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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."
With what the /. effect is going to do to this site, I wouldn't be surprised if this link was posted by a Microsoft representative.
Well, looking at the site.....it appears it's running on.....wait for it......Windows 2000! Yeaaaaay. Oh, wait......
Seriously though, what does that say about your position when you are adopting and running the product of which you are complaining about? Although, I suppose that might only back up their case.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Isn't slashdot already the place for Microsoft hating and bashing?
This site is redundant.
Seriously though, this is all well and good, but what's to stop users from logging onto the site and reporting violations out of spite? Do they really expect people to believe that they will examine every alleged violation, or is this simply a way for the government to pacify those that believe the judgement was too lienient?
Who is John Galt?
It's good to see there is no "Best viewed with Internet Explorer" at the bottom of the page. ;^)
30 comments and it's not even Slashdotted yet.
I'm sorely dissapointed in you people.
10. FP, Overlords, Dead Stephen King, Goatse, beowulf cluster, and all the other cliche posts (get them out of the way now so we can move on)
9. Discussion about whether or not the Borg icon applies to the story or not.
8. Someone whines about Microsoft-bashing
7. Someone whines about how bad Microsoft is.
6. "If you use Linux, you won't have this problem"
5. Something relating whatever the issue is to SCO.
4. A post about the latest gaping hole in Windows security, likely to be fresh news to many since new hole reports are coming out very frequently now.
3. A ton of complaints about the NYT's password-locked site, if the Microsoft story points there.
2. Smirking Apple users.
1. Something about *BSD being dead.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
With Office 2003 and its Information Rights Management features, which rely on Windows 2003 Server to act as a secure repository for the authentication information.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Some poor admin at Netcraft is 'tail -f'ing the logfile and thinking "Holy moly, Slashdot must have run a story on 'Microsoft-Antitrust.gov'.."
Trolling is a art,
Whilst the prior three fields give you 8K of plain text which to fill in, the final field only lets you upload in one of two proprietary closed-source word processor document formats (one of which is ironically Microsoft's) - nope, you're not allowed to upload SXW format (Open Office), plain text or even PDF files ! Also note that you're allowed a 1000K upload too, thanks to the bloatedness of the two formats they do allow...
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.
If you go to http://www.microsoft-antitrust.gov/contactus.asp you will find that they have a nice little web form for commentary to them.
For example, my comment to them...
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Good ol' Netcraft:
The site www.microsoft-antitrust.gov is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
Right now NT4 has reached the end of its support, and will be end-of-life next June. There are still many corporate environments where NT4 is the norm, and many of them aren't going to be changing anytime soon. This makes it hard for a developer who wants to create a product that works on NT4 through XP, as there is little or no support for adding or changing the NT4 platform at MS. However, it is not a problem for MS, since if they have any problems with an application (Word, Excel, IE, etc) not working on NT4, they have the ability to ship a change to the operating system with the update to the application(probably even after the "end-of-life"). This makes it hard for developers who have to say, yes you can use our product, but you have to upgrade to a later version of Windows, where MS can just say go ahead and buy this product now...you can upgrade the operating system when you are ready. This drives more of the application use on these older systems to only using MS products.
I wonder if that aspect has ever been discussed in any of the anti-trust proceedings.
Security Update for Microsoft Windows(KB1337N008)
Download size: 1 KB, < 1 minute
A security issue has been identified in Microsoft Windows that could allow an end-user to see information detrimental to the Microsoft Empire(tm) by allowing the user to visit certain anti-Microsoft government sites. You can help protect Microsoft by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. Read more...
That green slime had it coming.
Sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.