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Microsoft-Antitrust.gov Opens for Public
prostoalex writes "The Attorney General of the State of California has opened up a Web site, dedicated to Microsoft antitrust violations. In 2002 Microsoft received 2 court judgements, one from California and 7 other states, another one from New York and nine other states. If you believe the company has violated the conditions stipulated in either of the statements, visit Microsoft-Antitrust.gov Web site. Notice that the site collects only the complaints related to two final judgements mentioned above."
f you believe the company has violated the conditions stipulated in either of the statements, visit Microsoft-Antitrust.gov Web site.
Let the "fun" begin. Why do I think this webserver is going to become complaint central for all things MS?
Sent from your iPad.
They're not complaining about the product. They're complaining about the company's leverage of their desktop OS near-monopoly to eliminate competition in other markets (web servers *NOT* among them).
Fortunately, the CA attorney general understands the case better than the average "MS is bad" slash-drone.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Go read the site. It's a coordinated effort between California and New York.
But they're not complaining about the product. They're complaining about the company that produces it. There's a difference.
Second, the point isn't to go complain about Microsoft's products. It's to complain about Microsoft's business products.
Whale
its probably less ironic than it first seems since the people who are responsible for the lawsuit and the people who wrote the article and the people who maintain the server are most likely not the same.
/. from Windows machines...thats what I consider ironic (but thats just me).
Consider how many negative Microsoft comments are made here on
Not only that, but when submitting a complaint they suggest that:
If you are able to provide documentation to support your complaint, please attach the file in either Word (.doc) or WordPerfect (.wpd) format below.
That just seems sad.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
I don't indulge in Microsoft hating and bashing. I suspect I am no different to many others using this forum who carefully weigh up the pros and cons of various software solutions, their relative strengths and weaknesses, the total cost of ownership of various platforms, the commitment of various software authors to innovation and forward thinking, the overall quality of a proposed direction, the opportunities and diffculties presented by the various software licensing mechanisms, and then, and only then, after weeks of careful consideration, conclude that, yes, Microsoft sucks, and it deserves everything it gets hurled at it.
Technically, it is free, although they don't seem to offer it for download anymore and impose a completely bogus $15.00 s/h fee. Sucks, but you can probably scrape together the $15.00 if you want to do driver dev.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Bush got elected
In this case, they aren't leveraging in the same manner as in the antitrust rulings. The antitrust ruling says they can't do something like withhold the right to distribute Windows with an OEM manufacturer's computers if that OEM also offers an alternative OS on their systems.
Releasing software that has a feature that depends on their server software isn't really the same thing. This is leverage of course, but it is legal leverage.
- b
After sifting and sorting through the myriad of posts pointing out that this site is running IIS 5 and how the govt. is so hypocritical for doing so, I've come to the conclusion that some if not most slashdotter's are too riled by minor details. It conveys a serious lack of intelligence on our part. But I digress...
While going through some of the PDF docs on the site, mostly pertaining to court judgements, I noticed that many of these documents reference the Sherman Anti-trust Act.
2 Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 2
Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court
For those that don't know, this is Section 2 of the Sherman act, which Microsoft was found in violation of. I see the fine of $10,000,000 as a maximum to be completely impotent against a company with a financial foundation such as microsoft's. There should be some sort of percentage of profits reaped from the anti-competitive behavior that should be taken away. $10,000,000 is a drop in the bucket for microsoft. The penalty should be stiffer.
I'd be interested in filing a complaint regarding their procedures regarding the computer sales market, how pretty much all PCs come with their product and their "tax" regardless of whether or not you want it. THAT is a complaint worth filing. I am being FORCED to pay for a PRODUCT that I NEVER asked for nor implied that I wanted.
For precisely that reason, they won't investigate every complaint, or even a large fraction of them.
Like all complaint-takers for decades (if not centuries) they will investigate things based on:
Frequency of complaint
Precision of complaint
If 500 different people complain about the same thing, it's going to be taken more seriously than if one person does.
A complaint like "Microsoft screwed me blind! I want you to GET those evil bastards!" will probably be handled by a spam filter.
(Warning to those who are overly literal-minded: the following example is completely fictional!)
A complaint like "On Friday, Jun 14th, Jahfhs Ffjl of the Microsoft Licensing group told me that I would have to pay full retail price for Windows XP Home, rather than the usual OEM price, because I sell a line of computers that run Linux," will be much more effective.
Specific dates, names, statements, amounts, etc. will get far more attention than vague hate mail.
Finally, whatever they think should be done will get choked back to what can be done, given their budget.
End result: The most flagrant violations will get curbed quickly (or may never happen because they would have been caught so quickly).
Borderline cases will break down into two groups:
The ones Microsoft doesn't care about will get "cured", and used as public-relations fodder by MS.
The ones Microsoft decidedly does not want to get stuck with will be challenged in court, or similar stalling tactics.
In a few odd cases here and there, Microsoft will get their hand slapped and have to legitimately clean up their act some.
Bottom line: As usual, it's between the two extremes mentioned. It will do some good, but there's a lot of stuff that will still fall through the cracks.
My only complaint about it is that most of the good will come in the next year or two, and it will probably eat up money for then next couple of decades...
> Perhaps they recognize that everyone who would be likely to have a legitimate grievance are those who actually use Windows.
Your assumption is that anyone who has any access to any Windows machines should be writing all their contracts in Word. What if I'm a Linux shop trying to develop an application that will interoperate with Windows, but MS refuses to document their protocols as they were ordered to. You think it's legitimate that if I want to complain, I need to buy a Word license and import all my contracts and documentation to Word just so I can complain?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Maybe they had no choice? Isn't this the spirit of the lawsuits in the first place? ;-)
So why does MS use them? Well with the latest worm posed to attack an MS site MS decided to not risk this site going down and instead hired this company to provide caching/mirroring/proxy in such abundance that the worm couldn't possibly take the site down.
So yes it is kinda funny that MS faced with an attack caused by a bug in their own software saw the need to use linux, be it through a third party, to rescue their sites. But MS does not use linux.
MS just doesn't thrust its own solutions to stand up to an attack. But this is easily defended. MS is a software company, not a webhosting firm. Oh wait, MSN is. Never mind.
Oh and no I am not defending MS. I just prefer to laugh at them for the proper reasons. Truth is always more entertaining then fiction.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe they had no choice? Isn't this the spirit of the lawsuits in the first place?
Not exactly. The antitrust lawsuits were over control of the desktop. Microsoft has come nowhere near control of the server arena; last time I checked, the free Apache HTTP Server was providing healthy competition.
Will I retire or break 10K?
morals are stupid!
-pyrrho