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Iowa Court May Order Microsoft Refunds
dowobeha writes: "The Des Moines Register is reporting that thousands of Windows 98 users in Iowa could get $40 refunds from Microsoft. The Iowa Supreme Court has found the big boys from Redmond guilty of price fixing in violation of a 1976 Iowa law. According to the report, this is the first antitrust ruling in any state that favors 'indirect purchasers' (regular consumers who got Windows preinstalled on their newly purchased computer) rather than "direct purchasers" (manufacturers who license Windows to distribute on new machines)."
And, yes, Windows programs have a 'main', it's called WinMain. It *does* recieve the command-line string (though not tokenized like in Unix, and it also recieves some other stuff).
Before we start on the "I didn't know there were any computers in Iowa..." jokes- let's remember- the digital computer was INVENTED in Iowa- at Iowa State University!
Aren't sales from MS to Iowa residents interstate commerce and thus a matter for Federal antitrust law?
Yes, they are. They are also subject to state law where they sell their products. Being an interstate transaction adds federal jurisdiction to an already existing state jurisdiction, it does not in any way negate the state's jurisdiction.
In other words, it adds regulations Microsoft must follow, it doesn't supercede any. Just as California emissions standards apply to automobiles built in Detroit (but sold in California), so to Iowa's antitrust regulations apply to Microsoft's sales in Iowa, regardless of where Micrsoft is headquartered, or the floppies and CDs their shabby OS is distributed on happen to have been printed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I remember back when I was a small tyke that Nintendo was acused of price fixing on their NES consoles. Alot of people will think "Price-fixing in consoles???" But they don't remember the days when it was just Nintendo (The Atari was old and not not a serious compeditor) and there was no competition. Nintendo was free to do as they like and they forced retailers to keep prices artifically high so smaller retailers could be forced to buy @ higher prices.*
Well, Nintendo got busted and as part of a setlement they agreed to a rebate offer for any customer. You called an 800 number and they sent you a $15 dollar cupon for your next game purchace. They also were forbidden to do this again and were watched closely. Microsoft wouldn't even have a crack to slide the X-Box into if Nintendo still kept an iron glove on the retailers.
Now days Microsoft is doing things along similar lines and using extra tactics to keep their product monoply. Imagine if Nintendo had never been busted, and did not allow retailers to sell other videogame consoles. They might have been able to keep their monoply and we would have the N64 selling for $300 today.
If I got any of this wrong then post a correction as I was quite young when this happened and I'm suprised that I could grasp the concept of price fixing enough to remember it all these years later.
* If you have a product with a MSRP of $100, you may sell it to Wal-Mart @ $50 and to smaller stores @ $75. Wallmart could then turn around and sell the product @ the $75 that the smaller stores are paying and the small guys would never be able to keep up. When you make Walmart sell it @ a higher price to keep business of the smaller guys, you are price-fixing. This is illegal.
------- Assumption is the mother of all f$#@ ups.
3 computers? Whatever. It's comments like this that make people in Iowa better than people like you.
Iowa has ALWAYS been in the top 3 for education.
Iowa had the FIRST state-wide fiber optic network.
Iowa had the FIRST digital computer in the world.
So go ahead and make fun of us. We know how good we are.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I just ordered a computer from one of the many internet sites (micropro.com) that lets you modify the computer's configuration. I found that some type of MS Windows was a required purchase if my computer had a hard disk, so I configured it diskless. Then I added the hard disk I wanted as a separate item in my shopping cart. No MS tax with little effort.
Sure, it's not a clean, 100%-of-the-market textbook economic monopoly, liked you learned about in 7th Grade. Nobody ever said it was.
Fortunately, economists typically have more than a 7th Grade education. So, "monopoly" isn't usually that pure even in economics texts. Lookup up "Four Firm Concentration Ratio" or "Herfindahl-Hirschman Index". By either of those measures, MSFT enjoys unprecedented monopoly power (which doesn't require 100% market share).
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Micorsoft's 'improvements' to their products only improve their ability to continue to lock out any meaningful competition, and to force users into an ongoing upgrade cycle.. They are not aimed at helping consumers.
> Microsoft responded that the Iowa lawsuit went > against federal law, which says only "direct > purchasers," such as computer makers who buy > Windows 98 from Microsoft, can recover damages > for antitrust violations.
Regardless of what federal law they are choosing to violate, they have also violated state law, which is what THIS case is about.
They seem to forget that the end-users are the purchasers, and the OEMs are only distributors.
It would be one thing if Compaq/Dell/etc had bought the copies of Windows for their own use, and then decided to recell them. Buts that obviously not the case. They were merely distributors for MS.
And most of the end users were purchasing the COMPUTER, not the software. The software was bundled due to (illegally) monopolistic contracts that MS had forced the OEMS to agree to.
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Until your average home computer user has a REAL choice about what OS to have preinstalled on their Intel-based PC, and authors of word processors and 'business' applications (spreadsheet/database/etc) have full access to accurate, complete (and maintained and updated) documentation to the file formats that MS has forced into commodity use in the business world, and to the network formats they have made so many entities dependent on, Microsoft is and continues to be an illegal monopoly.
The original case is not, or should not, have been a 'lawsuit', it was, should have been a 'criminal trial' - the convict should have little, if any, say in the decreed punishment. And surely should not be allowed to continue to practice the criminal action, as Microsoft is still doing.
Thats one of my biggest peeves - why is this being treated as a civil manner. Microsoft has been found guilty of a federal CRIME, and so far I see no punishment, or corrective action..
I will have a huge party the day that you can get any PC (laptops and 'consumer' grade included) from the major manufacturers without any MS software preinstalled, and an even bigger one when it isn't the 'default' if you dont specify something else..
As for the first electronic digital computer, that wasn't ENIAC, either. I know you USAns like to think that you invented everything, but Colossus here in the UK beat you by a few years.
The first binary electronic digital computer was German: Konrad Zuse's Z1.
And ENIAC wasn't even the first stored-program electronic computer: while ENIAC had to be programmed by plugboard, the Manchester Mark 1, aka `Baby', was storing programs in memory along with data, just as all current machines do.
Credit where it's due, please :)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
1) yes, the digital computer.
2) Iowa produces Corn. Corn = Ethanol. Ethanol = lessened dependance on oil. This makes oil prices drop, and it lessens our dependance on foreign oil. Not to mention that it burns cleaner and more efficent than regular oil.
3) You want something that we've done? How about the first six-sided 'cave' virtual reality system in the united states?
Ever heard of the ABC? The Atanasoff-Berry Computer?
The first electronic digital computer, built at Iowa State University between 1937 and 1942, before the much better-known ENIAC? And, hey look, that was before Colossus as well.
So, perhaps before you act so knowing about how we "USAns" like to think we invented everything, perhaps you ought to do a little research. I'll give you the following link to help you get started.
ABC Computer