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California Takes Issue With Microsoft Settlement Idea
Deepfoo writes: "Note from CNet on the California challenge to Microsoft's attempt to settle the 100 civil cases on file against it by donating equipment. The dissenters will argue that those harmed in the lawsuit aren't getting compensated directly in this way, and that the ploy of donating equipment to schools is a transparent effort to further extend its monopoly. The dissenting California lawyers estimate the actual damages due to Californians alone could be on the order of 3 to 9 billion (wide range, but that's what they've said). Is Microsoft a do-gooder, or up to no good?"
It's just like going shopping for your wife and getting her a digital camera beacuse *she really needs it* and you end up using it all the time. The gift, or the donation is really for you. Only you benefit for it.
I find it hard to believe that donating a bunch of windows software and hardware to communities on a limited basis is going to resurrect the BeOS, put Sun back on the line as the company of the internet or put money into developing better products for less money for billions of people. This think of the children ploy is as transparent as those "feed the children in 3rd world country" foundations. Most of the money goes to to the Not for profit administrator and a scant few cents actually makes it past the us border.
what a joke
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In this case I see their attempted settlement as something that is good for PR(what is less loveable than donating computers to be used by kids in schools?), that is less expensive than some other alternatives, and which will cause the least damage to their reputation and ability to turn a profit in the future. If they thought that forking over $9 billion was the only way they could continue to make a profit they would do that. However, they will exhaust all alternatives before resorting to that and hope to find one which is preferable(like donating to schools). It's a simple, logical fact.
What's in a Sig?
Typically(as I understand it) in a lawsuit the whole idea is restitution of damages. I love the idea of Microsoft giving technology to underprivilaged schools, and if they want to do it then full steam ahead. But... their donation of resources shouldn't have any bearing on the actual civil litigation going on.
Companies donate money and services to charity all the time. In marketing that's called PR. Make the rest of the world think that you're allright. I'm from Southern California and I remember that when the Indian Gaming tribes went under fire during Proposition 5, they were donating money to charities left and right. Still do as a matter of fact.
Does anyone *really* think that the poor school districts are the ones who were hurt by Microsoft's Monopolistic(tm) practices? No, of course not. They wouldn't have been buying computers either way, it's the hardware that's too expensive for them--not Microsoft's inflated prices and crappy software. So after years of bullshit the average consumer has put up with by dealing with Microsoft's business tactics, as a settlement we get a company donating to an unrelated charity. Well, sign me up Frank.
There isn't any need to debate whether this sort of thing is going to extend Microsoft's monopoly or not. They do that kind of stuff all the time. It's the fact that people are willing to accept it as a term of a lawsuit settlement that pisses me off. Give'm hell boys.
As much as I like and respect the power of computers, it occurs to me that there are a number of higher priorities for schools, especially poor ones. How about books that aren't 25 years out of date? How about hot lunches for kids who can't afford to eat? How about pencils and other supplies? How about furnaces and boilers that actually work? How about kicking in a subsidy to help pay teachers what they're worth instead of keeping them at the poverty level?
Microsoft and RedHat will continue to play their little P.R. power games, using our schools as pawns. But each time I hear a story like this, I lose a little more respect for each of them.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I think they are trying to extend the monopoly and get Apple and others out of the schools...
Providing low-cost or free computing equipment to schools and universities - so a generation of graduates comes up pre-trained on your stuff - is an old hack.
IBM did it. DEC did it. Amdahl did it. Cray did it. Apple did it.
But to use such an anti-competitive activity as a SETTLEMENT of an anti-trust conviction... Now THAT takes GUTS!
If they get away with it, it will qualify as the legal hack of the century.
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Slashdot is the home of the big-bad MS bashing, but worse than Big Tobacco? These guys deliberately withheld information that showed smoking was addictive and killed people. What's MS done? At worst played fairly dirty when competing, and trying to achieve a monopoly. Hardly a fair comparison here.
Now I agree the settlement is pretty silly, mainly because it doesn't cost MS very much at all. Personally I think even the Red Hat solution is poor. After all, they're saying that these poor schools just don't know how to spend the money, so we'll pick for them. Wouldn't a better solution be to just give the money directly to the schools in question so they can spend it where it's needed? There's not much point providing computers to schools if the literacy standards are too low, for instance.
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IANAL, but . . .
In most states, only "direct consumers" can sue for anti-trust damages -- e.g. typically this means Dell or Compaq, not the end-user. The suits involving these states are going to get thrown out anyway, so they are willing to settle for anything .
In CA (and some other places), indirect consumers can sue. So these states don't want to give in. But, MS cleverly made the settlement contingent on all suits being settled.
The class-action lawyers for the consumers in states that can't really sue are trying to force this settlement down the throats of the other groups. What will the judge say? Who knows.
Which reminds me of another thing: how the hell is "giving away" software to poor schools going to help all of the victims of the M$ monopoly? How long have these lawyers been away from the outside world, that they would lose sight of their objectives? I guess since its all money to them, they don't really give two shits one way or the other...
Maybe you should ask the PROSECUTION , as they set the terms of the settlement.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Every programmer in the world. We have all had the right to write programs for money removed from us. Basically, any programmer who comes up with a good, popular, program can have that program copied by MS and see it given away as part of Windows and there is nothing they can do about it because MS can run them through the courts until they're broke.
Microsoft is a big (relatively speaking)
Yes, relative to all other companies.
big companies are easy to hate.
This is a classic cop-out by MS apologists. Big companies are hated because they treat everyone like shit. It's not the bigness which people hate, it's the treatment.
Big companies can not, even if they want to, treat their customers well. The best they can do is treat the important customers well and everyone else has to lump it. In MS's case, they are so big that NO single customer is important and they can treat everyone like shit.
You're jealous of Bill Gates because he made a lot of money.
I am jealous of Gates because he has been given a lot of money while I'm stuck here having to earn it. I didn't have a million dollar gift from my granddad when I was born and IBM never gave me a licence to print money. The government has never said to me "the last version of your software failed and crashed, was late arriving and didn't do what you said it would; could we have another million copies, please?".
Gates has sponged of the rest of us while destroying other companies (Netscape being the best known) for years. Why should anyone innovate in the face of that? If you thought of a new way to browse the web, would you spend time working on it knowing that if it works it'll just appear in IE7?
And just as a bonus...for everyone who rails at companies who (mis)use US patent laws to protect their patently obvious software developments, remember that the antitrust laws that Microsoft was accused of violating were put in place to combat the excesses of the railroad barons of the 19th century...just as poor an application of the law to the Microsoft situation as the application of patent law to software and "methods". Read your history!
This didn't make sense. What are you talking about? Are you saying that only railway companies can be monoplies?
From a cost perspective, it simply was too expensive to delete Windows from our configurations and create a special process for the small number of orders that required no OS.
I think you're lying. It doesn't cost 40 dollars to not install Windows on every tenth computer. Uninstalling it would be stupid.
Anyway, the phrase "Windows Tax" disguises what it really is: blackmail and extortion. Your company may have not wanted to remove Windows from its machines but, if it had, it would have quickly found out that it didn't have the option. MS simply would have stopped providing you with Windows and there sure as hell ain't enough of a non-Windows market to support a large OEM with no OS to pre-install.
This is the biggest abuse of the monopoly position: forcing OEM's to pay protection money in order to stay "in the game".
TWW
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