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Microsoft Case Proceeds
YeOldeCurmudgeon writes "This story just posted on Yahoo: Federal Judge Denies Microsoft Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Case. Microsoft's motion to dismiss the suit filed by the 9 dissenting states was denied. The judge agrees the states can sue." An article in the San Francisco Chronicle summarizes the case's current state and what's coming up next.
M$ should be forced to pay one million ... no one billion dollars to the FSF.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Somebody explain to me why it takes 1187 pages to say "this case can go on" and why it takes this long to figure out a punishment.
This should be all very, very simple. provisional punishments like "you will now allow people to take off IE" does not stop MS from behaving anti-competetively.
I mean, just fine them! in fact, fine the crap out of them. You are found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, you choke up 80% of your profits for the next two years (as from SEC filings) or 10% of the company net worth -- which ever is higher. if you do it again, 90%/15%; third time -- dissolution of charter. (third might be a little harsh, but again, we are following the "simple" route of spirit)
-- when the share holders suddenly realize that, wow, my $$ are going away because the corporate lawyer / managers are screwing up by doing illegal stuff, i don't think they will be happy about the anti-competitive behavior anymore -- i mean, $$ drives the company, so hit it where it hurts; not some bs settlement that they can just circumvent later.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
What I found interesting was the Judge's characterization of Microsoft's motion as misrepresenting the holdings of the cases it cited in support of the motion to dismiss.
That's a powerful statement from a judge and should be taken by Microsoft as a warning. It seems that the last thing they should be doing is demonstrating to the Court a complete and utter disregard for truth and for the law.
That's the kind of thing that makes a judge mad and judges are bad people to have mad at you.
Exactly! Can you please tell me how you can avoid buying Windows XP now when you are buying Toshiba notebook?
Read em here
Please note, this is a joke.
Now go back to your daily lives.
You're right. Microsoft lost and was found guilty in federal court of monopolistic pratices, but they outlasted us and outlasted the administration that beat them and got the next one to give them exactly what they wanted, including a free pass to keep doing business as usual. Lets not let those few states still fighting them conflict with our short attention span. We might as well realize that no matter what the court says, Microsoft will do whatever Bill damn well pleases.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Perhaps this trial should use opensource tactics. Judge Early, Judge Often!
But think about it.. this case is taking longer than it took to build Mozilla. If that's not saying something...
That would be trivial to implement and verify. And they would have nothing to complain about since that just enforces the status quo.
Any M$ app/OS on anything BUT an x86 box and Gates and Dancing Monkey Boy kiss their assets good bye and rot in jail for as long as the app/OS is available on anything but the x86.
Steve Jobs will just have to learn to like OpenOffice or StarOffice.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Since the mid 80's, the 'operating system' has been extremely important to Microsoft. Making sure everyone adopted Windows 95 and 98 was extremely important for the success of the company, as it locked them into the current architecture (2000/XP etc). This has meant that operating systems are VERY important to MS.
.NET, the operating system is not as important as it once was.. in the future, a proper .NET program will run on any system that has a .NET compatible VM and the correct class libraries!
.NET allows Microsoft's software to dominate on EVERY PLATFORM, and this is a great thing for them. A very clever move, and it may make all this antitrust case very irrelevant.
This may not be the case for much longer. With the advent of Linux, operating systems have been somewhat commoditized. With
Believe it or not, in 5 years, you could see Mac/Linux people buying, and running natively, stuff like Office and Visual Basic.NET, thanks to Microsoft embracing the concept of the virtual machine.
I think Microsoft is going to bank on the success of its virtual machine (.NET) and this whole new platform-independant architecture. Even if Microsoft was forced out of the OS game.. it's not a disaster for them. They still have the critical mass of users to sell software to (Office, etc), and a critical mass of developers used to developing for their platforms.
In essence,
mogorific carpentry experiments
It wouldn't help to have RMS on their board of directors - he would probably refuse to use any proprietary software, and therefore not find out when the meeting are scheduled!
--
It's funny. Laugh.
Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out
Instead of suing them for 'monopoly practices', which will be next-to-impossible to prove in court
Which Microsoft Anti-trust trial have you been watching? Microsoft has already been found guilty of abusive monopoly prcatices, and the case didn't even deal with their most damaging practices; their OEM agreements. In fact, their appeal has nothing to do with overturning that verdict, that appeal was rejected. This one is about trying to reduce the punishment.
I agree about not buying their software, though.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
So I'm thinking then that M$ will suddenly start to look at thin clients in a whole new light.
.NET to leverage!
If the OS is commoditized, they still have to make their money elsewhere.
*wavy lines*
Office? No problem! Don't buy that expensive Dell workstation - buy the cheapo thin client for your drones, and a big old server running WinXX and use
Oh yeah, now we got you where we want you on per seat licensing, and even though you just realized it, what you gonna do? Eat the cost of those 400 thin clients? Or pay us our per-seat fee?
Good boy, sign here.
*/end wavy lines*
In essence, .NET allows Microsoft's software to dominate on EVERY PLATFORM
.NET whether they like it or not. If you want to stick with Microsoft, .NET is not an option, it's what you'll have to use.
.NET implementation.
.NET's virtual machine and class libraries can do WAY more than what Java can.
.NET is just a VM/platform, whereas 'Java' was both the JVM *and* a language. This limited extension capabilities, as well as the conversion of older software. You couldn't load up your old C software, and get it working in Java.. with VB.NET, VC.NET etc.. this is a possibility. People have already created FORTH and COBOL compilers for .NET!
.NET may not be a success, but it has several very important things going for it, and Java had none of them. I mean.. come on.. Sun hardly had millions of users in 1994! Microsoft has got .NET out quickly, and is saturating the marketplace, ensuring their success into the future.
sed s/.NET/JAVA/ | sed s/Microsoft/Sun/
I don't think so Tim...
Microsoft has many advantages now over Sun in 1994.
For a start, Microsoft has an extremely large user base who are going to end up using
.NET is already being ported to other platforms. Ximian are working on something for GNU/Linux, and MS even released their own source code demonstrating a FreeBSD
Java was on lots of platforms, but it was VERY limited in what it could do on each one.
Java limited people to one language, a language that many coders didn't like.
Either way,
I might not love Microsoft, but I have to hand it to them.. they're speculating, and I think it's the right one.
mogorific carpentry experiments
An interesting point, but one that is easily answered.
.NET. Okay, some things like 'Windows Forms' are a bit proprietary, but there's still tons of documentation for it. The Ximian guys are even going to be spinning their own compatible version.
.NET solution.
.NET framework on them. This means people can go out and buy Microsoft Office 2005, and it'll run on their PC, Mac, or Linux box. What has Microsoft lost here? Nothing really, infact, they're likely to gain market share.
.NET. Microsoft will lock coders into .NET with its own development systems.. and Microsoft won't care what operating system the resultant programs work on, as long as Microsoft is making money on a) the dev tools, b) sales of its own software across multiple platforms, c) sales of its server software across multiple platforms, and d) the 'faithful' who will stick with Microsoft's own OS.
Microsoft has totally opened up the specs to
But it doesn't matter if the users aren't running Microsoft's VM. Unlike in the old days, Microsoft is not going to get rich by selling its platform anymore. It's going to stay rich by providing the best
Let's jump ahead 3 years. Let's say that Linux and MacOS X have a perfect compatible
Look it in terms of the browser war. Microsoft gave away the browser, but locked developers into its solution with proprietary coding styles. Many pages only appear correctly in IE nowadays! The same will happen with
mogorific carpentry experiments
.NET is being considered serious by many groups who are not Microsoft advocates.
.NET after the Parrot implementation is done.
.NET environment, but not necessarily be strapped to Microsoft's OS. Microsoft doesn't seem to disapprove of this, and in fact highlights how you can port .NET to other operating systems!
For example, it has been mentioned in the Parrot FAQ that Perl 6 may well be developed for
Ximian's Mono project also goes a long way to demonstrate that there are plenty of people who want a
mogorific carpentry experiments
who had been given this case came to hate MS, in much the same way as the previous judge had. She hated them because they lied, they cheated and they were trying all kinds of tricks to sway her viewpoint.
Now imagine you were really set to hit them upside the head with a nasty verdict. What would be the smartest thing in the world to do. Right... keep quiet about it. Never give a hint or whiff that you felt that way, or you'd never get your chance to apply a verdict at all. You'd know the previous judge really f*cked up when he talked about the case, so you wont make the same mistake. In fact, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to guess what you were planning on doing.
This is clearly conjecture on my part, but god it would be nice if it was true.
IBM has it's points good and bad, however the DOJ case (brought by the Johnson administration) was severely flawed (in ways that the MS case is not at least imho).
Among other things the prosecutors made their case on the basis of the market for mainframes. In presenting their case they eliminated the sales of Digital (then the #2 manufacturerer of computing equipment). Then they *included* the sales of IBM's competition in plug-compatible into IBM's 'market share'.
This is how they came up with the '80%' supposed market share figure that was widely published and believed. There were numerous other stupidities in this case.
MS has not, and while they managed to effectively sidestep a weakly worded consent decree after the '95 case, that very disrespect for the law is a big part of why the opposition is playing hardball this time around.
First time the rumor was that Gates threatened the Clinton administration that he'd take MS offshore. As has been said in posts above this one, you can only thumb your nose at the judge for so long before she decides to flex her muscles.
MS has begun to clean up it's act and behave in ways that are required of a monopoly. If they are found guilty and then go back and try to do the same cr*p yet again I daresay they will be facing a truly PO'd judicial system.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
They should do time.
Sling them in the slammer.
Probation after 12 months.
Computer no touchee for at least 3 years.
Why is that not too hash?
- They have created software which is so faulty that it's caused losses to other people counted in the Billions of Dollars. ( The cost of time needed to clean up after all the viruses and worms. )
- They have charged hundreds and thousands of dollars for bits of plastic worth cents. That's a con job netting 40 Billion Dollars.
- They have totally abused their monopoly position, and thus seriously impeded the progress of innovation in the data processing industry.
- They are now demanding money from people on a regular basis to provide continued access to their programs. In my country that's called a protection racket.
Those are the reasons why they are nothing more than a criminal gang and should do time.He came to hate them too. And went too far as a result. MS turned that to their advantage, just as they did Jackson's missteps. Neither Jackson's or Sporkin's humiliations will be lost on this judge. She will be as careful as she can possibly be.
I think the first two came to hate MS because they could see clearly the utter contempt MS has for the justice system, or anyone else that might get in their way. MS is still at it in this new courtroom. Lies, half truths, FUD, remorselessness, arrogance, self-serving "compliance" and disrespect for the intellegence of the bench are usually not part of a winning formula in court. Eventually, MS will find a judge that does not get provoked, but simply hammers them with the law. Hopefully, this judge will be the one.