Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Would Settle For The Children
The news from MSNBC
is that Microsoft wants to, er, settle for the children. Take that
whichever way you want. They propose to settle civil anti-trust cases (not the DoJ suit) with a $1.1 billion (retail value) spanking (they
have $36 billion in the bank), consisting of free computer goodies to our nation's poorest schools (the first hit's free, kids). I'm sure Microsoft will upgrade those old computers to keep them current, in perpetuity, for free, out of the kindness of their hearts, but in an apparent oversight that was left out of the news report. Of that $1.1 billion, $0.9 billion will be software presumably valued at whatever Microsoft wants to charge (see "monopoly"). For hardware and (laughable) training/support costs, Microsoft will be docked three weeks' worth of interest on their cashpile; they will seek matching funds for the remainder, I am not making this up. Some lawyers opposed this but "concluded that Microsoft's monopoly already is so pervasive that students would have to learn to use these products anyway in the workplace." Update: 11/20 21:22 GMT by M : Heh. Red Hat offers an alternative to Microsoft's settlement proposal - you provide hardware, we'll provide software.
... at wired: http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,48543,0 0.html
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
"You are a monopoly. As punishment, you must provide free software to the public schools, so that you can spread even further. Bad Microsoft! Now get back to replacing those foreign operating systems."
You're very right, Jamie. The double-meaning in the title *is* hilarious.
Their punishment is to help ensure that the monopoly they have continues to the next generation?
Sounds like Andrew Carnegie's big thing with libraries -- donate lots of money to build libraries without any money to fill them with books.
While I really don't have a problem with microsofts products, their anti-competitive business stance is very disturbing. .9 billion given back to them. How sad.
Won't someone please think of the children???
So lets spread around Microsoft products even more... that'll decrease the percentage of the market that they hold.... geez...
OK, I understand the Microsoft is unpopular here on slashdot. I also understand that they settlement could have probably been alot worse. But lets look at the advantages of this.
The kids are going to win in the end. They are going to get better computers in the classroom that should ulitimately allow them to get better jobs and improve their quality of living. If their was going to be a settlement, I like the idea of this much more than dumping a lump sum of money to state governments and ending up with god knows what. At least all the money is directed toward a good cause.
that bites. ie is hellspawn!
DOJ sues them for giving their products away and crushing competition all the while increasing their monopolistic presence.....so as a remedy MS is forced to give away their products to school kids thus crushing competition and increasing their monopolistic presence. Sounds fair.
How painful.
The Lawyer's comment, however ugly, just underscores what people in this country really think about M$ if they even think about it at all.
Ugh.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Joe Chemo would be proud. This is exactly what antitrust laws are supposed to prevent.
No SIG for you!
What should be intreprted as something nice is again skewed by the linux conspiracy zealots
Microsoft has a way of making "viable court-imposed punishments" out of shrewd business moves.
If they really wanted to show us how sorry they are, they would put Macs in the schools.
perhaps i'm an idealist but i find it totally disheartening that my beloved US of A is punishing its citizens by supporting microsoft's practices.
Nosce te Ipsum
How about Microsoft has to spend the money to buy the computers, but must put free (as in speech, not beer) software on the computers. Microsoft then helps out the schools without having to spend all that money on expensive software. That is what it's all about, right? Helping out the schools?
this is going to be the biggest tax write-off in history.
Congrats Bill.
Obviously you need a new set of geese for your house...
So the settlement is that Microsoft gets more of a school market share? What a deal :-(
At my most cynical, I don't think I could have come up with a more worthless settlement...
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
This is so bad because of what you said. It's a business decision that Microsoft might make, it's not in any way something that should be a settlement for lawsuits. "As a penalty, we'll engage in a massive marketing campaign...".
Article has been slashdotted already!
This is actually really cool of them. Tell me , could they do ANYTHING that you wouldn't put a slant on? Is there anything MS could do that would actually get you to like them, no matter how noble? I think not.
...And furthermore, we here at Microsoft will allow this group of thirty-one geishas to massage us as we skip a week's worth of board meetings! Harsh, you say? We haven't even told you about the part with the spankings and the oral sex!!!
Is the Pale Horse so stallid?
Did the DOJ skip 20th century monopolies 101?
A thought noone seems to bring up is that Microsoft is American. Behemoth though it may be, it's spreading America across the globe just like McDonalds. Just like the peace corps determining that slanted roofs are much better for African tribes. Look to America! and let the world shine.
The community can gasp! all they like. But this, it seems, will remain.
Bill Gates wants to play weasel again. If the DOJ had two brain cells that could wave at each other, they would tell M$ that they must pay the $1.1B into a grant fund for schools to upgrade their computers and other technology. Control of the fund would be by a board of trustees appointed by the federal government, or the fund can be distributed among the 50 states and state government can appoint the boards to handle grant requests.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Can we concentrate on either loving or hating Microsoft? All this wavering back and forth is making me dizzy!
- A.P.
"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?"
I bet they write off the whole 1.1b as a bussines expense and save on taxes this year.
A real penalty would be 1.1 Billion in hardware. If you let them include the software, credit it for it's actual value (7 cents per CD).
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
...their punishment is to advertize themselves.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Everyone who believes this giveaway actually "costs" them anything please raise your hand. So the penalty for overcharging millions of consumers is to allow them to "upgrade" all the schools (start them young!) with software that has an explicit forced march built into the license.
And this was a plaintiff's attorney who came up with this? Oh yeah, the lawyer was only looking at dollar signs. And who wants to bet the attorney's fees will be based on a percentage of the $1.1 billion MS is claiming this will "cost" them?
Nope, no sig
<obvious>Why not hook the kids up to CocaCola and BigMac's, IV'd.</obvious>
.. don't let your kids get left behind by forcing them to think "My Documents" is where their files are, no matter which computer/OS/etc they are on.
/surely/ be stuck in places when they grow up when only Coke is available).
This is kind of backwards if you want your next generation to be tech-saavy. Windows ABSTRACTS computers, removing the need (for most people) to actually know how a computer (and software) operates. In this respect, the world will be FORCED to at least have a small understanding of the technology
At any rate, it's insane. Would we let Coke donate lots of Coke to kids as a settlement (knowing that they'll
What strikes me the most is the acceptance that Windows will be the dominant platform for the next 80 years. Fortunately, this will not be true. Very few companies even stay in business that long.
"Old man yells at systemd"
That reminds me of an old forward, the difference between drug dealers and programmers:
Drug Dealers:
-Refer to their clients as "users"
-"The first one's free!"
-Have important South-East Asian connections (to help move the stuff)
-Strange jargon: "Stick," "Rock,", "Dime bag,"
-Realize that there's tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market.
-Job is assisted by the industry's producing
newer, more potent mixes.
-Often seen in the company of pushers,pimps and hustlers.
-Their product causes unhealthy addictions.
-Do your job well, and you can sleep with sexy movie stars who depend on you.
Programmers:
-Refer to their clients as "users"
-"Download a free trial version!"
-Have important South-East Asian connections (to help debug code)
-Strange jargon:"SCSI," "RTFM", "Java," "ISDN".
-Realize that there's tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market.
-Job is assisted by the industry's producing newer, faster, more potent machines.
-Often seen in the company of salesman,
marketing people and venture capitalists.
-DOOM. Marathon. SimCity. Command&Conquor. 'Nuff said
-Damn! Damn! DAMN!!!
Wow. It never ceases to amaze me. So M$ will provide the schools with Wintel machines? Great! Now our kids will be conditioned to use M$ since their early school years. How is anyone going to be able to convince a kid that's only seen M$ during his entire life that there's more that that out there. How are we going to convince them to use other systems. I can hear the questions already: "Why would I want to learn Linux? I've been using M$ since I was 5. I don't want to learn to use another system..."
The bottom line is: the punishment for M$ monopoly is to allow them to further extend their monopoly without the risk of being punished again. But wait, if they get punished again, they'll be allowed to put more wintel machines in schools, further extending their monopoly...
Is it just me, or does this seem like an infinetely redundant cycle?
Either hell has frozen over or I missed something. Microsoft has not triumphed over the government, as MSNBC claims. AFAIK, the 18 states involved are still in discussion about the goverment settlement. Just like MS, portrarying themselves as the victim. "We won the case against the government, now we just have to work out these little suits. The big, cuddly teddy bear you as Microsoft will not give in... we will fight to stay strong". Yeah, bite me. Microsoft is not good for the consumer, yet they're parading themselves around like the consumer is on THEIR side.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
This outcome is typical. Most class action cases end up with the company giving members of the class coupons for discounts on their products or some other non-cash settlement. The real purpose for these suits is to make money for the lawyers, there is rarely any real benefit for consumers.
I imagine MS is looking to do the same thing here. It will be a good thing for MS, a good thing for the schools, what the hell right? Wrong. I am really disapointed that they would try and do this a means to reach settlement, makes the whole thing rather hollow. If they had done this just because they felt like it I'd probably support them in it, now they just look slimy.
Errr, more slimy.
Of course they'll give their software away -- they can breed more mindless Office users in 3rd grade. Just what we need -- kids growing up thinking Outlook Express is the only email software ever written.
Are we really so powerless against Microsoft? I say f*** em -- my copy Win2K is the last edition of Windoze I'l ever use.
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
What's so bad about that? At least the money will be put to good use. Adequate amounts of computing equipment are hard to come by for many schools. Would you rather see this money go to some huge corporation like AOL, Apple, Corel, or Borland that needs money like a hole in the head? Or even worse the government? And let's be real...those computers are gonna use Microsoft software anyway...they might as well have Microsoft give it to them for free.
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
Are they kidding? This doesn't solve anything; it makes it worse! By providing software _for free_ to such a large number of people, the software now becomes the defacto standard for yet another group of people. These students will grow up in Microsoft(TM) America and like so many people before them be hooked into software that they'll be reluctant to leave in the future.
And using poorer schools... that's good. These schools would have previously been a good "target market" for OSS... can't beat the price. Now MS gets three victories for the price of none... they get the plaintiffs off of their backs, they get the PR boost that always comes with helping poor children, and they get a win against OSS. And what does it cost them? A "virtual" $1.1 billion. They're giving software to people that probably wouldn't have bought it in the first place, and they're giving away a product based on its RETAIL value; it costs MS very little to give this software away. The realized cost to MS will probably be less than $100 million. Much less.
Another Seattlement, if you ask me. I think I'm going to give up and be a rice farmer now... until Microsoft (TM) Wheat pushes me out of the staple foods market.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Hi! I am sending you this CD-ROM as part of an antitrust settlement...
But seriously--if Microsoft is to be punished, shouldn't Microsoft be forced to give all the poor children a PC with Linux on it? If Bill Gates was forced to do 100,000 RHL 6.x installs w/o kickstart, I bet he would never ever ever ever again stifle competition or build a vertical monopoly.
The proposed settlement is equivalent to giving a burglar keys to every house in the neighborhood, or giving a gun and rubber gloves to a murderer. The principle of punishment is to deter the perpetrator should the desire to commit crime arise again.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I'm getting that same vibe here.... Is it only me?
Jamie's ignores the inconvenient fact it is not clear that any harm to consumers could be proved at all. The unanimous Appellate Court decision in US v. Miscrosoft was pretty clear that any plaitiff representing consumers would need to prove net harm according to a stiff set of tests. I'd bet on Microsoft's odds to win that test in a court of law. (In fact, I continue to do so, since I'm not only an employee of the company, but continue to hold on to the bulk of the shares I've ever bought or been granted. My money is where my mouth is.)
However, even ignoring that, the key computation lay in asking how much each consumer would collect even if the most generous award were handed down. It turns out that the total payout would be less than $10/consumer before legal costs, and negative afterwards. The court isn't willing to go forward with a class-action lawsuit that will harm the plaitiffs even if they win.
This is a solution that makes everybody with a legitimate stake in the outcome win. Consumers benefit by getting something, the lawyers benefit by getting their costs covered, and Microsoft benefits by not having to go through another trial. The only losers are the third parties that make money off the continued controversy. I don't have a lot of sympathy for Larry Ellison or Scott McNealy, though -- do you?
This is brilliant! It's too bad that the cigarette companies doled out all that cash to various parties in their settlements. What a waste. They could've just sent a years worth of cigarettes to the nations poorest schools.
Where was this Michael Hausfeld fellow when we needed him?
-Erik
Gawd you people are full of shit. If MS if "overcharging" then EVERY SINGLE OTHER COMPANY ON THE PLANET is over charging! Apple, IBM, Oracle, Sun, EVERYONE. You can't get everything in life for free you assholes!
I can't help but wonder if Microsoft(tm) came up with this as their way of giving the finger to the justice system -- you know, they could make a random software package give a suggested retail value of 1 billion dollars and donate it to a school.
If you had read the article, you'd have found out this was the result of a bunch of civil antitrust suits and has nothing to do with the DOJ. Other than perhaps putting more pressure on the states to settle.
--Russell (duskglow2000 at yahoo - yes, it's me. I don't feel like logging in.)
Microsoft is found to be a monopoly, and this punishes Microsoft how???? Microsoft would probably gladly pay several billion dollars to ensure all children have Microsoft software legally available.
Stupidity is not against the law
I assume that MS isn't supplying the hardware, why should they supply the software?
Maybe I'm being cynical, but Microsoft providing the software for these institutions for free would be a very good move on their part to slow down the adoption of alternative operating systems and office suites. It's here, in schools that cannot afford the MS pricing anymore, that the erosion of MS monopoly will begin, and Microsoft has proposed a very effective counter measure to it. They slow down Linux and OSS adoption, and get DOJ off their backs. Both with one strike.
Then again, maybe they're just doing it for the goodness of their hearts...
We... bought... this... government yeaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
(Yeah, I'm sickened by this. Just in time for the holidays too; we can all let M$ get a pat on the ass for good deeds as the settlement for being naughty -- just like sentancing a mass-murderer to 40 hrs of community service.)
Karma whorin' since 1999
This has nothing to do with the US Vs. MS case! These are not DOJ sponsored punishments, this is how they are "settling" with some of the states that had their own cases against MS. The states are striking a deal with MS, outside of court, so this is a settlement, MS was not convicted of anything in any of the [state] vs. MS cases! So get yer facts straight, the states obviously WANT this, that's why they're settling. And as a teacher, it is really incredible what they are getting if you ask me.
If you'd like it to be "just" and make a (really small) dent in the MSFT monopoly, make them donate 1.9 billion in Apple hardware and software to schools. Appleworks for everyone!
:)
I'd rather be Uncle Steve's drone than Bill Gates' , at least I'd have some style
Even better give it to the FSF and Apache groups and let *them* dole it out to Free Software projects. I bet Open Office would hit 1.0 PDQ if someone would throw $! Million at it for full time developers.
"concluded that Microsoft's monopoly already is so pervasive that students would have to learn to use these products anyway in the workplace."
Just the kind of mentality we need so we can keep complaining about Microsoft, yet still do nothing about it..
F.
Will, for a long time it has been common practice here at /. to bash M$ -- and doing so for good reasons after all I strongly believe that that this community is responsible, directly or indirectly to have M$ face justice. But now it seems to me that the love to hate M$ is getting everywhere and out of control.
The article reported by MSNBC is focusing on small part of the whole settlement and just like any bad report taken out of context, if the report is focused on one element, it tend to paint a picture that this *is* all what the subject is all about where it isn't.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
In case you haven't noticed, Apple's market share continues to slide constantly, even though many of us did use Apples in school. So, I wouldn't excactly say that it "worked" for Apple.
In other words, this (i) helps Microsoft strengthen their Monopoly, (ii) costs Microsoft little more than $200 million, and (iii) probably harms children.
If MS if "overcharging" then EVERY SINGLE OTHER COMPANY ON THE PLANET is over charging! Apple, IBM, Oracle, Sun, EVERYONE.
Gee, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware that Apple, IBM, Oracle, Sun and everyone else had monopolies that allowed them to charge whatever they wanted to for their products. I didn't realize that they had all been found by a court to have illegally abused their monopolies. I'm glad there are people like you to straighten me out.
Nope, no sig
The only way any kind of settlement with Microsoft will accomplish anything is if the people who make up Microsoft's leadership actually alter their behavior.
This latest proposal shows that Microsoft is fundamentally incapable of changing its core DNA to suit a new paradigm. While all public businesses are driven by valuation, Microsoft doesn't realize that when a corporation reaches a certain size and power in the marketplace, it carries additional responsibilities.
Microsoft prides itself on providing boundless upward value to stockholders, but it seems to have a huge mental block when it comes to assessing its role in the larger culture.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
In this day and age, I think most of us have more important things to worry about than wheather the disadvantaged poor kids will be using Microsoft or non-Microsoft products.
Really, who gives a shit! I mean, why not just say:
"Wow, that's really a nice thing to do for kids who would otherwise probably not get a chance to use a computer."
and go on about your business? I have really come full circle in this whole anti-Microsoft thing. I liked and used MS products, then abandoned them in favor of their *nix counterparts. Lately, though, I've come to realize what a load of crap most of the *nix software is.
The fact is, the Internet, and computer software in general are not some magical thing that doesn't have to follow the rules like the rest of the world. Companies like Microsoft are in this business to make money, and frankly Bill Gates does an extremely good job at making money. His company makes a product that people want, and he has every right to promote it and try to get people to buy it. Just like any other product.
People, you need to realize that just because a company actually wants you to *pay* for something, that doesnt' automatically make it illegal. I mean, why should they be a company if they can't make any money?
Getting back on topic, I think it's great that Microsoft is doing this, as it will give a chance to kids who wouldn't otherwise have one.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I dont't think I will ever do that as I am in Film and Video production. There has been almost Zero products put out by The Microsoft (micro?, its MEGASOFT ;)empire that even work with video, let alone are the best choice, the closest thing I use to a Microsoft product is when i happen to be veiwing a webpage hosted on a Microsoft server.
But this part is by far the SCARY bit, microsoft controls the Plantiffs lawyers! Don't belive me?
"Another unusual feature of the proposal: The fees for Hausfeld, Stanley Chesley and a half-dozen other well-known class-action lawyers won't be tied to the size of the settlement, or taken from the settlement, as often happens in class-action cases. Instead, the judge will determine attorneys' fees and costs, to be paid separately by Microsoft, the lawyers close to the case said. "
Sorry for bad spelling, I'm Dislexic
Sorry for being off topic and commenting on this. Why do people come here just to type messages like this? Anybody know why?
Microsoft is a business. They want to make money. I think this is a smart business decision...
I'm a consumer. I want to save money. I agree that it's a smart business decision but that doesn't endear me to it.
Load up those machines with Windows. Let them try running Disney's Lion King CD in XP under the 640x480x256 "compatible" mode. Let them find that users on one system can't have their own video resolutions. Let them try to disable the paperclip. Let them try to get their non-ms multimedia keyboard working.
It won't be long before we see them here complaining about it.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Sorry. This presupposes that the children will benefit from being inundated with MS software. In the long run, they won't. Neither does the rest of the world: that's what this case is about. Your statements sound reasonable, until you realize that they presuppose what they're trying to show. That doesn't work.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Over the course of the last couple years I've reached the conclusion that Microsoft doesn't really care about money except for it's use as a catalyst for acheiving World Domination(tm). It seems as if they're always sacrificing large amounts of cash simply for the purpose of dominating yet another market - even when that market isn't very lucrative. I don't look forward to the day that MS stages their coup and forces their enemies into work camps.
I'm really only half joking.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
This doesn't sound much different than big tobacco giving cigarettes to children and calling it "charity". MS loves the opportunity to get people hooked on their proprietary file formats, and doing so costs them nothing. This does nothing but increase the size of their captive customer base.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Great! Now, that means that the school where my son is in first grade will get how many new computers?
Let's see... 375 students... 35 regular classrooms... one computer lab... one library and media center... one music classroom... one art classroom... one special needs classroom... one administrative office with staff... one nurse's office...
And this is just one public school in the district (there are about 40 other schools in the city).
So, how many computers will my son be able to use out of that $1.1b? Can I put a free (beer or speech, take your pick) OS on the now obsoleted hardware and see which has the longer uptime with daily use?
Just looking at the massive numbers involved, I very seriously doubt any of that money will be sent to the school district in which we live, especially since we're not in one of the bigger metropolitan areas of the country. 200,000 residents is a lot, but a far cry short of Chicago's population.
That way you can have a settlement with the DOJ in which you give away free copies of Linux.
-- SIGFPE
Hmmm...let me read the EULA...yes...mm-hmm...I see...wait a second...oh...my...god! It's a cookbook! IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!
Gates-ey loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All have money in his sight,
Gates-ey loves the little children of the world.
Next week on Bill Gates' sing along:
The Beatles' "All You Need Is Cash"
SIGFEH
According to this idea....
-MS gets to increase it's market share(by displacing Macs in schools)
-Does not need to change it's monopolistic practices
-Gets a $1.1 billion tax writeoff(They will try to write that off)
Wow, sounds like a great deal....for Microsoft and states idiotic enough to sign this(Kickbacks anyone?)
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Slashdotters UNITE! Fight against SUCCESS!
And you wonder why you are a bunch of losers.
If you become too successful and penetrate the market too deeply, prepare for breakup!
I hope MS decides to persecute licence violators down to the single user. They'll make up that $Billion in the first week.
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
If I was in charge of IT at the school, I would certainly push to take the computers and immediately reformat the drive and install Linux. I wonder if Microsoft would allow that?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
is exactly the kind of thinking that got us irrevocably hooked on petroleum and perpetuated the Vietnam War, et. al. If this settlement goes through, the kids will win in the short run, but any chance OSS/GNU/Linux has in the classroom is jeoparized. Check out the Linux TermServ Project at http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/k12ltsp.html (i think) and see what creative, beneficial projects would be threatened. . . Limb
You are not the customer.
About twenty bucks.
.iso's "valued" at fourty bucks a pop?
Ain't the software business grand?
Can I pay MY legal fines by donating Red Hat
KFG
Today, Phillip Morris, manufacturer of cigarette products, agreed to settle all pending lawsuits that allege that they (PM) sold cigarettes to underage smokers.
The generous $1.9B settlement provides for Phillip Morris to provide, free of charge, a lifetime of tobacco products to every Junior and Middle school in America. The settlement would consist of $1.1B worth of prepared tobacco products, and $800M worth of reconditioned ashtrays and smoke detectors.
Phillip Morris attorney Hugh Smokem commented that "This is an equitable settlement which answers our critics charges that we sell tobacco products to minors. Clearly, no tobacco will be sold here."
30
The court already found that Micros~1 charges whatever it wants for its software products, rather than fair market value. As such, Micros~1 should not be allowed to set the value of any software they donate.
In fact, I wouldn't let them donate any software at all. Let them donate cherry hardware (a random distribution of Intel boxes, AMD boxes, and some Macs thrown in for good measure). If Windows is on the boxes, it must be provided for free; if the school wants to upgrade later, they can charge separately for that at upgrade prices (not fresh install prices). The systems may not contain Windows-XP. The systems may not contain any hardware that requires Windows-only drivers to operate (I'm thinking of soft-modems in particular).
In short, make them part with cash, either paid directly to the government, or to hardware vendors who could use the business right now. Do not let them jigger the hardware to force them to use Windows on it. This will create an opportunity for Red Hat/SUSE/Mandrake/etc. to provide software solutions for these organizations.
Just off the top of my head,
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
$1.1 billion worth of software does not cost Microsoft anything. It's essentially free for Microsoft to crank out more software since the R&D has already been paid for. That reduces this so-called "settlement" to just a Microsoft marketing campaign.
Best solution: they must contribute $billion or so of cold, hard, cash to a fund for school technology improvement. Then independent technical experts and educators can suggest uses for the money that don't necessarily benefit Microsoft. This settlement is a total victory for Microsoft - I'd hate to see what happens when they actually win a case...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
You guys have it all wrong. See, M$ will not get any more money back from the schools other than the $.9 Billion they get initially because the schools don't have any money to upgrade. I think this could be one area that the M$ people overlooked when they thought of robbing all the money from our public schools... what money?
I can get a very basic PC setup with no software for about $600 and if I purchase XP for $100 and XP Office for another $500 then I have a potential free system for the needy that cost a total of $1,200. So about 50% of the cost is for MS software and the other 50% is for some lame hardware. By the MS calcualtions the software will cost just over 80% of the total. Which leads me to wonder what kind of hardware they are purchasing to give to the needy for free?
*notes it is not April 1*
You gotta be shitting me.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I thought the idea of a monopoly abuse case was to right wrongs and administer punitive damages. This money should be going to the individuals who spend the extra dollars to Microsoft. This means that big business should get paid, not the poor.
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
"New Microsoft Spokesperson - Michael Jackson!"
Then they'll really be screwed...
How did the software (say the Operating System and Office) get to be about 4 times as much as the PC hardware itself? Hardware is the stuff that actually takes materials to make right? And Software is the stuff that they make 100000x as much off of it as it took to produce it? Maybe I should just go read the article again.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
So this essentially means they're losing $2 million.
The school's wouldn't have bought their software anyway and it cost them only a few pennies to produce. This is the funniest thing I've ever read. $2 million is a drop in the bucket.
Their lack of market share is due to their management. The discounts to schools *did* give them loyal followers (my brother was one until the rest of their lame-brained non-marketing took over).
If Apple followed the indoctrination in the schools with some good viral marketing (kinda like MS's software did without them - how many copys of Windows 3.1/3.11 were actually sold vs. used?), and let other hardware into the picture, they would probably have been a decent contender for a common marketplace 300lb gorilla.
...Just a few thoughts.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
That may be so, but if m$ trully wants to acheive world domination, then they should do it by the quality of their products, not by throwing large amounts of cash at a market that was started by someone else and appropriating it for themselves. If they did that they probably wouldnt be in the mess their in.
Is the cost of the software to be provided based on the retail mark-up (for example, WinXP = 300USD), or based on just how much it would cost for MS to rip a bunch of CDs (CD = $0.50) to distribute to a market that wouldn't exist otherwise? i.e. does it really cost them $900M to provide software they've already developed and accounted for?
hmmm they want to give their os to the poorest school eh?
i bet 95% of those poorest schools dont even have a single computer fast enough to even run windows xp! they;ll end up spending more just to run XP
and a billion dollars? what a joke,nowadays one billion dollars isnt jack shit..poor schools need books not fucking windows.
Windows XP
Xtra price!
Xtreme pile of shit!
Someone at MS marketing is a genious. How can you say no to giving free software and computers to the poorest children in the country?
I'm so disgusted by this prospect I can hardly hold back the bial.
How can Americans take this abuse? It's rediculous. This isn't a remedy to Microsoft's monopoly, it's a ploy to give the remain state's lawyers a way to exit this case while leaving MS with almost no pain. What's it really costing MS to print up some more software and give it away? Nothing. In fact it grows their business.
This whole case has stunk badly since the new administration took over and there's little hope that it will start smelling like a rose now.
Redmond, Washington's Microsoft corporation today signed a deal as a part of their antitrust suit settlement for a record $1.5 billion worth of Macintosh hardware and software from Apple Computer. This purchase is supposed to go to schools, where the majority of WORKING systems are already Macintosh computers anyway. When asked about the deal, Microsoft's iconic despot Willy Gates replied "I go way back with Apple, so I figured I would throw them a bone. This is just a slap on the wrist anyway, so why not give some of this to charity?" No word on whether or not Gates was referring to the schools, or Microsoft's sometime partner Apple computer as the charity. Apple Computer's iCEO, Steve Jobs, was unavailable for comment, but is rumored to be in satisfactory condition and recovering from the shock of seeing the Purchase Order in a Bay Area hospital.
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
This is as if Exxon had offered to sink another tanker to settle the Valdez case...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
maybe Flight Simulator thrown in.
sic transit gloria mundi
Except that Adnrew Carnegie was not pushing his product, steel, on the masses. While you can argue whether he was trying to buy himself a better eduring image of himself, his donaton was a more enduring and lasting on than "XP for everyone.
MS are actually not charging ridiculous prices. Sorry, but they're not. Their "monopoly abuse" is, in fact, based precisely on giving things away! They abused their monopoly by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, hurting Netscape. They may be *proposing* to abuse their monopoly by forcing people to upgrade, but they haven't started that yet. (Besides, Windows is only on... what, version 5 or 6? Mac OS is on version 10.)
There's no point complaining about Microsoft's pricing, because that's actually just about the only reasonable aspect of their behaviour.
Let's face it: Being familiar with MS Windows is a much more useful skill for most school-leavers than being familiar with Linux is. This software and these computers are going to the schools with kids who are the least likely to have access to a computer at home, so learning this stuff at school is very important to them. If they want to dual-boot these computers with Linux, there's nothing stopping them from doing that, but the idea that these poor kids would end up being forced to learn something that for most intents and purposes is useless to them in the job marketplace simply because a load of computer programmers with lofty ideals would rather that they learn a free operating system instead of one by 'Old Bill' is abhorrent to me.
MS should be required to ask the schools what they want, and provide *that*.
For schools that already have something else (read: Macs) it's a disservice to provide PC's - all they do is cause problems for the already overworked staff. As a parent volunteer helping to maintain a mixed environment (Macs + a few Gates Foundation PC's) it is no picnic.
concluded that each member of the plaintiff class -- at least 65 million computer buyers -- would receive as little as $10 in a settlement or court victory. That would be less than the cost of identifying class members and sending payment, meaning most of the money from Microsoft would be swallowed by administrative costs -- and attorney fees. IANAL, but how can this be considered a reasonable settlement?!! How about punitive damages of three or four times the actual damages plus MS pays the administrative costs. But given what's been decided, can someone come up with a Scarlet "M", as in MONOPOLY, to use as the Window's splash screen and an explanatory note to the effect that Microsoft provided the computer as punishment for criminal behavior.
I think that when the dust settles, and the final verdict and REAL punishment is handed out to MS, whatever that is, that this should be added on in ADDITION.
...or so they wish.
I think I'll start a website called "FuckedCountry.com". America'll be top of the list, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan.
While I have absolutly NO respect for a Microsoft coder (they are not that bright, just thieves), I have a LOT of respect for their Lawyers and Marketers. This deal has to be the ultimate rape of all times. And GWB/Asscroft are holding up their end.
COnsidering these schools did not have the money to spend on microsoft licenses in the first place, there alternative would have been linux or other free software. Microsoft just ensured these children wont be exposed to free software/alternative operating systems in the near future.
: /
For balance.
It doesn't matter how many schools microsoft "gives" software to. These kids aren't going to learn marketable skills. What matters are the quality of teachers and the student's willingness to learn. My kids attend a private school and have a computer class. What are they learning? Typing. Because the teacher doesn't know anything else. What do you think happens in poor schools? We'll be lucky if they're even turned on. And from that point on, it's math blaster and mavis beacon. This won't add one bit to the user base of microsoft tools. The lucky kids learn word, which is knowledge transferrable to another product anyway.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
MS are actually not charging ridiculous prices ... They abused their monopoly by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, hurting Netscape.
While at the same time charging $40-$50 more for Windows (according to their own internal documents) than the market should have supported. So let's do the math:
Windows = $49
Netscape = $25
Windows + monopoly + Internet Explorer = $99
Canecel terms and we have Internet Exporer = $50. If the things they give away are subsidised by an illegally leveraged monopoly, the real cost of the things "given away" is actually the cost overcharged by virture of that monopoly.
Nope, no sig
First off, I should say that I *am* a lawyer..though I no longer practice (tech is far more entertaining):
This is an archetypical pro-business civil settlement. MS appears to be minorly rebuked, yet comes away with a PR and marketing triumph. On one hand, you have *seriously* needy public schools getting new and arguably functional hardware and software. That is, overall, a really good thing (N.B. I see nothing addressing issues of integration, support or training and am thus inclined to think that much of this, if it comes to pass, will be largely un-under-utilized..but that is another matter). Any settlement that touches addressing these shortcomings is at least worth considering...
However, as was pointed out elsewhere, MS is sitting on about $36BB cash and what is largely being "offered" here is in the form of software and hardware ($900MMish based on MS valuations) and here is the rub. That $900MM has an actual cost of somewhere in the neighborhood of $50MM (I have nothing to base this number on and I wager it will be lower than than...), that is to say that the actual cost to MS is de minimus.
In exchange for this minor offering to the legal gods (or demons), MS will *gain* a really substantial marketing coup...market penetration in a very young, eager and hungry market group..school children. (aside: I am sorry, I have this great image of RJ Reynolds handing out cigarettes at schools to settle one of the marketing class actions they have faced...) This is truly a win-win for MS...very little actual cost and a huge marketing upside.
The entire idea behind class actions and/or punitive damages is the idea of *punishing* a corporation for wrongdoing at the corporate level. It is always a matter of ratios. As a percentage of income/wealth, a $100 speeding ticket *hurts* the recipient to a certain extent...as it should. Here, we are faced with a situation where MS will receive the equivalent of a $1 fine *and* win Man of the Year.
If they are to be "punished" for corporate wrongdoing (rather well documented, at this point), then do so...make it meaningful and make it *hurt*. Otherwise, it is simply a cost of doing business and a cost that they have long demonstrated that they will willingly bear.
best,
/rootrot
--
Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, most do.
- Bertrand Russell
Have you not been reading the case? at least one of the points at issue is that M$ has been forcing hardware vewndors who sell its product to not carry competing products (ie. if you want to make a PC with Windows on it you can't sell PCs with Linux or Be, or etc on it).
The result - I couldn't buy a laptop with Linux, or even a blank one to put Linux on myself - now because of the DoJ suit things have changed (a little). That's called "leveraging a monopoly" it's illegal
So long as a customer goes to buy a PC at a brand leader like Dell, or Compaq, or Gateway and they don't have a choice of a non-M$ OS, or of one without an OS (at a lower price of course) then we don't have a choice.
PS: you want to buy all the old copies of Windows I was forced to buy with my last few computers? oh wait I'm not allowed to sell them - I was forced to pay for them, declined to accept the license but seemingly am still bound by conditions in the license I didn't accept that bar me from selling it
concluded that Microsoft's monopoly already is so pervasive that students would have to learn to use these products anyway in the workplace.
and start teaching concepts!!!
no one needs to know how to use MS Word, they jut need to know the basic fundimentals of how to navigate a computer GUI, how to use a mouse, how to type, and some general features that are intrinsic in all applicationslike save, copy, paste, ect. then terach them how to use a wordproccesor, ie how to pick a font, hoe to pick font size, how to type, how to save, etc. these skills will teach children what they need so they can have a much easier time moving from one platform to another or from Word to Word perfect or star office. it is more valuable to be cappable of picking up a piece of software, looking at it for a few min while you apply your previouse knowlege, and then begin to use it than it is to just know how to use a spesific piece of software.
I am in desktop support, I don't know everything, but if a person asks me how to do somthing, I can figure it out even if I have never used the application before (I work for a state agency, lots of diffrent custom crap software).
skills like that are what is important, not memorising how to save a document in word, but to know what to look for when you want to save somthing.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Talk to companies and see if they want to donate old computer parts that are just taking up storage space.
Install Linux, BSD or whatever you like on the old machines. Setup the network. Help the kids and teachers to run it themselves.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Suppose for a moment that Disney has been convicted of lacing their movies with illegal, subliminal messages to trick viewers into purchasing Disney products. Suppose that to make ammends they offer to donate $1B worth of "educational" videos to schools but that these "educational" videos also contain the subliminal messages. Would you support the Disney "settlement" in this case? Sure kids may learn a little more with the new videos, but as a side effect the original problem of subliminal messages not only persists but is actually made much worse through the expansion of their audience into these schools. Now replace "Disney" with "Microsoft" and "subliminal messages" with "anti-competitive behaviour" and you have the situation with Microsoft.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
This agreement is such bullshit that it boggles the mind.
Microsoft gives away some of it's software to schools that could not have afforded it anyway (so they are really not losing potential revenues).
The real kicker of this settlement is that it sounds like Microsoft will get to value the software at its reatail value and not at the actual marginal cost to Microsoft
Microsoft loses almost no money from giving away the software, except the cost of distributing the cd's. So they get to write-off $1.1 billion in profits, value the give-away at $1.1 billion, but their actual costs are only pennies per installation. So if they value windows XP at $200 but the actual costs of distribution and media on that one istallation are (let's be generous) $5, you can see that this $1.1 billion settlement really costs them only $25 million dollars (taking the $200:$5 ratio of stated-value:actual-cost used earlier).
Now since this $1.1 billion dollars is subtracted from their income, and assuming Microsoft pays about 15% corporate taxes, we can see that they get a $165 million write-off for about $25 million dollars. In other words, Microsoft ends up $140 million dollars richer from this deal.
Now there is $128 million in training and support they are promising (again, real cost to Microsoft is probably less) but even that leaves them with a profit. There are vague promises of setting up a foundation with up to $250 million, but that is not a firm number.
Also they will be trying to obtain matching funds from other charities, to leverage this operation.
And when you get down to brass tacks, this deal benefits Microsoft in a very important way. This gives them an excuse to train millions of schoolkids on how to use their stupid software so that when these kids eventually look for jobs their employers will have to buy software from Microsoft because that is what their employees have been trained on.
Also Microsoft gets good P.R. for "helping disadvantaged kids" (ha!) and don't have to spend millions more staying in court and risking a truly costly jury award.
In summary, Microsoft gets to escape any future civil liability, while instituting a training program that makes their software more valuable at virtually no cost, or even a cash gain for themselves. And all the lawyers will get fat fees.
Sounds like a great deal for Microsoft. Now what would be really good is if Microsoft had to spend $1.1 billion dollars deploying other companies software in disadvantaged schools. Wouldn't it be great to know that the Linux or FreeBSD or Oracle, etc., etc., installation at your local school being paid for by Linux?
evanchik.net
THIS post gets an "INSIGHTFUL" rating?? Sheesh!!
SCHOOLS are for teaching kids to use the tools that are most prevalent in the business world. Teaching kids on APPLES then sending them out into the PC WORLD didn't help them much, so now you see schools abandoning their Apples en-masse and moving to MS/PC.
Why on EARTH would we want to teach kids on open source? Why not teach them to play Tony Hawk on the Playstation, it has the same relevance in the real business world.
The idea behind school is to arm the kids with USEFUL knowledge, and unless LINUX can take a greater marketshare than they have now, teaching kids on LINUX is simply a waste of their time.
BTW I have a farm of LINUX webservers behind me, and several appservers as well, so I'm not against LINUX, I'm against teaching kids LINUX instead of Windows since MOST companies that use LINUX use it on their servers, not desktops, which is where these kids will find themselves.
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
It's getting rediculous when you don't even bother to read the articles properly before posting the headlines, thus biasing people. You are far from an unbiased news source...
... this is NOT EQUAL TO $1.1B.
$900m in software + 200,000 reconditioned computers + $90m in teacher training + $38m in technical support + $250m for the foundation + $160 to teach kids how to work with computers, guys, basic math.
900 + 90 + 38 + 250 + (est $40m for the computers) + 160 = $1478m
I watch all of the people here who complain without even reading the articles, and believing word-for-word what the editors post in the headlines and it makes me sick. You are a jouralist outlet that serves half a million pages a day, and you should be a lot more responsible than that.
Let me also call this fact into light:
The settlement proposal came from one of the lead plaintiffs' lawyers in the case
Oh interesting, so it was the prosecution's idea to do this...
and also:
Estimates of the value of the settlement ranged from $1.1 billion to as much as $1.7 billion, one source said. "It's going to get money to the people that need it the most," this source said.
And as I counted, the $1.7B is a lot closer to the value than the $1.1B, and this is also not counting the costs of actually figuring all of this stuff out for MS. And don't think that for each copy of windows handed out they don't have any costs either, they're not free once you consider everything into account (you add up all costs of developing and divide by the number of products made)... It's not going to cost them $900mil, but it will cost $400mil or so...
I just get tired of people who hate Microsoft and blindly believe everything that they're told (partially because they want to believe), and yet are being completely hypocritical. We're in a capitialistic society ladies and gentlemen... In this society man exploits man... If you were in their shoes, can you honestly say that you wouldn't do things any differently?
---
Having said all of that, yeah, they're being overly monopolistic, and yes, this is a rediculously small punishment for what they've been caught doing. I mean, not that $1.5B is a small chunk of change, that is a large chunk of money for any corporation, but they're not really being restricted hardcore from repeating the same "mistakes"/"crimes" in the future. And as anyone knows, the companies that survive don't do so because they're magnanimous, they just learn how to hide their mistakes better the next time.
But then again, with the court's track record lately, could you honestly have expected anything different? (sigh)... Justice will have to be postponed for yet another day.
If God gave us curiosity
at least kids get to use computers, that's a lot more than I can say with a lot of companies out there. Remember when MS and Gates keep pouring money to charity? that was a PR move too according to a leaked doc. Did you know what Mr. Gates make 1Million (probably more by now) every 20 minutes? that's less than pocket change for him.
kawai
But they aren't going to give up 'cash' to install a couple of thousand copies of Windows on these school machines. It'll just be the ammount they decide to 'charge for it that they claim they 'lost'.
Force Microsoft to donate $1.1 billion among the Free Software Foundation, the OpenOffice project, KDE and GNOME projects, the Linux kernel team, and various others. That'll pay all the significant Open Source developers out there for hmm.. at least the next 10 years.
You think Microsoft's proffer is stupid? Whatabout all these lawsuits? This isn't going to end the "monopoly". It isn't helping the industry. It's not going to improve the quality of anybody's software or make it cheaper either. The only party that benefits from all this nonsense is the lawyers on both sides. That's it.
If M$ is giving 1.1 billion and and .9 billion is in software, where is the missing .2 billion? M$ only makes software.
Well, to solve this problem, I am going to copyright this comment and value it at $200. I then give M$ permission to distribute 1 million copies of this comment to public schools.
There, I feel better now!
This post (c) Mike McCune. All rights reserved without expressed written permission (or is that implied verbal permission?).
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
Why can't MS just pay the 1.1b fine in cach?
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
$90 million in teacher training. That probably means teacher manuals and minimal direct training, meaning that Microsoft will be teaching the teachers, who will be trained to directly read Microsoft literature to children.
I wonder if copywrite law will become a sizable part of the computer carriculum.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
I guess it's cos it's news for GEEKS.
Some geeks LIKE Mircosoft.
or it's due to the same reason some people go to benews.com and sit there shouting Linux Rulz.
Apple's educational market-share is rigid, teachers don't want to learn new systems. We're always having to make sure everything works on Windows and Macs because we know that the majority of school computers are made by Apple. That's why Macromedia's authoring products (Flash/Director/Authorware) are so popular for games aimed at the younger audience - they allow easy cross-platform development.
WTF is "stallid"
The inner-city kids who are the beneficiaries of this program will turn out wonderfully. That Windows-using experience will certainly give them a leg up on their brethren after they drop out of school, turn to a life of crime, and it becomes necessary to try to rehabilitate their sorry asses.
I think I'd rather have an inner city kid hooked on heroin than Microsoft products. The two are rather similar, you know. How will these kids afford upgrades for their computers at home, now that Microsoft is making it tougher to pirate Windows? Obviously they'll haf ta start jackin' people ta get tha cash money fo' they upgrade. Itz all abou da benjamins, yo.
Yesh, this is unbelievable if it's true.
Pervasiveness is Microsoft's ultimate crime. They have sacrificed ethics, legal business practice and short term profits all for the quality of being pervasive in our culture.
If this is the settlement that is actually reached, it only continues their business goals, with no penalty. (How much does that much software actually cost to produce, anyway?)
As Brier Rabbit used to say, "Whatever ya do, brotha Fox, please don't fling me in that Briar Patch!" In this case, Microsoft is getting thrown back into the very marketplace it was sued for abusing in the first place.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Speaking of viruses... Will M$ also pay for the anti-virus software, or will the poor schools and under-privileged students be forced to buy their own AV software?
TO THE VIRUS WRITERS: Learn to deactivate M$'s Product Activation, so that your virus will disable the computer until the OS is reinstalled.
They should have taken that 1.1 Billion and put it into scholorships and grants, have you looked at the price of college these days, or how many OSS programmers could we pay to get equal, if not better functionality/stability/security then Microsofts programms. I dont know, but i think for 1.1 billion you could produce program for program exactly what microsoft has, and then you would at least have 3 compeating systems (Linux on the desktop is slow to take hold but its finnaly getting there). Choice == power for the consumer.
Im sorry but trying to break up a monopoly by fining a company and equivelenly buying that same amount of product FROM THE SAME COMPANY is stupid. Your going to extend thier monopoly and you havent done squat.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
what a great way to teach young children about their basic colors!!!
"Here's Blue, Johnny. Can you say Blue?"
Was it me or are jamie's comments just a little biased against Microsoft? I think at this point, MS could donate eleventy billion dollars to the Red Cross, WHO, and several other charities and there would be Slashdotters would would find fault with it. It turns into a kneejerk reaction that lost is charm years ago.
First, Microsoft gets off with paying just over 200 million. That's it. That 1.1 billion figure is garbage. That alone is a travesty.
Second, Microsoft receives no incentive to change it's business practices, which means that it is still perfectly free to go about reaming its customers and using its monopoly any way it pleases. That will allow them to make the money back many times over.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Its too bad linux doesn't have some super rich philanphropist to give away mandrake or redhat cds to schools and help get it installed (apologies to you debian/slackware people). That would be really nice, however since that will probably never be the case... the doj should make microsoft give out linux instead of MS software. Haha... how much do you think microsoft would hate that? And then the govt should make MS keep giving out free software (maybe start sending linux through the mail like aol) until it is decided that Microsoft doesn't have that a monopoly anymore (what percentage exactly of market share constitutes a monopoly... 75%, 90%?). Oh stay with me it gets better. On top of this, MS should be forced to #1) Not make a MS Linux, but instead distribute another version see top of post and #2) Provide support to this by either A) doing it themselves which sounds like a bad bad idea... i mean do we want apple doing tech support for microsoft? Anybody remember Microsoft's attempt at creating MS Unix? or B) give that most of that 1.1 billion to the OS community... including redhat who is the master of linux tech support. Of course, the bsd and hurd people might complain... so we'd have to give away some of their cds too. Maybe we can do mcdonalds give aways too. Get your RedHat, Mandrake Linux, FreeBSD, HURD collector CDs today!!!
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Instead they are trying to pawn off copies of software (that cost them next to nothing) while:
They should think of doing this anyways, but this is not a penalty for the laws that they broke.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I think M$ should donate 100mil to eduation per year anyways. They can afford it and it would be well used.
they need to know how to juggle more then one PC (running Linux with DVORAK keyboards)
Its strange to read that with such a biting sarcastic tone because I'm running Linux with a DVORAK keyboard right now, both at home and at work...
(I popped the keys out and rearranged them about 6 months ago, for fun)
(Work == stack programmer for a satellite isp)
get all kids to learn MS products and guess what'll be used in the workplace...
this isn't punishment, this is a dream investment...
wtf...
My preferred outcome is anything that involves those vampires going away empty handed. In fact, they are pocketing some unstated amount but the less they get the better.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I agree, but what they'll do is was whatever is most expedient to their goals without arousing the public consiousnes against them (otherwise they'd just form a mercenary army). They are completly without moral scruples.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Oh, never mind. It's not important.
I remember learining to program in Modula4 on a VAX in school. How useful was that? Not even a little.
Some kid graduates and doesn't know how to minimize a window, or alt+tab between apps, or use Explorer, etc. is pretty much useless.
"But I learned how to keep bowling scores in Modula4!!"
"Nice. Kid, go work in a bowling alley, I need to hire someone with skills I can use."
Hate MS all you want. Most people who hate MS also hate Tiger Woods and anyone else who is successful. Hate is the byproduct of fear and insecurity, and if you are not a successful person in life, you will quickly learn to hate those who are successful to help your self esteem. Personally I don't give a rats ass about MS or Linux. I use both in my server farm, I use whatever is best for the job. I don't care if Adolf Hitler made the OS, if it fits my needs most completely, I'll use it.
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
This is the sort of thing that Microsoft should be doing as part of their standard charitable giving program. I would be surprised to hear if they don't already donate their used computers to poor schools and charitable organizations. They should also practically give their software away to the poorest organizations who probably just use older versions of their software that has long been paid for.
So if that is the case, any financial experts out there want to comment on the financial benefits derived from classifying this expense as a settlement from a lawsuit as opposed to charitable giving?
In other words, does giving this stuff away as part of the settlement of a lawsuit allow them to deduct a larger portion of it from their bottom line than they would be able to if they just wrote it off as a donation to charity?
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
at least one of the points at issue is that M$ has been forcing hardware vewndors who sell its product to not carry competing products (ie. if you want to make a PC with Windows on it you can't sell PCs with Linux or Be, or etc on it).
This statement is utter bullshit. MS did not FORCE PC makers to do anything, and they didn't say they could not sell other OS's. What they said was "we will license to you Windows for price X (a very cheap rate) if you agree to sell it as the only OS for that model PC, or we will sell you licenses for price Y (a more expense price) if you don't want to agree. The PC makers than rubbed their greedy hands together and made your decision for you. Then, when the DOJ came calling, they cried "OH BIG BAD MS MADE US!". The PC makers decided that their profits were more important than your choice, not MS.
Isn't this how a monopoly deals with competition? Use market share and cash to squash the newcomers until you're the only one left standing? One of the main selling points for in schools was cost. Now it will just have to be reliabilty and ease of use.
Was it the fact you had to learn VAX that made you a pathetic loser too?
$NN million in free software is NOT any sort of punishment. Aside from the free publicity, the free expansion of marketshare, software costs almost NOTHING itself. The development / advertising / support costs money. Once you've developed the software, rolling out copies of it is relatively cheap.
It's like Microsoft printing their own money.
Why don't we let MS pay their taxes with copies of XP? Would employees like to be paid with copies of Office?
I thought BillG was a business genius before, but this is off the scale. Paying a massive monetary fine with non-corporeal assets is brilliant beyond words.
Using another unpatched security whole in IIS, hackers broke into MS owned site MSNBC and reposted an article from BBSPOT.COM.
"This has been an outrage," snorted an unidentified MS spokesman. "The thought that we would give away our intellectual property is just outrageous! Who do they think we are, the Free Software Foundation."
A press release from MSNBC apologized for the bad news coverage.
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
Was it the fact that you were dropped on your head as a child that made you a trolling moron?
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
WTF is the name of your community college?
I wonder if copywrite law will become a sizable part of the computer curriculum.
Chapter 1: Understanding the EULA
I could imagine Microsoft supplying textbooks that arrived in sealed envelopes with EULAs on them...
"Timmy, you got a 0 on your test!"
"But mom, disclosing any of the information I learned from my Microsoft textbook is a violation of the EULA! I could get in trouble! Microsoft could send people out to remove the part of my brain that retains the disclosed information!"
~Philly
Let's see... at $30 per RedHat CD...
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
How long is it going to take MS to get back that $1.1 billion? Its only a penny in a big big jar.
You morons, can't do it yourself so you're bitching those who can !!! It's a pretty good decision and everybody see it valuable... Microsoft aren't Monopoly, they are only good at what they do : BUSINESS !!!
Clearly Microsoft has been found guilty of a criminal offense. They are corporate criminals, proven beyond a reasonable doubt. My question is, since when do criminals get to determine the punishment for their misdeeds? And for that matter, since when do fines get to be paid in funny money (free software, which in terms of real money costs Microsoft nothing)? In fact, this can hardly be called punishment. It's like if a thief was convicted of a robbery in which multiple people were shot dead and millions were stolen, and the punishment was that they had to deposit the money they stole in an account at the bank they robbed. It's utterly preposterous, an affront to any human being with any sense of justice.
Call me cynical, but Microsoft, arguably one of the most thuggish corporations in history, is getting off the hook, without even a slap on the wrist.
The objective here should be to punish them to 1) make up for the damage they have caused to consumers and the industry, and 2) make sure they do not continue to engage in this behavior. If you are looking for real punishment, I would suggest fining them a real dollar amount equivalent to their ill-gotten financial gains, somewhere on the order of $30B in CASH MONEY (nearly the money they have in the bank), and use that money to fund open source projects and further anti-trust enforcement. Apparently the anti-trust division has no problem fining other corporations for price-fixing (recent corporate anti-trust fines to the vitamin industry neared the $1B range, and that's just for vitamins!). Why make such an egregious exception to the worst anti-trust offender of all time?
No it isn't you moron. Mac OS 1.0 was out in 1984. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 in 85. Windows has had about 7 upgrades in that 16 years, and in 17 years, Mac has had over 10 upgrades (they charged for half steps at times, like .5 versions).
Unless you count the Lisa OS, but it adds more versions then to the Mac OS.
Short version:
Most of the people posting against the settlement know not what they say.
Long version:
Most of you seem to have this knee jerk reaction to anything with M-I-C-R-O-S-O-F-T printed anywhere within. I think MS has a monopoly. Wow, what a revelation. Whooda thunk MS would ever be accused of such a thing?
Here's some info that I'd like some of you to consider before you flame me mercilessly and kill my karma:
1) MS didn't sprinkle pixie dust on PC users and magically become a monopoly. You and I MADE them a monopoly. And don't give me bunk about "the OS that people saw growing up was Windows, so that was the only OS in the universe". Whatever. When I was in school, we had teletype terminals and IBM DOS machines. There was no MS monopoly back then. I'm in my mid 30's so it's not like I'm talking about the dark ages of computing.
2) If you put Windows machines in schools, Apple will piss and moan about it. If you put Apple machines in schools, MS and everyone else will piss and moan about it. If you put Linux in schools, BSD folks will piss and moan about it. Face it, there is no OS on the planet that can go into schools that will get a 100% endorsement even within the free/open-source software world. Period.
3) Let's see what's more benefitial: average PC users receive a check for the $20 determined to be the "damage" we sustained as a result of MS's monopolistic actions, or kids in poor neighborhoods/schools get access to training, hardware, and computer related education that they would not be given access to otherwise. Hmmm... Let's see... (If you have to honestly think about it, you need to work on being more human and less greedy.)
4) I don't give half of a rat's ass if students learn to do word processing on Word instead of Abiword. I started off with DOS, then I moved to Windows, then I moved to Linux, and now I'm working with BSD and UNIX. I started off the same way these kids will start off, and despite all of that I'm not a Windows user. Gee, could it be possible that I had -- *GASP* -- freedom of choice? Reading comments posted here, you'd think that if MS puts Windows in classrooms that the people in those classes will nevereverEVER touch anything other than Windows. Get real, folks.
5) Windows is -- on the whole -- easier to use than Linux, *BSD, or UNIX. I say that as someone using these latter OSes daily and the former OS almost never. I don't let my preferences cloud the issue or induce prejudice against Windows, though. I don't care if you're more familiar with the latter OSes. Windows is easier to deal with for newbies than any of them. And until developers start putting the end-user experience in front of developer coolness (take a hint, free/open-source developers), this will continue to be a true statement.
5) Windows experience is more marketable right now than Linux/BSD/UNIX experience, and will continue to be that way for quite some time as far as I can tell. Unless companies completely ditch Windows and start over with a new OS (which will not happen, no matter how many op-ed pieces you read saying the opposite), it's going to be a long, long, LONG time before Linux/BSD/UNIX experience makes you more marketable on a global scale than Windows experience. And with the web services wave just about ready to rise, the OS people use will become less important than the browser it's running, so people will have less incentive to go through the IS/deployment/training nightmare associated with a company-wide OS switch.
Flame away...
Under the settlement, Microsoft will provide:
$150 million in cash to establish the foundation, and will seek $100 million in matching funds from other corporations and education groups.
$160 million in hardware and software support and
$25 million in online computer support
Up to $90 million to train up to three teachers in each participating school
Up to 200,000 refurbished computers each year, at a cost of about $200 to $500 per computer
Virtually unlimited copies of programs such as its Windows operating system and Office business software suite to participating schools, and more limited numbers of other titles.
Roger Kay, an analyst with IDC in Framingham, Mass., called the settlement "a huge victory" for Microsoft.
The settlement does nothing to curtail Microsoft's behavior, Kay said, while giving Microsoft an edge over competitors.
"It derails other companies like Apple and Dell -- even its own customers like Dell," Kay said. "It's amazing to me how favorable this is to Microsoft."
Microsoft said the settlement would not harm competition since educators could ask to use their funds for Apple or other rival products.
In 2000, Microsoft earned $7.3 billion on revenue of $25.3 billion.
Shares of Microsoft were up 1 cent to $66.55 in afternoon trading Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
That's not the point, as I've said a few times already - you can either teach a series of keystrokes or you teach the concept of minimizing a window - the former is applicable in one OS, the latter in any GUI.
Well, to use your beautiful Hitler analogy - people like you are those responsible for 60 million people dying during WWII - those who don't care about who they support as long as their conviniences are met.
I don't hate MS because they are successful, but because they think I should be paying $250 for an OS, every two years or so.
sic transit gloria mundi
Well, M$ presented Gateway, HP, Compaq, and Dell with a choice: stay in business or don't. IBM dared to offer OS/2 Warp as an option and they were denied win95 for one or two of the crucial seasons for pc's (back to school or xmas, I forget which, but it's in the Findings of Fact which have been accepted at every appellate level). IBM never regained the lost market share.
They also DID force computer makers who used their OS to place IE on the desktop in preference to Netscape.
Both actions are illegal. 100% bullshit free.
Won't someone please think of the children?
Celebrate the finer things in life
Once Microsoft installs the machines, there's nothing stopping somebody with a clue from ripping out the Borg implants and installing FreeBSD.
...after being legally found a monopoly, accused of strongarming their way into markets and gaining marketshare by squeezing out competitors, as part of the proposed solution, Microsoft wishes to give away over a billion dollars worth of their software to the nation's poorest schools.
And Apple (or other software vendors) can compete with this how? And this avoids further penetration of the educational software market exactly how? This prevents them from pushing other software vendors out of markets how? This avoids cyclical dependencies on their software precisely how?
I want some of what the state AG's are smoking.
Now, putting on my reality cap, I understand that to have to tell your voting public that you turned down the opportunity to have a one billion dollar infusion of software and computers into the poorest schools simply because you thought it would be wrong to let a company get away with something, and that overall, the people who are making money with the company will still make a lot of money with it after you "win", is something akin to political suicide. But it is still laughable.
But then it could be just me.
Rhetorical question: How can a case like this be settled against M$ without any meaningful relief for the plaintiffs?
So, 900 million out of a 1.1 billion settlement is actually just the retail value of a product that costs Microsoft next to nothing to produce. I never thought that the Justice department would accept Monopoly money for payment. And Microsoft will probably be able to write off the entire settlement in this year's tax statement.
I wonder if the IRS will accept Monopoly money for MY taxes next year.
Cartman: Seriously, you guys, I am, so, pissed off...
include $sig;
1;
From the Wired article:
"The giveaways would go to any school with at least 70 percent of its children on subsidized school lunch programs, sources said."
AP: Washington.
The Bush Administration today acted to introduce legislation in the House of Representatives to vastly restrict direct government subsidies of public institutions. "The government is usurping the role of private, religious charities to provide for the needy," said Bush. "This legislation will return to the people of America the great privilege and solemn responsibility of reaching out to their neighbors and loved ones. This is the core of compassionate conservatism." The bill is expected to breeze through the House. While conservatives applaud the bill, many leading philanthropists expressed uncertainty of the private sectors ability to pick up the slack. "Take school lunch subsidies, for example," suggested financier George Soros, "what private institution would pick up such a program?" Others are less skeptical. "This is simply great," said noted philanthropist, Microsoft founder Bill Gates. "A great burden has clearly been lifted."
Teching kids "Concepts" is fine, but if you go to an employer and say "I know the concept of preparing taxes, but I've never actually done it" do you think they'll be hired?
These are INNER-CITY KIDS. They would benefit the MOST from practical training. Leave the esoteric "Theory of window opening" to the IT majors.
What burns me is that the tactics MS uses are the SAME tactics MOST companies use. The ONLY difference is that they have done it better, and for that they are punished.
Personally I think Microsoft should dissolve and re-form in India, where they have a GREAT populace of VERY SKILLED IT people. That way the US loses all of their tax money and jobs and Microsoft gets a source of skilled, cheap labor.
Even better: MS should fold. Go out of business. Close up shop.
That way, THOUSANDS of software companies can fold with them. In the market that follows it would be LINUX, BEOS, OSX and maybe a few others fighting it out. The small developers would be screwed because they would have to support all 4 to be successful since any one of them would mean excluding 25% of the marketplace. Then comes the hardware... Like spending $500 for a GeForce3? Get ready to! Quadrupling the driver development staff to handle the range of OSs and versions would burden the peripheral manufacturers, who pass the costs on to the consumers. Games? What games? Electronic Arts and a few others will survive, but forget any company smaller than $50Mil in sales per year, they won't be able to author 4 versions of everything and hope to break even.
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
Why is it that all I can think of (besides the standard reactions) is Bill Gates wearing 40 silicon necklaces, driving around in a giant van, defeating bad guys with the rest of the $-Team, all for the children...
THE REDMOND, WASH., software maker tentatively has agreed to a five-year project to provide software and computers to more than 14,000 of the poorest schools in the U.S....
That's cool, let's use the software as coasters and install Linux on the machines. That way we'll teach the kids something useful rather than assimilating them into the Borg!
~ now you know
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011120/202744_1.html
The minimum standards are Commodore 64's (64, not 64C), imported from Kabul.
Ya I submitted this story hours ago but apparently it wasan't news then when it got rejected right away. This happens all the time. Sometimes Slashdot really bugs me. Mod me down, whatever.
Snoozer.
Bet they (M$) never do that again.
1.1 billion over five years. 220 million per year, at retail prices. Let's see, that would be not quite 12% of the interest they would make on the 36 billion they have in the bank, assuming they only get the same return on investment that I get from my banks savings account.
That seems reasonable.
Why doesn't Microsoft give these same poor schools 1.1 - 1.7 billion in cold hard cash to hire the best teachers on the market.
Which do you think would make a bigger difference?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I love cheap political shots.
Thanks, Microsoft -- you've just effectively intruded on the iMac's in schools trend from the last few years. My 12-year-old is in a public school with a really amazing iMac network. Here I've been thinking how wonderful this is, but you can just see this "donation" as a way into a sector that they've completely FUCKED for the last few years.
I'm really, really pissed about this.
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
DOJ's proposed Settlement:
Asks Microsoft "Where do you want to go today?"...{Microsoft addendum}...and who do we want to do it to.
Microsoft's Proposed Settlement:
"Oops, we did it again"...{DOJ addendum}...don't worry, we know you were "Just thinking of the children".
I sometimes dislike quoting cartoon characters, but "WHY AM I *NOT* SURPRISED!!!" Iago, Aladdin.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
Microsoft is a business. They want to make money. I think this is a smart business decision...
:)
Mr. Gates, we're asking you nicely. Please stop trolling slashdot. Thanks.
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Red Hat has just released an
alternative proposal.
Basically, it comes down to "Microsoft can put all the money in hardware, we'll provide the software for free".
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I'd be unconcerned too, if I was gonna get kickbacks from Apple, once the accepted standard turns out to be based on patented, licenseable revenue-generating technology!
Your home page bugs me:
Unfortunatly this site does not work on Netscape 4x yet (I'm working on it!).Please try netscape6 Internet exploder(yuch) or mozilla (recomended) Sorry for any incovienance. This sit works best with Netscape6 mozilla build 0.9 @ 1024x768 pixels.
Ok, let's say that Microsoft is allowed to settle this way. It should be allowed ONLY under the following circumstances:
If all of those criteria are met, I would agree to such a settlement.
Anyway. Of course an overriding goal is to increase the company's bottom line. However, traditionally, companies have also followed the constraints of the particular nation's laws. If not follow them to the letter, than at least to not directly oppose them.
This is a master stroke of punishment.
Think of all the kids and teachers making support calls to Microsoft. If they don't do a good job at support then you (the att. general) fine them $300 million per month untill they do. Which heavily cuts into profits, knocks their stock down and forces them into Chapter 11. Sun and Oracle partner to "buy" them.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
I love it.
This is so similar to the tobacco company settlement that I must question who these lawyers are representing: Is it the interests of the nation/people or a lurid fascination with deep pockets? Instead of jailing the tobacco executives who lied under oath - lies that cost the lives of many- we have created a system in symbiosis with their bank accounts: This we call a 'settlement'. It should be no surprise then that something similar may be done with Microsoft. The temptation to asuage the lawyers fecklessness with the pallitive of helping poor children-and pass this off as a solution no less- is a ruse no one should perpetuate. It should not be accepted since it addresses nothing concerning the law suits.
how many of those boxes will be set up with red hat after windows XXXP won't install on them, and they don't say what machines will be given and in what condition either (hey, could be a "$2000" 486 they had in the junk closet that wouldn't boot up right you never know) I bet the percentage that the children would actually see of this settlement would be around the percentage that artists see off their CD sales. Then again, is your sould worth free computers. I'd have to call this settlement a sellout. It looks like the DOJ is going to let them off easy, I urge the people in the civil suit not to do likewise.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Great, just more leverage on those that refuse
to run that damned OS; pitting accountants
vs. teachers. (mac isn't free, linux is free, but if you don't have to pay for microsoft why not use it?)
Microsoft is a perfect example of what happens when a corp. gets too big, they're
doing nothing 'wrong' but the scale of what they can do puts everyone else out of their league.... Usually this is when the Government is supposed to protect us, don't look that way today.
Looks like microsoft might succeed where Standard Oil, Bell Telephone and IBM failed.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
I can see it now... the special Settlement edition of Win XP, which costs $50 million per 2-month license.
This may already be posted somewhere, but Redhat has already responded to Microsoft's proposal by proposing that instead the computers run Redhat Linux and to use the money saved by running RedHat Linux to increase the number of computers from 20,000 to over a million. They said they will support the software and upgrades indefinitely instead of for five years, like Microsoft.
Here's the story.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011120/202744_1.html
Most of the people posting against the settlement know not what they say.
Damn straight. Mod this guy up.
As the article says, the other option would be to give all the claimants ~$10 each. Personally giving $1.1B worth of computer software/hardware/support to kids who'd otherwise never even SEE a computer is FAR better, regardless of OS. The kneejerking going on here is sickening - the worst I've seen on /. I'm a linux user. I think it rocks. But I can totally appreciate the value these kids will be getting from the MS solution. It's a far more socially responsible punishment than I would have expected. Good effort.
Tarkwyn.
...if it's for the kids and the schools..
The dummys will probably put in new hardware running XP. We can imagine that it would be cheapest for them to bully their vendors to take a tax break by dumping old corporate PCs and junk they can't sell. It's not like they can afford to send in thousands of $75/hr techs to struggle making new M$ junk work on older hardware. They will just use their existing channels of mass distribution.
The answer is to wait a while and be ready to assist. It won't take long for XP's subscription and reporting "services" to be abused by a worm/virus. It might happen before M$ themselves start turning them off remotly for non-payment of XP fees. Then there you have it, a few million dollars worth of broken hardware just waiting for reasonable software. It won't be easy, but the right thing is often hard.
No good publicity ever came from deception and shoddy products. That's why everyone knows M$ is second rate. People are set free one at a time.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Everyone whines about Microsoft being such a monopoly... OK, where's the products that could compete if it weren't? Linux? I think not! I'd love to see my grandma fsck her hard drive when Linux shuts down uncleanly!
This Microsoft page suggests there are at least 40,000 computers on the main Microsoft campus (search for the first "40,000" on the page). Since they want employees to use their latest and greatest version of Windows, Microsoft needs to replace computers frequently. Old boxes are just too slow. Replace each of 40K computers once a year for 5 years -- how many old boxes do you need to dispose of?
200,000
What a coincidence.
Email: slashdot3@FreeMars.org (Address will be abandoned when it gets spam.)
If so, then anyone who have access to software in high demand could give out a discustingly huge number of licenses and take care of their taxes with almost *NO* real cost to them...
Does anyone know?
-RB
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
You can call it differntial pricing, but when a monopoly is involved it's DUMPING.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Windows XP: 300 dollars.
Minimum system to run XP: 250 dollars.
The looks on their faces when you reveal you used an unpatched office 95 and an fdiv pentium: Priceless.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
I agree Microsoft is getting off easy in the settlement. Is this fallout of September 11?
bloody hell! I am not talking about highlevel conceptual training here - I talking about teaching kids "if you want to get a window out of your way, you minimize it - here's how you do it in Windows, Linux Mac and BeOS would be similar" instead of teaching them "sequence #17 - move mouse to upper right hand corner, click box, repeat until memorized" Bottom line is, you can teach people to use Windows without using Windows - it's a bloody simple thing! And I wasn't even suggesting they get Linux, that was a joke for gods sake.
Yes they are punished for using the same tactics as others except doing it better - for the simple reason of those tactics not being a Good Thing; and the better they do it, the more harmful they are.
Suggesting that the only way a market can function is if it is dominated by one company is somewhat ridiculous - we have diferrent manufacturers for cars, DVD players, stereos and microwaves and they all seem to function; but somehow the entire world of software depends on Microsoft being the only vendor of OS software? Rubbish.
Claiming that development costs somehow figure into the price of high-end hardware like the GF3 is just plain naive, the price is set very simply: units sold * price = revenue; as price rises, units sold decrease, the price that maximizes the revenue is set; higher production costs will decrease profit, raising price will decrease profits even more. In any case, somehow I am not worried about nVidia's profit margins - they'll make ends meet.
There is absolutely no reason why the same OS should be used on every machine (even every desktop machine) regardless of it's function; but it's not even about that - MS wants complete and total control of computers in both the home and business markets, with hardware compatibility, software upgrades, security, etc. managed by MS according to their priorities and discretion. And I would rather see them fold and risk the inevitable return to the dark ages that lack of their brilliant guidance would bring, than to see the market I just described.
sic transit gloria mundi
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People may be set free in mass! Thank you Red Hat.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"Fuck the children."
This will be a true test of the legal system, whether or not they actually consider RedHat's offer. And what a true piece of beauty this would be if MS could help us put RedHat/Ximian into K12.
Santa, could you give me this for Xmas??
I have decided to follow the generous example that MS has show us. I am hereby donating this post, valued at over $1million, to the children of America.
Feel free to read and redistribute this post without paying the $1million this was valued at.
The Bush admin. is a complete whore to big business. M$ is the biggest business, so they can write their own ticket, in this case a deal to endemnify them against further damages for .000001 pennies on the dollar.
Justice in this case is going to require direct action from the black hats.
I think this plan is actually a commercial for campaign finace reform...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I for one will ask when this site will ever just POST the news rather than providing a commentary with it.
This situation would be more like Exxon offering to dump the reclaimed and ruined oil into the great lakes.
Most of the people posting against the settlement know not what they say.
Or not.
1) MS didn't sprinkle pixie dust on PC users and magically become a monopoly. You and I MADE them a monopoly.
Well, I didn't make them a monopoly. I didn't buy a PC for my home until about '96 and I've never run anything but Linux. Pardon, I'm on Solaris 8 now. The greatest contributor to MS current monopoly position was user fear and MS decisively built their system to manipulate, contribute to and console that fear. Users didn't want to be reminded at every turn that they didn't know anything about computers *I just want to do my job.* They were masterful, but they built a crippled OS that now dictates de facto standards across the industry, from UI to browsers to security, authentication, yada yada.
Face it, there is no OS on the planet that can go into schools that will get 100% endorsement even within the free/open-source software world. Period.
So what. Who needs 100% endorsement to achieve something bright and beautiful.
3) Let's see what's more benefitial[sic]...
4) I don't give half of a rat's ass if students learn to do word processing on Word instead of Abiword....
5) Windows is -- on the whole -- easier to use than Linux, *BSD, or UNIX....
What's most beneficial is not for people to learn to use computers: *I just want to do my job.* People should learn to work with computers: *What can I make the machine do, today.* You tell me the best way to learn to work with computers: a) closed APIs, thousand dollar development tools, total lack of system documentation, indifferent support; b) open system, open code-base, reams of documentation at every level, avid user support world-wide. Focus on the end-user experience means dumbed-down tools, closed interfaces to *protect users from themselves.* This is fundamentally wrong.
There is no way I would be in a position as a software developer today without OSS. I was asking my wife what a right-click was five years ago. Today I'm lead developer on a system to make 1.5 terrabytes of aggregate US census data available on the web. I'm in my mid-thirties. I have a few humanities credits. Am I painting the picture for you?
5) Windows experience is more marketable right now
Bullshit. The tidal wave of web services you anticipate means it doesn't make a hill of beans what I develop in/on and the focus on the browser means business can swap the OS out from under without disturbing functional business systems. MS is over and supporting this settlement means saddling the nations poorest with obsolete userland skills which will have no value in three years. It smells like public housing.
illegitimii non ingravare
Microsoft did NOT gain its monopoly solely legitimately. It has used coercive secretive anti-competitive contracts with OEMs to keep any other operating systems off desktops. So yes we grew up with it, but we didn't have much of a choice in the first place. Who's to say that, e.g., if BeOS was allowed to flourish on desktops it wouldn't have a large chunk of desktop users. There is no real technical reason Microsoft is a monopoly. It's just that it has been able to leverage its position into other markets (yeah, ok it has great marketing and a good relationship with the developer community).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
All the money that they are going to have to give to the schools should be for training. They should pay to have the teachers trained in not just MS software, but in all aspects of computer software. The budget should be more like 1 billion for teacher training and 200 million for software.
Computers are tools and if you don't know how to use a tool then it is useless.
I've had enough of this. Microsoft has gone too far - they dominate the market by putting themselves in an advantagous position from the start, killing all competition, they over charge for products that cost little to be reproduced (money printing), they accuse others of being irresponsible for developing open software and talking about security holes, and then they try to ply a stupid court by screwing them over with a deal like this that ensures the next generation of poor kids will grow up only knowing about microsoft. This is to far, i say we sue them for monopolising and anti-trus... oh... yeah... nevermind
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
In real bottom-line cost to Microsoft, it is the cost of the media to supply the software, not the full appreciated cost of the R&D associated with it. With or without this deal, Microsoft's costs stay the same. That figure is purely a corporate accounting figure that does not represent any sort of a real penalty to Microsoft--the software's already developed...
are you people insane? Does the entire readership of slashdot consist of idiots with small penii? WTF GET THE BIG COMPANY, *waits till big company falls* OH NOW GET THE OTHER BIG ONE, *waits* repeats.
you idiots are tools being used by sun, oracle and the rest of the jealous bastards who would die to be in MS's position.
they should teach reality in whatever schools you morons went to. And maybe you should see some shrinks regarding your issues with 'authority figures'
MS wants to get spanked, they just don't want to shell the cash out to the vultures that hopped on the bandwagon, they'd rather give it away to someone who didn't ask for it.
"nothing attracts contempt like effeciency'
did anyone think to ask the poorest schools what they thought? No course not, because it's all about you (collectively speaking) and your infantile fist waving.
of course the lawyers are arguing about it, why? Because they are lawyers, they want to make money, the states want to make money. Oracle wants to make money, Sun wants to make money. MS has money. Get microsoft.
and more importantly *I* want to make money, not millions, not billions, I want to make a decent income programming, and no where in the opensource movement is there any fucking REVENUE FOR DEVELOPERS, just a bunch of lazy hippy brat users that want everything for free.
What are people supposed to do? Code for free while they work at mcdonalds? Leave MS alone, leave commercial developers alone. If you don't like people making money for work you are living on the wrong planet, 'happy lucky fairy land' is over the rainbow and turn left.
next you'll be upset because people charge you for plumbing and food and housing.
MS makes a good product, fine, but this proposed settlement is plainly insulting. In the context of an adverse settlement to a court case they lost, can you not see how ironic the proposed settlement is? If not, you're truly just an MS sycophant and your opinion is suspect.
I'll make it real simple. What good is giving a computer to a kid if he can't read, or do math? The children in question have bigger problems facing them than not getting enough quality mouse time. If Gates was truly trying to make the settlement into something noble, he'd just give the school systems the money, straight up, no strings attached. Then kids could get things they actually need - like facilities, decent teachers, a nutritious lunch, or....I don't know...books......
This is what Microsoft is all about: profit. It is more focused on making money than any other company I know. It is Microsoft's laser beam focus. Nothing else matters to Microsoft so it acts accordingly. That is the Microsoft mentality.
"Overly monopolistic"? I'm sorry, you might just be stupid.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Look, I think your missing the point of the outrage here.
.2 bilion for hardware (a fee which is nothing to them)
they are going to give this 1.1 bill mostly in THEIR OWN SOFTWARE! to schools that wouldnt have bought it anyway. that means that this costs them aprox
sure. I have no problem with Microsoft giving away software but to make that a punishment!
it is no punishment at all.
now, if they were giving cash only and the shcools could spend it as they wished, well, at least that would be a start.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
My main objection is that your point is mostly irrelevent to the value of the proposal. Microsoft has caused real damage to consumers and to the software industry. There is a real structural problem with much of today's software market because of MS manipulation, because they leverage monopoly powers. This problem will not go away if MS donates stuff to schools, sends all americans a $20 rebate, funds an african wildlife reserve, or engages in safe-sex education. Arguing the merits of windows vs. linux in schools is just offtopic. Debating wether MS "bought" or "earned" their initial monopoly is also offtopic.
We should be proposing real remedies to the current problem, such as:
1. Disclosing the terms of oem contracts with microsoft.
2. Punishing contracts which discourage/forbid oem makers from pre-installing other OS's or rival media players, authentication systems, etc. At the least, these contracts should be declared anti-competitive and unenforcable. At the most fines should also be paid for this collusion.
3. break up MS into a division that sells office software, a division that sells other stuff, and a division that sells an Operating System. The fact that MS even opposes this is evidence that they believe they can leverage their OS monopoly to increase their dominance in other areas. That's illegal. Even if it means subsidising your xbox sales by the minions who shell out cash for Office XP. This is a general and sound principle: As soon as you achieve dominance in one area, break it off from your other businesses. This levels the playing field.
4. Publish protocals, interfaces, and all system calls. For free, fully, to all interested parties.
5. No fucking with file formats. see above.
6. No EULA's forbidding reverse engineering. When you have a monopoly, reverse engineering shouldn't even be necessary. You should be forced to disclose all specs, validation schemes, etc. because they are defacto standards and standards need to be accessible to all comers.
This is how to deal with MS. Not by giving away free wheelchairs or whatever stunt is being proposed. You can debate the merits of my points, but that is what you should be debating. Not whether schoolchildren should learn MS Office.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
No.
First, almost all contributions are limited to 50% of "contribution base" (or less, depending on the nature of the donee), which is AGI ignoring NOL carrybacks ; any excess can be carried forward.
Second, contributions are deductible only at basis, not fair market value, when the property was not a capital asset of the donor. Software isn't, to its producer, both because it's inventory and because it's "copyrights, literary, musical or artistic compositions, and letters or memoranda, or similar property," with basis determined by that of the producer.
Thus, you would get a deduction only for your basis in the software, i.e., your cost of producing that copy, nothing in the case of a naked license.
Note that it's different here anyway, since it isn't clear whether this is a charitable contribution, the equivalent of a non-deductible penalty, a tort payment, or what.
Don't trust me on this -- individual taxes are not my specialty.
Lionel Hutts, J.D.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
I was just listening to NPR, and a comment was casually dropped that the money can be used to buy non-microsoft software. Is this true? Who chooses what software, the schools? The article also said that it would _cost_ Microsoft 1.1B; I hope it's in cash and the schools can spend the cash as they best see fit; no strings.
This is for the civil lawsuits. The thing that will most benefit 'the people', for having been screwed by Microsoft all these years, is for Microsoft to fund development of alternative OS's.
Now THAT would hurt them in the pocket book now and later! That is a punishment that fits the crime!
Fine them $5 billion. Give money to competing OS groups, including Apple, various Linux groups/companies, Palm, BeOS groups (ala OpenBeOS), BSD groups, etc. Set aside about $1-2 billion for a foundation that will distribute money and grants to computer science OS researchers for future technology to supplant Windows.
"And like that
I think Billy G should transfer his entire worth to... Me. yes, i should become the richest man on the planet. This would solve the following issues:
1) Microsoft would win the legal battle between them and the court, as i would pay off the judges involved with a small portion of my new fortune.
2) I would never require a job, thus creating one free job.
3) I would put this money back into the economy, by buying several expensive cars (auto industry) planes (much needed money to the aviation industry) and houses (um.. anyway).
4) I would by all advertising space on the tube, billboards, tv and radio, and fill it with blank space, thus freeing people from dumb advertising.
5) I would offer Bin Laden a handsom sum if he promised to stop being nasty to people and go retire to a cave somewhere. I would also pay Bush to stop being president, thus saving america.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
No, there is no such federal law. In fact, the federal courts held long ago that the Priveleges and Immunities clause of the Constitution does not apply to corporations because they're not "citizens."
They do have, e.g., rights against takings, but that's just to enforce the substantive rights of shareholders, really.
Lionel Hutts, J.D.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
How much does it cost a school to use M$ software?
How much would it cost to use Linux?
Answer: M$ monopolozes the market, so considering Linux is out.
Sad... but true.
I can tell you why this is bad. 1) This is not an appropriate settlement for an ANTI-TRUST suit. Doing this will only strengthen Microsoft's monopoly on things. Who cares if they lose a billion dollars? They'll make that up in no time. By giving Windoze-computers to school-kids, they will be pushing their software on even more people, teaching them that this is the "only way" to use computers - via Microsoft products. This settlement is NOT a settlement - it's a win-win situation for Microsoft. Settlements involve comprimise, and this is just a sneaky attempt by Microsoft to avoid comprimise and actually significantly benefit from this situation. 2) It's pretty tasteless from a political standpoint. Any judge with political aspirations would have a hard time saying "no" to an offer like this. After that, he/she could be easily targeted in future campaigns. "What, you don't like kids? You don't want to help the poor?" and so on. Don't think this is true? Then why would Microsoft pick a settlement proposal so wildly irrelevant to an anti-trust suit. I'm certain this political dimension was considered as well. 3) What's a billion dollars worth of computers and Microsoft software really worth to Microsoft? Assuming that they a) include only their own software and b) give the computers to these schools at consumer market prices, the real cost of these computers could be what portion of their proposed value? half? a quarter? To hell with that company. At this point, I am simply disgusted by it's tactics, both now and in the past. They're trying to extend their monopoly with a facade of good will.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
Ok funny, what are the alternatives? Supply shitty, undocumented OSes like linux?
Common, the best thing Linux can do is emulate the functionality of windows.
Besides whats wrong with learning MS tools like windows and iexplorer? At least they work!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You may note like RedHat as your favorite distro, but you have to admit they are the best player. They are involved when appropriate, I feel, and every interview I have seen with RedHat people has been right on.
Good job, RedHat
Bill Gates' reaction to the settlement
Notice the poor innocent youth to his right...
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Judging by your posting history, you can find the troll by looking at the mirror yourself.
There's no "prosecution." There's a corrupt bunch of plaintiffs' lawyers, looking to find an excuse to collect $300 million or so for themselves while their supposed clients get nothing. MSFT is only too happy to accomodate.
Microsoft gets a cheap dismissal, the plaintiffs' lawyers are happy, the plaintiffs get nothing. If the judge has an ounce of sense, the settlement will be rejected.
IMHO, of course.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
A more easily answered question might concern whose payroll the editors are on.
Poor schools may not have expensive security guards, or means of defending the machines from gradually disappearing.
Put a massive amount of expensive equipment in a poor school, and guess what gets stolen? Ram chips, graphics cards...
Some means of securing the machines must be part of the new redhat proposal. Paid for by M$ of course.
I've read several posts saying that this is bad because another group of people grow up M$. True. I've also read posts that these schools are a good "target" for free software. This is not how I'm judging this issue at all, please consider the bigger picture:
Would you rather see this money go to lawyers or to a poor school? The argument of M$ vs. free software should be set aside and we should focus on the humanistic side here.
This is not another generation of kids growing up M$, but rather, another generation of kids who don't grow up in the projects and live on welfare. You want that right???
Reality is that software does not make it into schools unless it comes from a charitable contribution from a company with deep pockets (like M$).
We've all seen this punishment before in old movies, it's bound to work. Remember when 12 year old William got caught smoking a cigarette? His dad made him smoke more cigarettes until he was sick to his stomach and would never touch a cigarette again.
Well, Microsoft got caught creating a monopoly, so the obvious answer is to hand them more users. And not just any users, the most impressionable ones we can find. If we grow the monopoly for them, Microsoft will surely get tired of no competition and correct their ways.
Seriously, if Microsoft did this out of context of a settlement people would be jumping all over them. It's a move intended to create a foothold in a market by undercutting competition. I don't think I could imagine a more obvious monopolistic action. I will admit though, it is a pretty genius move.
CAn you believe the gall of MS to actually claim that the software giveaway is *costing* them 1.1 billion? That is so bogus since the software is not costing them but a few pennies per physical media costs. MS could only legitimately claim loast "opportunity cost" of the full retail value of the software if the schools were intending to purchase it in the first place, but they have no intentions of ever purchasing it period, therefore the *IS NOT _ANY_ LOST OPPORTUNITY COST*. Ugh! I think I'm gonna puke.
It does no such thing. At "educational prices" the donated software may look like a billion dollars or so, but the only real cost to Microsoft will be the pressing of a few thousand CDs. And MS will probably get double its money back on those by writing off the full billion come tax time.
Worst case, you could argue that each "donated" product costs MS a cash sale; but that sale would put no more than $10-15 in Microsoft's pocket anyway. It stills totals out at a small fraction of the $1.1 billion paper figure Microsoft gets to crow about.
Bottom line for MS: this "$1.1 billion" settlement will cost no more than $200 million in real cash outlay; that's less than the Caldera settlement for DR-DOS, and means MS gets 65 million consumers off its back for less than 3 bucks a piece. This settlement will ultimately cost MS less than it lost to accountants' rounding errors last quarter. To borrow from Liberace, Microsoft must be crying all the way to the bank.
It's all in how you look at things- you're looking at this obviously from the "free market" and "free will" school of thinking. Sorry to say, it's not applicable here.
MS has deals that prohibit most of the machines being sold as complete machines in most retail outlets without their software.
Most people don't care about the software and just use whatever is provided them, so long as it does what they need of it. Really, there's nothing wrong in that.
Because of this, MS has this massive network effect that is difficult to break out of- which makes it more "reasonable" to use their software than other software for many.
At which point is abuses (key word there...) of this situation the fault of the companies bundling or the people using the stuff since they are either bound up (like the OEMs) or know no better?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
And here's the news:
Jane Bladderwell, recently convicted of operating a crack lab has been sentanced to 200 hours of community service in a drugstore.
Microsoft, recently conviced of leveraging their monopoly in OS software to create new monopolies, has been sentanced to help extend that monopoly to poorer schools.
Usama bin Ladin, recently convicted of terrorist acts, is to work off his 300 billion year sentance by helping to fabricate aircraft parts.
This would be like the tobacco companies
suggesting to pay the families of dead
smokers with cartons of cigarettes.
Or Union Carbide offering to build another
chemical plant somewhere in india.
Or S Milosovich telling the Hauge that
he was sorry and that as restitution he would
like to ethnically cleanse any country the
Hauge would like to choose.
Or my daughter offering to spill grape juice
on the rest of the white carpet, so the whole
thing is purple.
Or......
1) I certainly did NOT make them a monopoly. Strong arm tactics with PC makers made them a monopoly.
2) so, you agree this whole thing is moronic? Give
the moneys to the schools, and let them use the moneys where appropriate.
3) As npr just reported how poorly 12th graders are
doing in science, how about (again) letting the schools figure out what to do with these moneys?
4) so, you don't use 'ders, yet you can make a vaule judgement like this? "I don't eat ground up glass, but it tastes better than lobster." Oddly enough I do feel 'ders may be easier to use, but it sure is harder to get anything *done*.
5) Great. I didn't know school was about marketting. Funny, when I was in school, it was about *learning*. Guess some stuff has changed....
You miss the most obivious of points:
1) There is nothing wrong with being a monopoly, it's when you abuse that monopoly that the smack comes down.
2) MS was found guilty of abusing its monopoly.
3) Giving away it's own software (increasing the monopoly) is not a punishment for its illegal activities. In fact, it's just the opposite, it's a rewarding thing.
Sorry, but this plan from MS is an insult to our intelligence. They should be donating to schools and charities *regardless* of their legal situations. While I applaud your apparent lack of OS-bias, it appears your vision is clouded on this one...
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
You're correct here and with your notation that people have freedom of choice, can migrate to other systems and that this is a better solution than giving a bunch of people 20-dollar-bills.
I worked for a little while to help set up and Open Source lab in a housing project on Statin Island. It was great. I think for starters it would be just as great if the software were M$. The result is still the same: a whole crew of 10 to 18 year old hackers.
However, you've skirted the source of the outrage, my friend. The real issue is that the prosecution has (for whatever reason) offered microsoft a non-punishment. The bitter pill they're being asked for abusing their monopoly power is, essentially, to abuse their monopoly power.
Even though I'll admit that this solution will probably be beneficial to the recipients of the hardware, software and support, it is certainly not the best use of $1B+ to help low-income schools and is the opposite of a punishment for the guilty party.
Ergo it fails to qualify either as justice or as charity. It's a fucking sham. Hence the twisted feeling I get in my stomache, reminiscent of loosing a childhood baseball game due to trechary or a bad umprie call.
Howard Dean for president
What Microsoft is really proposing is simply to have Bill donate a lot of money to his existing Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? If you look at the grant breakdown, you'll see that $1.6 Billion has already been "granted" to Education. Increasing that to $2.7 Billion over five years makes an excellent tax write-off, although I'm not too certain that it wouldn't have reached $2.7 Billion in five years on its own anyway.
BG: I know! I'm giving away money each year to education anyway; let's tell them that I'm going to do it to settle this. Mwahahaahaha!
It's also worth noting that $160 Million goes towards what is essentially an MSCE-primer school, and then $38 Million goes towards paying those MSCE-primer students to support to new computers. And 200,000 reconditioned computers and laptops? In other words, they are simply redirecting what would otherwise be either landfill or freely donated anyway. I don't understand the $90 Million in teacher training either, unless it is not how to use computers, but how to make use of computers in an educational environment. Wasn't Windows XP supposed to be as easy to use as a Mac? They copied everything else, why not ease of use? (Microsoft doesn't have R&D, only D.) And yeah, $900 Million in software probably has a real cost to Microsoft of $1 Million. People need to know that the cost of duplicating software is nil.
It's nuts- open invitation to insert chaos into a working system. And, I do believe that there IS something in the works for this sort of thing for desktops.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Xenix. MS-Unix released by SCO. It wasn't bad in its day. The problem is finding it now. Oh well.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Really, who gives a shit! I mean, why not just say:
"Wow, that's really a nice thing to do for kids who would otherwise probably not get a chance to use a computer."
I suppose it's not such a "nice" (meaning well-intentioned) thing if one's goal is to avoid civil penalties. Not, I think, that this arrangement was suggested by MS, but this is not a charity act in any case.
Getting back on topic, I think it's great that Microsoft is doing this, as it will give a chance to kids who wouldn't otherwise have one.
Again, even if the outcome is positive, this need not reflect positively on MS. Lots of selfish acts have positive outcomes, but are not positive in themselves (no matter what the little objectivists say).
As an aside, it sure is a shame that 9 out of 10 folks here have failed to distinguish between the class action civil suit described here and the DOJ antitrust suit. These are different matters. It would be peachy if we can keep them straight.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
What about the ownership cost of all this hardware and software? If the schools cannot afford to buy computers, they surely cannot affort to support them. I don't think Microsoft is going to provide on-site or even regional admins to keep the computers running.
read the findings of fact in the case
Microsoft Windows never refers to itself for bad things, only good things. Ex: Windows has detected new hardware, and must restart your computer [not windows]. You have installed new software; you must restart your computer [not windows]. Your computer [not windows] has crashed. People then associate all the annoying things with the whole computer and not the operating system itself.
Got friends?
Yes, MS was found guilty of abusing its monopoly. And yes, giving away its own software is not what I would consider punishment. But I'll point out what I pointed out to someone else in this thread that I started: the DOJ case is where actual company-level punishment happens, not class action lawsuits. These kinds of lawsuits are meant solely for financial restitution, not breaking up the company, or forcing MS source code to be opened up, or any other organizational/procedural punishment. This settlement is meant to make MS spend $$ in response to their monopolistic actions, plain and simple. Whether it's $1 billion cash or $1 billion in software, it's still $1 billion in value that MS must cough up.
People here are bitching about it going to schools in the form of software, hardware, and training. I'm saying this should not be an issue. MS is proposing to dish out their $1 billion this way (as far as I know, it's still just a proposal). Knowing what I know about lack of computers in schools (and the antiquated state of computers in those schools that do have them), I know that there is actually some benefit to this. It's amazing how much people here are against this, and as far as I can tell it's just because MS is part of it. If Borland decided to donate tons of copies of C++ Builder (a proprietary system, I might add, that doesn't help all that much in teaching people non-Windows programming), something tells me people here would cheer even if they didn't care for Borland's products. It's strange.
Here is CNNs take of the whole thing.
o so ft/index.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2001/11/20/technology/micr
Not only does it cost them next to nothing to make $900 mil of software, they said it had a retail value of 900 mil, but they are giving it to educational institutions which would otherwise have received an educational discount. So even the actual value of the software is only about $400 mil.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
NPR just had coverage of this on all things considered today. There they stated that it would cost Microsoft 1.1 billion. Here is my letter to them...
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 18:12:38 -0500
From: "Clark C . Evans"
To: atc@npr.org
Subject: Incorrect Statement about Microsoft Settlement
You mentioned the Microsoft settlement on your
program this afternoon. And I'm afraid I heared
two mis-representations:
1. This program will cost Microsoft 1.1 Billion.
FACT: This program will cost Microsoft $300 Million.
The CD-ROMs and paper that the licenses
for their "$800 million" of Microsoft
software won't cost Microsoft more than
a few thousand dollars.
Further, since these schools are too
poor to buy the software, you can't
argue that it is a loss in revenue.
FACT: Having Children learn to use Microsoft
software, instead of open soruce
alternatives (such as open office
and linux) increases the value of their
software; since more people are familar
with it (the value of software is
proportional to the user base). It's
hard to buy new recruits.... costly
actually.
Having thousands of children learn how
to use Microsoft software "for free" is
hugely valueable to Microsoft. This is
worth more than $300 million alone...
2. This money may be used to buy non-Microsoft software.
FACT: The software licenses "retail value
$800 million" are for Microsoft
software.
Perhaps some of the $300 million can
be used to buy non-Microsoft software,
but I doubt it.
I'd like to mention that RedHat has an alternative [1]
if Microsoft *really* wants to spend 1.1 Billion.
1. Microsoft just buys the hardware instead.
2. Open Source software is used (for free).
I'm afraid that Microsoft's play is just a mechanism
to extend their monopoly. It doesn't help anyone
but Microsoft.
Could you please air a correction?
Best,
Clark Evans
[1] http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011120/202744_1.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nice upper cut RedHat, just make sure you follow through with a right hook.
Very nice suggestion indeed !!!
Red Hat's whole deal is free software, so why didn't they help out poor school districts a couple of years ago? Does anyone really think stunts like this are going to be enough to stop RHAT's downward spiral into dotcom obscurity?
This sounds wonderfull at the top level of thought. The idea of puting that many machines with linux on them in the hands of uncorrupted children. What a wonderfull world. But Linux still has one major downfall, It's not easy to configure the hardware. (Yes i know it does it better than it used to and is getting better every day but it still isn't the "it just works" that MS shit has) So if this were to happen what would MS do.....
The first thing they would do is make sure that there are as few identical machines as possible. Make hardware in each box different.
the Next thing they would do is offer to have there staff help to "install" Linux making sure NOT to set it up correctly.
and then just sit back and wait... schools will get fed up with trying to support all the different hardware models and trying to get the installs right that they will crawl back to MS begging to buy there bad software.
So in the end millions of kids accross the nation will have there first experience with computers and Linux be a complex frustrating task and will FOREVER be turned off from the Unix Linux world.
That's just my opion i may be wrong.
CreayD
Once again MS seems to be getting of with not only no punishment but they will actually benefit from this settlement.
A reasonable punishment would be for MS to give the cash money "value" of the software to the schools to spend as they want on educational materials.
What a relief!
When I first saw the title I misread it as "Michael Jackson would settle for the children".
*Whew*...
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Sorry folks, but they've won. If the courts aren't going to stop them who is ? Joe Public in general couldn't give a flying f*&k that M$ is a monopoly. The DoJ is now actually holding Joe Public down whilst M$ give them a butt plugging. Tell me I'm wrong !
I am SO funny.
This isn't even a slap on the wrist! Now the schools will get stuck in a cycle of perpetual software upgrades! Mein gott, do people actually think before they do things anymore?!
How is this even slap on the wrist!? Now the schools will have to pay MS every 2 years for the latest version of Windows and Office!
Do people think before they do anymore?
civil anti-trust suits are not restricted to monetary damages, although since monetary damages can be tripled, they are often the plantiff's focus.
For instance, in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services "The ISOs[Independent Service Organizations] alleged that Kodak used its monopoly in the market for Kodak photocopier and micrographic parts to create a second monopoly in the equipment service markets. A jury verdict awarded treble damages totaling $71.8 million. The district court denied Kodak's post trial motions and entered a ten year permanent injunction requiring Kodak to sell "all parts" to ISOs.
Personally, I think purely seeking monetary damages against a company with as deep pockets as microsoft is a mistake; they can just jack up their site-licenses and roll with the punches. And civil suits are a valid way of addressing most of the structural problems I cited above.
Another note, even if the plaintiffs only sue for money, they have great flexibility in using the threat of a fiscal award to force microsoft to agree to modify its behavior in a settlement. Surely settlements aren't limited to cash only, are they? Even in this settlement proposal, MS has agreed to set up an independent agency to oversee the plan, to provide support, and to provide software as well as hardware. That's not just "financial restitution" is it?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Wired the magazine and wirednews and all of wireds online properties are owned by seperate companies. Conde Nast own's the paper mag, and lycos owns the rest.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The settlement allows Microsoft to keep Linux out of the schools. (Remember, Apple's successful strategy of flooding schools with cheap Apple computers.)
WSB&C is the law firm that one of the lead lawyers, Stanley M.Chesley, runs.
Where do you want to let your child go today?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
It is a fallacy that sending checks for $20 or seeding the market are our only choices. Look at Red Hat's counter-proposal, for example.
Yet you support the ability of a major corporation whose goal is to remove that choice from you to bribe their way out of changing the way they do business? Makes no sense. Most of them won't, and even if they do, will they be in a position to use Linux in their day-to-day computing? Will this be more difficult or less difficult if Microsoft continues to use their revenue stream to advocate for absolute intellectual property rights? Remember, the typical American thinks no farther into the future than their next paycheck and has a very poor opinion of their own judgment. I agree, to a point. I personally have no desire to put crappy plastic baubles with simulated LCD displays on my desktop. I also agree that UI consistency and elegance is of far greater strategic importance to desktop Linux than making the desktop look like a dance club flyer, and I observe that platforms with published style guides, consistently followed (Macintosh) are easier and less aggravating for the neophyte to learn and use than platforms with loosely followed style guides (Windows), and platforms with three different UI toolkits, none of which behaves exactly alike and none of which satisfies a user's expectations anywhere near all the time (Linux/X11) come in dead last. Nokia cell phones have a UI that avoids surprises. Almost every button on the phone does something, and 99 times out of 100 it's exactly what you expected the phone to do when you pressed that button. Motorola StarTAC requires lots of manual reading before you can get your preferences dialed in, let alone make "power use" of the phone, and documentation, no matter how copious, is not acceptable in lieu of design.That said, consistency and elegance of programmer-level internals is important to reduce user aggravation through reducing the number and severity of unpleasant surprises a programmer has to work around and reducing the amount of work a programmer has to do to deliver consistency and elegance at the UI level.
Not necessarily. Public corporations are driven by valuation. Companies will switch to Product L when Price M is greater than Price L + Price PHBHP (an imaginary dollar amount representing the price of the pointy haired boss's head on a platter). Company M, being a public corporation and obliged to maintain its indefinite existence as well as its valuation, is obliged to maximize, over the medium term, Price M * Purchases M and to maximize the perceived Price PHBHP through FUD. The market failure is that Purchases M is a very large number, thus Company M has wide latitude in setting Price M. Company M can therefore offer very high prices to build a war chest on the backs of retail and small-volume customers and bargain almost any other vendor without such a regular revenue stream into the ground.I have to hand Rush Limbaugh one small word of praise: at least he practiced what he preached when he bought a computer and failed to fall for "symbolism over substance".
I call bullshit. MSIE's application service technology is nothing more than providing a lightly authenticated download service for Win32 applications, which for the most part still require Product M to run, for both technical and legal reasons. Not much choice when you're stuck buying something from unfriendly Company M because the law removes your choice. This is all the more reason to spank them hard, because not only do they own the license to exclusively deal in their software product, but they can attach conditions to and charge for the use of your physical goods as a result. MAI v. Peak was a sad, sad day for the independent researcher.As for OS switching, the Mozilla/Netscape 6 user interface is (now) almost identical on all platforms, and is asserted to behave similarly from a user perspective no matter what the underlying platform. Right-clicking now more or less consistently does what you expect it to. The only problem in the IT department is dealing with users who demand to use unauthorized software, and unfortunately sysadmins generally have little power to see even relevant company policy enforced.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
It must have been the "Cynicism 101" and "Sarcasm & Pomposity 201" classes that got snuck-in on you while you attended College - or were you all born that way?
Here's some cynicism for you: Let's have all of you Microsoft users who want to "stick it" to the Linux-o-philes and Open-Source fetishists file petitions with your Congress-persons (gotta be "Politically Correct" for the "liberals/leftists" in here so they won't sue me for gender-bias) calling for government protections against Open-Source software due to the Elitest-fostering tenents of Open-Source Software; that the average user has to know how to program in C or some other language to fix their own problems with the OS/Application/Utility/POS-Emulation-of-Microsoft- Office, and which, by it's own definition, will be excluded from the masses because of the technical background needed to use the OS/Application/Utility/POS-Emulation-of-Microsoft- Office.
I, for one, am very pleased with Microsoft's offer to provide the technology to disadvantaged schools so the children attending those schools can have a future that doesn't include State-sponsored Welfare (but that's what the liberals/leftists want; to continue and expand LBJ's experiments in Socialism), State-sponsored Housing (read "segregation") and other social ills that their parents suffer under. To take this settlement offer and twist it around to make it look anything other than what is is - an attempt to make ammends for their Judicially-decided errors in business ethics and practices - is the height of disingenuity.
Linux: "Linus, I Now Understand Xenophobia"
Peace,
ScottKin
I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!
It seems to me that all you guys want is a public lynching. You have no interest in finding the best possible settlement, and nothing short of completely destroying one of the largest companies in America, depressing the tech sector even further, devauling a significant portion of the country's stock portfolios, and leaving 95% of the desktop market without any company to provide support for them will satisfy your bloodlust.
Yes, this settlement needs work. But I would think that a billion dollars in final costs are somewhat excessive in this case. Do you really feel that you've all been damaged so thoroughly by this? Most of you don't even use Windows! You're probably out $35, tops, for your OEM license. And if you don't like what the OEM's are selling, start your own. No one's stopping Best Buy from stocking Penguin computers, are they?
If you want to make them shell out 300 million in hardware, then allow the schools to choose what OS goes on them, that's fine. Let them choose - don't make them accept RedHat or MS. I also don't agree with the 5yr expiration, but that could go away rather easily, I'm sure.
Do you honestly believe that the only way to solve this problem is to burn Microsoft's headquarters to the ground?
Computer skills should be handled in the word processing/keyboarding/computer-whatever classes. If schools are so concerned about those skills, then they need to rank it up there with P.E. crap like dodgeball "skills" and make it required in order to graduate. Between the lack of training for faculty, dammaged systems, software that doesn't fit lesson plans, and IT people that get paid school district wages, computers in school have always been a joke and a stupid waste of tax funds. My wife, a high school English teacher, would rather have enough books for the students to take home than see another dime spent on tech deployed in the High School environment where the culture prevents it from being put to good use.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
By giving away their software to schools, it continues Microsoft dominance because these kids will grow up only knowing Microsoft.
BAD idea to allow this because it only extends their influence.
Apple tried this in the past remember?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Who wants donations of software? WE all know it will be for Microsoft windows and most likely be made by Microsoft.
woohoo free Promotion for Microsoft.
This doesnt help anyone but Microsoft. I dont want to hear such BS.
What Microsoft should do is donate that money to open source projects, or better yet, allow the PEOPLE to decide where the money goes.
But the last place i'd want it is to go to schools so More people can be hooked on Microsoft.
Almost as bad as cig companies promoting it to kids, now Microsoft is trying to do it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
School is about learning.
Linux is open source.
What better OS to learn than linux?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
They CANT read because they dont go to private schools like you did with fancy computers etc etc.
Dont you think a computer is more valueable to someone whos poor and in the inner city who actually needs it, than someone whos rich and uses a computer just for fun or to play quake?
Think about it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A585 37-2001Nov20.html
"There are always going to be dissenters," said Cincinnati lawyer Stanley Chesley, who co-chairs the committee that manages the plaintiffs' cases. "Any individual who doesn't like this can opt out."
He added: "One of the sensitive issues was, do you further Microsoft's monopoly by giving away all these products? It's not like breast implants or tobacco where the products themselves are dangerous."
The product IS the the problem.
So the proposal is Microsoft be allowed to flood their main competitor's market with free products?
Stands to reason; this is what they did to Netscape.
This is a settlement to the private lawsuits against Microsoft. This has nothing to do with the governments case.
Mmmm.. Donuts
"Give me one generation of youth and I will take the world." Adolph Hitler
t es .html
Source:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/5612/quo
God Help Us.
Regards
Once again The Register brings up some good points:
Poor children in rich countries what do they need?
Here's our incomplete list. Somewhere safe to live; three meals a day; parents who love them, who don't beat them up, and who maybe even read read to them occasionally; somewhere to play outside; a good school which doesn't treat them as failures because they are poor; books; swimming lessons; friends. And when they are a little older? A credit card. This is how one gains membership of the Digital elite, not through owning a poxy computer decked out with poxy software.
If Red Hat really wants to help the indigenous poor, why doesn't it pay for free breakfasts for all children of primary school age in poor areas? And why doesn't Microsoft restock the public libraries with books, or pay for a hundred thousand class-room assistants. Or dole out free pianos, a cause we have urged since 1997.
Why free pianos?
Musically trained children will also make more clued-up employees. Recent research shows that young children who practice as little as 10 minutes a day on the piano are more intelligent than their non-music playing counterparts. They have better powers of concentration and are more confident too. In the University of California, Irvine study, 78 children aged three and four were tested on their ability to assemble at four-part jigsaw. The children were divided into three groups: the first were taught how to play Mozart and Beethoven: the second lot received computer tuition: and the third group - poor lambs - had no teaching at all.
Nine months later, the children were tested again. The performance of the piano-playing group jumped 35 per cent, compared with little or no improvement in the other groups. What's the betting this news will ever make its way in to the marketing material of educational CD-ROM publishers or PC vendors.
So what do these poor kids need more? A full stomach and music lessons or a talking paper clip?
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
"Microsoft has been convicted of raping the customer and the industry. A settlement has been reached. Please bend over, and let Microsoft do it right this time."
--The basis of all love is respect
Don't forget this isn't a done deal everyone. Anyone with a fax machine and some intelligent comments might still make a difference as Judge J. Frederick Motz is soliciting comments. Check out Redhat's counterproposal for contact info. If enough people pump this idea a potential disaster could become a big OSS win.
"The average joe that I talk to doesn't want their computer to be harder to use"
Your barking up the wrong tree here dude.
If people _really_ want computers that are easy to use why do you think mac is such a failure ?
Most people have only ever tried one OS, they have no idea how easy or difficult another system is.
People want to use a system that is FAMILIAR to them, difficulty is based on experience, its rediculous to say that the average user wants to be treated like an idiot and have the software second guess everything they do.
'Do you want to continue'
'You will have to reboot'
'Do you want to shutdown your system'
'Are you really sure'
'Say pretty please'
"So stop it with this idealistic shit and fight MS on its own terms."
What by becoming a convicted monopolist and then getting let of scott free ?
The average person in the street doesnt understand the politics involved with technology and so are not capable of understanding whats in their long term best interests.
It did not take Microsoft long to act on this. They have already reported the cost against this quarter's earnings.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will record a pre-tax charge of approximately
$550 million in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2001, resulting from the
settlement of more than 100 class action lawsuits.
On an after-tax basis, the settlement will result in a charge of
approximately $375 million, which represents a $0.06 to $0.07 reduction in
forecasted diluted earnings per share for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2001.
It is not clear if they are writing the total cost off all at once(in which case they it is costing them alot less) or this is the first of five instalments(which would make it more than the $1.1 billion reported).
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Just think, the schools could sell $0.9 billion in premium licenses that MS is legally required to keep track of for the holders to businesses having license problems with MS, buy whatever they want, avoid using software which will be out-of-date and totally useless when the students graduate, and save everyone except MS a whole lot of trouble.
Personally, I think the plantiffs should just go for $10b and actually get refunds for the software that MS forced on them. Or settle for (highest price of Windows - $30) for each plantiff. If MS wants to raise prices later or go to a subscription model, they can just keep paying the plantiffs. After all, the issue at hand is MS overpricing their software, so something should be done about it.
No ones ever really had the chance to CHOOSE So we dont REALLY know what the people want.
We havent given them a list of Os's with every computer and let them choose. No, they buy a computer, and windows is on it. no choice.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
While we applaud Microsoft for raising the idea of helping poorer schools as part of the penalty phase of their conviction for monopolistic practices, we do not think that the remedy should be a mechanism by which Microsoft can further extend its monopoly.
Instead, we believe the remedy should be a mechanism by which Red Hat can create its own monpoly, on Linux Operating Systems.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I have to hand it to M$ on this one. Having your old hardware and personal software put out to thousands of BEGINNER computer users(ie. children), as a form of punishment for bullying the entire tech sector is just brilliant. Who ever thought of this one needs a fucking raise.
Its to bad someone this smart works for M$ though.
When in doubt, rub one out. Not at work though!
p.s. on a serious note, in Wired article they say something about being able to choose what the school want.
Hyperom.com
The US of A never ceases to amaze me. We have a abusive monopoly. Lets help them be more abusive.
Riiight.
Everybody knows that we are the evil boys, making noise with deadly toys.
Judge J. Frederick Motz has invited written comments from interested third parties via fax. We strongly encourage you to fax your comments. He will make his final decision whether or not to accept the settlement in a hearing on Tuesday, Nov 27. This is your last chance to influence this settlement.
Hon. Judge J. Frederick Motz
H.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
Fax #: (410) 662-7574
It seems like pretty much all of the replies to this article are flames against microsoft's evil plan.
The other side of the coin is the willingness of Redhat to provide its software for free. This is really a very moving gesture on the part of Redhat. Yes, it greatly increases the likelihood that they will profit from it financially in the future, but Redhat would be spending a great deal of money providing the actual CDs and manuals and tech support, investing it all in the consumer reaction they will get from the widespread use. Redhat has only become profitable with its training courses. This would be a good move for them.
If the Redhat proposal is actually used Linux will be thrown into the mainstream rather quickly. Schoolchildren everywhere will know how to use Linux. They will be more likely to use it at home as well as at school, which means that many games (which are mostly targeted at young people) will be developed for Linux instead of Windows.
Jobs will be created; the people who currently run windows-based school networks will either need to be retrained or replaced. It would be very lucrative for Redhat to sell spots in training classes for all of the teachers and admins and parents and everybody involved who will want or need to know how to run Linux. Businesses would follow. It is conceivable that this could be what would instigate the Linux Armageddon that we all hope in the backs of our minds will one day take place. If all the school systems in the US start running Linux, and the very probable cultural chain reaction takes place, then in just a few years Linux could be on the level of Windows in terms of nearly everything. I applaud Redhat.
I'm as staunch an advocate of Linux as they come.
BUT, I'm also painfully aware of a basic problem.
There isn't exactly a glut of K-12 software out there, of the type that schools are using or would want.
Please don't point me at all the K12 stuff that IS out there -- I realize there's been quite a bit of development. But for the most part, a
linux box in a classroom that doesn't have a
teacher motivated (and permitted) to do quite a bit of work, is going to either go unused, or
else will eventually have a copy of windows installed on it (licensed or not).
A default install of Redhat is a wonderful thing, but it will also be something of a dead end for a lot of these installations. They won't tend to be on broadband internet connections. All the storebought edu software that gets donated to the school by well meaning parents and the community will be useless on the linux boxes.
when you wish with all your heart that the school used Windows.
Our school uses Macs. Unfortunately, it is not a poor school.
How about I plug in a new drive (actually, add a new partition to my old drive) and it gets a drive letter. Now all later drive letters change, screwing up all installed software that references them.
Mod parent up!
More than implying, I am stating explicitly.
...after using Linux for 5 years, I am still amazed at how well documented it is (see 1 above). Compare it to the Knowledge Base whose interface and enumeration scheme are intentionally obfuscatory. And its not a hanging garden. I can verify resposes to my queries with alternative sources of information, sources or documentation.
1) I precisely agree that using is not the same as developing on a computer. But I end up at a converse conclusion and it hinges on how it is different. Using a computer, by your lights, interacting with a computer to satisfy a given task, is precisely what I'll be spending a lot of time doing in order to accomplish my task of publishing two hundred ten years' worth of census data. The difference is that a data entry professionals' interactions with the machine are rather simpler than mine and I don't think that it is inherently elitist to say that. Yes, the OS must accomodate that disparity. My point is that the natural progress from luser to user to power user, and particularly the leap to *developer*, is distorted under Windows by virtue of MS proprietary, profit-driven design choices.
You don't credit the users you claim to protect. My wife can automate a business process of considerable complexity using Access, Excel and a smattering of VBA and wouldn't dream of calling herself a developer. I happened to want to know what IE was doing when it said it would *probe my (her) network settings*. (Jesus Christ, Microsoft is probing my wife's settings!) Consulting Windows Help in order to satisfy this curiosity, I learn what the boxes look like that allow me to assign and modify those values. Instead of describing what DNS is and what it do, Windows offers to *probe my network settings* again, conveniently contributing to the aura and mystique surrounding these modern marvels. Not everyone wants access to this level of detail, but the number who do is sufficiently large and their interactions with the machine sufficiently more interesting as to make reading the source code and writing against an API desirable. For these users, MS' closed model represents a liability.
2) There's no such thing as a career that is not a computer-oriented career. Truck drivers use computers, friend. When they learn to right click, they want to continue to right click; whose stack intercepts this event is irrelevent to them.
3) I'm an average human. I would welcome more dumbed down GUIs on Linux/BSD/whatever. We are both welcome to do something about that and apparently have all the tools and resources of documentation we need to get started. Will you open a project on sourceforge or should I?
While we're at it, lets make Windows a little more forthcoming in the UI area.... Oh, bummer.
4) You're right, I completely missed your point. My error. But you missed mine, as well. I argue that the case for undergoing the headache of changing OS on hundreds of computers company-wide is to be made by amortizing that cost over five years and then comparing to the licensing and maintenance costs for your XP installation over the same time period. Don't forget that mandatory upgrade schedule. You'll be installing and paying for a *new* OS three times. And you will cynically kvetch about how painfully un-new it is as you sign each check, even as MS uses a chunk of your change to beat you over the head about how *new* it really is. But wait, there's more. For this low, low price, you not only control your upgrade schedule, you control your interfaces and source code. If Joe Maintainer takes the project in a different direction you can freeze or fork.
5)
illegitimii non ingravare
How did we go from a *private* civil class action to money for schools? I mean just how are the schools involved? I understand that the judgement wouldn't cover costs to find and pay the members of the class. Perhaps that ought to be part of the penalty so that these suits have deterence value, perhaps the cost of of finding and paying the litigants ought to be added *on top* of any settlement. Or perhaps they ought to take the money that is awarded and hold a lottery among the class members, with winners getting a significant fraction and losers getting none. At least these proposals have 2 important atributes: they punish the wronging party and in someway compensates the wronged party. Giving money to a third party in a suit is just wrong all the way around, and sets a bad precedent.
Or maybe I just didn't understand it, and this is just another one of those things that is stupid but we have to do it in the name of the kids!
Don't get me wrong kids are great and we can and should help poor kids, but do we have to totally fuck up the rest of our society to do it? I think not!
Shit what a rip, the NZ govt has just signed a $10 million (NZ) deal with M$ to provide free all you can eat M$ software to NZ schools for the next 2 years.
"We're a monopolizing evil business. But we'll make it all right by distributing our software to the children! Think of the expanded userba.. err, children!"
Anyone see the flaw with this 'settlement'? Settlement? Hell. This couldn't be any better for Microsoft. So they cough up some money now, but in five years, they'll rake in major licensing fees or be able to send their armed gestapo into schools to throw teachers up against the wall and shoot them.
RedHat's solution would at least do what a settlement should do - punish Microsoft.
I'd be concerned if there was only one grocery store/plumber/construction co., 'cause then, as you so conveniently ignore, they can gouge away, leaving all the 'wannabe' plumbers/foodsellers/const. folks, as their customers/hostages.
I'll bet the NEXT election (if there even is one) goes somewhat differently. fud on.
The real issue is that the prosecution has (for whatever reason) offered microsoft a non-punishment.
Hey, can't you read the original article?
This settlement addresses a CIVIL case (actually multiple civil cases), genius. There is no prosecutor. The primary purpose of a civil case is not to punish the defendant but to compensate the plaintiffs. The DOJ is a separate case.
Further, Microsoft DID NOT LOSE this case. This is a settlement agreement. Which means that (assuming it is approved by the judge) BOTH sides agree to the terms, and that there is no winner and no loser. Had the case reached a verdict, there is no guarantee that the plaintiffs or the schools would have gotten squat.
I _can_ guarantee, that had the settlement or verdict been for a simple cash payment, the lawyers would take a huge (likely upwards of 50%) cut before the true "injured party" saw a dime.
This entire case is a sham. It was filed for one simple reason. Some scum-sucking class-action leeches/lawyers recognized that Microsoft was vulnerable after the DOJ ruling, and they all jumped on the bandwagon looking for a big score. If you think this case was truly filed for the benefit of "the people," you really need to open your eyes.
Or, Let's Put OJ in Charge of That Battered Womens' Shelter
SHEEESH!@#$% Does IT get any better than this?
What is MS's non-USA income share, amd whats in it for say, a person living in Australia or Germany?
.net thrust. Better get, forced to release sp7 and 8 for NT4 as well. Just an idea.
I pick these countries, as fines can not be converted to tax deductions- or should not be, and to double dip, and claim a tax deduction for charity at FULL retail is also not on.
I have kept my copies of DRDOS and OS/2, as I figure the very least, would be a free swap of a copy of a later MS O/S. I say swap, not upgrade, because incompatibilities and broken promises, or FUD factor, made me give up on em, as well as 95' upgraders who jumped because of the Y2K factor.
I feel I have been injured, and I would feel sick, if this slap on the wrist seattlement goes ahead.
Given sanity will not prevail, an order forcing MS to release and support a 3rd release of 98SE would be sweet indeed, because it would cannabalise the
I have to say that I'm a little disappointed by Red Hat's response. While it doesn't appear quite as slimy as the MS Seattlement, it still stinks slightly of opportunism to me. RH is aware that MS would never accept these terms; they're simply trying to make MS look bad as well as to make their red hats turn white.
If either company really appeared to care about helping poor children I'd probably feel differently, but both seem more concerned about public relations and court settlements.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
This is laughable. Microsoft says they'll give them the hardware and software, which is a great deal. Red Hat will give them just the software; "You figure out how to get your own hardware kids."
You don't understand how far from useful Red Hat's offer is. Every dollar in education is hard earned and hard to replace. Should that money really go towards software that will not provide the learning opportunities that are available for Windows based platforms? Whoever is requisitioning these machines needs to make sure that everything down to 2-button mouse vs 3-button mouse with wheel is properly considered so that every penny is put to something that will be useful. While I advocate Red Hat for server software, I cannot in good faith recommend it as the desktop platform for everyone and certainly will not recommend it for kids to learn on. The introduction of these many thousands of machines into the industry means that someone in the future is going to have to budget some real money to getting more software for them and thus injecting more cash into the economy which it really needs right about now.
It doesn't matter whether or not Microsoft plans to upgrade those machines. The kids are not going to be playing Half-Life or Quake 3. They're going to be using educational software which doesn't require a GeForce card and an Athlon 1800+. This means that whatever they buy will be useful for a longer time without being upgraded. This means that the computers can be cheaper and thus they can get more computers to the kids. Certainly you can argue that Red Hat software is free to get now, so there's nothing magical behind the offer. That's a lot of software, but without the cold cash to buy hardware, these kids, and many around the world for that matter, cannot afford to be smart. By now, we all know what happens in the parts of the world where countries ignore the education of their people and leave them to be ignorants. For the kids that are lucky enough to be getting the computers, the here and now is what is important. I would say that these machines would likely have a 5+ year lifespan and for those kids that is five+ years of exposure to computers that they would not otherwise have. Nothing is perpetual.
If this weren't the punitive solution to the monopoly case against Microsoft, I would tell people to stop knocking Microsoft when they're finally trying to do good. It's just a shame that this is what it took for Microsoft to do something that benificent. Because of the profits that they'll have in five years, it might not be a bad idea to force them to repeat the process in five years. And someone better keep an eye on what they're "charging" for the software since we know that some corporations get a sweet discount on that stuff and these kids deserver no less. They're obviously going to be fined for their monopoly tactics, but what does the government do with that fine? It's nice to see a direct benefit instead of wonder what part of the coffers it disappeared into.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Great idea!!
All those *stupid* suggestions about msft-pays-for-hardware-redhat-gives-software *suck*. Do you really think poor kids need fancy hardware? A good education will help them much better. Unfortunately everyone in the IT biz seems to equate better education == better hardware.
Very apropos. I can't believe you were moderated 'off-topic'.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This is the same 'get them while they're young' tactics that tobacco companies use. Brand identification at an early age. Is Microsof the next Marlboro?
I can see where the current government and Microsoft share similar interests.
PRE 9-11 Oil negotiations with Afghanistan in t he UN:
-the village voice-
Week of November 21 - 27, 2001
'Mondo Washington'
by James Ridgeway
Pre-9-11 Oil negotiations with Afghanistan in the UN:
-the village voice-
Week of November 21 - 27, 2001
'Mondo Washington'
by James Ridgeway
Damn wish that had been the case in the Win95/NT3 days when I used to take calls for the stuff at a resellers.
:(
It was fucking painful I can tell you
I wasn't aware that we had returned to the days of Chardonnay, herbal tea, and hot tubs.
Putting computers in schools in poor neighborhoods does not work. It has been tried, by well-meaning people who didn't know any better. Now it can only be tried by well-meaning people who are deliberately obtuse to the lessons of history.
The primary effect of putting computers in schools in poor neighborhoods is to increase the desirability of the school as a target for thieves. This is not good because they have too much crime already.
They don't need computers. They need better security, solid buildings, more and better teachers. Putting computers there is worse than not putting computers there.
Are people here really so totally unaware of what poverty is?