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Microsoft Verdict Vacated
Everyone and their brother sent in this unsurprising news: the Appeals Court handling the Microsoft anti-trust case has overturned the break-up decision. A few story URLs: CNet, BBC, ABC, AP, Reuters, MSNBC. The decision is available in .pdf format. A brief summary: the Findings of Fact (Microsoft's conduct, etc.) are still in place, but Judge Jackson's evaluation of those facts and the penalty he imposed are thrown out. A new District Judge will examine the case, starting from the Findings of Fact.
Update 2h later by J :
Dan Gillmor's analysis
is good. So is this
Washington Post column,
which is insightful except it doesn't go far enough. It also shows MS CEO Steve Ballmer's attitude even before today's ruling: "Is there any limit to what you think you can put into the operating system at all?" "...as a matter of law, no, I don't think so..."
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"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The fact that they _are_ a monopoly makes it unreasonable to _demand_ that the new judge be one that's never used Microsoft products. In fact it would almost be an advantage- if the new judge is a Mac user who uses Netscape etc etc. it could be taken as bias because you're _expected_ to use the monopoly product _unless_ you are biased against it.
Can we have a '-1: over 3K of straight Ayn Rand quoting'? o_O
If the Supreme Court upholds the findings of monopoly too, and you pull rank over them, can we just hire you as the sole judge in the US legal system? It would save a lot of money :)
This is standard SEC policy; I believe it is meant to prevent stock prices being manipulated. Whenever a major announcement is made that involves a publically traded company, trading of that company's shares is frozen for a short time before and after the (scheduled) announcement.
Really? In what market does Microsoft hold a monopoly? Operating systems? Browsers? Evil? Hardly. If someone is a monopoly that means that it has no competitors in the market in question; that is, if you have a product belonging to that market, you must have obtained it from the monopoly. That is the economic definition of a monopoly; it is not disputable.
Given the definition, does Microsoft hold a monopoly in any market? No. To disprove this, I need only examine my network. Not only aren't all of my [operating systems|browsers|other software] Microsoft products, none of them are. That's right, not one. So somehow I've managed to build an entire mini-network (6 machines) without a single product from a company that holds a monopoly over the markets in which I would need to buy products to build it. Friends, we have a conundrum here. Either my network doesn't really exist (it certainly seems to; I'm using it to post this) or Microsoft does not in fact hold a monopoly in these markets. To resolve the paradox, we can only conclude that Microsoft does not in fact hold a monopoly over any relevant market.
The proof is simple and direct. The conclusion is the only one possible. Microsoft holds no monopoly in any market. I make no attempt to resolve whether it may have excessive market power as defined by law. That is an entirely different and much more nebulous matter. As for a monopoly on evil, I can't really argue for that either - there's no shortage of competitors - Rambus, Gracenote, Oracle, Sun, the US Government, the EU governments, the Chinese government, Al Gore, and that Krusty the Klown doll to name but a few. Unfortunately being evil is not illegal.
You're confusing monopoly with monopolistic competition. In order to be a true monopoly no other competition can exist. The distinction is that Microsoft has a monopoly on Microsoft software but not on software. In such a situation they will receive monopoly profits on their own products, but their customers always have the opportunity to find alternatives. Their monopoly power only extends to customers who refuse to consider other sources. This goes to "excessive market power" but does not by itself constitute a monopoly.
Was that before or after V7 Unix, System V, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, Multics, os/360, CP/M, VMS, SunOS, IRIX, and Linux? A quick check indicates that those products' lifespans include the entire duration of modern computing's existence...in fact the union of their lifetimes wholly contains that of DOS. So, no, kind Sir, I was never alive during such a time as you describe; indeed, I do fear your search for such a person will be confounded by his paradoxical nature.
Not one of the 6 boxes is a peecee. And of greater interest is the fact that disproving something requires only a single counterexample. Which I provided. If you prefer larger-scale counterexamples, I offer the following: dgux, dynix, solaris, sunos, aix, xenix, macos, lunix, mvs, vms, os2, plan9, inferno, riscos, ultrix, nextstep, netware, unixware, openbsd, netbsd, freebsd, linux, hurd, tru64/digital unix, irix, unicos, amoeba, and os/400, to name merely a few of the more popular products which compete or have competed with Microsoft in the OS market. Since one might assume that an educated person is already familiar with those, I felt a direct example from my personal experience might be an appropriate mechanism for disproving the assertion that Microsoft holds an OS monopoly. Please forgive my overestimation of your knowledge.
If the courts are free to define markets however they like, could they not simply define the market as "Microsoft operating systems?" In fact, it seems that for all practical purposes this is what they've done. Under that definition it would be very difficult indeed not to conclude that Microsoft holds a monopoly.
That's what made today's victory a hollow one for Microsoft.
What makes their "victory" a hollow one is that despite their best efforts, they haven't succeeded in forcing a single person to use any of their products. The trial is a mere nuisance; a way to make the citizenry believe the government is looking after their interests. The battle in the marketplace is the relevant one, and that's where Microsoft is suffering the greatest setbacks. Say what you like about their evil business practices, but short of government intervention nobody will ever be forced to buy or use their products. I don't, you shouldn't, and nobody has to. The trial is a farce and the case should be dismissed. I look forward to seeing the Supreme Court so order.
I remember that Jackson remarked that he was looking forward to seeing his conclusions reviewed by others.
I also remember that Jackson endured a tremendous amount of beligerent behavior from Microsoft, and some outright lies (something about a video of IE being faster than Netscape, but IE was on a 33.6 modem while Netscape got a 28.8 behind the scenes).
I think Jackson realized that he was no longer in a position where it was even possible for him to be objective, so he threw the book at Microsoft, then tainted his own verdict to force a review.
He might actually be rather pleased at the moment that his findings of fact and law are to stand. I hope these documents condemn Microsoft to severe punishment, regardless of the competence of the prosecutors.
The longer this thing carries on, the longer M$ is under the microscope and news headlines repeat and affirm that they are in fact an evil monopoly. Every action that they perform will be set in that light and scrutinized before the public. The biggest success of the case has been changing the public's perception of Microsoft.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
DISCLAIMER: English is not my first language, if you want to correct my grammar or orthography, you are welcome.
And interesting quote, if Henry Rearden is on trial by having a monopoly, you are right, but if Henry Rearden is on trial by abusing monopoly power, it's another history.
IIRC, it's not illegal to have a monopoly, but it's illegal to abuse of monopoly power. Certainly, Microsoft did that. If they have beaten Netscape fairly, by offering a better product, we wouldn't have been discussing this issue, but MS Internet Explorer became a better product than Netscape much, much after they began giving it away for free, cutting one of Netscape's main revenue streams. Without research money and distribution channels, of course that Netscape's browser will fall behind, just like happened.
About EULA's, how would you refuse to use Windows or Office, if your clients, providers, etc. Require you to do so? It's like if you want to build a house, and need steel, you can only buy steel from Henry Rearden, like it or not, or would you live in a tent instead, just because you don't want to give jour money to him?
Anyway, I agree with you that it's a better remedy to educate people to think and evaluate choices, more than just being following the leader.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
And to paraphrase Warren Buffett, "In the short term the markets are gambling machines, in the long term they are weighing machines".
And the Good Book says, "he who has ears let him hear."
I briefly read through the Appeals Court decision, and I found very little in it actually defending Microsoft's market practices.
Microsoft won because they knew how to play the game. This isn't about right or wrong, it's about Lawyer Vs. Lawyer. Microsoft only had to do three things:
- Drag the court case on as long as they could, and postpone any verdict as long as they could.
- Never EVER admit to even the slightest wrongdoing. Vehemently protest even the merest suggestion that anything they did was at all improper.
- Flaunt the judge at every opportunity. Remember Bill Gates not being able to remember business decisions he made, not knowing the meaning of simple words, and trying to say that Netscape wasn't a competitor? Remember the faked videotape?
The first two tactics worked well for a long time. (Note that even Bill Clinton used these tactics to some success.) But it's the third tactic which cinched the win for them: by basically giving Judge Jackson the finger in court, ANY reaction Judge Jackson had as a result could be blamed on him being biased against Microsoft.This will have a devastating effect on the software industry, since it's been proven that Microsoft has the money and the resources to buy any market they want to own, and the political power to get away with it. Even if you had the Next Big Idea and a million dollars to start with, how could you even hope to compete with Microsoft once they got wind of your idea and copied it?
We're only now seeing Microsoft begin to notice the free software industry. I don't think it will be long before they find a way to 'embrace and extend,' lock customers into Microsoft-only solutions, and make free software become irrelevant. Nobody thought it could happen to Apple, nobody thought it could happen to Netscape, nobody thinks it'll happen to Linux...
Ok since I'm not a laywer, does this mean it's back to sqaure zero? What does the new judge do first?
-Peace
Dave
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
An excerpt: I tried AOL Time Warner's competing "You've Got Lackeys" a few years ago, but found its virtual agents a bunch of weenies. Not their fault. Microsoft wrote code into Internet Windows that tripped them up when they attempted Web chores. No wonder nine out of 10 professionals today subscribe to Microsoft agents.
Now that's interesting. All of the Microsoft bashers were predicting the appeals court would upheld the decision because it was so sound and just.
Meanwhile those of us with common sense knew it was loony tunes. The appeals court threw out not only the remedy, but several crucial parts of the case. i.e. the Internet Explorer tying crap.
Now nearly everybody agreed that some of the exclusionary contracts and coercive contracts were violations. We felt that Microsoft should be punished for engaging in such behavior.
But punishing a company for making a better product than a competitor, and thus putting them out of business, is lunacy. Such was the case of Microsoft and Netscape.
Honestly the fact that Jackson bought that line of bullshit is plenty of evidence for bias.
http://www.sodablue.org/Computers/Windows2000/Reli ability.asp
I was at 96 days when I decided to add a USB card for a Printer and Scanner.
Hmm. I have Windows 2000 installed on about half a dozen computers. Every one of them runs fine, except one.
That one has a Tyan Trinity 400 motherboard and seems to have a problem with certain video operations causing it to lockup hard. It ain't the OS, it's the motherboard. No BSOD, just a lockup.
It's not unique to my computer either. Doing a search finds many people with the same hardware config having the same problem.
It was worse, before I moved my PCI cards around and put them in different spots. It was locking up any time sound was played as well.
Now I suppose I could blame this on Windows 2000. But then I'm not ignorant, like some people. So I'll blame it on what it is, a crappy motherboard. At some point here I'm going to buy another Intel board, I'm tired of Via weird stuff.
WordPerfect is still the defacto standard in the legal profession. Virtually no lawyers use Word. Given that the document was written in WP, that's what they provide. The PDF and HTML versions they provide are viewable anywhere anyway.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
It's well known that the Bush administration replaced the entire team of lead attorneys at the justice department with junior lawyers who had never tried a significant anti-trust case. So, while the Justice Department didn't drop the case at executive request, they did manage to replace all competent staff associated with the original investigation with complete incompetents. That's how one kills an investigation behind the scenes. --M
But, either way, the district court UPHELD the rights of individuals (in this case MS and its shareholders.) You might not like microsoft, or its shareholders, but the government was trying to FORCE them to change their buisness practices. MS's rights are just as valuable as yours or mine because cooporations are OWNED by people.
Like many, you seem to have missed the main point of the ruling. The court agreed that MS has a monopoly and had acted illegally to maintain the monopoly. What was remanded back to the lower court was the ruling to split them up. This simply means that they are guilty, but that the punishment isn't necessarily the correct one.
Linux is MS's competition. MS is therefor NOT a monopoly because it is slowly, and steadily LOOSING its marketshare.
I would like to see the data you use to support the contention that Microsoft is losing marketshare. They may not be expanding their market share, but that's because they already have about all they can get.
Again, the court has upheld the fact that Microsoft has an OS monopoly. You say that Linux is MS's competition, but try to tell that to all the PC makers: "Oh, you don't want to use Windows? Well just put Linux on there, your customers will never know the difference." Like it or not, nearly all PC buyers want Windows. If a PC maker doesn't like the tactics of the hard drive maker or the memory maker or even the CPU maker, they can just switch manufacturers. With the OS they have NO CHOICE.
This is what makes it a monopoly. The monopoly itself is not illegal, but it forces MS to change their intensely competitive actions, which they have failed to do.
Sounds like a recipe for a lower court to say: "Yes they monopolized X (some combination of software that was once commercially relevant) when the complaint was filed, but due to issues with tying, innovation, etc., X no longer exists, nor do the plaintifs' products, nor did Jackson ever scope out what X was very well, nor is there any way of putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Therefore: reveal some source, document your APIs, and never darken the court's door again."
I wrote parts of this stuff
Not quite. There are three parts to the original ruling: Findings of Facts, Conclusions of Law, and remedies. The appeals court has vacated _remedies_ only, while both the FOF and COL were left intact. That means that the appeals court agreed that Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive behaviour (FOF) *and* that it violated sections the Antitrust act (COL). (or, in english: MS is still a monopoly). A new judge will look at the facts and decide a new remedy. Note that this is not a retrial: only new remedies are considered. Also note that new remedy != lesser remedy (although, I agree, this is likely).
That is actually better news than I had expected. The ruling makes DOJ's position much stronger, since the bulk of their case has survived the appeal intact. It also opens the door for private lawsuits against MS. The plaintiffs in those suites do not need to prove that MS is a monopoly: the feds did it for them, and the appeals court agreed. The only question at this point is: is the DOJ willing to continue? Somehow I suspect I know the answer....
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
>The court has decided to send the case back to a >lower court to be reconsidered. No, the court has decided to send the case back down for the *punishment* to be reconsidered, not the whole case.
>The court has decided to send the case back to a
>lower court to be reconsidered.
No, the court has decided to send the case back down for the *punishment* to be reconsidered, not the whole case.
To say "we find no evidence there was a problem" and then effectively "but there was a problem" is absolute garbage. The DOJ will probably appeal this...but they may hold onto that until after they see who the new lower-court judge will be first...
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You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Exactly -- they're still guilty. Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Don't bore us, nobody thinks you're smart.
Can't survive in second place? doesn't know how to market in other positions?
Maybe you should pay more attention to IBM. They have comfortably made the shift from being a world dominator to just another huge conglomerate. Sure it seemed to take a while on American time but compared to companies form other parts of the world they made the shift fast. Expect Microsoft to do just as well when they do eventually get their asses handed to them on a platter. I expect in 15-20 years we will all be running an OS designed and programmed in China. They have the talent and the resources, just wait until they get the desire.
There is nothing wrong with second place... or even a 5.4% place (see Apple).
--- I do not moderate.
I think they choose these pictures on purpose. During the trial, news sites usually chose pictures of Bill talking, shouting, or standing at a microphone or podium - suggesting Bill is fighting for his side. This particular picture just seems to say "Ha. Look who's on top, you sorry bitches. Who's your daddy? I'M your daddy. Yeah."
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The scene is a courtroom, where Henry Rearden, a steel industrialist, is on trial for the sale of his own metal:
Ah yes, Hank Reardon, the character who gave an exclusive distributorship agreement to his mythical metal to the business partner he slept with. That's ethical. Perhaps a little better than Roark, who blew up a building over a creative difference in the design, but still not quite the lily-white archetype of perfection Rand would like her characters to have been (too bad, really, flawed heros are a little more believable). Speaking as both a skeptic and a capitalist myself, you can do far better than Rand, who based her entire philosophy on empty tautology (A is A) and nothing more than ad hominem against her opponents. I prefer Robert Ingersoll for the atheist arguments, James Randi for the skepticism... still looking for a good capitalist apologist, but economics was never one of my main interests.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Not that I care either way. Break 'em up, don't break 'em up, I hold stock either way. What really matters is that their conviction for using their market status illegally has been upheld, which, despite being a no-brainer, means that Microsoft has to play nice.
Finding God in a Dog
Except the interview that raised so much furor was done after the trial was over and the verdict had been handed down. And the bias I was referring to (at least in the 2600 case, regardless of who was right or wrong) was very blatantly done from the bench. The MS comments were made after the trial, IIRC.
-jdm
What amazes me is the double standard we seem to have here about what the courts are "allowed" to be biased towards. Judges often gloat about or cite their "tough record" on crime, occasionally singling out their record of sentencing minorities to harsher penalties than caucasians (*cough*Philadelphia*cough*).
Or what about the 2600 DeCSS case? For anyone who has even read a few minutes of any of the preceedings, it is blatantly obvious that the Judge is severely biased against the defendants. Yes, I know that may get 2600 somewhere in the appeals court, but I can't possibly see a unanimous vote to remand a majority of the case to a lower court.
Yes, *gasp* god forbid we actually say bad things about a corporation or businessmen!! Even if they did blatantly lie on the stand and even bring forth false evidence. MS essentially admitted to perjury (sp?) with their false demos. But how dare we say this aloud?
It's a sad, sad, day when libertarian actually whole-heartedly supports the DOJ is a case against a corporation. Bah.
-jdm
\begin{rant}
No shit. I'm sick and tired of slashbots (and editors -- this means you, michael, Taco, and Hemos) jerking at the knee and whining about how Bush is going to beatify M$ at any possible opportunity. Sure, Bush isn't a good president, and he's downright bad on a lot of issues. However, Al "Corporate Whore" Gore would have been worse on this one. If any of these clowns would have bothered to look at vote-smart.org during the election, they would have noticed that Al Gore has spoken in favor of Microsoft on many occasions, hailing them as "great innovators" and "champions of the new economy". Furthermore, Gore even spoke at the M$ campus, hailing them and assuring them of his continued support. Gore also spoke out against the breakup, whereas Bush is on the record calling them a predatory monopoly.
Who's owned now? M$ gave over a million dollars in soft money to each party -- although it looks like Gore didn't need quite as much prodding, as he's been sucking their dicks since 1995 -- so these morons should get a clue.
\end{rant}
I guess I can stand to lose some karma for this if it's not in line with the "Slashdot Herd", but I've needed to rant about this for a while.
This poll was brought to you by Internet Explorer, now with innovative ActivePoll(TM) technology. Why suffer from the drudgery of filling out those confusing questionnaires, when ActivePoll(TM) can do it for you.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's a funny thing, appointed judges. Can you really be impartial about a ruling if you were placed through a political process? What about debts? What about the prevailing political atmosphere?
Richard Posner is a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. (that's Chicago) He's quoted in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin as saying "People who think that federal judges base their legal opinions solely on their interpretation of the law and the Constitution are living in a make-believe world."
There was an interesting article posted on k5 about a man in a lawsuit against Coca Cola Corporation. If you're in the least bit surprised at the Microsoft ruling, you'd best read it.
IBM was required to openly hardware licence patents at a reasonable price. I'm not sure if this came out of the US or the European anti-trust actions, but it was the result of the 'plug-compatible' wars of the 70s.
The key bit about this is that it made PC clones possible. IBM had ISA and VGA and so on patented, but was forced to sell the specs to their competitors.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Trading of a companies stock is always halted directly after a large news story is released about them (this is why most companies release earning reports after the market closes). The reason they halt trading is so that investors are given some time to think about what they're going to do before they go off and buy or sell.
Maybe he's talking about the Dubya the elder ... Also there are still a lot of judges left fomr the Reagan days too...
It will be nice to see a whole slew of new consumer-friendly products from Microsoft now - after all, they're entirely free to "innovate" now. I wonder how many other markets they'll get to consume before the government comes to its senses? If Microsoft is allowed to use the capital amassed from its past crimes to stroll into new markets, almost no industry in the U.S. is safe. It's just a question of "Where does Microsoft want to go today?"
This really was Judge Jackson's case to lose, though - I'm as pissed of about Microsoft as anyone, but you'd think a federal judge would have the sense to keep his mouth shut about his personal opinions of the defendant, and follow the legal procedures entirely by the book. This was only the biggest trial of the decade or so. More than anything, this appeal overturns his handling of the trial rather than the facts of the matter or Microsoft's guilt.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Corporations are artificial citizens. Who would you levy a criminal judgement upon? The CEO? The whole board? All of the stockholders?
Why not? After all, these are the beneficiaries of the illegal conduct. The "corporation" doesn't get anything out of it, only the people making money.
When every stock investor starts getting notices from the court that they need to send in a check for $50 as punishment, maybe we'll finally have worked out an incentive for companies to stop violating the law. No longer will the board be able to say, "well, we have to maximize profits at all costs", they might have to consider how angry stockholders would get to be held personally responsible for their illegal actions.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
This is essentially what happens when the value of a company's stock falls due to a pending judgement
But ther's no direct correlation for the stockholders to say, "hey, you shouldn't have done this because I was held responsible for your bad decisions". The issue is responsibility, not money...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The fall in Microsoft's share price after Judge Jackson's ruling was quite obviously a result of that ruling. A 'fine' wouldn't have been any different, and most Microsoft shareholders would still have placed more of the blame on Jackson (for ruling to fine the company) than on the Microsoft board
No, that's completely wrong and ignores human behavior.
Number one -- a fall in stock price is not the same as a fine because you don't have to sell the stock, you can simply ignore it and wait for the stock to go back up.
Number two -- if someone recieves a notice that their fine of $50 (while possibly much lower than a drop in stock price) is due to the court by XX date, or they personally face contempt of court charges, then it becomes a personal issue.
They actually care about it and see that their own individual well-being is tied to the company on the downside as well as the upside. you can no longer simply take your money and run, you have to actually face responsibility for the company you own.
if Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch faced 55% of the jail term for corporate criminal violations of the law, perhaps they would police their companies better for violations of law. if they faced 55% of the financial liabilty for the companies in civil case, they might be more concerned about following the law.
As it stands, the worst that can happen is that the company gets a stern *tsk, tsk* from a court, maybe even broken up, but other than stock value, the investors never face any real personal ramifications despite their very real personal ability to influence those violations of law...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
I don't like Microsoft but I want them to get their just desserts fairly and for the right reasons. So back to the lower court it goes and if we are lucky it will get worked out while it's still vaguely relevant to our lives.
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-The vast majority of games only work under windows
-Office only works on windows and since most of the world tends to revolve around Microsoft's document format this means I have to keep Office and thus windows
-The latest Quicktime hasn't been ported to Linux
-Several websites are designed to only work well with Internet Explorer
If I thought Microsoft was competing and I thought that the average user was getting a real choice, I'd have no issue with them. This, however, is not the case.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
ah, but how many of those appeals court judges did BushDaddy appoint? How about Uncle Ronnie? (I don't know... I'm asking... does anyone here know?)
Reality has a liberal bias
Sigh. Some people just didn't read the appellate finding, apparently. From the document:
Specifically, they reversed the DC's judgment that Microsoft violated part 2 of the Sherman Act, or in other words that they didn't illegally attempt to monopolize the internet browser market. They also remanded to the DC the finding that Microsoft violated part 1 of the Sherman Act, or the unlawful tying of the browser to the OS. The only part they did affirm, and this only partially (with the rest reversed, not remanded) was the violation of part 2 of the Sherman Act by using anti-competitive means to maintain it's OS monopoly. To see what exactly they affirm and what they reverse on that, feel free to dig deeper into the decision.What this means is that the appellate court DID NOT uphold that Microsoft is guilty of defending its monopoly, and in fact actually REVERSED an important decision necessary to the monopolization case. They've also REMANDED the second Sherman violation back to the district court.
I am serious...I haven't heard anything of this one, so if there's any merit to your claim...please back it up now. Some links to hard cold evidence would do it.
I guess we really don't want to look behind the curtain!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Lets have the list of those things.
The reality is that we have a president that is not very original in thought and is beholden to special interests to a much greater degree than other politicians. For instance, he let industrial interest groups create his strictly voluntary pollution standards, and put an oil industry guy in charge of enforcement of those standards. Come on, if his daddy were not president do you really think this guy would have had a chance at getting into office? Nepotism rules with this guy. He never would have been employed in business if it were not for his father and that took until he was forty!! He then proceeded to run those companies into ruin and then ran his baseball team into the ground. As the head of the great state of Texas (speaking as a Texan) he screwed up everything Gov. Richards worked so hard to create. Education is abysmal, and the environment in many areas of Texas has gone into the toilet. I was shocked last week when I went back to Dallas/Fort Worth on business for the first time in about ten years. Urban sprawl nightmare with smog and unbelievable traffic rivaling that of Los Angeles!
I would like to not be as pessimistic as you are about our government. I am proud to be an American, and I will fight at every opportunity for what I believe is right. Make your voice heard and perhaps you can make a difference.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
How about I take you up on your offer for the $300? I will post a P.O. box and when I get the money I will take it down to the homeless shelter I am volunteering in next week.
As for some of your other objections:
I am sure nuclear scientists are good at their job, but I can tell you that a larger number of the patients at one of the businesses I am associated with are from Nevada, northern Arizona, Colorado and Southern Utah (downwinders)and they have more diagnoses of cancers than they statistically should. (particularly brain cancers).
A president should be politically aware of some issues when it comes to appointees. The appointees influence policy and should reflect and represent the public.
Bush pro environment?!!?!?!? Ha Ha Ha Ho Ho Ho wheeeeeeeeeeeha. I think I am going to be sick.
Nuclear disarmament? India and Pakistan are the exact reason why countries should maintain this alliance and further it.
Necessary evil to drill in Alaska? Perhaps we should reevaluate our needs for oil and figure out how to reduce our reliance on it.
If you have not flown over the west, try it. Either fly your self or charter a small plane and go sightseeing. You will be absolutely amazed at how many roads there are in some of the supposidly most remote portions of our country. This is not heresay it is a fact.
As for the repetitive stress injuries, dude, wait until you get out of school and actually start working for a living. And don't begin to lecture me about living on almost nothing in college. I supported myself through college because my parents could not and then into the school of medicine here. Now I am back in graduate school. I put aside all creature comforts for my undergraduate and post graduate education and invested everything I could into the stock market and a couple of businesses I am associated with. I have worked hard and I have had some degree of success. As such, I believe I owe a debt of responsibility to others around me and in my community and I am more than willing to help out.
Grow up.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Damn strait! I will probably get modded down here, but what is it with this guy? Is he completely out of touch? Every morning I pick up the paper there is some other reason for me to become more and more disillusioned with the current president. He:
1) Appoints a lumber lobbyist to head the forest service.
2) Appoints an extractive industry lobbyist to head the department of interior.
3) Is pushing to reinstate nuclear testing.
4) Appoints John Ashcroft as A.G. Someone who spent a good part of his career fighting against desegregation.
5) His nominee for dept of agriculture one said that that farming areas that are not ethnically diverse are more productive.
6) Backed out of the Kyoto treaty giving even more reasons for other countries to hate the US
7) Is Backing out of the nuclear dis-armament treaty.
8) If any of you have ever been to the unspoiled beauty of Alaska, you will realize why it is completely insane to want to drill there.
9) Repealed the public subsidy against logging roads in national forests. Have you flown low over the west lately? Roads everywhere already!
10) Heres one for the Slashdot crowd: he eliminated protections for those with repetitive strain injuries.
11) Whats with the income tax reduction? The only ones its helping are those that are already loaded. And it is going to make it much more difficult for me to get my portfolio up to where I am loaded with the deficit problems that are going to crop up.
I could go on and on here without even mentioning foreign policy screwups, But that's enough venting for now.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
... is that you need a LOT of sustained firepower to put a BORG cube ship out of commission. If you only cripple them, they regenerate!
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I think that's pretty close to whats happened. The most important findings in this case is that the finding that the claim MS attempted to create a monopoly in the browser market is not viable, and that tying windows and IE together was acceptable.
While they upheld that many of MS' buisiness practices were not acceptable for their position in the market, they indicated that the punishment must fit the crime, and that they did not believe that Jackson's plan was appropriate. I think we will likely see a punishement similar to what you predict, but probably a bit lighter. What will probably work itself into the mix (but shouldn't) is the effect that this ruling has had on the markets, and the effect the previous ruling had as well.
There's also the chance that we're going to see the DOJ drop the case entirely, because there's not much of a chance for huge results, and the fact that the current administration doesn't want this to adversely effect the economy.
But, IANAL, and this is just my opinion of what's likely to happen.
Maybe when enough people like you figure out that the Demopublicans and the Republicrats are all out to trash both your wallet and your rights, and that the Libertarian Party isn't a bunch of druggies but just feels that it's nobody's damn business what consenting adults do to themselves or each other behind closed doors, we might get somewhere.
Until that happens, however, basically, we're fscked.
--
In the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead,
there is the possibility of hope.
-- Draal, Babylon 5 #219
The courts move too slowly to affect anything in the 'net-realm anyways. By the time a "final" decision is made Microsoft will own the Internet, TV, cable, and video gaming systems.
That's why it is up to us, the consumer, to provide the judgment through our wallets.
--- witty signature
There is this little thing called checks and balances. This was the Judical arm (over which the president has no control) vacating a ruling, because of improper contact between the judge and the media (from what I have read, this is a fairly no-brainer. you have no business as a judge doing media interviews during a trial).
This doesn't explain the judge in the 2600 case. He worked for Turner Broadcasting, relating to DVD protection. And TB is a large part of the MPAA.
So that's not bias? And yet he refused to excuse himself from the case, with barely any explanation.
I've hard of judges excusing themselves from cases for such distant relations as their uncle playing golf with a cousin of one of the participants in the trial. In fact, in the inbred political circles in some areas, that's a major problem, finding a judge who can hear a case because they don't have any third-degree relations with anyone involved.
Yet, in this case, the judge was specifically payed to help draft a law, then he's called on by his old bosses to help in enforcing that law. And that's not bias?
That should be treason. I think actions like that should get him removed from the bench and bisbarred.
You (if you are from the US) live in as much of a socialist country as it is a capitalist one.
The government passes many laws controlling businesses, taxes both companies and people, and applies that to improvements for the benefit of the people. That's a socialism.
It's nominally capitalist, but only within fairly strict guidelines.
The only problem is that our government is in the pay of the corporations and they pass laws that help the biggest. Which just shows that it's a corrupt socialism, not that it's not socialist.
Microsoft is purchasing enough legislators to force people to use their software.
Their suprise software audits are performed with federal marshalls, without MS having to provide proof of wrong-doing. Isn't it a bit scary that a company can buy federal cops to enforce their EULAs?
They're trying to get the government to forbid the GPL and similar open-source licensing agreements. Both so that no government agency (or agency working for the government) can use GPLed software, or release any software under the GPL.
They're also well on the way to switching to a subscription model for software. You can't buy it once and use it, you keep paying.
Combine this with their stance that any computer sold without an OS is one that will be used to pirate an MS product, and you get a situation where you'll be paying a government mandated MS tax on any system you buy, regardless of what you do with it.
There's a lot more they're doing, but it generally involves steps towards having the government mandate that everyone simply owes MS an annual tax, because, after all, the only software is MS's, and if you're not paying for it, you're a criminal.
Nothing personal, but I hope you lose a lot of money on those stocks.
Why? Because by buying them you're actively supporting a company that's guilty (and proved it, by lying in court) of many crimes.
And now you're complaining that they may be reprimanded for this and you may not get the full benefit of those criminal actions.
Oh, wah. My heart really bleeds for you.
The good thing about this being sent back is that when it goes through again, there won't be anything worthy of appeal.
I hope MS doesn't get broken up, I agree. I hope they get fines based on the percentage of their business that they unfairly stole from other companies. Simple 100% of the revenue from all the business they wouldn't have had, if they'd not forced competitors out of business with the monopolistic trade practices.
I have little sympathy though, for people who invest in mutual funds without investigating them. I won't invest in a fund which has stock in companies who I wouldn't invest in directly, and I wouldn't invest in companies whose business practices I don't condone. (Think Rambus and Microsoft, etc)
This country (and the world, though less) is getting too willing to say "Oh, I didn't know, it's not my fault." when they should have looked. If it takes a bunch of people losing their shirts over this, so be it. I'm sure they could make most of that back with a class-action lawsuit against the mutal fund, for investing in MS when this case was proceeding. It's the American way after-all. Don't accept responsibility, sue everyone who didn't protect you.
Ok, so the period was an accident.
Try to make a point relevant to my post while you pick on how I wrote it.
Sort of an ObRelevant, for the alt.hackers out there.
This would be a good idea, if it worked. However executives rarely get punished for their actions and ditto with companies.
Rambus drove their stock very high by illegally pursuing fraudulent patents. I don't see their officers being led off to prison, nor anyone in the business world saying that it's a likely outcome. Why not?
Ditto with MS. If you or I lied to a judge and deliberately fabricated evidence, we'd be behind bars immediately for at least six months. Why didn't Gates even get slapped for it? Or the people who, on his orders, knowingly faked a video 'proving' something.
Toss them in jail, and fine both companies HUGE ammounts (based on their take from the illegal actions, AND on reparations for the companies they've hurt.)
Until this kind of action is common, chances are that anyone who buys stock in a company like MS is endorsing their behaviour. If you do enough research to justify a stock purchase, their illegal activities are fairly obvious.
While I feel, on a personal level, for your loss of money, and I understand how that hurts the retirement date... I don't think you should do anything unethical to make more money, or by supporting the wrong people, do anything unethical by proxy.
Now, you did nothing directly to aid MS, but your purchase of their stock, along with many other people, is what drove the price up. People were willing to pay it. Had you not been, and others like you, not been, the price would have been low.
A high stock price *is* in MS's favour, and on a personal level, helps the officers of the company because of their stock options.
I see many people who are fully aware of MS's crimes, and yet don't want them to be punished simply because they own stock. It's like voting for bread and circuses... It's eating away at the stability of society just so you get a slightly larger cut than anyone else.
Because of this, it makes me question the immunity of stockholders. I would consider making it a crime for people to invest in a company they know is breaking the law.
It might have a "chilling effect" on the markets, but the world would continue. People would still want their products, so companies would still make them. Their investors would just demand a lot more oversight so that they could prove they didn't know about any crimes the company had committed.
Oh, and I'd also have tossed Bill in jail for a year for perjury when he lied and had those falsified videos shown.
The long and short of it is that you decided that having more money was worth the ethical cost of supporting someone like BillG. I disagree.
No problem, I've had discussions with you before so I know you're not just a grammar nazi or anything. Not *just* at any rate. :)
I think fines need to be based on the damage done, and partly on the ability to pay.
There was a pollution case I was reading about where the company dumped semi-toxic waste because paying the fine was cheaper than paying for proper disposal.
That's insane, even my city is smart enough to make the cost of a crime more expensive than compliance with the law. (Driving with a non-hands free cellphone is fined at $150, because that was twice the cost of a hands-free kit when the law was passed.)
I think punishments also need to be scaled to someone's ability to pay. A rich person and a poor person both live the same lifespan (aproximately) and a year in jail hurts both the same way. But a $10k fine might be a year's savings to the poor person, but to the rich person it's a month's worth.
IMHO we should base these things on someone's wealth. A $10k fine for a person making $30k a year becomes a $1.5M fine for a person making $4.5M a year. (Basically, though it should take total assets into account, etc)
I do realize it'd be very hard to properly implement, but nobody ever said law was easy. It might take a ton of investigation to do properly, ditto with the fine based on the ill-gotten gains, but it'd start to make crime an unattractive proposition.
He didn't actually draft the law, or the final law, but he worked with the department that lobbied for what eventually became the DMCA.
And yeah, it basically would be high-treason. By destroying the public's trust in the judicial system, the country is significantly weakened.
It's like when people start questioning if their vote actually matters, when vote tampering could have won a close election.
I wouldn't actually recommend the death penalty for it, just life in jail. To me, it seems fair for a traitor who sells out their country for some money.
You're just a crackpot troll, but you're also completely wrong, so I'll smack you around for it...
Even if open source developers had anything to do with this, their writing free software, in a price sense, means that less people will pirate software because they have free alternatives.
And we know that pirated software is a LOSS for microsoft. For every copy of Office that someone copies, Microsoft basically has to burn $300.
So... Microsoft and the BSA should PAY Linus for every copy of Linux in use, because that's someone who isn't copying windows. And ditto with Star Office, there's someone who doesn't need to copy MS Office.
Open source developing would be very profitable if Microsoft would actually pay the people who keep it from losing money.
*Your* purchase, along with that of all other purchasers, is the reason that MS stock has any value at all. If you hadn't purchased, it'd be that tiny bit lower.
Supply and demand. Supply is fixed, you upped the demand, the price increased accordingly.
Now, you happened to do this at a really bad time, but, all else being equal, MS's stock price is higher (if only by a fraction of a cent) than it would have been without you.
You don't really seem to care what you profit from though, so I'm not upset that you bought as it plummeted. Almost makes me believe in karma.
Of yeah, keep saying that MS's actions don't affect your stock price.
You *directly* profit from MS's actions, because public perception of the stock price is (usually) based on the actions of Bill and friends.
If it weren't, you wouldn't care what the court did to Billy boy. But, you seem to mind, so... maybe it does matter?
I'm not saying you're directly responsible to their actions, but by supporting them, you and people like you, are driving up their stock price, rewarding them by increasing the value of their stock options.
Most MS stockholders I've talked to have wanted all the charges against MS dropped, even as they've acknowledged their validity, because it hurts their precious stock price. That's a perfect example of selling out the rest of humanity just so you benefit, regardless of the kind of scum you're supporting.
Sorry, but I'd rather support all the companies MS crushed along the way with their unfair trade practices, insane lawsuits, and "piracy" raids, than to support MS themselves. But maybe if you rationalize it enough, you don't even see this anymore.
Well, that's what it is. If you follow the law and someone else doesn't, they've got the advantage. So you take them to court... They punish them for their law-breaking, AND make them follow the same rules as anyone else.
Everyone loses if this crooked company wins, because nobody will be able to beat them without being crooked, and they'll end up with a monopoly and be ruthless about enforcing it.
Much like a big software company we're all familiar with.
Sure there is. Just no flat fee that will affect them.
Let's take the Dr. Dos case as an example. Let's say that they increased their immediate market share by 5% by converting DrDos users. Then, they prevented more from switching by continuing this sort of thing. Figure out from similar markets, how much of their user base they gained only by unfairly eliminating the competition.
So, fine them n% of their earnings from their OS.
Then do the same with Office, etc. See how many people use Office because MS tweaked the OS to hurt competitors. Then see how many people use Office because Microsoft removed OS competitors (and thus the office suites that ran on those other OSes).
Fine Microsoft n% of their office-suit sales.
Etc.
It wouldn't kill them, but a fine based on their ill-gotten gains would be a great punishment. It'd not only hurt them, but it'd be a great incentive for other companies to play fair.
It'd also be a HUGE slap to all the assholes who own MS stock and support them, not because they're right, but simply because it's the best thing for their stock portfolio. I'd *LOVE* to remove immunity, for people who knowingly invest in a company involved in illegal actions.
(Man, just consider the Rambus investors, especially the ones who invested a year ago, when they announced their plans and it was public knowledge how they got their patents... those people deserve a bit of jail time along with the officers of the company, the lawyers advising them, and the employees putting this into effect.)
Nope.
I can't point to anything to prove it, but they've done this in many ways. They tweaked Windows 3.x to not run on DR-DOS (Thanks Ethereal for the nitpick).
They broke Lotus Notes in NT4 SP6.
They added delay loops in MS Office for the Mac to prove that Windows was a better OS (See, it runs Office faster).
The deliberate changes to sabotage a competitor are fairly common knowledge. Check google.
Which of the two companies gets:
Xbox
WinCE
WinXP
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Who gets Xbox, and the hardware (mice, keyboards, game controllers, etc)?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Come on. Little competitive shit like this most definitely IS a problem when a large segment of an industry looks at your 'road map' for what to do next. The point is not that this behavior is illegal or that it violates the anti-trust act. The point is that it is a tactic, and it is a tactic they're using now. It is a tactic that has served Microsoft very well. I picked one example of this tactic off the top of my head. If you want the full list, read a history book that's not written by Bill Gates.
I reiterate. By the time this case finishes, MS won't care about the outcome. They'll pay the measly $100M(US) fine and won't even blink at it. It'll be written off as cost of doing business. Meanwhile, they will have moved on to bigger fish, control of the Internet. They want a piece of every monetary transaction that occurs across the net. In a couple of years (after the bigger fish is netted), they will throw the desktop market to Linux zealots like yesterday's gnawed bone.
But first they have to net the big fish, and for that they need to keep the desktop locked up just a little longer. Endless circles of appeals serve to do just that.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Several people have correctly stated that the ruling was vacated versus being overturned. While this is true, it matters little.
.NET servers in order to even register to vote.
...uhh, Mr. Jackson, sir. You're retiring in a few years, right? Government service hasn't been all that lucrative for you. I'm not asking for you to throw the case. I'm just asking for you to say a couple things that would cast a shadow on the decision.
Microsoft has always played delaying tactics while they bring other guns into play. For instance, when OS/2v4 shipped with voice recognition software, MS execs went on record as saying that it was just a toy and not ready for the real world (despite others and myself doing a lot of useful work with it). Meanwhile, they are investing boat loads of money into voice recognition software.
Gates has simply taken a page from Kirk's play book. If you can't win under the rules, change the rules.
The ruling has been vacated. How long will it take for another judge to be selected? How long until that judge has reviewed all the documents and issued a ruling? How long before that ruling takes effect? YEARS!! And by the time it's played out, Microsoft won't care because we'll all have been long since forced into paying them to authenticate our Internet accounts through their
I can see the seen on that yacht last year like it was yesterday:
Gates: Look, Thomas, I mean,
Jackson: I will not have you get away scott free, Gates.
Gates:You know we're guilty. We know we're guilty. Hell, everybody knows we're guilty. Your finding of facts were rock solid. There is no way we're going to win this case. All we're asking you to do is make a couple comments so that the Appeals Court will have the case reviewed a little longer. We're trying to get out of the OS business. That should make you happy. We just need a little more time...
Jackson stares at the floor, deep in thought...
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Criminal law is one thing which makes a nonsense of the idea of corporates as "people". A real person would await trial either or in prison or subject to bail, they would have to bring their entirity to court too.
But for a large corporation they can just carry on as usual. A real person couldn't do this, even a moderatly sized business...
So what is the solution; strip corporates of "person status"; halt their operations and freeze their assets as soon as charges are filed; charge Microsoft instead under RICO; etc?
I wouldn't go that far.
We bring the whole person into trial for practical, not punitive reasons; if you bring a partial person to the courthouse, said person isn't likely to be in any shape to testify.
The idea of shutting down a corporation because charges are brought against them is incredibly dangerous. This means that almost anybody with a good lawyer could bring a company to a screeching halt.
Once a corporation is convicted, however, the story changes. I suggest that we have a corporate death penalty (though I oppose the human death penalty); when a corporation is behaving in a sufficiently criminal manner, courts should be able to shut the company down, selling off its assets to pay back the stockholders.
--The basis of all love is respect
Among other things, this talks about the Freedom to Innovate Network. They describe this as a non-partisan, grassroots foundation that they started.
Will somebody explain to me how a multi-billion-dollar corporation can form its own grassroots movement?
--The basis of all love is respect
You can't open source the windows source code without compensating MS. How many billions do you want the taxpayers to shell out to effect this remedy?
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
And how are you going to determine how big that fine is? How long would they have been able to carry their codebase? Going from the original NT to XP you have at least 10+ years of develpoment. Are you going to say they have to give up a decade of profits? How about 30 years? That's how long Unix has been evolving. So let's see, you are going to effectively steal their product and then fine them 30 years worth of revenue to open their codebase for free. Even me being a huge liberal who voted for Nader sees this as beyond extreme.
When they broke up AT&T they did not hijack their lines. As competitors entered the market AT&T was able to lease those lines for years while competitors added their own lines. The same holds true here.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
A monopoly -can- exist when other companies are in the same field. A monopoly exists when a company is able to act like it is the only company in the field. And Microsoft does. An example of this, oddly enough is Copyprotection. As long as competition existed for office applications everybody dropped copyprotection. Now that competition basicly doesn't exist for Office Applications Microsoft is adding copyprotection.
(Lotus was a long holdout, but even they caved in at some point and dropped their copyprotection.)
Hopefully now they will give more consideration to implementing some of the measures outlined here ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft-antitrust. html ) -- more similar to IBM's punishment for unfair practices than to the Bell System's (breakup).
Unfortunately the essential.org article (which was *VERY* good, as good as the Stallman article itself) is no longer there, the staff is working on tracking it down again.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Checks and balances are all well and good...
Until you realize that the US Government is a litigant in the case. The DOJ is the plaintiff in this case, and the DOJ is part of which branch?
<church lady>
Could it be EXECUTIVE?
</church lady>
Sure, "W" couldn't poke his nose into a case between IBM and Microsoft, but as the plaintiff, the government can decide to forego prosecution any time they want to. If not in fact, then in spirit for certain.
I assume that this won't happen in part because of the consolidation with the 29(?) States' cases, but as they say... I am not a lawyer, so I could be wrong on that count.
In other news, the US government announced that in the future it would be making documents available in Word XP format and will be requiring Passport accounts for access.
OK, folks, I know you're all just jumping to flame George W. Bush and any other right-wingers you can find, but slow down a second.
.NET and their new licensing system, and a ban on the embrace-and-extend strategy.
What really happened is that the appeals court says that the original judge gave the impression he was biased against Microsoft, due to the nasty remarks he made about the company and the secret press conferences he held. The appeals court then overturned the sentencing portion of the verdict, and remanded the case to a different judge, to craft a new sentence. Nobody's saying Microsoft isn't guilty, they just want a judge who's not biased to sentence MS.
If you remember some of the comments Judge Thomas Jackson made about MS, you'll probably agree he was about as biased against MS as the average Slashdotter. As much as we may think that he was biased "the right way", a judge is supposed to be unbiased, and to allow otherwise is to corrupt the judicial system. This is justice being done (slowly), even if we don't like all the steps along the way.
Besides, who here thinks that just splitting MS in half is the best remedy? Each half will just be as bad as before... I'd much rather see carefully tailored prohibitions against some of the nastier anti-competitive elements of
Maybe you think splitting MS is suitable "punishment". But who does it punish? Microsoft itself is a name and some legal documents, and can't feel pain or unhappiness. The executives won't mind, because, with a split, there will be twice as many positions, and all but the most senior execs will probably get promoted. Does Bill Gates care? It would probably hurt his pride a little (about as much as a cream pie in the face), but it's not like he'll end up homeless on the street. Shareholders might get burned. Before you get excited, remember that your grandmother's pension (or yours, or your teachers') may be heavily invested in MS, without their knowledge. Burning MS might also send the tech economy even farther down the toilet. How many more of you want to be unemployed?
Seriously, folks, this is probably just justice being done (very) slowly and carefully, and it's probably for the best, even if it means we don't get the satisfaction of seeing MS split in two.
Somebody is going to mod me down as a troll, because they think that no person in their right mind could be anything but foaming-at-the-mouth anti-MS. Before you do, ask yourself, what contributes more to a debate, a hundred people agreeing with each other, or rational disagreement?
I found this bit of the AP article quite ironic ...
Since Bush took office in January, more than seven months after Penfield's breakup order, he has given no indication of how he would handle the mammoth suit he inherited from President Clinton
except to say that he is, in general, ``unsympathetic'' to lawsuits.
Fleischer underlined that point Thursday: ``The president believes people should work hard to enter into agreements and the president believes there's too much litigation in our society, generally speaking.''
I started to laugh, but was overwhelmed by anger or rightous indignation or something.
- bridgette
No, that would be like the bank robber robbing more bank's while he's out on bail.
Except that (accused) bank robber would actually be subject to bail conditions. If they broke them they could be carted off to prison.
AFAIK nothing similar. e.g. release a new version of Windows or attempt to tranfer assets out of the country and all your company belongs to "Uncle Sam", ever applied to Microsoft.
Corporations are artificial citizens. Who would you levy a criminal judgement upon? The CEO? The whole board? All of the stockholders?
Odd that this should only be a problem when it comes to punishing them, but not a problem when it comes to allowing them to have the same rights as real people...
If it's possible to give them rights then it must be possible to "jail", "bail" and "execute" a corporate. Indeed the latter is probably the easiest.
Corporations can be and regularly are tried on criminal charges and assessed criminal penalties (usually fines).
But they are not placed in jails, bail bonded, forced to attend court with 100% of themselves in the court, prohibited from going to certain places/enguaging in certain actions, forced to do work to help the public, forced to attend some kind of treatment, etc.
I'm sure many regular criminals would love to be able to continue comitting crimes and simply send their lawyer to court...
Funny - I remember reading or hearing about how when IBM got a subponea to turn over all of its documents, they indexed all of the documents to tape - and then destroyed the table of contents. Thus, the documents were present, but there was no master index on the tape!
That appears to be half the problem, corporates can drag out trials with the sort of thing which would get a real person jailed for contempt of court.
Jackson's problems stemmed, at least in part, from his inability to trust MSFT after they were caught lying in court (eg, the faked video tape).
IMHO the real problem is that even after doing this MSFT were treated as though they should have been trusted
Is there any word of trials of perjury against those responsible for lying in court (such as those that filmed the faked videotape)?
Except that this isn't actually "purjury", at best it's "contempt of court" at worst "conspiring to pervert the course of justice".
You can't open source the windows source code without compensating MS. How many billions do you want the taxpayers to shell out to effect this remedy?
You don't have to give them anything, just reduce the fine by 1%.
There will probably be a retrial just as was commanded by the Appeals Court, and a judge who is a little more level-headed than Jackson.
If there is a retrial Microsoft will again enguage in contempt of court and try the same appeal. Until they either run out of judges or the appeal court wises up.
A judge is supposed to decide the merits of a case (or an appeal) based on the evidence presented by the attorneys of the two sides, not by their own observations of the case.
And when one side gets court presenting forged "evidence"?
Yet, in this case, the judge was specifically payed to help draft a law, then he's called on by his old bosses to help in enforcing that law. And that's not bias?
That should be treason. I think actions like that should get him removed from the bench and bisbarred.
If he was involved and drafting the law then it would be high treason. Where the traditional penalty is execution.
Basically to top it off close to %80 of all internet users support microsoft which is supprisingly higher then the national public.
How did they do this poll? Web pages have been "ballot stuffed" before...
Name me one area in which microsoft has led the way, and no, software bloat doesnt count.
:)
Egomaniac naming of desktop components, "My Computer", "My Documents", "My Music", "My Network Places"...
Hell, they didnt even come up widos, they just bought out a company and added their own stuff.
Some people just don't realise how accurate an analogy The Borg are
"embrace and extend" is not a leadership philosphy, you would only use it as a strategy when you were falling behind, and needed to stop your slide, which is why MS uses it so frequently
But if you are already on top it can be an effective way to stay there. Anything else has to be better than Microsoft's offering before it is even likely to get a look in in the current situation.
Again, "we" are not "taking care of" Microsoft. Microsoft has power over the market and skill at manipulating any threats to that power out of business
Long before they can be "threatening", unless their first attempt were to be something which could do everything Microsoft stuff could do and more.
The only kind of things which stand any chance of being any kind of challenge to Microsoft, through a development and improvment cycle, are those protected by something like the GPL.
Proprietary software can be either killed off or asymilated, BSD licenced software can also be asymilated.
to the point where the normal apparatus of capitalism is no longer in any sense functioning, the resources needed to establish a second consumer operating system are controlled wholly by microsoft, and there is no way to return the market to a capitalistic competitive state short of some form of governmental intervention.
Also the longer this takes the more drastic any such action (and it's immediate effect) needs to be in order to have any effect at all.
Either that or you reach a point where any "treatment" is just as lethal as the "disease".
WP is the standard word processor for lawyers. Has been for years. They have (or had) special add on packs for lawyers. It used to be, back in the DOS days, that only WP could do the special characters used by lawyers.
Also IIRC certain kinds of word count (ignoring notes and certail annotations) are needed for legal documents which WP can do, but MSWord can't.
So basically the appeal court agrees that MS is the largest criminal organisation the world has ever seen but it refuses to punish it.
You probably mean largest non governmental such organisation.
Exactly -- they're still guilty. Its only the penalty of being broken up that was overruled.
The problem is that to a corporate entity it dosn't matter if they are tried, it dosn't matter if they are found guilty, it dosn't matter even if a sentence is passed. The only thing which matters is for any sentence to be carried out.
Criminal law is one thing which makes a nonsense of the idea of corporates as "people". A real person would await trial either or in prison or subject to bail, they would have to bring their entirity to court too.
But for a large corporation they can just carry on as usual. A real person couldn't do this, even a moderatly sized business...
So what is the solution; strip corporates of "person status"; halt their operations and freeze their assets as soon as charges are filed; charge Microsoft instead under RICO; etc?
Its just illegal to abuse it. So yes, you should care because they matter. The DOJ was real stupid not to go after the OEM deals. But no OEM for some odd reason wanted to testify agaisn't them. Hmm I wonder why.
The whole OEM thing is basically the kind of racket organised crime would love to have.
A legitimate business would say "you can buy our widgets at X amount each, if you buy a lot or buy regularly then the price goes down" (The reason doing that the latter situation means that the suppliers costs are actually less.) It would become a dodgy deal if supplier were to start saying "The price is X if you only buy widgets from us, otherwise the price is Y" or the supplier starts telling you what you can and can't do with them once you bought them. (The MS OEM agreements probably also contain a "if we catch you talking to the cops we cut off the supply" clause.)
The thing with software is that it's not actually a "widget", but suppliers like to sell it as though it is one (the actual cost being very low, especially if it's the OEMs who are printing manuals and pressing CDs.) Whilst at the same time claiming to sell some kind of abstract entity (generally immune to laws governing trade.) You also get things which on analysis are utterly bizare, such as Client Access Licences. Not even the "running a program is copying, therefore copyright applies" kind of logic makes any sense here.
Yes, they try to make money. Yes, they try to gain market share. But THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO in a free market!
If you have a company which breaks the law they will always appear to do better then honest businesses. If they are not weeded out PDQ then you cease to have a free market.
--
The lower court (not Thomas Penfield Jackson) may decide that MS should be broken up anyways.
Or the lower court may decide that the Findings of Fact do not support judgement of liability at all.
absolutely correct at to monopolizing, but not as to tying, which was remanded for finding in view of the new rule.
DOJ can let microsoft go, but there are co-plaintiffs! The states.
I see no proof of innovation in any sense. You know, getting the king to grant you the exclusive right to conduct your form of business and murdering the competition are also good old-fashioned business tactics. Are you recommending those tactics, or are you just expressing a hatred for capitalism?
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Right there, you lose half your argument. Moving on, we see you say that:
... The problem is you're assuming that Microsoft is the arbiter of what a contractual obligation consists of. Microsoft is not, and not even Microsoft's lawyers would claim to be. The only organization with any authority to determine what is or is not a contractual obligation is a court of law.
This means that Microsoft may very well have contractual obligations via their EULA. It's a well-established proposition of law that there is no contractual obligation which can withstand the scrutiny of consumer-protection legislation. If Microsoft says in their EULA that they have no liability whatsoever for their incredibly shoddy products, and a legislature decides that businesses are responsible for their shoddy products, well, guess what: that part of the EULA is null and void.
Does the EULA free Microsoft from having to provide technical support? Absolutely not. I'm willing to bet that if Microsoft released an incredibly shoddy product and refused to support it, a court would find that Microsoft was engaging in fraudulent business practices. Their disclaimer of "no warranty expressed or implied" wouldn't hold up worth a damn against a serious consumer-fraud case.
Now, it just so happens that antitrust law is soundly Constitutional; antitrust law rests squarely on the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress the ability to regulate trade among the states. Antitrust law is an interstate trade regulation, thus, Constitutional. A lot of free-marketers like to claim otherwise, but the Supreme Court hasn't been too kind to their attitudes.
"Taken as a whole, Rand's body of work is the most complete, thorough defense of human freedom I have ever encountered."
l it fr.htm
This song is basically what I think of Rand's "freedom".
http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/songs/texts/cal
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
I'm not saying that everyone's provided for, but that when they aren't, there isn't any bullshit about "freedom." I'm no fan of the USSR, but to call Rand's ideas "freedom" is just too simplistic.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Linux is advancing fast and furious on Microsoft's turf, the desktop. Palm still dominates the PDA market. Microsoft isn't even on the map for the wireless market.
People are seeing the .NET initiative for what it is, Microsoft's way of controlling when and how you use their software.
Microsoft is rapidly becoming irrelevant. The small innovative companies MS has tried to crush, or buy, are rising up to the challenge, and beating Microsoft. Internet Explorer was Microsoft's last major hurrah, and that's just because they forced the entire company behind it. Can you see that happening with WinCE/Pocket PC? XBox? Wireless? Not bloody likely.
Microsoft rose from the ashes that was IBM's move into the PC market. Microsoft has become those ashes. They're no longer a leader, they're a follower. And Microsoft can't survive in 2nd place, their corporate structure doesn't know how to market and compete from other than a total dominating position.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Great piece, I almost submitted it as a story, but the /. editors don't post that sort of stuff. It's certainly worthy of its own thread.
Best Slashdot Co
WP is the standard word processor for lawyers. Has been for years. They have (or had) special add on packs for lawyers. It used to be, back in the DOS days, that only WP could do the special characters used by lawyers.
Best Slashdot Co
Female Prison Rape in NY
If the federal government agencies even threatened to bail from purchasing all microsoft software, they'd probably be able to pressure Microsoft into doing whatever they want them to do (or not do).
I feel little sorrow for people bitching about Microsoft yet continue to buy and use their software. How much does the federal government pay Microsoft each year in license fees anyway? Can you imagine if each federal agency went to computer makers and demanded "naked" PCs or lose the sale? Or if the federal government committed to buying Corel office products for example? It'd give enough cash boost to whatever Microsoft competitor that exists to make them a very viable competitor.
The court has decided to send the case back to a lower court to be reconsidered.
--
- We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality.
So do stock market investors not RTFA? MS's stock is up 5%. It doesn't seem like MS is that much better off.--
Back when there were viable alternatives, Microsoft wasn't a monopoly (almost by definition). What, exactly, would the Justice have pursued? Bill Gates' bad taste in neckties?
"We're breaking you up /now/ because in the future you will become a monopoly..."
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Various analysts - myself included - were not happy about the breakup anyway. It actually seemed to allow MS some extra potential for market stranglehold, and on balance - except for legal costs and stock price fluctuations - they would end up pretty much the same either way.
At least they are just one big monopoly that everyone can watch closely, as opposed to a few smaller monopolies in various markets.
They are doing themselves out of business anyway with the rules surrounding XP - all my corporate clients use Ghost for system backups Enterprise-wide and started getting worried when MS discussed unit-specific licensing, yearly software charges and similar issues, not to mention the appalling uptime you get even from an OS as supposedly solid as W2000. Quite a few of them are already rolling out Star Office, and some are seriously considering Linux as next upgrade (even one client with >4000 desktop users)
I use most major OSes for business reasons, and MS for games. It's just not robust/cost-effective/secure enough for today's world.
Not a troll/flamebait - the facts I get from corporations every day support my viewpoint.
Frog51
Windows XP is a great example - people are snapping that up - not because everyone else has it (they obviously dont, it just came out) but because they feel compelled for some reason to purchase it
WinXP is not available yet. But you illustrate the mentality I alluded to splendidly.
And I have no doubt that people feel "compelled" to purchase it.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Exactly, my thoughts and if you look at history when justice is not done in the courtroom its done on the streets, so the American courts have now given yet another reason for the Tim McVies and Osma Bin Ladins of the world, America is going the way of Rome before it, as a non American I feel very sorry for all the innocents who will be the victims today and tommorrow, goodbye America...
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
...and what's more, this is the court that is usually favourable towards MS...
They're still a monopoly. They're still an illegal monopoly. The ONLY question is what to do about it.
--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
The court seems to be directly expressing concern of the effectiveness of either conduct remedies, or structural remedies in such a rapidly changing market. I wonder if the new judge reviewing the case will look at this, and interpret it as, "Hey, find a solution that really does prevent Microsoft from continuing to be a monopoly."
One can hope!
--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Judge: Let's break up the biggest consumer technology producing company in the economy. Don't broadcast this until after I issue my order and pretend appeals don't matter.
Economy: Okay, let's watch the stock market that high-tech stuff has been driving crash and burn immediately, starting today.
Appeals Court: Sorry, can't ignore the law and make your own rules judge. We'll have to send it back to someone less self-promoting at the law's expense.
Economy: Well, we'll start off with a big rally... [to be continued...]
Now what that says to me is that simply put, the punishment no longer fits the crime. I believe this isn't as big a victory for Microsoft as it originally seemed after seeing the headlines. Look for a more fitting punishment to follow seeing how an Operating Systems company and an Applications company could still control the marketplace in much the same way as it is now. (It could also mean they get off scot free, but I thought I'd look for that silver lining.)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Can someone (who really knows) explain to me about what legally constitutes bias by judges?
I understand that before or during the trial if the judge says, "Damn that OJ is as guilty as hell," that that would indicate he has already made a decision before all the evidence is in.
But from what I read, the MS judge first made his findings of fact and law showing that MS is a dirty, cheating, soulless, money grubbing whore, and then in an interview later said that MS was a dirty, cheating, soulless, money grubbing whore.
Are you not allowed to say stuff like this out loud as a judge ever, or did I miss a statement he made before the trial, or did he say something different in the interveiw than what he has said in court?
Thanks
- I like pudding.
Ouch, I don't like that line of thinking.
I'd like to believe that we take court actions for wrongdoing, not that we take court actions to "give other people a chance". That's a bit of judicial activism, if you ask me./p
Aha! You're one of those bitter people who doesn't like the electoral college when it doesn't support their candidate of choice. Your motivation is coming into focus.
Give us all a break, and a little credit, eh? The decision was entirely proper given Jackson's impropriety or appearance thereof. Your attempt to villify a man you clearly hate by blaming him for something he did not accomplish is pathetic, at best.
The fire and brimstone you want to rain down on us here is really an incredibly small thing compared to sitting idly by when judges don't do their job correctly, like Jackson did not when he acted with impropriety. A justice system we can trust is much more important.
So I can blame any bad judicial decision in 1992-2000 on Clinton? Cool, because there were a lot of rather activist decisions in those times that (I feel) had nothing to do with justice; now I have a scapegoat. (Hey, it's the childish/ignorant way!) It's a lot easier to blame a figurehead, isn't it?
So enlighten me. How, precisely, does the executive branch of the US government overturn a case? I don't know about you, but I read "Appeals Court" in the summary, which is probably still judges left over from the Clinton presidency.
Having waded through the decision itself, I don't understand this interpretation. The appeals court agreed that (a) the facts were as Judge Jackson presented them, (b) MS is a monopoly, (c) the deals with OEMs, ISPs, and ISVs threatening their access to Windows unless they dropped Navigator were illegal, (d) the deal with Apple was illegal, (e) almost the whole Java thing was illegal, and (f) code mingling (applications and Windows) is illegal. The part about MS bundling IE with Windows (just as an application) and the breakup remedy were remanded. They're still guilty, just not of quite so many things. The chances of getting the guilty verdict overturned would now seem to be remote.
If I were MS, I would be almost as afraid of procedural remedies for that list of activities as an actual breakup. WinXP is clearly illegal due to code mingling, how much time and money will they lose fixing that? Will they have to go back and fix everything since Win98? MS is still likely going to have to implement procedures and audits and reports to the court or the DOJ for years to show that none of the illegal activities are going on. Having been through the AT&T breakup back in the '80's, those kind of procedures take up a lot of corporate resources.
Plus, violating procedural remedies tends to get you put in jail for contempt -- not one of the best recruiting tools around.
Da comrade. Those crazy americans spend their money on useless lawsuits - but we - the people of USSR know the truth: F73WT-WHD3J-CD4VR-2GWKD-T38YD
... and that capitalist pig bill gates won't be getting your hard worked money.
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W7XTC-2YWFB-K6BPT-GMHMV-B6FDY
MD97J-QC7R7-TQJGD-3V2WM-W7PVM
PRVR2-CMXTB-J9PXR-3WVM2-XTVK6
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--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Oh, and Napser getting shut down is W's fault as well.
WordPerfect 6 format?!?!?! What's up with that? Were they afraid to publish in Word format?!?!?!!?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Ugh! ya got me. I omitted the use of the word "modern". It does sort of make sense. Clinton employed many of the corrupt practices of a century ago but weren't Democrat reformers the ones who pushed through civil service to get rid of this kind of spoils system BS?
Jackson's problems stemmed, at least in part, from his inability to trust MSFT after they were caught lying in court (eg, the faked video tape). Is there any word of trials of perjury against those responsible for lying in court (such as those that filmed the faked videotape)? .V / _` (_-<_-<
.\_/\_/\__,_/__/__/
__ __ ____ _ ______
\ V
make world, not war
In a way, a small part of me is somewhat glad that they won't be broken up anytime soon. Now, if/when Linux succeeds, people won't be able to say it was ONLY due to the breakup of the giant. At least the court trial gave us a few years where MSFT had to behave, so we could help spread the good word in a fairer playing field.
Besides, I think the breakup was the wrong punishment for MSFT's actions. I don't think it was painful enough.
__ __ ____ _ ______
\ V
make world, not war
Even better.. In the OS segment, seperate the 9x and NT codebases, and give a third the development tools instead of giving it to the applications group.
Two companies having to work with a third party for their development tools is a great way to ensure interoperability.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Hm. Maybe now they'll have to use the same standard when examining Judge Kaplan's behavior during the 2600 DeCSS case?
---
Now they can build hotels on Boardwalk.
Jason
This means that the Findings of Fact (the abuse of monopoly power) still stand, and the case is only subject to review in terms of penalty. The case is being turned over to another judge at the circuit level, and if that other judge reccommends that MS be broken up (more likely he would rec. a lesser penalty) the break-up may still come to pass.
This section essentially says that while Judge Jackson's statements showed a bias, the facts still show that MS broke the law. (It says a lot more, but essentially says that the facts are still there, and MS cannot dispute them).
Essentially what this biolds down to is that the Findings of Fact stand, but the Conclusions of Law (the breakup order) show evidence of judicial bias, and as such will be submitted to another judge to determine a new conclusion (ie: may issue a new breakup order, order release of code, pay a fine to gov't, etc.)
Hope this helps. While I'm not a lawyer yet, IP, antitrust, and constitutional law are in my field.
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Oh, and Algore would have been better? Give me a break.
I could come up with a list of thing I wouldn't have liked from a Gore administration, and I'd be just as upset as you are about Bush.
The neat thing is that neither your party or mine really gives a damn about us. All they really care about is taking more freedom from us and making the government more powerful, only from different directions and in different areas. But, its all bad.
Services First, Technology Second, People Third
"Microsoft doesn't care much about shared source or Smart Tags and we are wasting our time following their marketing trail. We need to focus on Microsoft's true goal, which is to completely dominate the internet services market. We should pay attention to how they are building a services infrastructure, not a technology infrastructure. We should figure out how they are going to use tools like Passport and Microsoft Messenger to control our personal information and various internet transactions."
How to Download YouTube Videos
Does this verdict shed new light on Microsoft's hostility towards various open source licensing arrangements? Although this is breaking news to us, I'm sure the lawyers and corporate officers at Microsoft caught wind of this long ago. They might not have known how the court would rule, but they've certainly been clued into what was being considered.
/remedy/ is going to be reconsidered, then consider this: how would MS feel about being compelled to comply with OPEN STANDARDS? E.G. - perhaps force them to disclose protocols, binary document formats, etc.? I've always thought this would be a much more effective remedy than splitting them up. Force them to publish the specs for MS Word docs. Force them to tell Jeremy Allison everything they program into SMB. Etc.
/that/ is why Microsoft has recently been so hostile to certain types of licensing arrangements. They are /scared to death/ of any license that doesn't allow them to take things proprietary. Because that is now a possible remedy that could be used against them.
So if the
Maybe
Maybe today isn't as bad as I first thought when I saw the headlines.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
The fact is Justice should have pursued this when it really mattered, back when 95 was coming onto the scene. Back when there were alternatives to Windows on the desktop.
Um, when Windows 95 was released, almost nobody was using Mosaic or Netscape or anything about the Internet. There was no standard TCP/IP stack for Windows, just a few good third party hacks.
I think you're confusing this case with the "One CPU, One EULA" cases that the OEMs were bringing to the courts. And even those didn't happen in a newsworthy way until 1997.
[
'natural gas', not natral gas or natrail gas.
'stopped', not stoped.
grammar much?
[
... and although another court will decide what remedy is necessary in this case, that other court could also decide Microsoft should be split up. It simply gives MS at not being split up, but in the end this appeal may have no effect.
Do domain names matter?
Now, instead of using the "update:" convention, we have /. editing their articles as they notice the flaws popping up -- whatever happened to being honest and admitting to mistakes when they happen?
So just because it made the judicial system look bad, and despite the fact that they found no evidence of bias to support Microsoft's claims, they overturned the decision anyways in the interest of maintaining integrity in the judicial process?
lookout for riots and looting on the streets of San Jose and Austin tonight.
Wrong. The appearance of bias merely lead to Jackson being disqualified from re-hearing the case.
It was the remedy being vacated, not the "findings of fact"; they stand, but have been reinterpreted.
The remedy was killed for many reasons... mostly lack of an evidentiary hearing, and lack of a logical causal relationship showing how the remedy would stop the practices (as far as the limited technical understanding of these judges could see).
Most of the appellate courts problems with the "findings of fact" were minor, with two exceptions:
1) The appellate judges did not find evidence submitted in the trail that lead to Jackson's conclusion that IE prohibits entry into the browser market (from page 63):
During the appeal, the judges brow-beat the DOJ attorney concerning why Jackson would refer to both the OS and the browser as a "platform". The DOJ attorney just stared and stuttered. What an idiot!I really wanted to answer the question for him: like an OS executes programs, a browser renders web content; the dominant browser will have web content tailored to it's idiosyncrasies, causing standards to become obscure and proprietary, leaving competing browsers "chasing the tail" of the dominant browser, trying to emulate it's idiosyncrasies perfectly and follow the changing idiosyncrasies with every update of the browser. At this point in the ubiquity of IE, if Microsoft comes out with a patch or IE revision that causes web pages to not be rendered properly, everyone will remake their pages to conform, and every competing browser must change it's rendering procedures to follow the idiosyncrasy -- the same way MS kept DRDOS from ever being compliant with DOS.
For evidence, look at all the comments by ASP's in slashdot articles that have claimed that it's too cumbersome to maintain web pages that work for both Netscape and IE... and they just test for IE compatibility because of it's ubiquity. For further evidence, try different browsers that are trying to emulate IE: for example, at my Fidelity Investments web account, there are certain pages (news, graphs) that will not even allow my browser to try to render -- even if the browser impersonates IE but says the OS is Linux (as Opera will do), you get an error message instead that says to "upgrade to IE for Windows". I have many email responses from Fidelity Investments saying that they only support IE for Windows and MAC and will disallow any browser from even trying to render certain content.
The judges go on to say that the browser wars can no longer be used to prove anti-trust behavior (page 100, page 59 also explains this):
2) The appellate judges did not find conclusive evidence that "tying" was ultimately helpful or harmful to the market (Page 85, following a long diatribe of cases where tying was helpful and other cases where tying was harmful): This is followed by carefully laid-out merits that must be achieved to prove "tying" was detrimental to the market.There were other minor logic "flaws" that were found... along the lines of lack of evidence to backup a logical argument... as in if a,b,c,d, then e... the appellate court found cases where some point had not been part of the evidence given in the case. For example, Jackson said something along the lines of "along with all the commonly acknowledged instances of this behavior"... where the appellate judges said those commonly known instances weren't part of the record so couldn't be part of the conclusion.
The judges said that "every OS bundles a browser" as a reason to allow Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows. They also stated that the anti-competative behavior was entirely in business arrangements, and not proven to be embedded in the technology. They apparently do not understand the role of API's and special hooks into the OS that only MS is privy, as laid out in the "findings of fact".
In the entire 125 page document, there are only 6 paragraphs that use the term "API"; and none of those paragraphs show a good understanding of what Judge Jackson was talking about in the "findings of fact" concerning Microsoft's use of API's (and special proprietary hooks into the OS for the advantage of their own applications) in blocking competition. For example, IE was able to make a web page a users background -- that wasn't in a defined API, and it immediately gave Microsoft a clear "gee whiz" advantage over all other browsers.
"The appearance of bias" is a ruse. My opinion from reading the document is that the appellate judges don't like Jackson, had a score to settle, and were waiting for a reason to punish him with public humiliation. He erred, but not as badly as they made it seem.
I think they are intimidated by Jackson's grasp of the technical issues, that they can't begin to comprehend. They need more evidence for what was "obvious" to Jackson and other technically competent folk.
They also seem quite adamant that Microsoft needs protection. The remedy should not punish or hurt Microsoft, only allow future competition. These judges truly don't understand the problem, and have just let Microsoft off with murder (the millions of programmer lifetimes wasted trying to compete with Microsoft).
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Of course, that just throws the bias in Microsoft's favor, since the new judge will be afraid to say anything bad about Bill Gates or the corporation itself.
In addition, it's unlikely under the current presidential administration that anything drastic will happen to Microsoft. We've entered into a Big Business-friendly era, and Microsoft is feeling right at home.
Got Rhinos?
Here's the decision: http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/06/28/microsoft_file/dec ision.pdf
Got Rhinos?
Face it, the Judge lost the case, not the prosecution. If he wasn't so obviously biased in his choice of Court advisors, allowances to the prosecution, or flapping his big frigging mouth off after the trial but before the ultimate resolution. The fact is Justice should have pursued this when it really mattered, back when 95 was coming onto the scene. Back when there were alternatives to Windows on the desktop. If they want to help the computer industry now they need to fight to ensure there remains competition in the server side of the market. (the desktop war is over, the victims have already been buried) Get some regulations out there to protect the privacy and information of individuals. Protect their freedom on the net by preventing companies from locking up the world. PS: It didn't hurt MS's case that Netscape/AOL merged with Time Warner, kind of rendered a lot of the future predicitions made by prosecution pointless.
Got Rhinos?
As was said on the MSNBC article covering this ruling (or rather, it was a link to other antitrust cases in history, eg: AT&T, IBM, etc) these cases are usually drawn out for DECADES before they're either given up or ruled on. IBM's case started in 1969 and didn't end until the 80's, and AT&T's case lasted almost as long too. Considering Microsoft's case started in 1998, we've got atleast 8 more years of this in the courts before they get around to doing something meaningful..
The thing that's really too bad is Judge Jackson did this to himself-- if he'd kept his mouth shut, not appeared on TV and in the media making public remarks about the case, there's a decent chance he'd have atleast been able to continue presiding as Judge over the case. Now they're handing it to a different Judge, possibly one that will be more in line with what Microsoft's lawyers want.
Got Rhinos?
The important battle was still won.
The important battle was the one that got IT managers looking at alternatives instead of blindly choosing a Microsoft product.
The important battle was one that got Microsoft's internal documents out on the Internet for all to see and read. These showed how Microsoft's goal was domination with IE. (Never mind that, in the end, they did make a better browser than Netscape.)
The important battle got Linux thousands of headlines and millions of dollars in IPO money and venture capital.
The important battle was the one that got the phrase "open source" in the vocabulary of millions of people.
The important battle was the one that IBM joined -- Linux as a viable server alternative.
The other important battle was the one that got embedded Linux rolling. I love my TiVO, and I don't have to worry about anything dealing with regular Linux -- I can just sit back and let it record for me. That's what consumers want, and Linux delivered.
Folks, it ain't over. Linux has the mindshare now. Linux has IBM. Microsoft has been forced to make a really stable OS (2000) to compete.
Competition is a good thing. Microsoft sees the threat on its horizon. Even if Linux dies (which I don't think it will), Microsoft will have changed dramatically. Microsoft now is competing on features and stability, not on "well, everyone buys our product anyway, so we can afford to make it crappy."
In short, don't forget how far Linux has come, or how far it can go. Don't get caught up in these "anti-open-source" agendas; they are meant to take away from the real issue. Some of the best programs in the world are released as open-source, some are not. It's not the issue. The issue is that Linux/Apache/etc. has started to be taken seriously. This is a good thing.
Got Rhinos?
You see, because of the free market, people all over this country have switched to Linux. Nobody forced them to do so... they do so because Linux is better for what they want to use their computer(s) for. Unfortunately, for the average (i.e. dumb) user, Windows is still easier to use and more convenient than Linux. We are working to change this, but at the current time, the average person that uses Windows will tell you that, yes, it sucks (i.e. unstable, slow, etc), BUT these they are willing to live with these problems for the ease of use.
Yes, Microsoft is a giant. Yes, they try to make money. Yes, they try to gain market share. But THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO in a free market! If businesses didn't try to make money, we would still be riding trains everywhere and building our own homemade computers.
Microsoft WILL fall by the way any company in a free market falls... by a better product taking away their market share! You can't expect this to happen overnight, as Microsoft has a HUGE userbase. And, in my opinion, they are still the best product for some people.
So, how can you, after seeing how the free market has allowed Linux to come in and cause serious damage to Microsoft's server market share, go crying to the government to interfere with capitalism at work and manually break up Microsoft?? The truth is that Microsoft is the BETTER product for many people to this day... and that probably pisses you off, and you don't want to accept it.
I hate Microsoft. I want to see them fall as much as you do. However, when they fall, I want them to KNOW that it was Linux that took them down... that it was a better product developed through the use of open source, that took down the giant! If the goverment goes in and breaks them up before we win, then they will just blame everything on the goverment instead of Linux. In 100 years, it will be the government that stopped Microsoft, not Linux.
We are making such good progress, why would you guys want the government to stop the war when we are on our way to victory?
I have never been FORCED to give Microsoft any money. In fact, the only person that has EVER forced me to give them money is the government via taxes (one of these days, I'm sure I will be robbed, but not yet). In fact, I don't think ANYBODY has been forced to give Microsoft their money... yet Microsoft takes in tons of it. This must mean that there are still tons of people that CHOOSE to give them money for one reason or another. We need to find these reasons and stop them ourselves.
The government is NOT the answer!
Some of you have the illusion that you (or anybody else) were forced to give your money to Microsoft. If you think so, post a reply and tell me how it happened, and we'll see if we can see how you were forced.
Ah, my favorite troll. I'm not sure why some people continue to think IE is worth anything. It could be that Windoze loads it on start up so that it looks faster to some people. It's still slower than Netscape 4.x on NT for me. I suppose people who must have all the flash trash, images and java that adverters can toss at them might like IE which won't let them turn them off. (I have to turn them off each time you open the thing). Some people might even like the total system integration that alows malicious web sites to own their computers. No, here at work I'll stick to Netscape. Others can continue to give away their freedoms by whatever means they will.
And that is the issue. It's not a single application, it's my ability to choose. MS has used all sorts of dirty tricks to force applications, all inferior, down people's throats on their platforms. They have also used all sorts of dirty tricks to keep hardware makers from even thinking of making drivers for other OSs. You know, that stupid little flag on the box, interface specs in a timely manner la la, so that you have less of a choice about platforms. They have refused to compete and will continue to refuse because they can't.
All those dirty tricks are haunting them. Win2k is NOT STABLE. A friend of mine's been running it and it's not much better than NT, a crash in six weeks or less ususally less. It could not even format a hard disk at my house for my wife's MS box. All the little breaks and odd things they put in to thwart competitors have got to make their code base a bloated hell. If only that effort had been put into fixing things instead. Still, their programers are no match for the thousands of happy volunteers a decade of abuse has spawed. Free software sucks less and there are now more Linux developers than Windows developers. Hearts and minds are lost to them and won't be comming back.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is insightful? Since when does the executive branch have anything to do with the judical branches decisions?
My understanding is that there are two different burdens of proof on appeal. This seems to be echoed in the decision (if you read it).
Findings of fact are generally deferred to by a higher court. The reasoning is that the original judge -- who had direct access to witness testimony, etc. (Or the jury) had the best chance to decide what is so, and read the faces of witnesses during testimony, etc. The further you crawl up the appeal ladder, the farther you are from the real evidence/facts of the case. Findings of fact are generally only overturned if there is a finding of 'obvious' error.
Findings of law, on the other hand are decided 'De Novo' -- anew. The thought here appears to be that the law doesn't change when you crawl up the appeals ladder, but knowledge of the law increases (in theory) as you climb.
As such, it's not uncommon to find comments in high level cases that read like:
In this case, it was no surprise that they essentially left his findings of fact alone. Where they did touch his findings of fact, it tended to be on the law underlying those findings not the facts themselves. The legal decisions (i.e. what to do with the found facts) is where they did most of their damage. This seems pretty normal activity for an appeals level court.(I'm still reading the decision).
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This seems to have been a majour sticking point for the court of appeal. They pointed to the rapid movement in the computer industry as a reason why Jackson should have allowed an evidentiary hearing before giving a remedy. The facts of the case were, in some cases for years before the case went to trial. An evidentiary hearing would have allowed him to figure out what was going on now and adjust his remedy to that.
It's actually quite possible that an evidentiary hearing could hear about what microsoft is doing now, and result in a far more draconian response than what Jackson decreed. On the other hand, they might look at the netscape/ AOL/ Time-Warner merger and decide that everything is fine now (unlikely).
This recent decision does seem to open up for the DOJ (and even intervenors) to make submissions as to what the current state of the market is in hopes that we'll get a rullling that really does stop Microsoft's monopolistic practices as of now, not as of 1995 when they didn't control the 'net like they do now. We might even see an opening up of questions such as Microsoft's creeping domination of the network multi-media market, and other areas.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Corporations can be and regularly are tried on criminal charges and assessed criminal penalties (usually fines).
Why doesn't the Linux community put together a decent enough product that it can compete instead of crying that daddy-government isn't fixing their problems for them. You sound like a bunch of welfare receipients who were just told they are going to have to fend for themselves from now on.
Also, something you geeks may eventually learn (I finally learned it (the hard way) after decades of programming) is that technical-superiority != good-product. There is a lot more to making a product successful than just programming the code and you guys aren't even close to figuring that out as is evidenced by your jealous daddy-make-it-fair attitude.
You can keep your dreams of socialized software, I'd rather make companies compete for my dollars.
Open sourcing thier OS does nearly nothing other than allow people work out how it works. I guess you really meant GPL'ing it, this would not take it away from them! It would simply mean that whatever price they sell their OS for, the purchaser can give it to someone else for free if they want. Imagine MS have to GPL everything, they could price WinXP at $10 billion and make a consortium buy a copy from them to resell as they wish (knowing MS can in turn undercut them by selling more copies at a lower price). Imagine they cannot even charge for the OS, they still have not lost it at all as you would suggest. If you have a DB your working on in MySQL and you discover that you can't do something vital, who do you call first to do it for you? If you want WinXGPL (trademarked, patented and owned by me so FO) customised for your network, you are going to go to MS first and others second. The fundamental fact is that if they were forced to open it and keep it open they would still be the primary development centre and can leverage revenue from there thanks to the high costs of entry into the game to rival them (you reckon you can create a Windows distribution with any substantial changes just because you have the source).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Simple, do you want government to intervene whenever it is for the greater good or do you wish it to let exploitation happen as the market will always sort it out. I want intervention (I just want people to elect sane representatives to do it appropriately, but I know that I'll never see that) and I cannot understand how anyone can believe intervention is never appropriate. Think of it this way, I would not let ANY company make 90% of the cars on the road AND lock the bonnet AND be a major petrol distributor (and only their petrol works and you can't analyse it to figure out what their adding, if you do they sue) AND a road builder AND AND AND. Owning bits of the whole game is fine as long as you don't "control" any part. No-one can deny that MS own the PC market (yes 10% is elsewhere but they are nearly by definition seperate markets) and as the car scenario is unsafe and offers horrible potential for exploitation (from the garage who'll crack open the bonnet to service it unofficially to the manufacturer themselves providing a EULA that states they car must be returned after five years for "safety") MS is unsafe (Outlook Virii as a headline example) and offers the potential for exploitation. I believe in the people first, everything else second, thats why I opject to software patents (and to some degree patents and IP as a whole, excluding copyright for artistic work). What do you believe in?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Here you make a jump where you ascribe attributes to me that I do not believe I have demonstrated byeond the fact that I would strip people of the fruits of their illegal labor (i.e a heroin dealer, guns runner or extortion raquet). Would you really bust a drug deal and let the dealer keep the money?
Other than that I believe identically to what you describe here! I believe society is simply a complex network of individuals of equal importance. I don't believe that you can ascribe anything to society really however, for example our TV is not the sum of society, it is what is produced by the people who go into that business (a load of individuals). I believe that everyone owns the right to the fruits of their labor subject to a taxation system which serves to ensure the stability of all individuals. We may not agree on taxation levels but I doubt you really mean that peoples rights to the product of their work means they should provide no "product" to society, even if it is only to cover a legal system to deal with criminals.
Finally I also believe that people can exercise copyright on software (to me there is no question code is artistic, data mightn't be). You can do what you like with your code it is the product of your work. A software patent however is an extra protection that I believe is a joke concept and I can't really even express why it is just so insane. I hope you weren't implying that stripping software patents strips the rights to the fruits of your labours because software patents are what strips the ability to use your labour (no you can't write any code that plays DVDs).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Ok, I'll take an easier example to accept, Would you catch someone robbing a bank and then let them keep the money? Basically whatever laws we have must be enforced (of course it is preferable if the laws are sane, I believe that current drug laws are fscked). Do you really believe in no law, just money? If so, it's time to move to your world and become a murdering thief and sleep at night.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Maybe I can sell the stocks I bought at $90 before the next judge rules to fsck them again.
It ain't over, folks. Just delayed. Looks like Jackson blew it (and not the Justice dept).
Oh, those claiming that this is due to GWB are simply dreaming. Now, if Justice decides not to pursue the case in a retrial, then you can say the current administration had some influence.
But, Supreme Court notwithstanding, Bush has no influence over judical decisions. (Just kidding about the Supreme Court thingy).
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
After the news broke, Nasdaq halted the trading of Microsoft on the market. Yahoo finance had a really quick quip about it... does anyone else know why they did such a thing?
-gerbik
A lot of comments have wondered about the rational for the decision. Why, if the court says there does not appear to be any bias in the decision, would they bother overturning it? I think they are doing the government a favor, because they have just removed one criteria on which Microsoft could continue to appeal down the road. When a case is this important, absolutely everything must be 100% by the book. The actions of the Court of Appeals will make sure that is so, and will make it harder for Microsoft to appeal later.
Is that the appeals court upheld that Microsoft is guilty of illegally defending its monopoly. This clears the way for a whole slew of lawsuits.
Q: Why do people think Microsoft software is poor?
A: Because it's unstable, unreliable, and requires frequent reboots. Q: What do the editors and net-ops of OSDN, who run sites such as Slashdot, Freshmeat, and SourceForge, and cheerleaders for Open Source, assume is the first solution to any problems with their network?
A: REBOOT THE DATABASE! REBOOT THE FIREWALL! REBOOT THE ROUTER!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I am looking for a word processor. It must be able to understand WordPerfect, as I have several important documents in older WP formats.
wp2x will convert WordPerfect 5 documents to HTML, TeX, etc. From there, you can use StarOffice.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Who do you think nominates judges to the Supreme Court? Any judge who wants to further his career does whatever he thinks will please those who will make or break him. Believing that the executive branch has nothing to do with this injustice is childish and ignorant.
Indepenedent thinking is underrated.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Not that any judges except Jackson himself are to blame. If he had acted a little more like a judge deciding a major case, and a little less like an instant celebrity, the decision may have stuck.
This appeals court has a definite right-wing bias, and a history of striking down anti-trust rulings; they would have voted against Jackson's decision anyway. This just gave them a convenient excuse.
--
Well... to Judge Jackson this is the rebuke that vindicates. I didn't think the appeals court would be so smart about it. Proves he knows the law, but also proves he can't keep his mouth shut when he has to.
I'm thinking that this is frustrating, but in theory it's nothing more than a delay of the inevitable. I say in theory because you never quite know what the Ashcroft DoJ is likely to do in a situation like this. I will say this -- I hope the judge that gets the case factors in Microsoft's recent behavior and their open defiance of the breakup order. If said judge is doing his/her job properly the second time around could be worse.
Then again, that's assuming the best of the courts. After the whole Florida fiasco I don't think we can be too sure.
/Brian
"obvious bias" only counted outside the courtroom, IMHO. Jackson has a history of dismissing his own experts if their testimony makes no sense -- ask a perpetual-motion pusher named Joseph Newman how he was supposedly screwed by Jackson.
I've gotten the sense that Jackson is actually quite conscientious about his work. In the above-mentioned case Jackson threw out the testimony of an expert witness that claimed Newman's suspiciously efficient electric motor generated more power than it took in because it simply didn't make any sense scientifically. What killed him was his inability to keep a poker face about the situation, which in practice is probably rather meaningless but still doesn't look good in public.
/Brian
The order is not quite being interpreted the way everyone says it is. According to the legal commentary I heard on NPR this morning on the way to work, part of the reason for throwing out this remedy is that they didn't feel it would prevent Microsoft from exerting its monopolistic strengths in OS and Browser markets even after the company was split in two. They have asked for a new court to come up with a remedy that should actually weaken Microsoft's position with regards to its control of these markets.
More data, damnit!
The odds of landing on Boardwalk are of course much greater...
Hmm. I've traversed the entire Monopoly board from Old Kent Road to Mayfair many a time, and I've never once landed on Boardwalk. Or Park Place, for that matter. Then again, I'm playing this edition.
Added to which, no government that approves a merger like AOL-TW can break up MS.
--- Submission is feudal.
You shouldn't have posted AC -- hopefully the mods will allow people to see it.
1) Netscape 4 sucked so people switched browsers.
2) IE had a greater marketshare than Netscape before Win98 shipped
One thing you neglect is Microsoft's bundling agreements with ISPs and with third party application vendors. There was lots of contractual arm-twisting going on even back in the IE3 days, and it sounds like the appeals court rightly upheld this conduct as illegal.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
This decision was not overturned. It was vacated. All this means is that another judge will review the findings of fact and the original ruling, and a new penalty will be considered. The lower court (not Thomas Penfield Jackson) may decide that MS should be broken up anyways.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Pathetic.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Which consumer is that? Did you get his/her name and are they aware that they are an endangered species?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
And I agree completely with your point, the suggestions made by the FSF will do far more good than braking up the company (which is something I don't think makes much sense anyway), and I certainly hope this will receive some attention.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Not that any judges except Jackson himself are to blame. If he had acted a little more like a judge deciding a major case, and a little less like an instant celebrity, the decision may have stuck.
Thankfully they have not vacated his findings that they have used their monopoly power illegally, only that his remedy is to be reconsidered by another lower court.
There is nothing to say that the next lower court can decide on the same punishment, or something else entirely. At least that was my understanding from the clip I read at www.salon.com.
I do not have a signature
I was going to try to reply rationally to your post, but there's just no point. You're completely and utterly ignorant. You don't have the slightest shred of knowledge about ANYTHING you just wrote. Take for example, saying the John Ashcroft spent his life fighting against desegregation. What could possibly make you think that? I mean, while governor of Missouri, he had the highest possible rating for diverse judgeship appointments. You know what, the more I think about it, your statement is not just wrongheaded, it's slanderous. For Christ's sake, why not just say "he appointed John Ashcroft, a man well known for his tendency to eat the souls of the unborn, AG"? It would have made at least as much sense. You're an idiot.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Damn Link. Just type in Microsoft.
Damn. Third time's a charm
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. -Welsey Willis
http://saveie6.com/
What does this have to do with the appeal?
The answer is simple. With numbers like this the government will look bad picking on poor old Microsoft and Americans will likely be upset if they are broken up. The oil companies in charge of the energy crises are huge target on the governments list because Americans care. They do not when it comes to Microsoft or they actually support them.
We slashdoters may know better but barely half of americans even believe ms is a monopoly? Even those who think MS is, believe that its a good thing for the industry and economy. How many of you written politicans argueing for breaking them up? Now how many of the vast majority have written politicans demanding to leave poor bill alone for innovating? My guess is a hell of alot more. I except the poll results to show on cnn website soon since I just saw it on television. Otherwise I would of put a direct link
The justice department is just reacting to the public's perception of a great innovator who is unfairly being picked on by an intrusive government for making superior products. We all know some of microsoft's tricks on how to cripple other companies rather then competing but the public does not know this or care sadly. The bush administration will likely be largely infleunced by opinion. By the way many conservatives like Orin Hatch and Barr support breaking up Microsoft but know that the public perception is agaisnt them so they will not recommend an injunction agaisnt them to Ashcroft. Its not Bush but the american public and also the republicans hate government interaction.
http://saveie6.com/
This is only Round 2.
There are more appeals and legal manuvering to go. Don't think that this is the end. This issue will not even be in the next round for 90-180 days. Resolution will not be complete for 3-5 years. By then Windows9x will not even be the prominent OS and no one will remember or be using Netscape 3.x. Microsoft strategy is to make this the longest appeal possible. The longer that this trial takes the better for Microsoft.
Brief recap...
1. Combination of the browser with the file manager and OS.
2. Proactive incompatability with other non-Microsoft browsers.
3. Specific exclusion of Netscape browser.
This is only round 2.
This far from over.
-- Andy
Huh? '95 was the first consumer-level windows with their integrated TCP/IP stack in it.
IBM sure did slow down that trial and awful lot, more than you would expect from something that was "dragging them down"
Every Linux Geek should read the decision, both so they know what they are talking about, and to recognize Microsoft strategy when they see it. Microsoft is still very clever and plays good strategy, and we should be aware of it...
.NET, C#, and the rest. Why? For one, if it is standardized, then Microsoft could claim anyone could make a .NET clone, it's just that consumers and developers, acting as consumers with full market knowledge, yada, yada, decide to purchase the superior Microsoft produce. Freedom to Innovate. Checkmate, bastards.
.NET in the works, although it may not be released until the last second, and will be a business and legal win for the company. In time, your grandmother (or, by that time, your mother) will be running Linux on her home system - but it will be the Microsoft distro, running .NET and Passport.
In the first few pages (around page 19), the decision reports that the Appeals Court upheld that MiddleWare would not count when determining that Microsoft was a monopoly. Microsoft defined middleware as any system that supplied an API for applications programming (Java was an example). If the middleware layer became an industry standard, then the API could be mapped to other operating systems, making Microsoft's monopoly irrelevalent. Application designers could write an application, using the API, that ran on Windows as well as other operating systems, and consumers could then move to another operating system with a significantly lessened cost-of-entry. Thus, Microsoft would be unable to leverage it's monopoly power - the market would take care of the remedy. With increased processing power making indirect APIs more attractive, Microsoft thinks this is a real threat.
The Appeals Court upheld what we all know - the current middleware software (Java et all) isn't good enough - you can't write a fully portable, fully powered application on top of it. Thus, it doesn't factor into the court's decision that Microsoft is a monopoly.
So, what does Microsoft do? They try to invent an API that is powerful enough -
What if they don't buy it, and split the company up anyway? Well, Microsoft, while it was one company, already created the application-to-operating system interface, and can seemlessly use it as two companies. Plus, they can port it to other systems, and leverage their market share on office applications in other markets.
So, yeah, I expect a Linux port of C# and
That's not precisely true -- merely assessing each as a square along the playing board doesn't factor the various non-dice related influences on board position. The odds of landing on Boardwalk are of course much greater (according to one analysis, Boardwalk is the 18th-most-landed upon property, whereas Park Place is 33rd.
For more detail, see http://www.tkcs-collins.com/truman/monopoly/monopo ly.shtml.
FreeBSD - the power to serve.
Interesting to note that the MSNBC article also claims (erroneously) that the ruling that bundling IE with windows violated the sherman act was thrown out. Does anyone else find it a bit troubling that they use their own news company to put an even better spin on this news than there should be?
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
As was said on the MSNBC article covering this ruling (or rather, it was a link to other antitrust cases in history, eg: AT&T, IBM, etc) these cases are usually drawn out for DECADES before they're either given up or ruled on. IBM's case started in 1969 and didn't end until the 80's, and AT&T's case lasted almost as long too. Considering Microsoft's case started in 1998, we've got atleast 8 more years of this in the courts before they get around to doing something meaningful..
The thing that's really too bad is Judge Jackson did this to himself-- if he'd kept his mouth shut, not appeared on TV and in the media making public remarks about the case, there's a decent chance he'd have atleast been able to continue presiding as Judge over the case. Now they're handing it to a different Judge, possibly one that will be more in line with what Microsoft's lawyers want.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Bill Gates gave a brief speach telling what a burden has been lifted from their shoulders and how he wants to thank the thousands of supporters who have called and written in support of Microsoft during this trying and difficult time. (nothing said of the thousands, including one vocal interviewee on the news, who were not supportive and feel the rat has made off with the cheese) Bill continued with the party line that they have established technological partnerships with thousands of technology companies and continue to work with their partners to improving hardware, softwage, etc. for home and business. Note: Their partners. Nothing is said about improvements for non-partnered technology companies, and you could read that as any company which does not buy Microsoft language IDE's or compilers, or basically sell their soul for a slice of the pie. He sounded rather unrepentant, but not necessarily defiant. I'd like to note, however, that whenever I here him use the word "innovate" I wonder how many people around him understand how negatively this will impact them.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Milosovic extradited, Bill Gates still free.
We begin by considering whether Microsoft possesses monolopy power...and finding it does, we turn to the question whether it maintained this power through ainticompetitive means. Agreeing with the District Court that the company behaved anticompetitively,...and that these actions contributed to the maintenance of its monopoly power, we affirm the court's finding of liability for monopolization."
After these statements, the court goes on to essentially shoot down everything Microsoft tried to tell them was wrong about the finding, essentially agreeing with Jackson the entire way, or noting errors in Microsofts reasoning. This is actually quite interesting, since the part about why the court is vacating the Jacksons remedy is limited to the last 30 or so pages out of 125 and seems to be quite narrow.
Jackson made improper comments to the media
Jackson met with the media in secret during the trial.
Jackson didn't hold an evidence hearing about what course of remedy the court should go through.
All of Microsofts arguements about why they are not a monolopy where shot down one by one, just as they were by Jackson. All of Microsofts arguements about the fast track nature of the trial and how it was handled was shot down with the simple words "Microsoft agreed..before the trial".
So what we have here is a prediciment for Ashcroft, who clearly is not interested in going after Microsoft. He can try to make it disappear, but the states now have their affirimation of the ruling and may be able to continue without the federal goverment, he may try to settle, again with the States getting in the way and with the appeals court giving just as damning ruling as the Finds of Fact, or he can piss of his republican freinds and continue with the case.
It will be interesting to see what's next...
Burn Hollywood Burn
They specifically mentioned not taking Justice' view (ignoring Jackson's comments) nor MS' view (start all over) in their decision, hence the reason it was vacated.
Interestingly the decision does not really fault MS for it's tying of IE to the OS (the lower court will decide further), but rather what they did to java;
Some choice quotes from the ruling;
As explained above, however, a monopolist does not violate the
antitrust laws simply by developing a product that is incompatible
with those of its rivals........Because the cumulative effect of the deals is anticompetitive
and because Microsoft has no procompetitive justification for
them, we hold that the provisions in the First Wave Agreements
requiring use of Microsoft's JVM as the default are
exclusionary, in violation of the Sherman Act. As a result, even Java
''developers who were opting for portability over performance
TTT unwittingly [wrote] Java applications that [ran] only on
Windows.'' Conclusions of Law, at 43. That is, developers
who relied upon Microsoft's public commitment to cooperate
with Sun and who used Microsoft's tools to develop what
Microsoft led them to believe were cross-platform applications
ended up producing applications that would run only on
the Windows operating system.
On the IE tying;
There being no close parallel in prior antitrust cases, simplistic application of
per se tying rules carries a serious risk of harm. Accordingly,
we vacate the District Court's finding of a per se tying
violation and remand the case. Plaintiffs may on remand
pursue their tying claim under the rule of reason.
That's the long and short of it. Anyway, MS may not need victories in this case as clearly their strategy is to stall until the case is irrelevant.
There is a lesson to be learned here about giving in to loathing at an inappropiate time as Jackson did. As a consolation, it's fun to read the decision recanting Jackson's rants calling Microsoft a bunch of gansters.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Really? In what market does Microsoft hold a monopoly? Operating systems? Browsers? Evil? Hardly. If someone is a monopoly that means that it has no competitors in the market in question; that is, if you have a product belonging to that market, you must have obtained it from the monopoly........Given the definition, does Microsoft hold a monopoly in any market? No. To disprove this, I need only examine my network ...
You must have not been alive when DOS was the only operating systerm. Microsoft was enough of monopoly to snuff out caldera's DRDOS. Evidently they felt guilty enough to pay 150 million for what they did This antitrust case is DejaVu all over again, They did this by introducing an incompatibility in DOS according to Undocumented DOS that had no technical reason whatsoever other than to break DRDOS compatibility with Windows 3.1/DOS. DRDOS had a real chance for market penetration - it's just that MS would not allow it to be installed by OEMs. More detail here
The proof is simple and direct. The conclusion is the only one possible. Microsoft holds no monopoly in any market.
The proof is simple and direct. You are wrong. Pull your head out of the sand. The world doesn't revolve around you and your 6 pc mini-network.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I take that back, you were alive during DOS days.
Not one of the 6 boxes is a peecee. And of greater interest is the fact that disproving something requires only a single counterexample.
The only thing that you prove is that your a guy with 6 non-standard machines that disagrees with the seven appellant judges when they unaminoulsy said today in their ruling that Microsoft is a monopoly and it holds an OS Monopoly. (You bothered to read the opinion, right??) The arguments that you use is the same one that Microsoft used. "that there are alternative OS"
from page 15 of the ruling today;
Microsoft argues that the District Court incorrectly defined
the relevant market. It also claims that there is no barrier to
entry in that market. Alternatively, Microsoft argues that
because the software industry is uniquely dynamic, direct
proof, rather than circumstantial evidence, more appropriately
indicates whether it possesses monopoly power. Rejecting
each argument, we uphold the District Court's finding of
monopoly power in its entirety.
If you prefer larger-scale counterexamples, I offer the following: dgux, dynix, solaris, sunos, aix, xenix, macos, lunix, mvs, vms, os2, plan9, inferno, riscos, ultrix, nextstep, netware, unixware, openbsd, netbsd, freebsd, linux, hurd, tru64/digital unix, irix, unicos, amoeba, and os/400, to name merely a few of the more popular products which compete or have competed with Microsoft in the OS market.
The important thing to note here is none of these OS belong to the relevant market. The only OS worth mentioning from your list is macOS and OS2, and the court explains in detail on pages 16-23 why these don't compete with Microsoft OS monopoly in the relevant market In other words, your not going to Circuit City and find computers running solaris (or linux for that matter). Nobody is writing apps for OS2 anymore, and everybody isn't going to throw away all their intel hardware so they can go out and purchase all new (and more expensive) machines so they can run macOS. Likewise, people aren't going to pull out their old Z80 Kaypros so they can run CP/M. Just because their is some guy in a basement doing it somewhere doesn't mean it's a competing OS. You at one time could purchase Nextstep for PCs (far superior to what the Mac or MS had at the time) but nobody bought it because their was no applications for it nor was there the promise of apps on the horizon. So it died.
Just because you have examples of alternative OS running on your mini-network doesn't neccessarily prove that it's a competing OS, as it has a market share of One Nor does listing a bunch of other OS that existed at one time or another.
That's what made today's victory a hollow one for Microsoft. The appellant court affirmed what most of us have been saying all along. Microsoft holds an OS monopoly and uses it to squash competition. The question remaining for the lower court is if they were wrong to "tie" Internet Explorer to the OS and what should the corrective action should be to restore competition in the relevant markets
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I wrote this article for my customers. You are welcome to use it without payment if you don't change it, show my name and company (with trademark registration symbol) as the author, and tell me where it appears.
Microsoft Breakup Decision Overturned by the Court of Appeals
Judge Jackson had compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers".
by Michael Jennings
(Thursday, June 28, 2001) Today the Court of Appeals handling the Microsoft anti-trust case overturned the lower court's decision to split Microsoft into two or more companies. The breakup would have placed the Microsoft Windows operating system in one company and created a second business for everything else.
This decision of the Court of Appeals has been widely recognized as fair because of the behaviour of the judge of the lower court, in which he had not given the required appearance of impartiality. Judge Jackson had, for example, compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers", and Bill Gates to Napoleon. (See page 111 of the Court's decision [PDF format]).
The Court of Appeals found that Judge Jackson's 206-page Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal conduct, was entirely acceptable. It was his conduct outside the courtroom that was a violation of the code of conduct for United States judges. (For more about this, see pages 111 to 115 of the decision.)
Earlier, many people had praised Judge Jackson's skill in handling the case inside the courtroom. Technically oriented observers considered the Findings of Fact to be very well informed.
However, the penalty that Judge Jackson recommended for Microsoft was voided because of his public misconduct. The Court of Appeals directed that a new district judge examine the case, using the Findings of Fact as a starting point.
The story is very widely reported. For examples, see: ABC, AP, BBC, Washington Post, Seattle Times, CNet, The Industry Standard, Reuters, Guardian, Motley Fool, and MSNBC. The NY Times article requires that you register. Registration is free.
Silicon Valley.com said "[Microsoft] can continue its brutal practices for a while longer..."
There were two parts to the anti-trust case, 1) the Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal activity, and 2) the remedy, which is what would happen as a result of the court finding illegal activity. Judge Jackson had ordered that Microsoft be broken into two companies. It is only this second part, the remedy, that has been voided (vacated) by the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals wrote, "We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte [outside the court] contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality."
The Court of Appeals added, "Although we find no evidence of actual bias, we hold that the actions of the trial judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process."
The ruling of the Court of Appeals was unanimous, by a 7-0 vote.
More links:
Open Secrets.org report on Microsoft soft money donations
Common Cause report on Microsoft political contributions
Antitrust Law and Economics Review
Older Articles:
Microsoft Unfazed by Threat of New Antitrust Suits (Thursday, June 21, 2001)
What, me worry? Microsoft's Ballmer stays cool, confident, composed. (PC World, June 17, 1998)
Michael Jennings
Futurepower®
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
U.S.A.
Tel: (503) 233-7820
Fax: (419) 781-4606
E-Mail: jennings_michael @ hotmail.com (remove spaces)
Futurepower is a registered trademark.
Copyright 2001
Bush's education improvements were
There you have it: The case was vacated because Jackson said some commonplace things. Being a judge, he used bad judgment, for he needed to appear to ride above such matters. But the fact is that what he said is what pretty much everyone in the computer world knows to be true. It is so obvious that MS is a monopoly it's not worth discussing. When Jackson said something along those lines, he doomed his verdict.
Still, it is interesting that the appeals court couldn't actually find evidence of bias in the ruling. They just didn't like what Jackson said on his own time. And you know that MS hired plenty of guns to find bias anywhere they could. They failed. MS is a monopoly, and there was no official bias. Merely unofficial bias. Just as we all have.
________________
________________
Private Essayist
Judges are nominated for life for a reason. So they dont have to worry about pleasing anyone. They can piss off everyone, They will remain on the bench. They're less biased than lower courts, for that simple reason. They're a judge till death or resignation.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
Jackson screwed up by appearing on mainstream TV, comparing Microsoft execs to gang members, etc. so his judgement simply is not creditable. However, the court has admitted that a) Microsoft is a predatory monopoly and b) Microsoft's behavior was in clear violation of the law.
Microsoft is a dual monopoly which they have maintained historically by enforcing one monopoly with another. Breaking the company up into two monopolies is clearly not the solution and could result in more agile competition from proprietary software when Office developers no longer have to think about the market share of Windows and vice versa.
Ralph Nader has argued for a breakup arguning that it would take an army of law enforcement officials to ensure that fair play was used. In reality, the 100+ lawsuits against the software giant will have a far greater impact than 1000+ law enforcement officials. Microsoft cannot afford the liability that this will create in the long run as the software market continues to slow down (55% percent of office users are using Office 97), so their management may become paralized as a result (remember IBM and their lawsiuts?). Already several tech stock magazines have cited these reasons for listing Microsoft as a turnaround candidate, so this really isn't new news.
Bottom line-- this is not the victory that Microsoft thinks it is.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The important battle was the one that got IT managers looking at alternatives instead of blindly choosing a Microsoft product.
The important battle was one that got Microsoft's internal documents out on the Internet for all to see and read. These showed how Microsoft's goal was domination with IE. (Never mind that, in the end, they did make a better browser than Netscape.)
The important battle got Linux thousands of headlines and millions of dollars in IPO money and venture capital.
The important battle was the one that got the phrase "open source" in the vocabulary of millions of people.
The important battle was the one that IBM joined -- Linux as a viable server alternative.
The other important battle was the one that got embedded Linux rolling. I love my TiVO, and I don't have to worry about anything dealing with regular Linux -- I can just sit back and let it record for me. That's what consumers want, and Linux delivered.
Folks, it ain't over. Linux has the mindshare now. Linux has IBM. Microsoft has been forced to make a really stable OS (2000) to compete.
Competition is a good thing. Microsoft sees the threat on its horizon. Even if Linux dies (which I don't think it will), Microsoft will have changed dramatically. Microsoft now is competing on features and stability, not on "well, everyone buys our product anyway, so we can afford to make it crappy."
In short, don't forget how far Linux has come, or how far it can go. Don't get caught up in these "anti-open-source" agendas; they are meant to take away from the real issue. Some of the best programs in the world are released as open-source, some are not. It's not the issue. The issue is that Linux/Apache/etc. has started to be taken seriously. This is a good thing.
Quite. For some "good" and "insightful" analysis that isn't oozing with derision akin to that of Penfield's and that of the rest of the the /. community, check out Salon's take on the news. It is far more unbiased and takes an honest look at what the ruling means by asking a variety of different "experts".
On a side note, "Still, a small degree of celebration is fair. The tags are out of our browsers for the time being. That is progress, real progress." What is all the fuss about smart tags? From everything I've read about them they seem like a very novel and useful new idea.
-acidboy
Face it, the Judge lost the case, not the prosecution. If he wasn't so obviously biased in his choice of Court advisors, allowances to the prosecution, or flapping his big frigging mouth off after the trial but before the ultimate resolution.
The fact is Justice should have pursued this when it really mattered, back when 95 was coming onto the scene. Back when there were alternatives to Windows on the desktop.
If they want to help the computer industry now they need to fight to ensure there remains competition in the server side of the market. (the desktop war is over, the victims have already been buried)
Get some regulations out there to protect the privacy and information of individuals. Protect their freedom on the net by preventing companies from locking up the world.
PS: It didn't hurt MS's case that Netscape/AOL merged with Time Warner, kind of rendered a lot of the future predicitions made by prosecution pointless.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Interesting to note how much more soft money Microsoft's been giving to the Republican party lately - they used to be much more even-handed about doling cash out to the parties.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
When the executive branch cuts funding for an expensive legal effort by the Justice Department, the outcome is not hard to predict. And when judges rely on the President to appoint them to higher court positions, it's not surprising that some of them suddenly make rulings that are in line with the current President's views.
O.J. Simpson won because he had a better legal team than the government did. The same thing just happened here. Bush got into office and cut funding for the Justice Department's legal efforts against Microsoft. The legal team now in place pales in comparison to the one that tried the case the first time. You don't have to control the courts. You just have to control the budget of one of the legal teams.
If O.J. won solely based on bias, why did he waste millions of dollars hiring the legal "dream team." From what you argue, he could have won it with a public prosecutor. (Remember the try-on-the-glove incident? Had O.J.'s lawyers been facing worthy adversaries, that fiasco would never have happened.)
You need to spend a little more time reading the newspaper and a little less reading Slashdot. Your lack of understanding in this case, the O.J. case, and world events is scary.
I think that this election just shows what a shame it is that we still have the antiquated electoral college (something I have railed against since long before G.W. Bush ever thought of running for President). One person. One vote. And all of those votes should count and count the same. Living in a populous area should not mean that your vote is devalued. Nor should your vote be given extra weight because you live on 100 acres in Wyoming.
I don't care about number of counties, number of states, square miles, or any of that. What I care about is that the majority of Americans selected Al Gore as their choice for President and George W. Bush is now in office despite the vote. And that is a travesty no matter how you spin it.
Thank you for expressing something that I wrongly assumed the average Slashdot reader would understand. In addition to that, Bush cut funding for the Justice Department efforts and gutted the legal team assigned to the case.
Re: Microsoft... I'm sure this is a redundant comment, but wtf, there are 900-odd equally redundant comments up there so wtf? ;)
* It's very depressing news. Clear proof, if any were needed, that big business controls the US government.
* As a non-American citizen, my righteous wrath is tempered by the fact that they control everywhere else, too, except some of the more enthusiastic theocracies and the two remaining communist nations (Cuba and North Korea).
* It's not exactly unexpected
* It now down to us. No-one else is going to beat these creeps.
We have to work and work and work to promote Free software. And, for those who are skilled enough and lucky enough to have the time & energy, help to improve it, spread it around. Read the evangelism FAQs. Get your facts straight (don't claim NT/2000 BSODs every day, or every month even. You just lose credibility with the people who need to understand why Freedom is important.
Incidentally, to all the Slashdotters who work for the Beast... LEAVE! Seriously, how do you folks justify working for these people to yourselves? Do you think...
-
There's nothing wrong with what Microsoft do, or
- if they didn't do it, someone else will, or
- screw the ethics, show me the money, or
- something else entirely?
Just interested...--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Judges are nominated for life for a reason.
Not all judges are appointed for life. Supreme Court Justices are, Federal Appeals Court Judges are, and (I'm not 100% on this one) Federal Circuit Court Judges may be. Most other judges are not (though many states probably have lifetime appointments for State Supreme Court Justices and the like).
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
looks like those capitalist pigs got what they deserved! eh comrades? uhm...
Now that the press is reporting that the decision has been reversed the legal niceties of that reversal matter little. The Bush people will settle and Microsoft will give them a nice campaign contribution before the soft money limits kick in.
Rather less of the decision has stood than some Slashdotters appear to think. The case has been remanded back to be heard by a different judge and the Appeals Court has made it clear that the new judge need not take much notice of Jackson's opinions.
The Appeals court has overturned parts of the 'findings of fact' in practically every area. I suspect this is part of a strategy. Under the ridiculous Appeals court rules the idea is that the Appeals court is bound by findings of fact by the lower court - hence Jackson's stated intention to prevent review by issuing the findings of fact as a separate document. If the Appeals Court had vacated the findings of fact directly there would be a possible appeal to the SC. However the Appeals court has essentially remanded the case in such a manner that the new judge is free to reverse as much of Jackson's findings as they see fit.
Specifically missing from the rulling is any endorsement of Jackson's findings, they decline to vacate them, but they don't bind the new judge to them.
I doubt that the case will get as far as a new trial since the Bush people are practically certain to settle. I suspect that the Gore folk would have settled also, although on rather less favorable terms. The terms of the proposed breakup were idiotic, they would have created two monopolies in place of one. I think they had more to do with the size of the lawyers egos than policy sense
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
to kick MSFT's ass with software than it is to do the same with the law? Y'all act like you don't trust free software to win the day on its own merits.
Are you saying that Democrats are almost as greedy and corrupted as Republicans? My god, what a revelation.
"Oh, and if you read your links, they gave a vast majority of it to the parties in general, not to individuals ($5k limit, it makes it hard to buy people)."
I would say that $5k is plenty, but that's irrelevant since the limit means nothing. And if the limit could work despite non-federal accounts and pseudo-independent PACs, the contributions would still be limitless because, thanks to those loveable lobbyists, contributions are .
"So, if they They bought whatever / whomever they needed, why did this not happen years earlier, ie: before the first verdict?"
Check the original links, which I'm sure you poured over, given your snide response; Microsoft has only been a corrupting force on Capitol Hill for a little less than 2 years.
I didn't appreciate the judge botching this up either, but obviously you have it all figured out. And you're not the only one who shares that opinion of slashdot. Hell, I would say at least 10% of slashdot readers think that 100% of slashdot readers are mindless anti-MS zealots. Which leads me to believe that around 10% of slashdot readers are morons who have yet to figure out that they're reading slashdot.
What were you reading? I was being sarcastic. And the 'flaw' you think you pointed out is the equivalent of asking me to prove your conspiracy theory. You thinking that other huge corporations have some agenda that would lead them to paying off politicians in order to trigger an antitrust lawsuit against a huge corporation that already deserves an antitrust lawsuit, does not equal a flaw in my arguement. In fact, it's absurd. And you obviously know how to read, so one would think that you had seen the link in my reply that shows how at least one of your examples (AOL), gave less than Microsoft. The others were a waste of time to link, since they would only appear on a very long list, because they didn't give enough to make that 'top 10 donors' page. And that fact is still irrelevant since they could've given twice what Microsoft did, and there would still be no logical reasoning that would lead someone to believe that the message behind the donations was "sue Microsoft for a crime they're already under investigation for."
Yes, I do.
And I most likely 'conveniently' overlooked money (bribes) from those companies, because they were 'conveniently' not the topic. It's all a giant conspiracy. John Katz is my gay lover.
If you want to look up contributions on any company or organization, you can also go here. But you could've also looked them up on the sites I originally linked. Apparently while I was conspiring to keep you from finding out about other companies and their contributions, I overlooked the fact that I was linking a search engine that can be used to find contributions of any company who's name you enter. Doh!
Exhibit-A, Exhibit-B, Exhibit-C.
The real problem, is it isn't up to "us" to nail them, it's up to Junior's Justice Department. You think they are going to go aggressively after one of the biggest Republican campaign contributors?
However, because the finding of fact was upheld, it should make it easier for various companies that think they were harmed by MS's anticompetitive actions to go to court themselves and collect damages. This might be a bit like trying to weaken an elephant by turning loose a batch of mosquitos to suck its blood, but it beats waiting for Ashcroft to go out there and say "Bad Elephant! If you trample another crowd to death I will have to beat you with this feather!)
The one article mentioned MS had done away with the desktop icons (any of them?) Which release is this? What's there now, just your desktop picture?
AOL should just add a few tens of thousands of lines of code (a month for a couple of decent programmers) and turn Netscape into a virtual OS, then just put it out for free DL on the Internet.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Enjoy waiting on your government waiting list to be issued a PC that makes a TRS-80 look like a Beowulf cluster of 200GHz 65,536-processor massively parallel computers.
That is, assuming the local politician in power "allows" private people to have it. He has, of course, his payoffs to consider and his interactions with the official government computer makers, who produce 1/1000 of what is needed because they aren't capitalist, and in that land of need, the pie (don't know why it's so darned small!) has many other people who want a cut before something frivolous like a home PC.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
This quote is by Steve Ballmer, from the Washington Post op-ed piece:
"because Windows has real-time communications built into it"
I don't think he knows what "real" or "time" mean, and he especially doesn't know what "real-time" means.
--Blair
After checking all the links on the story to get all the info, I decided to check www.microsoft.com to see what the company itself had to say for its victory:
'Save $50 on Office XP'.
Oh, and by the way , you can get yourself cool 'Freedom to Innovate' support-microsoft t-shirts if you follow a link. Can't get that at ThinkGeek, huh?
There is no such thing as 'world peace'.
bbc leader image
Jesus, that's tasteless.
THL.
(I mean 'leader' as in the story leader, not 'take me to your...')
--
Keeping
I worked for IBM briefly in the 80's, and I could see that their anti-trust trial was putting a real drag on their operations. For example, every scribble we jotted down onto a scrap of paper had to be copied and saved on microfilm in case it was needed as evidence. Things like this tend to put a damper on productivity. They were also very timid about enforcing patents during this time, allowing competitors like Compaq to spring up out of nowhere.
Over time, the trial adds enough friction to the business to allow others in the market to catch up.
The real question is, with the new administration, will they keep the trial going. It looks like they'll go for an early settlement instead, thus greatly reducing the 'punishment'.
That's what Larry Ellison, Scot McNeely, and Steve Jobs thought until this morning.
Of course, US antitrust law is not against monopoly, so what you are saying misses the point, but here I beg to differ in what you seem to be really saying. Although I think MS is in fact doing a lot of WRONG things and should be fined trillions of dollars, that's aside the point.
I believe in the people first, everything else second, thats why I opject to software patents (and to some degree patents and IP as a whole, excluding copyright for artistic work). What do you believe in?
You say you believe in people, then you claim the desire to strip them of the fruits of their labor. If a man's work produces nothing that he owns, then his work is worthless to him and so are those who leeched the value from him.
I'll tell you what I believe in. I believe in individual human beings - and I disbelieve in any group mentality such as 'society' except as an abstract concept, to be taken in context, and not as an absolute or a concrete. I believe that a man or woman owns the product of their work, I believe they have a right to it, that it is a right that is theirs, possessed at birth, and not delegated to them as some form of favor from a government or a society or a 'god'. I believe that the only form of 'society' that is less than objectionable is full-out 100% pure Capitalism. What may surprise you is that as far as software goes, I believe a person has a choice to keep their code to themselves, but I myself would/do not. In the real world, one potato feeds one person. With software, one program feeds everyone. Socialism actually works - look at the internet routing, everyone randomly using everyone else's computer, etc. It makes sense here, because of the nature of the world it exists in. The fact is, Capitalism in the real world makes the Socialism of the internet possible. But it is a voluntary Socialism, one may retain all rights to one's product and do what he/she pleases.
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
A note, first: This is NOT in support of MS - it is an attack on the case against them, but it is NOT in support of them.
...
... I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with... the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.... Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and to do it well... I refuse to apologize for my success, I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code - and I will accept no other. ... I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation, as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above, and against my own - I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, and I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it"
Antitrust laws in and of themselves are flawed and are flagrant violations of the U.S. Constitution. They were originally designed to halt the advance of railroad and timber companies run by men who were seen as 'robber barons' - to paraphrase a famous rebuttal of that idea, I pose the question "If they were robber barons, why did they create? A robber does not create. A robber steals. But if they're creating, then it's not theft - if there was nothing, before they created it... what then is there for them to steal?" The problem I have with this antitrust suit is that they are being pursued for being successful - the arguments used against them have little technical merit, and are based soley on the interests of their competitors. Bundling software? Well, it is their product, their effort. Let them do as they please.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have no love for MS, their operating procedures, or their products. I'm simply saying that litigation is not the answer - educating the consumer is. Microsoft is successful because the general computing public does not know much about alternatives, nor even about what is specifically wrong with MS's products. That is changing, slowly but surely, and I suggest the idea that MS is creating its own demise with these invasive technologies such as 'smart tags' and these software registration hoops we're being asked to jump through. The market will regulate itself, people will, if educated, make better choices, they will, often as I've discovered, willingly take the extra time and energy to learn a more complex, less 'fancy' operating system - for the simple purpose of avoiding MS's inherent malfunctions, both in terms of software quality as well as software function insofar as privacy is concerned.
For those of you who think the government needs to protect the consumer, I suggest the idea that you are right - inasmuch as the government should punish fraud, breach of contract, false advertising, etc - but not to the extent that they actually retain a grip on what products and services we have available to us. Has MS committed fraud? I'm sure they have, although I have no direct example to give. Has MS advertised falsely? Indeed, I remember a couple of MSN commercials a couple years ago that were blatantly false, promising faster-than-56k on 56k lines etc. Has MS broken contracts? Microsoft has no contract obligations, they produce a product and the consumer is the one who signs the contract, aka the End-User Licensing Agreement. The EULA even frees MS from the responsibility of technical support, bug fixes, etc. Sue MS all you want, but if you do so, use proper legal grounds - sue them for what they did wrong, not what they did right. Slackware and Redhat and all the other Linux distributions participate in 'bundling', providing media players, web browsers, online help systems, even supplying some packages that notify the package maintainers every time a new installation comes online (example: pine). Are any of these really bad things? No, they're GOOD things, good for me and good for you and good for the software developer. The only difference is, MS's bundled software is all made by MS - and that is not in itself bad, the only bad part is that most MS code is of low quality. And let me note the fact that MS has been defending themselves on the wrong grounds - they claim they have not broken antitrust laws. What they should be doing is following Gates' viewpoint, that antitrust laws are unConstitutional, and then attempting to prove so by way of Constitutional scholarship.
What I'm saying here is that when government sues corporations for crushing their competition, they're really suing them for being ultra-successful. The government should be harrassing MS right now - but not for the things it has chosen to attack. I want MS to win the court case, and I want it for the simple fact that I want what is right. The truth, no matter how hard or brutal, is preferrable to any false bed of coushions. MS is dooming itself to massive revenue losses, the drop of the value of MS stock, and the disfavor of public opinion, as it bludgeons its way down the road it has chosen. Let the consumers and the market as a whole regulate MS. I quote Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged - as an attack on antitrust laws, not as a defense of MS:
The scene is a courtroom, where Henry Rearden, a steel industrialist, is on trial for the sale of his own metal:
Judge: "Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?"
Rearden: "Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product."
Judge: "We are speaking of... other methods."
Rearden: "Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters - and I recognize it as such."
"No, I do not what my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it.
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
I love this line. Gee, Microsoft isn't trying to UP Apple when its their ass is on the line.
Micro-soft responds only by saying:' 'the district court 's market definition is so narrow that it excludes Apple 's Mac OS,which has competed with Windows for years,simply because the Mac OS runs on a different microprocessor.''
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
From the ruling: "Given the limited scope of our disqualification of the District Judge,we have let stand for review his Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.The severity of the District Judge 's misconduct and the appearance of partiality it created have led us to consider whether we can and should subject his factfindings to greater scrutiny.For a number of reasons we have rejected any such approach." - IV.D.2.Review of Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law "The judgment of the District Court is affirmed in part, reversed in part,and remanded in part.We vacate in full the Final Judgment embodying the remedial order,and remand the case to the District Court for reassignment to a different trial judge for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." - VII.CONCLUSION It seems what they really had a problem with was the Judge, his behaviour, and his remedies.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I myself am an advocate of Linux and the Open Source Movement, and I'm often critical of Microsoft, but I think people are missing the larger issue here. Let's not let our religion blind us to the Appeals Court's point. The Appeals Court agreed that Microsoft had monopoly power and used it unlawfully; however, it disagreed with the lower court's remedy (Microsoft's split). The Appeals Court merely sent the case back to the lower court to resolve the time claim and remedy problems inherent to the lower court's decision. The Appeals Court doesn't care about Windows, MacOS, Open-Source, or any technology, it is concerned with procedural substantive due process - ensuring that a defendant received a fair sentence in line with what is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. If a judge has a personal vendetta against a defendant, that defendant cannot receive a fair and just trial - this includes sentencing. The lower court may have been correct in its findings of fact; however, the judge's partiality tainted the appearance of judicial fairness. This is what the Appeals Court was concerned about. On camera, the lower court judge likened Gates to Napoleon and Microsoft to a group of gang members he sentenced earlier. Hopefully the next judge will be a bit more pragmatic - at least enough to conceal his personal opinions of Microsoft during the trial.
...but of course, I'm probably drinking too much blue Kool-Aid.
I personally have mixed feelings about splitting Microsoft. I truly believe that we would be created a two-headed monster here. The courts are powerless to prevent one operating system company from intimately allying itself with an applications company (i.e., Novell and Computer Associates). Operating System manufacturers have every legal right to favor one application manufacturer over another, so a split does nothing to benefit. It merely means that the wealth and power earned by Microsoft is redistributed, but still within the Microsoft empire. Even opening suspect components of the Windows OS would be more immediately beneficial to competitors. Personally, I'd like to see Microsoft port some of its software over to Linux, especially DirectX