Slashdot Mirror
Feds to Publish Public Comments on MS Settlement
Silas writes: "This AP Article notes that the government is going to be releasing the comments submitted by the public on the Microsoft anti-trust case. Highlight: 'Overall, the department said it received about 7,500 comments from people in favor of the settlement reached by the federal government and nine states, while 15,000 opposed it. Another 7,000 comments were dismissed as opinion, like "I hate Microsoft."' Apparently they have to publish and respond to each one." CNN is carrying the AP wire story as well.
Am I the only one that finds the AP photo just to the left of the article which pictures someone putting a hat on top of Bill Gates' head really hilarious? God it must be nice to be super rich. And here I am putting on my hat in the morning all by myself like a sucker......
I posted to
You mean, all the slashdot stories and everything, and we only got 15,000 responses?
Come on, guys, where is your activistic spirit?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
How many of the 7,500 comments in favor of the settlement came from Microsoft?
/. readers?
And...
How many of the 7,000 "I hate microsoft" comments came from
Anyone?
:)
As much as I hate to admit it, I think I would be interested to read some of the comments that people had to say on this matter. Does anybody know how the CD-ROM's that they speak of in the article could be obtained? This might even be good for my school's library.
"I can do it fast, I can do it well, I can do it cheap. Pick any two." --Unknown
I wonder how many of the comments that were against the settlement were looking for a harsher settlement as opposed to the number of those thinking no action or less action should be taken. At first glance the numbers seem to indicate that twice as many people think there should have been harsher punishment, but the actual content of those comments could be different.
My letter was a 3 page diatribe against Microsoft which most certainly could be summed up in "I Hate Microsoft." I don't think I even mentioned the Settlement until the end :-P
Oh well, hopefully this settlement will be rejected and we all get another chance!
Must remember to talk about the settlement, must remember to talk about the settlement......
That's not what I meant.
I can't help but wonder if Microsoft has somebody hard at work translating Kurt Sibold's open letter to English, declaring those 15,000 critical comments slanderous. :/
Use grep to count all the "fsck microsoft" versus "I hate microsoft" vs. "Leave Microsoft alone!" (return address @microsoft.com)... 8-)
I wonder what percentage of the 7500 in favor of the settlement are Microsoft employees' sisters, or work at companies with Microsoft contracts, or were somehow contacted by Microsoft PR hacks and "encouraged" to write letters. It'd be hilarious to find that 6000 of the letters were all written by some poor intern at Microsoft, using names from the phone book.
314-15-9265
My first reaction was that anti-Microsoft loonies would, by their zealous over-reaction, bile, vitriol, and social incompetence, play right into the hands of Microsoft. Of course, there's a handful of loonies on the pro-Microsoft, or anti-regulation side of the barricades, as well, but for the most part, even though I'm not a part of either of those camps, I suspect that none of their partisans are quite as fanatical about their cause, and so probably appear more reasoned and sensible. However, I'm sure that some loonies on each side posed as loonies on the other, and it all came out in the wash.
Like T.S. Eliot said in The Waste Land, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate
intensity".
Am I the only one who thinks that very few people sent there comments? My guess is that they're probably all from geeks. I don't think that the rest of the world cares about this subject.
A small number of these submissions are simply advertisements or, in at least one case, pornography.
It also said that all submitters of comments will have their names listed in the Federal Register.
Cool! I'll be famous!
I submitted a comment...did you?
- Bill
Most likely that those 7500 people are just shareholders of MS.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
If I remember correctly, microsoft has played this game illegally before with alleged grass roots campaigns (having people who dont even exist sending letters to their representatives), fixed online polls to sway public opinion (zdnet), and squashed competition and innovation to make the almighty dollar.
Somehow i fail to belive that those 7000 letters are from real people and just another fabrication from microsoft.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
The first thing I thought when I read this: I bet some bastard sent in the goat sex link. Evil.
Does this mean the government has to publish the porn and the spam in the register along with the legitimate comments?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Justice has asked the federal judge handling the case to allow it to publish them online and on CD-ROM.
I'm glad to see this has a good chance of happening. It would definitely be nice to have easy access to the comments. I'm kind of interested in the 90% that were not "substantive," including the "pornography."
The figures don't exactly add up though. The article states it received 30,000 comments and breaks it down into 15k, and 2 7.5k chunks. However, the first part of the article says only 10% was "substantive."
If the numbers are true, I must say I'm actually quite pleased at the turnout. I'm curious as to whether or not the uh... less constructive comments will have any bearing on the decision. The article seems to paint the picture that most of those opposed the settlement. It does make you wonder if Microsoft's "grassroots" efforts are responsible for those comments.
"The Bush administration encouraged Americans to comment on the proposed settlement via e-mail, rather than fax or hard copy. It got what it wanted -- 90 to 95 percent of them came electronically, the department estimated. "
I wonder how many viruses they got?
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
There would have been an additional 25000 letters from the Windows User Group.
But they either crashed their computers every 12 minutes writing the letters or got blocked by Office XP's WPA after they replaced their broken network card.
Tim Dorr
Owner/Manger
A Small Orange
Given that when they actually dug into the responses, less than 50 were really well researched and made significant points about the case. I mean talk about signal to noise ratios.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Here are some snippets of the comments from some of the "big guns" who responded. This article was published last week.
This bit from the inquirer is good, had to be editied a bit cause no strike tag is allowed here:
WHO WOULD have predicted early in the case of the Department of Justice (DoJ) versus Microsoft that in 2002 both would not only be paddling the same canoe but spinning the same yarn?
But, good golly Miss Molly, and Holy Pixellation! the unthinkable seems to have happened, with the Dow Jones newswire saying that the Great Vole and the DoJ want a one day hearing to settle the affair.
So much so that they've issued a joint filing to the mediator appointed to clean the Augean stables, hmm, i mean, settle the matter.
The DOJ would like to propose a new remedy, based on several of the 7,000 "opinions" received during the public comment phase.
Under the terms of the proposed remedy Bill Gates will be required to pose for a photograph, to be published on the World Wide Web at http://goatse.microsoft.com/
A DOJ spokesman said "We really had no clue what these people were asking for when they asked for Microsoft to 'open up their APIs'. But then someone sent us a link to goatse.cx, and all became clear."
Microsofts attorneys were said to be considering the proposal, although an unnamed source pointed out that goatse.sun.com and goatse.oracle.com do not resolve.
"When Steve & Larry open their asses on the web, then Bill might think about it," was the source's opinion.
--
E_NOSIG
Is this how we are going to deal with our laws from now on? Ask the public via polls and opinions as to how to deal with an issue and than use that as a fact to win a case?
I wander how many of those opinions came from people who *really* know what a computer is.
---
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Only 5 years ago, a great many people would have e-mailed flame after flame to the DOJ against Microsoft; founded not on evidence or logic, but on emotional, personal opinion. But thanks to PR awareness and education in the community, more people can cite specific evidence or examples of Microsoft's illegal behavior, and make rational, well-formed arguments on how Microsoft has damaged innovation, broken published protocols, APIs and standards and how they have illegally leveraged their market position to force out competitors.
Gone, or at least greatly diminished, are the zealots who write "M$ SUCKS!" Instead, people are more educated on the issue and can express their comments with supporting evidence in a calm, rational manner.
Despite these advances and compelling arguments, the US-DOJ still backed down on its position in the antitrust suit; but it can no longer be said that the majority of people who disapprove of Microsoft's business practices are "Anti-MS-Zealots."
DOJ is planning on publishing (on the web/cd/federal register/whatever) the ENTIRE e-mail that they received from people commenting on the case. This means that along with your comment, your e-mail address will be available to anyone who chooses to sort through whatever DOJ ends up releasing. It isn't too much of a stretch to then think of people who decide it's a good idea to send an e-mail to all the folks who spoke against MS or for MS, promoting whatever their cause is.
I won't even think about the poor fools who thought it would be a good idea to include home addresses, phone numbers and other personal information in their signature.
I'm quite sure, though, that the media outlets will pour over these addresses to look for trends like what they did with the screwed up ballots in Florida after the last election....
Personally, I'm just glad that I used an account I barely ever use when I submitted my comment - no need having my work e-mail address published by DOJ!
-Mark
I didn't realize the Govt had to publish the comments!
So what happens if someone sent in the source to DeCss inside their email? Would they have had to publish it?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I bet Stile did it. Stile needs no motive.
Stop the brainwash
Why? Because as so often been pointed out on here, a physical manifestation of opinion is more likely to get attention and a response. I'm looking forward to receiving it, by US mail and come what may, a copy of the letter and the response will be family artifacts.
It feels good to participate in a democracy. I encourage it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I was thinking this too -- until I remembered that the US isn't even a semblance of a democracy any more.
Majority loses to the rich or important minority.
It's been a long time.
No, all you need to do is sign up with one of the many reputeable age verification systems! All you need is a credit card. ;)
The enemies of Democracy are
I am not surprised at the breakdown of the messages, except that the number of messages rejected as 'opinion' (7,000) sounds rather low if anything. The number of form letters (3,000)also sounds like it on the low side.
I doubt that anyone in the administrationis going to treat the messages as 'votes' [what start a lawsuit to stop them being counted? - Ed]. The number of messages on both sides will have been inflated by 'astroturf' (fake grass roots) campaigns by Microsoft, Sun, AOL etc. Fortunately messages of that type tend to be easier to spot than the people who purchase the campaigns think.
The bulk of the messages will simply repeat each other and standard positions fed to people by the media (including slashdot). I suspect that the 48 'substantive' comments are mainly the briefs written by industry lawyers to support one party or another. I strongly suspect however that it is the case that practically every idea expressed in the 22,000 contributions is covered in the 48 'substantive' contributions. Identifying a small number of contributions that put all the important issues well is a tremendous service to people trying to read the materials.
Taking the feedback as email will have helped sorting to an enormous degree. But a structured forum with some form of moderation could have helped the feedback further, collapsing repetative positions down to one instance and such. The moderation need not have been on the slashdot model in which there is a single pool of moderators, there could be twin panels of moderators representing each side. After all posting troll comments and pornography would do nothing for either side unless they wanted to discredit the dabate.
Finally the cost of publication at $400 a page does not seem unreasonable, it is roughly equivalent to the cost of printing and distributing about 1,000 copies. That is not much more than one per senator, congressman, state AG, party affected and news organization.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The law in this case requires the collection and publication of opinions. The judge can do with these opinions whatever she wishes, including disregard them completely.
So, don't get your panties in a twist.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
I think it would be considered against the settlement. :)
It's been a long time.
Hell, we even get frontpage stories about the latest anime DVDs to come out.
Why should we boycott anime DVDs? Most of the publishers aren't members of the MPAA, and don't pay DVD CCA dues. (The exception being Manga, who generally carries only the really bad stuff anyway) Many anime DVDs don't even use macrovision or encryption, and the North American releases generally aren't region-coded.
I'd say these are the kinds of DVDs we should be buying, to show that we're willing to support companies that don't place ludicrous restrictions on their "intellectual property".
Then there were the "me too"s
So you actually had a decnt chance of being included in the comment base if you took the time to actually write an intelligent thoughtful comment. Form letters were tossed as obvious attempts to flood the channel.
It probably winds up being similar to the number of comments in any number of Slash articles, and reading everything above 0.
!5,000 submittals that were not trolls, flamebait, etc, and which actually had some content is probably not that bad.
Heck, you could go for months here at slash before you hit that many.
Just taker a look at alterslash
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
7,500 - Pro Microsoft
15,000 - mAnti-Microsoft
7,000 - CowboyNeal
This page accidentally left blank
semi-off topic, but I'd like to point something out.
I was just reading about this on The Register, and I hit a link regarding what the 9 remaining states are preposing.
As usually happens, the article discusses what Microsoft will allow.
To that, I say this: Punish Microsoft. If they resist the punishment, revoke their charter, and heavily fine Microsoft Executives.
A simple ultimatum, isn't it? "You have broken the law. Accept the punishment, or die."
It's been a long time.
Yes, I did send mine. I like the policy of filtering out redundant and irrelevant comments. What is left over should provide some valuable insight as to what exactly people think about this whole thing.
One thing for sure, this whole thing is never dull, just when you think you can see the outcome good or bad, it takes a turn in an unexpected direction. Overall I have good feelings about this. Maybe our system sort of works, just slowly...
Blogging because I can...
Imagine it, they make every comment available, with sender's name. The next day, everybody that posted an anti-MS comment finds their copy of XP stops working. :)
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Only 15000? I know the potential for more is clearly there.
It only took and hour to compose and submit mine. That is not a lot of time.
Anyone have any good ideas for incentives to encourage this sort of thing short of experiencing the consequenses?
Blogging because I can...
If I was in the Justice department, one of my required remedies would be that Bill Gates would have to dress up as Mr. Monopoly whenever he appears in public. This would last as long as Microsoft had the majority of the OS market.
Majority loses to the rich or important minority.
I hate feeding trolls but..
If the rich and important minority screws over the majority then why is it that the rich pay much more in taxes than the majority?
Mmmm.. Donuts
Sending either of those opinions to the DOJ mean that the sender is an semi-literate idiot, and they probably don't know what it means for a corporation to lose it's charter.
But they probably know how to spell "a semi-literate idiot".
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Considering M$ well-documented shenanigans in survey responses, you would think they could do better than 7,500 letters. Even so, it's interesting to see DOJ admit a 2:1 dissent ratio. It would be much higher than 2:1 if you factored out the people who work for M$ and have something to gain by perpetuating the alleged monopoly.
If we were soliciting comment about the war on terrorism, should we count the opinions of the terrorists themselves?
Don't be so quick to assume that all republicans want to make love to Billy G. Even Rush Limbaugh has spoken out against Microsoft, during one show referring to Bill Gates as a "monopolist, threat to national security, and a thief."
Pro business doesn't mean evil, nor does it mean supporting a criminal business.
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
From the above link, http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9900/9946.pdf (emphasis mine).
For geek dads: Contraction Timer
It's a shame that 1/4 of the people responding did it in opinionated, baseless ways, and had their say thrown out. (I'm assuming most of these were negative :-)
While a 2:1 margin of negative versus positive response to the lame-ass settlement is good to see, it could have been 3:1 if people would have expressed real reasons as to why the settlement was not adequate, rather than ranting.
In any case, a good result.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
First, I'm not a troll, even if my opinion may make it seem like it. I post my opinions, and whether or not my opinions are happy and peppy visions of a utopian future(like everybody seems to want), they remain my own.
Taxes aren't the only gauge of the minority getting screwed.
Think of several laws passed recently, whose existance could only have been suggested (and aggressively pursued) by the rich(or does the digital equivilant of banning knives help the majority somehow?).
Think of this whole Microsoft thing. Why the fuck does a convicted criminal get off with less than a slap on the wrist? Especially after being convicted once, and using loopholes to get out of their obligations once already? I can't think of any regular individual or small business who could get away with that, but MS is getting off virtually scott free.
I think the existance of the DMCA, and all the other crap I've(okay, we've -- I learned it on the internet, I'm sure I'm not alone) seen proves what I said is true.
It's been a long time.
I urge the Department of Justice to carefully go over every last word of the proposed antitrust settlement against Microsoft, keeping in close mind that Microsoft's many political contributions do *not* entitle it to get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
From the AP article: Given the volume of the comments received, Justice has asked the federal judge handling the case to allow it to publish them online and on CD-ROM.
All you have to do to make extra money is make comments about MS. In the case of Slashdot, every MS article brings in thousands of page views to generate ad revenue. In the case of the government they get to sell CD-ROMs. This must make workers at the Government Printing Office very happy.
I think maybe I should go into business writing s*** about MS. It's the next best thing to being MS.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
not sure how mine was counted. You tell me.
.. but you fail to mention whether the one that's being considered adds to MS's monopoly or not.
Considering you didn't specifically mention the proposed settlement, I'd guess that your comments would be part of the 7000 that were thrown out.
The only place you say anything about the settlement is this: no settlement that adds to Microsoft's monopoly should be considered
Of course, you did better than me (I'm not an American, so I couldn't even write at all.)
They must have had a great filter. Only a 1:29 ratio of spam? Amazing. And only 1 pornography spam? I think they must be making up the numbers as they go along - this seems important. I am usually at 1:1 or 2:1 ratio for spam.
I wrote a two-page well-reasoned response that took the better part of an afternoon. All because of the article slashdot linked to by the WINE guy about a month ago. I also forwarded the info to about 50 of my friends, 2 of which I know responded, 1 of which forwarded on to their friends.
Slashdot was therefore responsible for at least 3 of those 15,000 responses, and at least 1 substantive response.
I'm not saying that we aren't pitiful sometimes as activists. I forget to mail in my donation to the EFF, or do the work on how to run for Congress (and run a mean campaign) that I've been meaning to do for a while. I can't even get my grad school apps together and finish my resume for a new job. On the other hand, I'm also helping to run a volunteer non-profit, trying to keep my web development business afloat in hostile times, doing a website for charity for free, and also trying to speak with friends sometimes. We're all busy. We can do better, but I'd guess most slashdot readers do something. Just not the cohesive efforts that money has bought for the opposition.
Yet.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
So they have to respond to each comment? Does that mean they have to give a response to the judge? Or that they have to mail/email ME a response?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The subject "Hose your grandmother's account" would be filtered out because it does not contain the required subject header.
Of those who said "I hate Microsoft" or "Linux Rulz", these give no constructive comment on either the settlement's comments or what has been excluded. Simply saying "I hate (some company)" may be an ethical statement that you hate them because they sell a product you hate, and is no indication that they are break the law. eg, "I hate Ford", because they sell cars, and I hate cars. This is not a reflection on Ford's business practices.
My comment largely centered on possible antitrust comments in upgrades. For example, there is nothing stopping MS from doing things in "required" upgrades, such as shutting down competitive dual boots [Win2k], applications, &c. Upgrades and retail versions should be subject to the same technical restrictions as OEM versions viz Abiltity to not install assorted middleware, honouring multi-boots, etc.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Wow, what a good idea.
Send them the code to XP, hehe.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, according to this article:
The gov't received over 30,000 emails, 2,900 were "substantive", 45 were "major", 2,800 were form letters.
"Only about 10 percent had anything substantive to say, officials said, calling the volume unprecedented."
"Microsoft is evil", you assuming that every considers it bad. Evil is a matter of interpetation. Often, people on the giving side of evil don't view it as such, therefore they can not assume you angry with them.
I think the only way justice can be served is to pull Microsofts charter. and yes I do know what that means.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
7,500 in favor of the settlement
15,000 opposed it
7,000 comments were dismissed as opinion
3,000 containing a degree of detailed substance
45 were ``major,'' based on their length and detail.
2,800 form letters
1000+ completely off topic
at least one pornography
I can't wait till they publish on the web - I really want to know how they classified my letter. It definitly should have rated "opposed", and hopefully rated "a degree of detailed substance".
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If by much more, you mean that the 2% of the population that makes over $200,000 a year averages $1,000,000 and pays 39% tax then split the remainder in half -- assuming half don't pay taxes at all, and that the remainder pay an average of 20% on 40,000 (and got a $300 tax break last year)... assuming 100,000,000 tax payers:
The rich paid $390,000 a piece for a total of $780 billion
and the majority paid $8000 a piece for a total of $784 billion
But the fact is that the rich pay hardly any taxes because they can afford good accountants and "expenses" and some poor guy who makes $14,000 working at McDonalds pays about $3000 in taxes.
note: these numbers are made up -- except the McDonalds guy -- who actually worked at another fast food establishment whose name was changed in order to protect the innocent.
So much for respecting the public interest. This process seeks to sweep the whole thing under the rug before the press can even read the comments....
You missed the point of the entire exercise, then. The whole purpose of the public comment period was to permit anyone and everyone who had an opinion as to the substance of the Revised Proposed Final Judgment to express their opinion and justify it by quoting the RPFJ, the various court documents, and for the legally enabled from other authorities. It's spelled out in the Tunney Act...read it.
Based on the summary report, the public has indeed spoken. I know I sent in a 24-page opinion and analysis, both in electronic form and via paper using Federal Express. I know my voice has been heard.
Given the volume of comments, I would not have been surprised at a DoJ request to extend the response period, nor would have I have been surprised at the judge's approval. The surprise was that DoJ said they could do the job in the time required by statute.
You missed a fact: the DoJ has to evalute, summarize, and respond to the comments -- more than just doing a Reader's Digest or worse and then putting the whole thing before the judge.
As for "the press reading the comments" many of the comments had been made public by the authors. This Slashdot article has pointers to news articles written based on those author-publicized comments, so the cat's already out of the bag. If you want to read my comment, just ask -- I'll mail it to you as a PDF.
The District Judge has made it clear she won't brook any more delay in getting this thing finished. I agree. Time to get it over with and behind us, IMHO.
If one side or the other did any serious astroturfing it should be pretty easy to spot once these are published. Simply put them through the various anti-cheating programs that make the headlines around here so often to find out how many of these messages are suspiciously similar.
And if Balmer appears, he has to wear a black and white striped top, a mask, and a bag with 'SWAG' written on it.
Actually, it will be available in plain text (1 CD) and in word format (417 CD set)
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I really wanted to submit comments about the settlement, but I knew it would require effort to compose a good comment about it, so I hadn't gotten around to it yet. A recent story reminded me that the deadline was imminent, so I wanted to make it a priority to make sure I didn't forget -- I kept a browser window open to a page about it, so I would not forget to get back to it before the deadline.
Nevertheless, I missed the deadline. Why? Because Mozilla crashed and lost all my open browser windows! I had no idea what pages those windows were open to, so I couldn't recover from the crash. All of that state information was lost forever, including the page that was up to remind me to submit a comment about the proposed Microsoft settlement...
I find it rather ironic that I didn't get to send in a comment about Microsoft crushing Netscape -- because Mozilla crashed! *sigh*
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
You are making the (false) assumption that people are somehow obliged to pay according to how much they have.
If you were roommates living in the same apartment, would you pay more of the utility bills based on how much money you made or based on how much you actually used the phone, etc? (note that I'm not talking about it being in proprotion to how big their room was, etc - that is already taken care of by property taxes, etc.) what I'm talking about is if you said your rich roommate should pay for most of the dishwasher detergent and most of the cable bill just because he makes more than you - that's what the government does when it taxes the rich more _per person_ than it does others to pay for things like roads, defence, etc.
It is always popular to propose measures that "screw the rich" - that is the reason why the Communist party succeeded in Russia in the first place - their manifesto was to screw the rich and take their wealth and distribute it amongst the majority.
The richest 1% are consistently screwed over by tax law - as evidenced by the fact that they pay 61% of all income taxes. This won't change. However, it's the richest 0.01% which is the one that's consistently making out like bandits because they can afford to lobby for special privileges and exemptions - like when they don't cash out their options but borrow against them and then deduct the interest from their income.
A communist is someone who reads Marx & Lenin.
An anti-communist is someone who actually understands Marx & Lenin.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Typical zealot. When faced with the possibility that your argument may not be shared by others you resort to personal attacks and claims that people who have an opposing opinion must be paid.
And you claim to not be a zealot. How cute.