company was left weakened by the dispute with Microsoft and was forced to cancel an initial public offering of its stock.

$1 Million ought to get the ball rolling again ...

Imagine that

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Oh boy, here we go:

Microsoft is trying to bully people. Imagine that.

Microsoft made promises it didn't keep. Imagine that.

Microsoft got shunned in court and have to pay damages that equal little more than lunch money for Bill Gates' daughter. Imagine that.

Unix has Microsoft running scared.

Um.

Huh?

Wait a minute...that wasn't in the article...but, but it said, and I mean, I mean it said something about Microsoft fooling these Bristol people and...Unix technologies in Windows?

Bill Gates hits the crack pipe again.

Imagine that.

Whee.

[Kid Zero]

$1 Million? That's IT?

Bill could probably find that in his couch.

I don't see where it will help Bristol at all, except in maybe an appeal or retrial.
-----------------------------
1,2,3,4 Moderation has to Go!

Re:News?

[Money__]

Watching CNBC Squak box, while siping your morning coffee:

"Good Morning. I'm Trent Presedshirt. Let's go over to the big kahuna for the "ms jury report".

Thanks big guy: (up pops a cleverly produced, weather map looking, graphic showing the ms logo and various litigation represented as storm fronts approaching)
"We have a 70% chance of a guilty verdict as the sun microsystems decision moves in from the north, and a 99% chance of the Bristol decision sweeping in from the west, but the real threat is the hurricane building off the shores of the pacific northwest. The name of the hurricane is DOJ and current tracking models predict landfall very soon.

Now onto the 5 day forcast. (up pops yet another cleverly produced graphic showing the next 5 days with dollar amounts representing legal decisions agains ms) "Mon. a 23 million decision. Tue., 17 million. Wed, 19 million. Thurs., 14 million. and Friday will bring the full impact of the DOJ decision with damages totaling in the Billions. So the early part of the week looks like the usual for ms, but the storm coming on friday will mean a massive evacuation of windows programers to Linux."

Back to you, Trent.

Umm....what?

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

"The courts announced that Unix has Microsoft running scared ... anyone surprised?"

Yes, I am. Why would the courts say such a thing? It has nothing to do with a legal ruling. Do you have a reference for this? (it's not in the ZDNet story you provided a link to)
--
Bid on me!

News?

[SUWAIN]

Isn't this a daily occurance? I think true news would be "Microsoft, in a remarkable change of pace, was not sued yesterday." :-)

...............
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name

Misleading conclusion from the article

[boing boing]

The courts announced that Unix has Microsoft running scared ... anyone surprised?

That is not what the article said. It said that Microsoft was trying to damage Unix competition while they were putting out an OS to compete.

And they used their standard operating practices to try and make that happen.

I have no clue where "running scared" came from.

Unix has windows running scared?

[photon317]

I don't think so. Windows is the pre-eminent operating system of the modern age. Unix is some 70's technology that lived beyond its usefullness. Unix still works on cromagnon ideas like functional process priorities, truly protected multitasking, scalability, and conformance to open standards and APIs for interoperability.

Microsoft saw through all of this crud, and has produced what the modern age really needs: An operating system expressly designed for computers with one user, who's running one application, which is only available from one vendor, and is capable of consistently crashing and losing data so as to provide the user a safe direction in which to ventilate his frustration with his miserable life.

Re:Nice, But...

[Obiwan Kenobi]

How much effect does this have on the "main" case, the DoJ antitrust decision, and Microsoft's plan to appeal?

Answer: None.

Re:Sigh...

[Shotgun]

Why is it that they *always* rule against Microsoft but yet they are always ruling in favor of the MPAA and Amazon and all of these other bullshit lawsuits?

Because, Bill Gates thinks that he's smart enough to be an advisor to GOD, and that all of these politicians and "laws" are below his contempt. M$ plays as if they can play smart judges and plaintiffs as fools like they do the general public. Unfortunately, judges, and smart people in general, don't like to be toyed with. M$ therefore gets slammed at every turn.

RIAA/MPAA/et.al., on the other hand, being the mafia dons they are, have a little more respect for the powers that be. They've paid off the right people beforehand, so that everything they do has a "legal" argument. They genuflect and smile when appropriate, and never scream about "thier intellectual property" (notice how they're always looking out for someone else?)

70% of making way in this life is not about how you treat others, but how you can convince others that you are treating them. M$ isn't doing as good a job of convincing as the other mafia groups.

Another Link To This Story

[8127972]

CNET has more on this story at here

Probably not a typo.

[Deven]

Could it be just a type? It must be $1M and they forgot the M... I can't believe someone would award so such a compensation.

I doubt it's a typo, given the quote from Microsoft claiming that the judge's ruling was inconsistent with the jury's verdict. It said that the jury only found Microsoft guilty of unfair-trade practices (and not guilty of other charges), and imposed damages of $1. One dollar is the traditional nominal amount that is intended to be effectively free. (Like when your dad "sells" you a car for $1.) Evidently, the jury decided that they couldn't return "not guilty" on the unfair-trade charge, yet they didn't want to punish them, so they declared nominal damages. It would seem that the judge disagreed with the jury and felt that Microsoft should be punished. It's inconsistent with the jury's evident intent (to let Microsoft off the hook for their actions), but not inconsistent with the "guilty" verdict. Besides, it's the judge's perogative...

Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer. (IANAL)

Re:WTF?!?

[lunenburg]

There's precidence in this in antitrust law - the old United States Football League (USFL) sued the National Football League (NFL) back in the 80s and the NFL was found guilty of having a monopoly on pro football in the US and using their monopoly power to squeeze the USFL out of TV contracts. The monetary verdict was $1, and was even tripled, for a grand total of $3.

You gotta wonder what juries are thinking - they'll award $1 in damages for anticompetive business practices, but millions and millions in cases like the (yes, overused) McDonald's Hot Coffee incident.

Reference: http://www.todayssports.com /NFL/stats/history/usfl.html

Re:It's too bad the judge only fined them $1 Milli

[Hooha Man]

The amount of money MS makes is not relevant.

Look at it from a different angle: How could a judge justify fining more than $1million, considering the details of this case?
The fine amounts to a slap on the wrist, which is exactly right for this particular situation.

If there was a similar fine in the anti-trust case then there would be a problem.



<O O&gt
( \/ )
X X

Unix daemon for scare protocol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unix has Microsoft running scared ... anyone surprised?

Nope, most Unix daemons are named by the protocol name followed by the letter "d" (e.g. ftpd, inetd, imapd, named etc.), under NT, the "services" (NT's equivalent of background-running daemons) are usually given freeform text strings as names. It is not surprising at all that Microsoft has adopted standard Unix naming convention for this "scare" protocol's service daemon.... they probably intend to do some more "embracing and extending". I would like to know what this "scare" protocol is all about, though.

8-) (big grin.... funny, eh?)

Re:WTF?!?

[bfree]

• One in four workers waste between 30 minutes and one hour due to slow and unreliable technology per day.
• Nearly half (45%) said slow and unreliable technology stalls their work for five to 30 minutes per day
• 30 per cent of employees wait over two hours for IT problems to be fixed and 22 per cent wait 30 minutes to one hour
• One third of employees spend over 30 minutes per week helping others with IT problems
• One in 10 people find PC failure more stressful than missing a holiday flight
• One in 8 people find PC failure more stressful than being left by their partner

From ICL, IT Day from Hell

There is no denying that McDonalds (well I don't think so but that is another argument) caused the old lady some real misery and damages (hospital bills and loss of quality of life for ......). The point is that MS have caused even more misery the world over and incurred far more costs. You think all the miserable computer users ICL found are all using Mac, *nix and Be? How long before MS pay?

WTF?!?

[codemonkey_uk]

a federal jury found that Microsoft had violated Connecticut's unfair-trade practices act, but awarded Bristol damages of just $1

Thats right the jury awarded just one dollar. It was the judge that set the $1 million, at a later date (after appeal?).

There something weird going on here, and I'm not sure I like it. What makes a jury award such a small amount of compensation that a Judge has to overule it later down the line.

Thad

Re:WTF?!?

[Vuarnet]

What makes a jury award such a small amount of compensation that a Judge has to overule it later down the line(I'll assume this was a rhetorical cuestion of sorts)

In two words: stupid juries. Ok, maybe I'm being unfair, but the trial-by-peers system in the U.S. and other places is starting to deteriorate. As the evidence used in cases such as this gets more technical over the time, a jury of normal people will base their decisions less and less in the evidence shown to them, and more and more in public image and lawyers' speeches.

In my opinion, a trial-by-experts should be used instead, with the experts chosen at random from a big database or something.

Re:WTF?!?

[mickwd]

Yes, but Bristol's dealings with Microsoft should have taught them that Damages 1.0 isn't worth having, and they need to wait for Damages 2.0 before they can do anything useful with it...

Sigh...

[dizee]

I don't like Microsoft any more than the next person, but I really wish the courts and the DOJ would start paying attention to the more absurd things going on like Amazon's patents and the MPAA/DeCSS crap.

Why is it that they *always* rule against Microsoft but yet they are always ruling in favor of the MPAA and Amazon and all of these other bullshit lawsuits?

If you ask me, Microsoft is the lesser of two evils.

Mike

"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."

Surprised? No. Diasppointed? Yes.

[ackthpt]

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge found that Microsoft Corp. engaged in "wanton, reckless" and deceptive business practices against a Connecticut software maker, in a harsh ruling reminiscent of the court's finding against Microsoft in the government's antitrust suit.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport, Conn., ordered Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to pay punitive damages of $1 million to Bristol Technology Inc., in the highest award ever imposed under the state's fair-trade statute. After a six-week civil trial last year, a federal jury found that Microsoft had violated Connecticut's unfair-trade practices act, but awarded Bristol damages of just $1.

This reminds me of a settlement between the NFL and some upstart football league (USFL? WFL?) A $1 award by a jury after finding the bigger-monopolistic party guilty. Good thing the judge stepped it up to Damages Awarded v2.0 Bad that this small company is likely to run out of gas, even with $1M potential, fighting M$

Vote Naked 2000

Re:Microsoft running scared?

[Fervent]

Something about Microsoft "running scared" from a 30-year old system doesn't seem to jive with me.

I think they mean Linux, FreeBSD, and other Unix-like systems has Microsoft running scared.