Microsoft Offers A Modified Settlement

inepom01 writes: "Just read a story here about Microsoft offering a different settlement proposal- this one would have two other companies join in on the foundation MS is establishing- Connectix and Key Curriculum Press. Since Connectix makes software that lets Windows programs work on Macs, seems like same old Microsoft tricks." gnovos points to another story at MSNBC on the shifting terms of this proposal.

Comments

I don't get it

[GreenCrackBaby]

How would you feel upon learning that the local mobster, after being caught for extortion proposes, offers, as his punishment, to donate some money to a charity.

What people seem to forget is that Microsoft has destroyed companies, hurt consumers, and generally played the all-around bad guy, and yet no only do they get to propose a "penalty" (I use that term lightly), but they get to propose a penalty that actually tightens their stranglehold!

Apple always did well in the school market, and now they have to stand aside as Microsoft "punishes" their way massively into that market.

Why emulate?

[mattkime]

Why would Microsoft need Connectix to provide copies of Virtual PC? Seems like it could only be an attempt to put Windows on Macs. After all, MS Office is avaliable for Mac. I'm sure suitable Mac alternatives could be found for other windows products.

Or perhaps Microsoft would like to point out that Macs make for very slow windows machines.

Slashdot Settlement

[althalus]

For all the ideas that get tossed about, why dont' we create a slashdot settlement? Everybody chips in and tells the DOJ in plain words what's wrong with the microsoft ideas, and then proposes a fair settlement(s), and discusses why it's a better idea.

Re:Why do they get to choose their poison?

[buzzini]

No, it's not like that at all.

1. This is a *settlement* in a *civil case*.
2. It was architected primarily by the lawyers who brought this suit in the first place.
3. A $1 billion charge is not necessarily a "win-win" for Microsoft. I'd challenge you to rethink your biases on that.
4. In what way would Connectix be a "tool of Microsoft"? By sitting on an independent committee that doles out software? Again, I'd challenge you to rethink your biases on that.
5. How would "Connectix...be toast"? How does Microsoft "need" Connectix? If Microsoft wanted to "toast" them, they could now. And there are plenty of other companies MS could suggest for this committee. Nothing special about Connectix.

Re:What ever happened to justice?

[M.C. Hampster]

Nobody is missing the point except the idiots who keep asking why Microsoft gets to pick its own punishment. It's not! This is a settlement. Must we define what a settlement is?

They went to court, they lost, they appealed and then they went to settlment talks. The government could refuse to settle and move on to trial. If Microsoft lost at that point and did not appeal or lost on appeal, they wouldn't get any say in their punishment. Well, they would get to plead their case for punishment A or B, but it's not as if they have to agree to their punishment.

Is it possible to have an intelligent discussion on anything related to Microsoft?

Why is it that posts that ask why Microsoft gets to "decides its own punishment", which is obviously false, get modded up, but others that explain the reality of the sitation don't?

More Teachers and $$ not computers

[RembrandtX]

My wife's school has 25 new (as of 2 years ago) Dell computers with m$ installed on them.

they have all kinds of scanners, and networking equipment.

This was all donated via M$ as part of their Digital Divite plan. [My Wife works in a low income targed school]

Do you know how effective these machines are in this environment ?

they are still in their original packaging. There is no one on the school staff that has the ability to set up a network , let alone install software and keep it running. There is no internet access to the school .. nor do they have the funds to obtain it. And to top it all off .. they school system is *NOT* allowed to take volenteer help. [I already offered to set them up for them] They belong to the school union, and I dont.

Great donation. some 50k of machines and software (har har) at the time. Yet my wife's teaching budget of $900.00 isn't enough for her to get enough of even the most basic of art supplies for her 350+ students.

Since it was a donation, the school board is not allowed to sell it. And use the $$.

So these things do *NO* good to anyone [exept microsoft and i suppose dell] because of the tax breaks.

If microsoft REALLY wants to help education, they should turn part of their marketing machine on the prospect of paying teachers a salery WORTH what they deserve. If my wife got $1 for each child a day that she teaches [WAY cheap for a babysitter] she would double her salery now.

that means she gets less than five CENTS an hour to teach a child. [per child of course]

if the average american parent we're to guess how much their student's teachers were paid to care for them a day .. how many think they would be anywhere CLOSE to guessing right ?

donate computers to schools indeed. Why not just put the money into their research department, and *SAY* they are developing a plan to improve schools ? Same effect.

For the love of god...

[eyeball]

(I know this message will probably be marked troll, but here goes)

...seems like same old Microsoft tricks.

Would you guys just grow up? Did it ever occure to you that it is the responsibility of every employee, executive, and board member of a company to do everything in their power (including 'old tricks') to try and beat out the competition? If they don't, they are committing a crime against their own company (and against the principles of capitalism for that matter).

Re:Time to beat MS at their own game

[Osty]

Capitalism is the enemy of the Free Market! The goal of any true capitalist is to create a monopoly. A monopoly means they have no competition, and without competition there is no free market! The Free Market is a good and wonderful thing, it is the foundation of our way of life and the root of just about everything that is good about the USA. It needs to be protected from the predations of the powerful corporations who would crush it in the pursuit of their vision of Capitalist Brand Utopia. That's why we need anti-trust law.

Welcome to monopoly economics 101, wherein we will detail why you are wrong and I am right. Err, I mean why you're misguided about capitalism/monopolies vs the Free Market.

See, there's this interesting thing called competition. It's the drive to succeed. In a free market, it is competition that drives prices down, all the way to the point where one of two outcomes happen:

1. In a perfect competition market, all players have exactly the same product, and they have exactly the same operating costs. This means that at a certain point, companies can no longer undercut each other on price, and so all companies run at a subsistence level (enough to pay the bills, but no profit). This is the "ideal" state of a free market, but it's a very bad state to get in. Luckily, it's also near impossible to reach, as before that point the various players will beging differentiating their product, building customer loyalties that allow them to charge a bit more than their competitors without losing too much business.
2. A monopoly arises when all but one company is no longer able to compete in a market. That can come about in several ways:
   
   • A natural monopoly exists when there is some "natural" barrier to entry. In a natural monopoly, the monopolist can easily charge what's called the "monopoly price" (a price point above the "competitive" subsistence level that the firm would be able to charge if there were others in the market)
   • The more-likely case is when a monopoly springs into existance through competition -- a single company has lower operating costs than the other firms in a market, and thus drives them out by lowering prices to just below the operating costs of everybody else. This will eventually drive those companies out of business if they cannot reduce their own overhead. Once the other firms are gone, however, the monopolist firm can not re-price at the monopoly price because they'd simply be inviting new firms into their market.
   • There's also the red-headed step-child of monopolies -- the government sponsored and endorsed monopoly. This would include things like air traffic control and cable companies (the first being a nationalized industry, thus a de facto monopoly, and the second being a case of government-enforced "natural" monopoly, where the only "natural" thing about it is that it's apparently "natural" for a single entity to own what could be considered public infrastructure. I'm not saying cable companies should be nationalized, because they shouldn't. Just that this is an example of a government-enforced monopoly).
   
   

Now, I know I just said that those are the only two outcomes, and if I were talking about theoretical economics, I'd be correct. So let's revise that to allow for product differentiation and brand loyalty. Now, goods are no longer interchangeable, and so competing firms are no longer forced to subsistence-level earning. Now, differentiation can also lead to introduction of competition back into a monopolized market (differentiation is brought about by R&D, which often has a side-effect of reducing operating costs by researching newer and more efficient production methods. lower overhead means the ability to charge a lower price, and thus slip into that monopoly market where the price was previously below your costs). In other words, the free market fixes these situations. The old policy of Laissez Faire was the best policy, in regards to government involvement in the marketplace. A free market works best when it's not shackled by government (because government *never* works efficiently, which puts it totally at odds with the goals of a free market). Yes, I know the event that changed the US's policy was the Great Depression, but what most people conveniently forget is that our current welfare state was only meant to last for a duration of 5-10 years or so, just long enough to get the economy back on its feet after the depression. FDR never intended things like welfare and social security to extend past a generation at the most, and realistically no more than needed to get out of the Depression. But here we are, with a socialist mindset where we expect the government to take care of us and protect us from the big mean capitalists. And we're going into another recession, so it's not even like these social welfare plans stopped that (which, btw, is the natural ebb and flow of a free market. it goes up, and it comes down. and it goes up again, and so on. we can help "flatten" the wave by having lower highs and higher lows, mainly by doing things like manipulating interest levels to encourage spending or saving as appropriate, but we can't make the cycle go away).

Anyway, I would argue that the free market was the foundation of our way of life, but no longer is. We're well on our way to becoming a socialist nation like many European nations (the day I pay 50% of my salary in taxes is the day I move to Mexico), and too many consumers have forgotten the fundamentals of a free market, instead preferring to have the warm safety blanket of Big Brother Government to keep them safe and warm at night, and scare the Evil Capitalists out from under their beds.