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Micron Seeking Amnesty in DoJ Antitrust Probe?
deaddeng writes "Memory maker Micron Technology is allegedly seeking amnesty from a US Dept. of Justice grand jury investigation of price fixing, collusion, and antitrust by the memory industry, according to numerous news services, including the LA Times and Reuters. Last week, a Micron regional marketing employee pled guilty to charges brought under the same DoJ investigation for destruction of evidence and lying to the grand jury. The DoJ is investigating charges that major memory makers colluded to prevent the success of Rambus memory favored by Intel, and once that was achieved, colluded again to raise prices for DDR-SDRAM in 2001-02. If Micron is granted amnesty, it can keep its executives from facing criminal prosecution, but it may still face civil court challenges."
And Rambus Inc.'s practices are better?
Case in point for why being a responsible consumer can actually pay off for the person doing it. The average computer repair shop has a regimen of troubleshooting/burn-in tools that while effective for diagnosing many simple problems is simply not representative of the actual uses and requirements of their customers. At the place I pick up my systems from, the process is tailored to the uses the consumer has for the equipment -- they start with the standard toolkit (POST card, power supply checker, RAM tester, troubleshooting diskette, virus scan, 3D benchmarking suite), but will also try some of the latest games, office software, and any of the stuff you bring in for them to test (basic hourly fee applies if testing goes beyond two hours.) They even run some stuff past the web browser; apparently, certain web features demonstrate sound or display problems even among the same versions of a web browser on different systems due to often overlooked plugin incompatibilities, and some OEM systems come without certain "webfonts" that these guys will put on to make web pages look more like the designer intended. One has to pay a little more for this level of service, but the result is a finely-tuned system without the weeks of learning PC/Windows fundamentals.
Service varies a great deal depending on where you go. Some businesses are just skimming along without a good deal of regard to the customer, but others are more than eager to throw in everything but the kitchen sink for something like 120%-150% of what the skimmers charge. Local businesses competing against chain stores realize that every edge is important in remaining viable, and their owners/employees tend to be pretty cool people.
Unfortunately, what we're talking about here is the consumer's choice being limited to two giants: SDRAM and Rambus. This isn't to the benefit of the customer, and I feel strongly that we need to request another standard of memory that is truly Open and Free so that anybody can manufacture it without a patent submarine or limiting consumer freedoms. The playing field is so restricted right now that we're pretty much beholden to pay what they charge if we want the product, and whether or not they're taking unfair advantage of it this isn't a situation that is to our longterm benefit.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The DoJ is investigating charges that major memory makers colluded to prevent the success of Rambus
So? Yeah, beat 'em down if they were fixing prices, but I'm not so upset w/ a conspiracy against Rambus. Hell, if they asked me, I would have joined up!
I have a hard time remembering who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. We still hate the RIAA and love Linux, right? We've got so many jihads, I can't keep them straight!
If this were a socialist country, or Micron was a monopoly like Microsoft, then such a thing would be possible. However, this is a free market, and any company who wants to sell a lot of RAM would not join a price fixing collusion, but exclude themselves from it. If Micron was doing such a thing, why wouldn't Crucial, Buffalo, Geil, Kingston, and so forth lower their prices and blow the competition away? Most of what happened was because Rambus RAM was attempting to become an overpriced proprietary monopoly (and fortunately failed), plus that huge RAM factory burned down in 2001.
Obviously, a rival is bribing -- I mean, influencing through political contributions -- high-ranking officials to target Micron alone. Perhaps RAMBUS wants to be like SCO and take honest people to the grave with them? Micron deserves amnesty.
Not that it is much of a similarity in actions, but the end goal reminds me of the Roxio case discussed earlier on /.
From a Slashdot Discussion earlier on the Roxio case
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Rambus, Inc.'s misbehavior is well-known, so Micron is hardly alone here. If Micron is guilty of collusion, the pregnant question is, "With whom were Micron colluding?"
You might get it - or at least a light sentence.
Clear, Dark Skies
One is a political ideology, the other is an economic philosophy. Unfettered corporate capitalism leads to fascism (the state regulation of the economy) in that the state becomes a tool of the corporations, rather like you see in the USA today. A well-structured capitalist society *requires* government intervention, for the same reasons a well-structured civil society requires government intervention (in the form of the police, and the judicial arm of the government). Even if you ignore the travesty of corporations-as-entities as practiced by the USA today, and concentrate on corporations-as-public-charters (such as the the US had before about 1880 or so), you still need regulation and monitoring. Otherwise, the biggest corporations will carry the most power, and therefore have the ability to "regulate" (in the political and economic sense) the functioning of corporations of lesser power. This is why the US has the Sherman Act, and anti-trust laws. Now, these laws are not followed, as is evidenced by the recent anti-trust ruling against Microsoft, and the refusal by the US government to follow through on any meaningful penalty. But, even criminal law doesn't work against corporations, as seen by the recent inaction of the US government against the Enron corporation, and its executives responsible for those crimes. The "true principals of capitalism" work no better than the true principles of communism. (*NOT* that there has been an implementation of true communism, except on extremely small scales. The most we've ever seen practiced by as large as a country is socialism.)
Too many people are passive consumers. That's why you can't buy a TV that lasts more than three years anymore, that's why you can't legally play DVDs under Linux, and that's what's gonna get us all DRM in our hardware. Modding someone down who happens to believe in supporting your local economy instead of the multinational clusterfsck where we all work 80 hour weeks for $4/hr seems to be the action of someone in fundamental denial of our situation (and their power as a customer).
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
...and I'll freely admit that I haven't RTFA yet...
but Rambus surreptitiously cuts a deal with Intel to make their patented technology the new industry standard for memory, and when it backfires, the rest of the industry is guilty of collusion against Rambus?
The inmates are running the asylum, kiddos, and it's getting nuttier by the minute!
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
I feel a small bout of OT coming on...
If you were part of a group that 3 years ago went out every Friday naight and strangled some kids, and you went to the police and put your hands up, told them the names of the rest of your group and provided them with enough evidence to convict the majority of the group, you *would* receive a much lighter sentence, an identity change, and be part of the witness protection scheme.
The police are very helpful to people that do thier work for them.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Please, their "money in the bank" is from convertible bond offerings; they've burned almost $2 billion in shareholder equity since 1999. The amazing thing is that anyone still believes their bullshit.
They aren't competitive in DDR (irony of ironies) because they were the last to shrink processes and the very, very last to move to 300MM wafers. They are good at stretching out a process, they are lousy and innovating. And don't even talk about their patent portfolio-- they have ZERO revenues from royalties going bacy 10 years, and the one time they tried to enforce their IP against Mosel-Vitec, it was thrown out by the federal district court on the grounds of prior art.
They used to be a competitor to Dell in the PC business with their MicronPC subsidary, which IMHO made some great computers, but they ended up selling that at a $170 million loss. They failed to diversify to flash, which the rest of the industry (including Intel and AMD, not just memory companies) used to ride out the bad time.
In the most recent quarter, MU posted "earnings" of $1 million on sales of $1.1 BILLION. They would have received a better ROE on a statement savings account. And memory prices have done NOTHING but decline since then. What keep MU going is political connections, being the largest employer in Idaho, and duties imposed on Hynix.
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