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Microsoft Blames Anti-trust Legal Fees for Price Increases
jm.one writes "BBC news has an article about the Californian anti-trust case and points out that Microsoft tells users would suffer from this: 'Somebody ends up paying for this,' said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. 'These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.'
Do they really understand why there are laws?"
I remember when MS got slapped with that fine. People said, "Eh.. it's no big deal to them to begin with, but with what they lost, they'll gain back with a simple price adjustment."
So basically they still haven't learned their lesson. Cost of doing business.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
With a bit of luck, this will come back to bite them in the gonads.
price increases steadily, security holes found repeatedly, consumer's irritation growing until they say "Well you know what Billy boy, up yours, we're switching to linux (or OS X)"
I just hope there's a viable simple alternative by then to which the customers can switch.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
This is a good thing.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I gotta buy some of their stock one of these days... it's not that I believe in the concept or think it's right... it's just working for them so well!
Agile Artisans
Nice to let your customers bleed for your criminal conduct... More reason to leave them and use a real OS.
Im getting SO tired of us paying for their mistakes? There outta be a law to prevent companies making people pay for them getting pasted with fines due to their own law breaking policies ...
hey mr. policeman.. you better not give me that speeding fine.. or else.. somebodies bank will get robbed.. you know, somebody ends up paying for this.
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
Lord knows they can't afford to take the legal fees out of a measly 500% profit margin or the big stockpile of cash they are sitting on.
These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.
Like MS couldn't settle for something a little more reasonable than their 80%+ profit margins on Windows and Office. This is such bull. It's designed to get the government and public to be more accepting of their outrageous pricing.
It may sound "unfair," that Microsoft is somehow getting out of paying for its actions, but all expenses paid by all businesses for all reasons are always passed on to customers.
"Mr Crew has billed Microsoft just over $3,000 an hour for his own work, as well as more than $2,000 an hour for other lawyers on his team. " What lawyer is worth even $200/hr (more on par on normal) much less several thousand dollars per hour. Cause I'm sure no one else could have done Mr. Crew's job just as well for less. definately something wrong if that was approved for lawyer fees after Microsoft lost. (but hey who didn't know that there was something wrong with the legal system in the States)
the company should pay the price of the fines, it should not be turned back to the customers. maybe a price increase is just what's needed to get those thinking about other options to just go out and implement them sooner. sounds like a pretty pathetic plan to me.
this is just the cost of doing questionable business, and it's not like they can even begin to say 'we didn't know we couldn't do that'. it's just fucking rediculous what these asshats are trying to get away with.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
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Erick
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$3k/hr sounds stiff. But what did he actually provide?
Would a less expensive lawyer been as successfull?
I think certain cases can demonstrate what a difference between a good, great and the best lawyers can have.
Maybe if we had a bit better performance the DMCA wouldn't exist. Maybe OJ would be in jail, who knows.
But when it is my ass or $$ on the line, I'd want the best, and the citizens of California deserve it too.
Obviously the law is there to protect their buisness model against all competition and crush the opposition, right? Its a great thing when applied against OTHER people.
Allright, now I realize you all like to bash MS as much as possible, but from the article: Mr Crew has billed Microsoft just over $3,000 an hour for his own work, as well as more than $2,000 an hour for other lawyers on his team.
Jesus! I'd object to having to pay that as well.
Wouldn't it be nice if all that money went towards, you know, the users that were "harmed" instead of to the lawyers?
RTFA people. Microsoft isn't complaining about the fines (or settlements) here. They're complaining about the plaintiff's legal fees (which they're being required to pay).
And, quite frankly, I think they have a point. The lawyer who lead the class action lawsuit may be a really good lawyer, but I don't think his time is worth over $3000 per hour.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Users get $10 coupon on newest version of windows.
Newest version of windows price increases due to litigation by $40.
Two years later, court says "no no no", consumrs get $15 coupon towards new windows.
They don't get it. The fine is because they over charged people.. They're not allowed to "make it up". They are supposed to distribute that 50bln their hoarding back to the people the stole it from.
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Perhaps it will now start to sink in for those people who use M$ products?
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If you are angry, then this is why you should be uing Linux.
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No installation required, try it from the CD and if you decide you want to make the jump to the penguin world,. just run the install to disk program. Best of all, it is free. If you don't have the bandwidth, ask a freind, I have given out over 20 knoppix disks to my freinds, and 15 of them have converted to Linux 100%. Don't forget to checkout Wine and Crossover office, It will help your transition!
OK, Microsoft says its legal bill is too high, so it has to overcharge its customers. But why did it get that legal bill in the first place? From the article:
"The legal costs are part of Microsoft's settlement for over-charging consumers buying its software in California."
Sigh...
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Sports players get paid way more than that for two hours work, however they only perform a couple of hours a week.
One of the unique aspects of a monopoly is the inelasticity of demand on the price of their products. In other words, MS can change the price of their products and, since they have a monopoly, roughly the same quantity of their products will be consumed. Of course, this is not black and white. They cannot make their products 100 times more and expect the same amount to be consumed (though, I know of some MS shops that would have no choice . . .). However, they can raise their prices much more than probably any other company without having a significant amount of revenue decrease.
This means that additional costs to Windows can pretty much be passed 100% down to the consumer, and the EU's monetary penalty is really just another form of tax on the consumer. Perhaps we could call it an "excise" tax on windows.
No, the real way to punish MS is to break up the monopoly and introduce competition, then charge a monetary penalty that cannot simply be passed on to the consumer, because if the new MS enitity/entities were to raise their price so many people would buy the competitions' products that MS would actually experience a decrease in revenue.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Do they really understand why there are laws?
No. Plus they have a cash reservers that can last them 5 years of $0 in sales. they can easily eat it up. It is more of a scare tactic to prevent the states from doing it again. In fear if they do it again then then they will need to rase prices again. This does really hurt consumers in many levels including people who wish to purchase commercial distributions or linux, What business like to do is keep their prices no more then half of their competiors prices, so when Microsoft sells XP for $250 its competiors like Apple and the Linuxs will sell it for $125. If Microsoft sells it OS (like back in the good old days) for $80 Apple and the Linux's would sell for $40. The problem is that there are to many Supid consumers out there combined with their fear of computers. Makes this worse. People see something expensive they think "gee it must be good" and then they see how many people are using the product then they go "Well if everyone else is using is then it must be good" While the minority who actually knows economics and goes well I see that everyone is using it so demand is up so the price will rise, no mater what the quality is. So I will look for a product that is just as good but is not much in demand then buy that because it will be cheaper. Popularity and Price have nothing do with the quality of the products. If everyone went to Microsoft your prices are to high we will switch to an other os unless you lower your cost. Then Microsoft will lower its cost no mater how many states are suing them. Microsoft is working with a 20's mob mentality, with out perhaps the drugs and murdering.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Darwin said it best. Microsoft has to compete or they're dead in the water. They can't compete if they jack up their prices. The MS mentality is to offset court expenses with product prices, but that road is mined heavily. They should know better than this, really. Oh wait... nevermind.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This is nolonger the 1990's, Linux is easy to use now.
Yes, modern linux distributions such as Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE and even Debian put a browser ICON right in front of your face! There is a lot of work to get winmodems working, espceilly in the pay for distros.
Why do people keep spreading fud about Linux being hard to use? I think everyone who claims that should try KDE 3.2 or GNOME 2.6.
In a true competetive market, this could not happen. In fact, penalties actually work and tend to weed out the crooks.
But when monopoly power exists, the monopolist can indeed pass on the costs of fines. That's why fines are seldom effective. What gets the attention of would-be abusers of monopoly power is the credible threat to destroy that monopoly power, as the trial judge tried to do in the BIG case. The remedies actually agreed upon by the DoJ and MSoft have been shown ineffective.
for time wasted for reboots ?
The users already have their money.
The lawyers get paid by MS.
If the lawyers charge $10/hr, or $3k/hr the users that were harmed get the exact same money.
That being said the better lawyers probaly got the users more money than a cheaper lawyer would have.
I hope soon consumers realise that MS is gouging them so much that they should give them the finger. It's just goddamn stupid, that's what it is, and the price increases are nothing to do with "antitrust action". Even if they were being sued for antitrust all the time, they'd still make sufficient profit from their (IMHO insanely inflated) current prices.
It's to do with them realising that consumers think that higher value == higher price and vice versa, and so they can get as much as they want out of them for Longhorn etc.
At this rate, the OS will be more expensive than the PC it runs on. Oh wait, it is!
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Stupid people are too stupid to realise just how stupid they are!
Somebody ends up paying for this,' said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. 'These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.'
Why should consumers pay for the illegal business practices of a company? Aren't stockholders the ones who are expected to shoulder the risks?
Maybe there should be a line in the company's financial report: "We have absolutely no risks whatsoever because we have such a captive market that we can always pass any costs down to our customers."
..should be able to see through that argument. They took monopoly profits before, they take monopoly profits now. Sunk costs like legal bills have absolutely no effect on the optimal price/quantity point. It only comes into play if there's competition.
This is simply trying to shift the blame of why they're extracting monopoly profits: "Damn M$, stop bleeding us dry" to "Damn justice department, stop suing them so we don't pay the bill". When in reality, they would have taken that money anyway, because they can.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Their objective TCO studies will still show Windows is cheaper than Linux.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
I just did a little math... If they had thier forty-two billion dollars in cash invested in CD's at seven percent, they'd be making roughly 2.94 billion in interest a year. That's more than enough to cover all of thier legal bills, and that's not even considering the fact that they're probably getting an even bigger return on thier horde. They just want another excuse to raise prices on an already overpriced OS. To hell with them.
For years people have been coughing up the high prices for Microsoft software. Now that prices for Microsoft producs are going to climb, F/OSS is starting to look like a much more cost-effective option.
Maybe the courts will fine M$ another billion and cause M$ to price Windows out of the range of average Joe! Then Joe will finally use Linux!
I'm amused at the outraged postings of people shocked by the fact that Microsoft passes along settlement costs to the consumer through price increases rather than cutting into their profits. Look, they'll raise their prices first, and if demand drops off or they're afraid that their market share is shrinking, then they may lower their prices again.
Litigation resulting in cash penalities are the easiest for corporations like MS to handle. I believe that state and foreign governments sue not for whats "right" or "fair" but because its a backdoor method of taxing the public.
IMHO, the best solution to deal with MS was the original penalty of splitting the OS and Apps segments of MS into two separate entities. You can't pass that along to consumers. No wonder MS fought so hard to get that reversed.
BTW - Here's another little fact. Corporations don't pay taxes (technically) either. So before getting all huffy that MS is getting away with it again, take a good hard look at the runaway litigation in the world and ask yourself where all of the money is going!
This is absolute rubbish. If Microsoft could have made more money by increasing prices, they would have done so before. Not because they are evil, money-grabbing, blah, blah, blah, but because that's what companies do in a capitalist economy!
The claim is made even more ridiculous since software has zero marginal cost!
Pure FUD from Robert Rosenfeld, plain and simple.
They have every right to adjust their prices to reflect these additional costs.
Actually, no, they do not. This is yet another example of them abusing their monopoly position within the marketplace. That's what all of the legal action has been about.
The fact that Microsoft can nonchalantly pass on these costs to the consumer with litte concern for its loss of market share shows how much of a monopoly they truly are, and how much they know it to be so. When an pattern of existence dominates an environment so completely, "evolution" ceases to be an issue - short of cataclysmic or revolutionary change.
Galmarley - Free research on economic hi
This whole idea reminds me of something I see all of the time -- people supporting a government program, but not realzing that someone has to pay for it. For example, here in Florida, voters a few years ago backed a bullet-train overwhelmingly, not realizing that the money for such a train had to come from somewhere. We enjoy no income tax here, so it comes in the form of higher sales or property taxes, which affect us all.
On the same vain, everyone cheers when Microsoft gets whacked with a big judgement or settlement. But, the money has to come from somewhere -- and it will likely come in the form of higher prices. And since 90% of desktops run Windows, it will likely affect you in some manner down the road.
With that said, the attorney's fees in this case (and many others) are outrageous. The judge for set them more modestly.
Jason
...make them cease to exist and no longer legally able to operate within this country.
Technology has been hindered because of Microsoft. Reports have shown that innovation and advancment in technology has been deeply stifled by at least 10 years because of the monopolistic influence that Microsoft imposes on others. Microsoft has (on many occasions) paid other companies (Intel) to NOT release a certain product for fear that it would, in some manner, hurt profitability of Microsoft.
Their Blatant disregard for law is disgusting. Law doesn't affect them. They simply have way too much money. Instead of fining them $600 million, fine them 75% of their assets. Since this won't happen, they will continue to trample all over the law and simply shrug it off with a, "OOhh teehee, I'll just throw cash at it till it disappears.." They are no different than your street thug going back to jail for repeat offenses. Eventually the thug will get life in jail, but what will MS get? Nothing.
They do nothing positive except generate enough revenue that makes the govt grin in the amount of taxes they pull in. Fucking get rid of them. Make a law specifically for Microsoft that prohibits them from further operation.
This NEEDS to happen.
This is an example of how fucked up our laws are requarding businesses. This isn't a Microsoft is evil example this is a basic corporate fact and is an example why corporations exist. Corporations are by design intended to protect individuals(the owners ) because the only thing you can do to a corporation is take it's money and as it job is to make money it will simply treat such an event as a loss of profit and it will react as such. If other operating costs go up then that would effect the price too. The only way you are going to change corporate behavior is by holding those in charge responsible for it's acts not the corporation. Except for a corporate charter many actions could be tried under conspiracy or even racketeering laws but that corporate charter insulates the owners from that. Change incorporation laws and this would stop.
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Bloody hell, I am going to a law school. $3000/hour is crazy and sounds great. I do not understand why MS is bitching about the fees; it is still pocket change for them. Why should the consumers have to pay for their criminal conduct? They can't be so greedy that they will pass the bill to the consumers. They do have $50 billion in the bank. A few news stories on this, a few ugly bugs (security issues), and they'll lose many customers. The potential loss is bigger than the gain if they pass the bill to the consumers. Remember, this was the lawyer talking, not someone who makes the decisions at Microsoft.
Consumers to the burden of proof, added their personal information to the cost of using MSFT's software, and software prices went down across the board, right? Quite the contrary, you now get the burden of proof, a hoop you have to jump through every time you change hardware, AND higher prices.
Hey, as long as the MSFT sheeple keep taking it up the pooper you can't get mad because Redmond takes advantage of the situation.
Just got done isolating the last Windows machine on my network so it can't access the Internet. That's a Win2K box. The last piece of MS crapware I purchased at home since...2001. Wow, time flies when you're having fun instead of spending all you time patching Windows.
And I have to say it feels good when stories like this and the virus of the day come by. Not that I'd ever taunt the sheep by saying something like NEENER, NEENER, NEENER. And though I might be tempted to think they're technology LOOOOOOSSSEERRRS, manners would prevent me from saying so out loud. Instead I'd pretend to be sympathetic and understanding and wait until their back is turned and they're a polite distance out of earshot to start laughing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I would consider this to be "abusing their monopoly power." Shouldn't the law consider it the same, thus allowing the DoJ to bring another anti-trust suit?
Oh wait... Bush would just quash this one like he did the last.
In a sense this is still good because it contributes to the erosion of their customer base.
So, this guy just "wins" a case against someone for price gouging... then turns around and price gouges, but that's ok, becuse it's MS he's doing it to... Toss this one in the blindly biased bucket.
... they would push to make sure the majority of the "benefit" would go back to end users. But that wouldn't serve their purpose. After reading the article and a million different posts... they're just angry about having to pay their opponents' lawyer's fees. Hey, I would be too.
Not that I care for MS or their tactics, but isn't it a bit sad? If there are 13 million Californians who are going to recieve the benefit, a $10 coupon would not cut it. That gives you $130 million to the end users and $260 to the prosecuting lawyers. Looks like they'd have to double it... the saddest thing is that the big winners in all this are the lawyers and not the people.
FLR
I blame Microsoft on Microsoft price increases.
It seems like a lot of people here think that passing along the expense to the user is unfair. These are the same people that are proponents of Linux. Do the math ... Windows costing more means that there will likely be fewer users of Windows because they can't afford it in their or their company's budget. Anyone that pushes Linux over Windows should be HAPPY that the cost is being passed onto the users.
1: Run other companies out of business and become a monopoly .
2: Profit
3: Get sued for Anit-trust violations
4: Pass legal fees and damages on to the customer
5: Profit
6: Have customers sign up for free software upgrade license agreement for large $SUM
7: Release new software AFTER said agreement expires
8: Profit
9: Extend, Embrace, . .
How do I get in on this?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
I'm surprised that no one figured this out before...all companies do this (pass costs on to their customers).. It's just like these people who constantly want Corporations to "pay more taxes"......Companies DO NOT PAY TAXES !!! They only collect the taxes from YOU (the consumer ) and then pay Uncle Sugar to re-distribute as the Politicians see fit. Great system, isn't it. Time to go to the Flat Tax System (as the RUSSIANS have !!) -no income tax, only consumables are taxed - everyone pays the same flat rate. I doubt it's possible in the US though... the IRS and Tax Attorneys are too powerful...it would put them out of business.
SCO's one and only Darl McBribe makes $986,047 per year for doing nothing but blowing smoke out his arse.
Lawyers at least put in a little effort into presenting their side of things, Darl does not even present anything to backup his claims! - Just what does Darl do for his money???
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
why would they raise prices?
I think this is just a PR move. They keep their prices at calculated *optimal* levels, where (profit per unit)*(projected units sold) is maximized.
I'm not a business guy, but this just seems like common sense; this will not affect their prices.
-ashot
Hmm It's like.... nothing.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
raise prices, and keep their monopoly. Sounds like proof positive to me.
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Linux has made great strides in usability...but its got a way to go. Why did I just need to recompile my madwifi drivers with my kernel update? Why does Fedora's kudzu insist all ethernet interfaces start with "eth" (madwifi uses "ath")?
*I* know the "whys" for all this because I've been using Linux for years...trying to explain this process to someone less familiar, and they'll think I'm nuts for going through this process when my Windows XP setup "just works".
This is a totally reasonable thing for MS to do. After all they only got 60$ billion dollars in the bank.
Money they desperatly need to keep alive, improve their products even more and offer their users an even better Xperience.
Maybe it's the alignment of the planets, or sunspots, or a harmonic convergence that is actually going to cause a rise in prices. You can be sure of one thing: No matter WHAT happens, M$ will raise their prices.
Windows XP BSOD'd unrecoverably when I plugged in my digital camera, with Linux, It I just plugged it in and it worked. My distro just works with Wireless. (Mandrake cooker).
99% of problems are the distros fault, report the bugs to fedora, and help beta test Fedora core 2 so it will just work in the future!
- The lawyer fees are not adding to a per unit cost on Windows for Microsoft.
- Microsoft has priced their software to maximize their profits at an optimum quantity sold. Microsoft will lose money by increasing the price of Windows, since it will lead to reduced quantity being sold.
The result is it's Microsoft who is paying for the lawyer fees, not the customer. This is true with any cost not related to per-unit costs. These costs only affect Microsoft's exit condition in it's market, and I highly doubt the lawyer fees are high enough to cause Microsoft exit the OS market.What you may be getting at is that Microsoft is artificially raising the price to retaliate against the California government, but this leads to conspiracy theories that I am not ready to go along with. Ultimately, Microsoft is obligated to make profit, not dabble in politics.
that is only true in a competitive market. if i recall, the whole point of the suit is that microsoft has a monopoly.
here's the argument why they _can't_ pass along the cost. microsoft was _already_ setting their price to maximize profits before the suit. now the government comes along and says give us X dollars. microsoft says, no problem, we'll just raise the price to raise our profits to pay you. but, since the price was already profit-maximizing, any further rise in price actually decreases profits.
obviously, since the world is dynamic & products change, that is a bit simplistic. but it gets the essence of the argument across.
(for those with some economics: the point is that the fine is a lump-sum cost, and thus doesn't affect marginal costs.)
"Look, they'll raise their prices first, and if demand drops off or they're afraid that their market share is shrinking, then they may lower their prices again."
You know, that's how it should work, in all cases except a monopoly, where the product can be priced artificially high. So it's ironic that in an anti-trust (anti-monopoly) suit, the punishment is price-related rather than a true penalty like splitting the OS and Apps.
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if any law infractions revolved around named human beings, and not this non person person they call a corporation. If we re adjusted the laws back to named humans are responsible for their actions, and if the fines came out of personal bank accounts of whomever issued the orders that resulted in the crimes committed, you'd see a lot more honesty with companies. And the government could mandate a price freeze as well on their products to go in conjunction with any fines, or they could actually institute a "three strikes and you are out" provision like they have with human beings, and in the case of corporations, just completely revoke their charters after a third conviction. But they don't do that too often, companies are allowed crime after crime after crime after crime, yet they still stay "in business".
You make Bill Gates pay a big chunk out of his pocket, then make him do 500 hours community service picking up trash next to the road,after a few months in lockup, like any regular guy would get for stealing those sorts of sums, you'd see changes in his company's predatory practices, and pronto. You give him a perpetual get out of jail free card, he'll keep using it. It's that simple.
There's a variety of techniques that could be used to make corporations more honest, but bottom line is, nearly all the legislators, judges, and people in the executive branch make the bulk of their money from being stock holders and/or being in ownership or management positions in corporations, they profit handsomely from this corporate insulation, so they will NOT write, vote for, or sign into law anything that could hurt them personally. They keep up the laws that benefit corporations, and they keep up that level of legal armor and shielding that corporations have, that private individuals don't have.
If YOU defraud someone, it comes out of your pocket and you can't "pass it on" as a cost of doing business. If you do it a few times, you will personally go to jail, some times even one time depending on the crime. Pass a bae check over 100$, it's a felony, you could serve time. a corporation defrauds thousands of people out of billions, or puts a competitor out of business using questionalb tacts, those corporate officers hardly ever see any jail time. It happens, but it's extremely rare. Corporations can just keep getting away with it, time after time, and when they are so huge as to be dominant market players, it never results in any significant changes to the corporation, other than they learn to obfuscate the bookeeping better, and THEN they figure out what new laws that would benefit them better, that might keep them from getting caught, etc, that need to be passed, and then they go to work on that with campaign contributions and lobbying, using money they half stole in the first place. It's a corrupt vicious cycle, organized gang activity basically, and gates and company are just one example of many.
The system is so broken and so corrupt there is little hope that it will get fixed any time soon. I doubt it will frankly. And there is so little difference between "government" and really really large international corporations that we should probably just end the illusion that there is.
The purpose of a fine is to penalise the company. By passing the costs on to consumers they are effectively passing the penalty on to someone else.
Microsoft have that much control over "everything" simply breaking them up into seperate entities could be disatrous to the economy. These price increases will be far reaching, it means prices of OEM PCs + Windows tax will also go up, companies use PC's in all areas of business so other products and services go up. I am not an economist but it seems fairly obvious to me that the influence of Microsoft in todays world economies is a serious problem.
It sickens me that it has been allowed to get this far, though sooner or later they are going to collapse. As the old adage goes what goes up, must come down. In the case of Microsoft the higher you climb, the harder you fall. Lets just hope that it happens sooner in order to minimise disruption.
Nick,
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Think about it. What if you were running a small business, and for some reason, got hit with big fees of some kind? If they were insignificant compared to your total profit, you might just shrug them off, but if they weren't, you would have to do something to adjust for this cost. In fact, a legal fee is almost like, in the case of Microsoft, another cost of doing business. This could easily be the case in our country (USA) where frivalous lawsuits (Not saying Microsoft's monopoly lawsuit is frivalous) become an extra cost of doing business. Just as malpractice lawsuit awards drive up the cost for insurance for Physicians (especially, in the US, OBGYN's) and thus crank up doctor's fees, it only makes sense that companies would start charging more to compensate for their new costs.
Really the line is drawn here right where you ask, "Could Microsoft pay for these fees, feasibly, without price increases?" I don't know-- really. But in light of how ridiculous the sums can become in these cases, I would give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here and say maybe not.
Regardless, I feel that lawyers have always had too much clout in the US. And I don't think it is a thing of our law per se, but a cultural trend that has been sneaking up on us for the last 200 years.
As I grow older, I've gotten to hate Microsoft less and less. I guess for some people it may be the opposite-- but as for me, I have begun to actually realise that companies like Microsoft are run by people too, and people make mistakes, and people have limited perspective, etc, etc. The bottom line for me is that I think Linux CAN and SHOULD compete with Windows, and that we don't need any government intervention to muck everything up. Keep Uncy Sam outta this, people. Big Corps love Big Gov't. This has been the rule for 100 years (since the 'Progressive' Era.) If we, as programmers, businessmen, and computer scientists need the government's help to compete with Microsoft, that's pretty sad. I guess I could go through all of the injunctions against MS and say which ones I support and which ones I don't, but I've already been too long winded. I would just say I do support a few of them.
This isn't a redundant post; I just set my threshold to 6.
That out of all of Microsoft's business costs, the only ones "somebody has to pay for" are the legal costs with the government.
For example, wouldn't it make more sense to point at the approximately three hundred million dollars per quarter that Microsoft has been pissing away on the XBox venture since it began with no apparent plan to move to profitability in sight, and say that perhaps that is the cause of the cost increases? Or what about the MSN division, which last I checked has run very slightly profitable for only one quarter (sometime last year) once with only losses for the entire rest of its entire history? Or-- say-- Windows Media Player? Microsoft's giving it away but there's clearly development costs. Doesn't someone have to pay for that?
It seems absolutely bizarre that Microsoft seems to be trying to make the implication that ventures such as the original IE, or Windows Media Player, really are "free", and just attempts to "stay competitive", and the fact they have all this money from their OS and Office divisions doesn't give them any unfair advantage. Yet then once it becomes advantageous from a PR perspective to do so, they begin trumpeting about how all their costs get passed on to consumers. Well, gee! If the costs of doing business are getting passed on to consumers, then aren't the development costs for IE and WMP being passed on to consumers as well? And if IE and WMP are being paid for via costs passed on to the people who buy Windows, then why does Microsoft claim that these are anything other than forced bundling? Why the "it's free" charade that seems to be the basis of their claim that IE and WMP aren't illegally anticompetitive actions?
I'd say the costs passed on to consumers from Microsoft paying slap-on-the-wrist fees for monopolistic practices are dwarfed by the costs passed on to consumers from Microsoft actually engaging in monopolistic practices in the first place.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
But that is the beauty of trickle-down economy! These filthy rich lawyers over-charge MS. Therefore MS over-charges the consumers. But even though the consumers pay (much) more, these filthy rich lawyers will invest in the economy, creating new jobs and making everyone richer! Consumers should be happy to pay (much) more because it is good for the economy.
bring it on! --- JFK
It's a common misunderstanding that costs are always passed on to consumers. Most companies actually sell at whatever price they can get (the price that the market can bear). They then make a profit by having costs that are lower than that, the lower the costs the better the profit. In a competitive market, there is normally a fairly clear price which things can be sold at set by the price the competition is charging.
Where does money for this come from? Simply, existing shareholders in a company which is making less profit get less money.
If a company is a monopoly with a captive market, the calculation is completely different. The question is "what price can we get away with charging without someone stopping us". The idea, in this case, is to try to increase the "percieved value" of the product (so people are willing to pay the price) and to increase the "percieved cost" of the product so that people feel that the cost is justified.
All of this is the reason why the statement from Microsoft is tantamount to and admission of being a monopoly, and further, given that this is a discussion about illegal overcharging, it seems like a clear admission that Microsoft intends to break the law again.
The fact is the MS is in a position that most other corporations would love to be in - not simply just being a monopoly but actually dictating to it's customers whatever it likes, rather than in most other industries when the customer has the power of choice and some influence over product pricing.
Whether this is good for Linux or not is irrelevant - the fact is that the user base MS has is no longer a customer but a dependant in the same way a drug addict needs a dealer - in other words, customers taking some control and forcing MS's hand.
What this needs is a few big MS customers to simply refuse to pay those license fees and to stop upgrades (and no, I'm not talking about just moving to Linux) - then there is some likelihood of vesting power back into the customers' hands such that MS products are bought based on their quality and pricing, rather than just because they are depended on.
It is very dangerous to allow a corporation to have this much influence & power over its customers - if the customers just "lay down and die" now, then this kind of event will happen more frequently as MS gets more confident in its bullying tactics. This will get *much* worse unless people start acting now.
Incidentally, before anyone accuses me of Linux zealotism, my attitude always has been that Linux's continued success should be based on the postivie aspects of delivering what people want rather than MS negativity forcing people to migrate to it.
In this case, migration to Linux is an option but hitting MS in its corporate wallet is what is needed to counter this action - users should just continue using the MS software they have and not upgrade. Corporate users should look at the licenses they have a maybe start cutting back on Office licenses, possibly handing out Open Office to users who don't need the full capabilities of MS Office.
These are actions that can be taken that will not necessarily affect the user environment greatly but that will send a message to MS that the bullying must now stop.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Go get them!
Man, I think this is just awful. You pay your taxes to ensure that teh government can prosecute anti-trust cases, and then the company that gets sued (who makes billions of dollars in PROFIT every quarter from their business practices) decides to pass along the costs of losing to the consumers. No matter what happens, the consumer pays for it.
Shame on Microsoft. I think this is the first time that they REALLY pissed me off about this.
They are realy just pointing out that fines are not enough punishment (and end up punishing the consumer not them)! The other options are jail and death!
Sindri Traustason.
The fact that you mentioned depenancy hell means you haven't used Linux on the desktop for a while. All the distros I have tried (Fedora, Ark, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Lindows (before it was Linspire), and Gentoo) have had dependancies solved ages ago.
And I am skilled and I don't tell people to RTFM. In fact I replied to another user on this thread on how to get their mother to use Firefox.
So I invite you to try a distribution that automatically resolves dependancies and see why I called it FUD. Mandrake 10 is a good choice. KDE 3.2 is really slick and easy to use. Its what I am using now!
If someone persistently breaks traffic laws, they lose their priveledge to pilot an automobile. If you break anti-competitive laws, you get barred from that marketplace.
It has been said that it's hitting people in the wallet that really hurts. I don't think so. Hitting them in their ability to fatten their wallets is what truly hurts, and hurts in a way feared in advance and not easily forgotten. Stop Microsoft from developing or releasing anything related to IE or Windows or Office products for two years. Now that would get their attention and cause them to pause before acting with reckless abandon and total disregard for the law.
Those who think that 'what is good for Microsoft is good for America' say that because they fear that hurting Microsoft hurts themselves. But that is simply not true. Sure, there are a lot of jobs at Microsoft, but those jobs exist to answer market demand for the products offered. Bridling a ferocious company like Microsoft does not in any way destroy market demand. In fact the innovation permitted by the destruction of such a dictatorial central planning authority is often the best thing that can happen to an ecosystem. Especially when you consider that Microsoft does not innovate in markets, they distort.
Think of it this way. If you suffered from blindness and could be cured, would you worry about your cure putting your overcharging Braille publisher out of business?
is that it means if I have to buy a laptop, it will be more expensive. Because you don't get any affordable laptop without being forced to pay for Windows and Works and other crap.
Never mind that you format the shit away right at the start: you still have to pay for it.
And you have to pay whatever Microsoft thinks appropriate to charge you for something you are not going to use.
Sure they do. The real question to ask is 'do they care'.
The answer is no. As either way they make billions and increase market share.
Just that with those pesky laws, its a bit slower.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Everything, even the law, must step aside in the name of corporate profitability.
Microsoft, the Krup of our time.
Personally, I'm not at all shocked. What has me outraged is that the courts just can't seem to figure this out.
In theory, the fines and penelties are supposed to be corrective in nature, that is, they are meant to hurt the bottom line. Without that hurt, the behaviours will predictably continue.
If MS were competing in a healthy market, this wouldn't be a problem. They would be unable to raise prices without losing sales. The fact that they can just make up for it in higher prices should send a message to the government loud and clear.
Since MS has such a rich history of not getting the point, it's clear that the only way a fine will be corrective will be if it forces them to raise prices so high that they lose their monopoly status. Anything less than 50 billion just won't do it. If they still don't get the point that their illegal practices must stop, make it 100 billion. Make it clear that next time it's going to be 200 billion.
In other words, make sure they know that they will NOT profit from criminal activity.
Before anyone claims that that is too harsh, consider that when an individual goes to prison, they lose 100% of their income for the duration of their sentence. If they lose everything they own because of that, well, too bad.
According to the article, they make (before fines) about 1.8 billion in a 3 month period.
In other words, scaled to an individual, in the latest anti-trust case in the EU, they got 30 days (roughly, time served). The total of 2 billion is more or less 120 days for what has to be their fifth or sixth conviction.
Keep in mind that none of this even includes the fact that an individual with a felony conviction has their ability to earn money perminantly damaged, and they suffer a lot more than just loss of income for the duration of their sentence. What are the odds of an MBA with five sequential felony convictions ever getting another white collar job?
What sort of sentence might an individual get for their fifth conviction for the same felony? I'll bet a lot more than 120 days.
No wonder MS seems so smug. What sociopath wouldn't be smug after managing to plea bargain grand theft down to disturbing the peace five times in a row?
Doesn't matter if its Microsoft or any other corporation, the costs of punishment ALLWAYS end up in the lap of said companys customers one way or another.
The only thing that's effective is either fine (or jail if appropriate) the owners of the company or force a liquidation, anything else is just a strike in the air.
/greger
Rolling your metaphorical eyes at MS doesn't really invalidate their point. This is exactly what happens when government attempts to interfere with and limit natural monopolies which do not use unconsensual force or defrauding to establish their dominance - the overhead is passed on to the end-victim, the consumer. And as government has a monopoly on the use of force, Microsoft can't do anything about it. "Absorbing the costs" is not possible when a government ultimatum and your company's freedom and ability to operate unmolested are at stake, and when the aforementioned costs lead to no tangible benefit for the company.
1. Erh . . . I don't know about your company, but my company sells ABOVE the cost of each unit (aka, COGS) in order to cover their fixed costs, one time costs (like, legal fees), and opportunity costs (which can be seen as the investors' opportunity costs in investing their money in MS). I.E., rent does not increase per unit costs (talking variable, not COGS here), but if your rent goes up, you better create more revenue to cover that cost
2. Right, and now that the cost of windows has increased, they must compensate by INCREASING the price in order to maintain their optimal level of profits. Since the consumers don't have much choice (definition of a monopoly), roughly the same amount gets consumed (a little less, but not enough less that their revenue does not increase). In a competivite market, MS would have no choice but to have its optimal level of profis decrease since a large enough amount of consumer would flock elsewhere if their price were to increase (since price elasticity would be high).
The result is that MS pays the legal fees and is able to maintain its profit targets by passing the costs down to the consumer.
You are confusing accounting "variable costs" with economic "marginal cost." These legal costs ARE part of economic marginal cost, as well as are opportunity costs. Think about it, if MS were to STOP producing Windows, would they still be incurring these legal costs? That is how economists distinguish between marginal and fixed costs.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
First I don't agree with Microsoft being a monopoly. PCs are just a small part of the computer world. Microsoft has quite a few competitors on that platform, they just happen to offer what people want and what people think they need. They don't control both the hardware and the software thereby lessing their total dominance. I don't think XP or MS products are addictive, they just simply do what little people need their computers for. There are suitable OSes but face it, there isn't a real reason to run much of anything else other than a Windows derivative if your John Q. Public.
The various government know this, hence they simply come up to the plate and tell Microsoft to pay them fines under the guise of "monopoly behaviour". This works out because the public believes that the fines are for just that, monolpolistic behaviour. Microsoft pays the fines because this is a no win situation for them, they just treat it as the expense of doing business. This turns around and becomes yet another indirect tax.
Whether or not you choose to buy a Microsoft product or not you will pay this "Tax" in one form or another.
Regardless, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO RUN THEIR PRODUCTS ON YOUR PC. No one does. However nothing else is viable as a solution to John Q. Public. Linux + StarOffice - Get real. The configuration woes of setting up Linux are what us geeks when through in our DOS and Win3x days. Do you think anyone wants to do that now? Hell I don't want to set up linux boxes for people I know because they will ask for things I know are a bear to solve. They will have hardware which just doesn't work or there are no drivers for.
I tell them either get a cheap windows machine or if they are anti-MS go get a cheap iMac.
The lesson isn't for Microsoft, its for us. Fines are not the cost of doing business, they are embedded taxes that the consumer gets to pay.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Just about the only mechanism that I can see for the difference is if MS won hatred or sympathy sufficent to change what customers would be willing to spend on software.
Wikileaks, no DNS
MS is a convicted monopoly. And now let us think about what monopoly might mean in terms of earnings. And then let us ponder the fact that MS has 60$ billion in the bank.
And now please think again if what you have written applies to this case or is simply beside the point.
Every single cost of doing business in generally passed on to the consumer. High gas prices drive up the cost to the consumer, a big new labor contract drives up cost to the consumer. Taxes are huge ones that are passed on to the consumer. It's smart. M$ has a responsibility to it's shareholders to turn a profit and continue to grow. If they can do that with they current business model then that's what they need to do.
How about this: Whenever a corporation is "fined" for breaking the law, require them to issue new stock equal to the amount of fine. This stock is issued to the SEC who mandates all stock purchases must be made from this pool at the stock's price when the fine was announced; no privately held stock can be sold until this newly issued stock is sold to realize the cash value of the fine. Prohibit the company from buying its own stock for one year. An added bonus penalty for eggregious cases would be to require them to expense the issued stock as well.
This punishes the company by reducing its share price, which price increases cannot easily make up -- it'd be unrealistically complicated to translate this kind of penalty into an operating expense. It also can depress the share price by diluting the share pool, effectively punishing shareholders who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the illegal behavior.
Prohibiting the corporation or its officers from buying their own stock for one year prevents them from buffering investors from the penalty by buying the stock with their illegal cash and effectively un-diluting the share pool.
I think a class action should be started immediately. The fines, legal costs, etc. are supposed to punish the offending company, not the customers of a monopoly. Since MSFT is now a "Monopoly" they shouldn't be able to hose the customers.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
1. Erh . . . I don't know about your company, but my company sells ABOVE the cost of each unit (aka, COGS) in order to cover their fixed costs, one time costs (like, legal fees), and opportunity costs (which can be seen as the investors' opportunity costs in investing their money in MS). I.E., rent does not increase per unit costs (talking variable, not COGS here), but if your rent goes up, you better create more revenue to cover that cost
You can't sell what people won't buy. You can't just increase profit by increasing price if you are already selling at an optimum price per quantity.
2. Right, and now that the cost of windows has increased, they must compensate by INCREASING the price in order to maintain their optimal level of profits. Since the consumers don't have much choice (definition of a monopoly), roughly the same amount gets consumed (a little less, but not enough less that their revenue does not increase). In a competivite market, MS would have no choice but to have its optimal level of profis decrease since a large enough amount of consumer would flock elsewhere if their price were to increase (since price elasticity would be high).
The users have a choice as some others on Slashdot have noted. They can choose to not purchase Windows (stick with an older version or purchase a substitute).
The result is that MS pays the legal fees and is able to maintain its profit targets by passing the costs down to the consumer.
No they don't. Less people will buy a product if the price goes up unless it's perfectly inelastic, which Windows is not.
You are confusing accounting "variable costs" with economic "marginal cost." These legal costs ARE part of economic marginal cost, as well as are opportunity costs. Think about it, if MS were to STOP producing Windows, would they still be incurring these legal costs? That is how economists distinguish between marginal and fixed costs.
First off, variable and marginal costs are both terms used in Economics. These legal costs are definitely not part of marginal cost, does every Windows product Microsoft produce cause lawyer fees to go up? No
Opportunity costs are what Microsoft is losing for not putting their resources in another market. Yes, if Microsoft were to stop producing Windows they would still incur legal costs. This is a variable cost in the long run and a fixed cost in the short run. This has nothing to do with the price Microsoft sets for Windows; it just decides their exit strategy.
I believe you are confusing your terms.
I can't believe I applied for a job there. I'm so ashamed.
http://www.deadtroll.com/index2.html?/video/ossuck scable.html~content
I find this video true to the real factor of OSes. MS sucks, Linux is getting easier but still has a hell uva learning curve,,,,look at the video for yourself.
(Of course that doesn't keep me from tooling around town in a Focus. Just goes to show, even cynics are goldfish.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
An easy fix.
Adjust the law;
The first 50% of the fine comes from seizing and selling at auction the primary residences of the board members, then proceeding on to their other assets.
The next 25% comes from the "C" officers personal finances. (CEO, CTO, etc.) If additional money is needed, start down the latter.
The last 25% is converted into a formula (pro-rated and regressive) of minutes in jail. Spread it out and start at the top. At a big company it migh translate to 3 or 4 days in jail for a lot of management.
See if the company feels like shaking off that.
'Somebody ends up paying for this,' said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. 'These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.'
I think that's one of the points: it reduces a little one of Microsoft's unfair monopolistic advantages--namely to set prices arbitrarily. Unfortunately, it doesn't go far enough.
Just jail the people in charge.
;)
;).
If you want to let them still operate the company let them email from prison, with the infamous Bubba breathing over their shoulder. Penalizing by time hurts both rich and poor (except in some countries the dirt poor may have a better quality of life in prison - free food, lodging).
In my country, managers risk jailtime for copyright infringement. Believe me, the bosses do get nervous. Fines are paid by the company, but jailtime really hurts - it's paid out of your own life[1].
It's obvious how the MS bosses feel about the whole thing.
The USA seems a bit screwed up in that respect- letting a company found guilty of overcharging pay its fines and legal fees by overcharging some more. Maybe the lawyers are overcharging - but hey no court has found them guilty of it yet.
Was that the highest court the US has? Talk about "contempt of court". Better add earmuffs to the already blindfolded Statue of Justice, to help deaden the sound of laughter around the world.
What next in the US? MS starts making electronic voting systems or buys up Diebold? Talk about X Boxes...
[1] Of course some ppl here run businesses fronted by fake bosses, so that if stuff happens, the fakes go to jail, and the fake's families get compensated double the fake's salary or something like that. But you can't really run a big company that way
Doesn't affect me one bit.
Seriously, they're just punishing their loyal customers. I love it.
BlackNova Traders
Why are the settlements generally paid in Microsoft software then? It doesn't cost them any more. It isn't as if Microsoft is losing money either, they have a gross profit margin of 80%. Many businesses would love to have 5%.
Corporations try to avoind payiung much in terms of taxes because profits are supposed to be taxed when shareholders get paid. If the company AND the shareholders that own the company are taxed at both points, then it is double taxation of the same income. Whiners complain of "corporate welfare" but I bet if those whiners were taxed twice by the same agency for the same tax, they'll have other things to complain about.
And to answer that question... I don't think they care why there are laws. What they care about is prices... and penalizing them when YOU decide to break the law will only serve as motivation for them to jump ship.
Microsoft tells users would suffer from this
Considering these are Microsoft users drones who will pay I think it is perfectly correct and acceptable.
There you are, staring at me again.
For this given level of production the price has increased for MS (if MS did not have an illegal monopoly, they would be selling at a smaller quantity).
MS does not need PERFECT elasticity to make it worth while to increase their price. They merely need the increase in additional revenue gained to be greater than the loss due to the additional amount of consumers whose price reserve is now lower than the actual price. They will not be able to recover 100%, but they will be able to recover more than any other non-government entity in existence today.
How about glue in widgets? That is DEFINETLY a marginal cost, right? However, the company does not buy a portion of glue for each widget, right? They buy a tank of glue and allocate the COST to each widget, but the actual tank of glue is not bought but once a month, year, decade, whatever. The more widget they build, the more glue they must buy, but the actual timing of the cash flowing out is usually fixed. Hence, it is how this cost influences their decisions that is important.
Their monopoly has a slightly higher cost for each additional product they sell. The more products they sell due to their monopolistic practices, the higher the monetary penality will be when it comes time to pay. Finally, if MS BELIEVES this will increase their price per product in the SHORTTERM (which we can probably assume to be so since they are evaluated quarterly, so we can make such assumptions unless explicity indicated otherwise) then that means they are treating this like a marginal cost, just as if it were a container of glue in their packaging factory.
Economics is clearly based on perception. When the stock market crashes actual wealth is not destroyed. However, perceived wealth is and consumers react accordingly.
MS perceives this as a marginal cost and is raising its price to maintain optimal profit.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
This boils down to: "If we'd just stop breaking the law, our products would be cheaper".
Why does this remind me of a sweatshop mentality?
"Anyone who reports of abuses in this shop will be beaten severely!"
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I guess Microsoft has been dipping into Rambus' stash, must be some pretty good stuff. What's next? Will they take a hint from RIAA and sue their (former) customers for not buying Windows at its new higher price?
Laws are for controlling the common folk.
I'm not sure exactly who the "they" is in your question, but this default case covers most situations:
In this supposedly enlightened age, as the roots of globalization branch, grow and strengthen and nations install governments that are little more than paid operatives of corporations, said corporations develop a sense of omnipotence and the companion view that laws that do not work in their favor are mere repairable obstacles on the road to greater corporate wealth; an artifact of a less enlightened time that can be removed with the judicious application of money and, until they are removed, the penalties for the violation of which are entered into ledgers as just another "cost of doing business" that will ultimately passed on to the consumer. The sad, albeit anthropological, fact is that since greed and vanity are key characteristics of most politicians, many politicians are happy to accept deferred positions on that road repair crew in exchange for assistance in their appointment. They may end up repairing the road to hell, but that is irrelevant to them since they probably won't be around to see it completed and would likely never be held accountable for the impact of their work, since they tend to control the formation of laws that would hold them accountable.
So, to answer you question: to many corporations, understanding why there are laws is moot. They understands very effective means to deal with them. Among the those means:
1) Affix a surcharge to the cost of all goods
2) Return a small portion of that surcharge to people in positions to influence laws and treaties to the corporations' benefit
3) Profit. ;-)
Sigs are bad for your health.
...that the TCO of MS Windows goes up.
With all the settlements, disputes and
infringement they have done, there are
no assurances that what they give you in
code is truly theirs.
Sounds like the same hogwash they have been
passing over to F/OSS solutions.
you know, the risk of getting legal troubles, and the fact that its users can't just "quit" it?
What makes everyone here think that Microsoft is somehow obligated to run their business so as to help their competitors out, or provide products at whatever price a bunch of computer-enthusiasts arbitrarily deem is "appropriate"?
If you don't like Microsoft, you are welcomed *not* to use Microsoft products. See Articles on Microsoft.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Microsoft has 50 billion dollars in cash lying around. Someone tell me, why can't they use any of that? I thought they were keeping it around for lawsuit expenses and settlements?
In a world where anti-trust laws were actually enforced, Microsoft should, and would be smacked with a punishment for this so fast their head would spin. The fact of the matter is that because of the Justice Department's suit against them, they are supposed to be watched to make sure they conform to the law. I sincerely doubt they are actually being observed in fact, or they wouldn't have the guts to say this. In the least, this should give class action lawyers a field day. Anybody for more lawsuits against MS? Anybody?
Again I say, ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!
When I was younger I really thought that the capitalist system was just like nature. Only the strong survive and that's a good thing. Unfortunately I never considered corporate monopoly or global economy and what that means to those of use that don't have millions in the bank and couldn't care less if gas cost $5.00 a gallon. And people still insist that Bill Gates isn't evil! Hah!
"I'm gonna screw 'em 'till they scream and then I'm gonn just make 'em pay more for the priviledge!! Somebody get that damn penguin outta here!!" Bill (Pearly) Gates talking to Steve (Wadda you look'in at!!) Balmer (Well, that's what I heard was said...)
How about another example: With rising gas prices, do you see stuff at the grocery store raise by 10% overnight to cover the extra REAL shipping costs they are paying? Do Auto part suppliers get to raise prices for cost of health insurance of steel prices going up 20% in the last year? Of couse not! Those buinsesses live in competitive markets and the first one to "blink" on price will often loose sales or violate pricing contracts with their customers. Heck, right now many business are actually LOWERING prices to stay afloat instead of raising them when they really NEED the increases to be profitable!
Sure, MS can raise it's prices...but the fact that their management can openly tell that to the news...because they got fined by the govt no doubt... only reinforces the fact that they are operating outside the bounds of "real" capitalism. It reinforces the fact that they are a preditory company and that suggestion that prices would increase instead of mearly paying it from cash-on-hand means that they are not even sorry for abusing the market position they have!
It's like Michael Jackson showing up to court riding in a bus full of boy scouts!
Fine. Raise prices. More people use Win products than any others? OK. Maybe they have no choice. But some people won't upgrade, some people won't buy a better computer, some (rare) schools and librarys will use Linux instead. I went from Win95 to Win98 to XP home. And each time, I saw a stability benefit, fair 'nuf. And I saw my RAM demands increase as well. I for one have had enough.
(posted anonymously because this comment sucks.)
Companies get taxed for the goods they buy, the land they own, some of their equipment (taxes on company vehicles), products they sell in most states (sales tax), and wages they pay to employees. The owner of a company can withdraw money directly out of a company without taxation (though I could be wrong), but generally the owner is paid a wage just like everyone else. Since shareholders are owners, them being paid a wage and taxed isn't any different than any other company. The fact is, everything tends to be taxed multiple times which just advantages vertical monopolies. I don't pity shareholders.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
..... Then I blame MS illegal activity for .....
The TCO calculators being incorrect....
Someone needs to add a RICO act function into the equasion.
Free MS Security Training
Perhaps their coffers aren't too empty.
How stupid would people have to be to believe that justification? Yeah, they are being bled dry because they are having to take money from the cash pile.
'These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.'
I've heard this one before, and it makes me (as an armchair economist) absolutely livid. There is absolutely no correlation between Microsoft's cost of production and their market price. The idea that legal fees and fines or taxes get passed on to consumers is only true in competitive markets with a limited supply of the goods in question. Microsoft is selling a product with zero marginal cost (after producing the first copy of a new version of windows, each additional copy has effectively zero cost) in an extremely non-competitive market. Cost of production has absolutely nothing to do with their market price - it is determined entirely by the demand side.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I already paid for Windows 98SE when I bought my old computer. I will not be purchacing it in the future, thus any anti-trust lawsuit that gives me a few bucks is purely to my benefit. Since I will not be purchasing another copy of Windows, the "cost" will not be "passed along" to me.
/usr/games/fortune
If you study the economics of monopoly behaviour, then you know that firms set prices and output based on the demand for their product and the marginal cost of producing that product in order to maximise profits. Since I doubt the marginal cost of printing a CD, a box, and a manual has changed, then the price hike can only be attributed to a change in the demand of microsoft's products. Fixed costs such as lawsuit payoffs do not enter the pricing formula unless they raise the expected future cost of lawsuits as an increasing function of units sold. That could be, but I doubt it. For sure, Microsoft has always been maximising its profits and continues to do so. The price hike is completely unrelated therefore to paying for the fixed cost of the lawsuit.
That's how business works, folks. It's just like conservation of matter, energy and momentum. When costs go up, the money to pay for them has to come from somewhere, and a corporation's money ALL comes from its customers. It doesn't matter if the reason is material costs, rents, interest rates, criminal fines, whatever.
Look what happened after the great, historic, multi-billion dollar tobacco industry settlement. The price of cigs went up, that's all. After politicians stopped blowing their trumpets of victory, everything was the same except the government was making more money from smokers.
In principle a company loses market when it has to raise prices, but for Microsoft this probably isn't the case any more than it was for Phillip Morris. Millions of people already buy software from Microsoft, even though the equivalent is available for free. Are they going to switch because it gets a little more expensive? Probably not.
This is a good argument for penalizing corporate executives personally for their business decisions instead of letting them hide behind the corporate shield. Think about this when politicians talk about taking the tax burden off the individual and putting it on wealthy corporations. It's a smoke screen. They all get their money from the same place: you.
...because they are a monopoly.
A monopolist charges the price that maximizes their revenue under the demand curve. This price depends *only* on the demand curve.
Fining Microsoft doesn't change the demand curve for their products (aside from the bad PR) so it doesn't change the price that maximizes their revenue.
So the fine really does come out of Microsoft's profits.
So first consumers get to pay more because Microsoft has a monopoly, then consumers get to pay more to pay for Microsoft's expenses due to having a monopoly. And the expenses of Microsoft employees messing up their technology in order to maintain their monopoly is someplace in there also.
3000$ an hour in legal fees?
I'll say this for Mr Gates to the lawyers... GO FUCK YOURSELVES!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"Microsoft is saying that they can shift their cost curve, customers will pay"
It isn't necessarily monopoly that allows Microsoft to shift their costs but the inelasticity of demand for the goods (Operating systems).
Necessary goods, like say gasoline, has a very vertical (inelastic) demand curve: i.e. a shift in price does not reduce quanity demanded much. If it is exactly vertical then any tax or extra fees are born entirely by the consumer.
Similiarly if the demand curve is horizontal then the business bares all the cost of the tax.
Its alright, the more they raise their prices, the less people that can and will afford it, and the more people will use pirated versions.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This swindle shows the central problem with M$ monopoly crime: corporate liability protection. Properly administered, monopoly crimes would be remedied and punished at the corporate level, directors and owners, as their decisions (active and passive) caused the damage (and continue to do so). But the corporation construct protects them. So they pass the costs along to their customers. As a monopoly, their customers can't just switch to the competition.
.NET vs. VisualStudio, Office vs. Works, Consulting 1, 2, 3. Decimating the company would have unleashed value for everyone, including ginormous shareholders like Gates and Ballmer, who would see the combined value of their parts grow more quickly than the monolithic entity. But their personal power, which chokes the industry and its dependent markets, would be diminished. And a model would be installed for killing these giant krakens before they strangle us with their endless tentacles. Instead, we are dragged to the maelstrom.
Even though Ashcroft's Justice Department and Bush's FTC have obviously given a pass to M$, exactly their kind of corporation, they're just the sizzle on the rotten steak of the original penalty judgement. The only remedy to a monopoly corporation is to destroy the monopoly. M$ should have been split into its vertical components: OS, development tools, applications, media, and consulting. Probably some of those components should have been split into directly competing companies:
--
make install -not war
This is pretty fsckin' hilarious....
Where's our discount for all the years that Microsoft made so much money because they were a monopoly and we had no choice but to pay their outrageous charges?
Well, it matters not to me. I have no intention of paying Microsoft for anything anymore.
Does anyone remember Ayn Rand? She always said that monopolies can only charge so much up to the point where the next most expensive alternative becomes cheaper. And that has happened: Windows has gotten so expensive, with M$ deciding that every additional cost should be passed on to the customer and that the cost of every failure on M$'s part should be paid by their customers, that the relearning involved with Linux has become trivial.
Bye, bye Microsoft!
IANAEconomist, but all of the folks saying, "It's econ 101! In competitive industries, companies can't change prices, MS is warning that they're going to change prices, ergo they're a monopoly!" should be aware that economics has retreated from this simple "price setting" == "monopoly" claim since the 1930's. Now, it so happens that microsoft really is a monopoly. However, the fact that there is some elasticity in their pricing doesn't prove it.
By the "economics 101" definition, common sense tells us that very very few modern industries are "competitive," because in almost all real industries, companies have pricing power. E.g., Nike is not a monopoly, but they obviously have a lot of latitude in how they price their shoes.
The classical market model, wherein producers have absolutely no control over the prices of their products, was a great model for the mercantile systems of the 18th and 19th century, when they were developed. If you're a cotton planter, or molasses distributor, or lumber baron, etc. your production accounts for a small enough fraction of available goods that you really can't effect prices at all; you have no choice but to take the going price.
Very few modern industries fit this model, in part because not many modern industries involve true commodities; there's always some difference between McDonald's and Burger King that's important enough to some consumers that they'll pay a bit extra for their favorite. But also because most industries have a few behemoth leaders that are responsible for most of the production. But even for chemically identical commodities like steel and salt, companies end up having pricing power because so few companies account for so much of the production. In the US, if C&H stopped selling sugar, there would be a noticeable "sugar crunch"; this effectively gives C&H an ability to price sugar, since consumers can't credibly threaten to just get all their sugar somewhere else.
(Been reading Galbraith on my AM commute lately. Would genuinely appreciate any real econ types smacking me down.)
Making the company donate millions of dollars to needy organizations (Churches, low income school districts, etc) to be spent however they choose would be a good start, but money should not be the driving force behind making companies pay "penance" for Anti-Trust violations -- there must muST !MUST! be some other kind of penalty that these companies are forced to pay.
.02 and I'm sticking with it. These people must be forced to understand the law and what it stands for.
The non-monetary penalty that I would suggest the government enforce is that of a business ethics class -- you know the one that Bill Gates missed when he dropped out of college to take the software industry hostage? Gates and Ballmer should be FORCED to take that class and be graded on it, just like any other kid who previously failed the class. No less than an "A" grade would be accepted -- and they'd have to take the class over and over until the correct grade was received. I suppose that the next step would be for the companies to establish business ethics divisions (with heavy emphasis on anti-trust education) that are mandatory for all decision making employees to attend.
That's my
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
There is a growing law practice in the US for knocking these fees down. I have been hunting for the article and can't find it. Anyway, in several large recent class action settlements, the class was not satisfied with getting a coupon, while the lawyers walked away with millions. After the case was won, the "class" goes and hires another law firm to attack the initial firm for excessive fees. The fees get significantly reduced. If you find the article, please post it!
when you feel like it. If you disagree, just post why, doesn't matter to me, this is words on a screen, can't hurt much one way or the other.
and by the way, I only use my screen name here, the only time I post anon is little one sentence stoopid funnies that don't mean much, never any flames or anything.
Do the math
As good as is sounds unfortunately, this is not true.
Only 2 weeks ago my company held this "brainstorming" session about what we could do, to be more open-source-ish and one of the things that came out was that we couldn't use open source to reduce our costs, since Microsoft is giving us such a "good deal" (Something like 30-40% off list price) with the site-license we have.
Our Servers dont cost us that much (~ 130.000 Euros/Year). It's the desktops with MS Office that cost real money, and nobody thinks it's realistic to switch even a part of our userbase over to Linux/OO.
We work a lot with external data and MS Office compatibility in OpenOffice still sucks..
Everyone realised we were in a Microsoft Lock-in and the bosses were not to happy about it..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Gee, no room in the 80% margin to cover the costs incurred establishing those same margins.
life sucks being them
In truth, they've recalculated the price point, and the fines they've been subjected to are a good PR reason to charge the higher price. The fines cannot be the real reason, unless people's tastes have changed as a result of them.
Bad economics with psuedo-moral justification isn't that rare though, is it?
Wikileaks, no DNS
It's the OpenOffice compatibility in the MS-Office that sucks, not the other way around.
... the more I think you may be correct as regards closed source propietary software. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see stolen code in a lot of it, if it was honestly audited by independent third parties. Right now, fat city for them, snag what they want, claim it as their own, no one (more or less, very broadly speaking) can look at it. Change a little here and there, poof,it's their "own" IP.
Can 0 worms some day.
The whole point of fining them to begin with is so that they learn a lesson... if they are just going to shrug it off and rape the consumers for the lost sums, then why impose a fine on them to begin with. There needs to be a better punishment alternative, designed specifically for microsoft, so they will actually learn a lesson.
More anti-trust laws. The revune loss from breaking these laws cannot be passed down to the consumer. They are going to go broke eventually if they try this.
So deliciously evil. They pay the fine for monopolistic price increases by pushing through a monopolistic price increase.
What's the next step? Suing their customers for giving them a bad reputation when the next worm gets passed around and everyone running microsoft loses three days patching their systems?
Basically, Microsoft is so entrenched now that they can dictate terms to governments by threatening economic slowdowns, and hence, poor showings on election day.
Essentially, Microsoft now has enough economic power to also possess de-facto political power.
- undoware.ca
Are just power grabs by greedy politicians. In the 1920s, the Sherman Act was averaging 20 convictions per DAY. "Anti-trust" is just the actions of one coercive monopoly attacking the actions of non-coercive so-called monopolies.
The only times that a company can get away with this is if it is either a monopoly or sells addictive products. This is why the government can jack up the prices of cigerettes cia taxes.
Actually, state governments have found that demand for cigarettes is quite elastic. The new cigarette taxes (well, several years old now) have produced vastly less revenue than anticipated, because consumption of cigarettes has dropped whererever the taxes have been instituted.
To be fair, some people say that that's just because the people are now buying their cigarettes from other sources such as Indian reservations which are exempt from the tax.
Look it from the other end. What was the Government truly trying to accomplish?
Taxation.
They could easily have "fixed" Microsoft with organizational or enforced conduct. The problem would have been solved, but it would not result in almighty revenue.
Why "fix" a cash cow?
The Government knows MS has a monopoly. They also know monopolies can charge pretty much any rent. They also know a fine, to any large business, is simply a cost of doing business.
Simple logic, even for a Government droid. They aren't putting a fine to MS - they're just levying another tax.
"By buying Micro$oft products, you support corporate terrorism!"
I heard that Linux spits.
A company that is convicted of being a monopoly can't be sued into behaving. It has to be dismantled. This is a perfect example of why that's the case.
The fines that are awarded, alternatively, could be secured by seizing the companies assets and either placing them in the public domain, where IP is concerned, or auctioning them to pay some recompense to the people hurt by the company. But even so, if you leave the company intact, it will just do the same thing again. I know of no example of any monopolistic company giving up it's bad behavior if it could continue to break the law and still make a profit.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
You bet they do. There are these laws because their political opponents won the last round. Customers don't have a "right" to fair pricing, and Microsoft don't have a "right" to charge a fee for every copy of Windows that is made - these are artificial conditions created as a result of politics and backed up by government coercian, financed by taxation. Neither more nor less. This is the basis of every legal system.
The Bush Administration Bullies Its Electorate -
The real issue here is not the price increases as they stand - its basically the fact that its a message from [the Bush Administration] to its electorate , essentially saying to them Use your influence to stop the government hassling us or well make you foot the cost of any legal action.
The fact is the BA is in a position that most other dictators would love to be in - not simply just being a monopoly but actually dictating to its electorate whatever it likes, rather than in most other governmental approaches when the electorate has the power of choice and some influence over product pricing.
Whether this is good for the Democrats or not is irrelevant - the fact is that the user base Bush Administration has is no longer a electorate but a dependant in the same way a drug addict needs a dealer - in other words, electorate taking some control and forcing the Bush Administrations hand.
What this needs is a few big Bush Administration electorate to simply refuse to pay those license fees and to stop upgrades (and no, Im not talking about just moving to the Democrats ) - then there is some likelihood of vesting power back into the electorates hands such that Bush Administration products are bought based on their quality and pricing, rather than just because they are depended on.
It is very dangerous to allow a Presidential Administration to have this much influence & power over its electorate - if the electorate just lay down and die now, then this kind of event will happen more frequently as the Bush Administration gets more confident in its bullying tactics. This will get *much* worse unless people start acting now.
Incidentally, before anyone accuses me of the Democrats' zealotism, my attitude always has been that the Democratic Partys continued success should be based on the postivie aspects of delivering what people want rather than Bush Administration negativity forcing people to migrate to it.
In this case, migration to the Democrats is an option but hitting the Bush Administration in its corporate wallet is what is needed to counter this action - users should just continue using the Bush Administration governance they have and not upgrade. Citizens should look at the licenses they have a maybe start cutting back on Freedom Restrictions , possibly handing out Duct Tape to users who dont need the full capabilities of Bush Administration War-on-Terror .
These are actions that can be taken that will not necessarily affect the electorate environment greatly but that will send a message to the Bush Administration that the bullying must now stop.
For this given level of production the price has increased for MS (if MS did not have an illegal monopoly, they would be selling at a smaller quantity).
You are partially right here, costs have gone up for MS but it is not based on a level of production. The lawyer fees are the same whether Microsoft sells 500 thousand or 500 million copies of Windows.
MS does not need PERFECT elasticity to make it worth while to increase their price. They merely need the increase in additional revenue gained to be greater than the loss due to the additional amount of consumers whose price reserve is now lower than the actual price. They will not be able to recover 100%, but they will be able to recover more than any other non-government entity in existence today.
Microsoft has already set the price of Windows to an amount that produces the most profit. Raising it a little bit will lower profits. If Microsoft raises the price, less people will buy it.
In a competitive market, a firm's marginal revenue will stay pretty much the same as their quantity of production increases. Since Microsoft has a monopoly, they control the quantity of Windows (let's just worry about legal copies). If Microsoft wants to sell more copies of Windows they have to lower price. Microsoft "picks" the price based on the amount of quantity supplied that will produce the most profit. This quantity is where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. They then pick the price demanded at this quantity (which is above marginal revenue and cost).
An interesting segway, marginal cost for Windows and software in general is very low and flat: producing 1,000 more copies after you have already produced 1,000 is very cheap. This could explain why Windows has become cheaper over the years. Since Microsoft's marginal cost is really low and flat, they can choose a quantity where marginal revenue is near 0. This means that the price Microsoft sets is a really close direct relationship to how many people are in the market to purchase an OS. This means Windows will become cheaper the more people buy it. It also makes their monopoly that much more "perfect." They don't need to work as hard as, say, a manufacturer to find ways to cut production costs.
How about glue in widgets? That is DEFINETLY a marginal cost, right? However, the company does not buy a portion of glue for each widget, right? They buy a tank of glue and allocate the COST to each widget, but the actual tank of glue is not bought but once a month, year, decade, whatever. The more widget they build, the more glue they must buy, but the actual timing of the cash flowing out is usually fixed. Hence, it is how this cost influences their decisions that is important.
Their monopoly has a slightly higher cost for each additional product they sell. The more products they sell due to their monopolistic practices, the higher the monetary penality will be when it comes time to pay. Finally, if MS BELIEVES this will increase their price per product in the SHORTTERM (which we can probably assume to be so since they are evaluated quarterly, so we can make such assumptions unless explicity indicated otherwise) then that means they are treating this like a marginal cost, just as if it were a container of glue in their packaging factory.
Hmm, this is an interesting point. The lawyer fees cannot be considered per-unit costs since they are tied to per/hour salaries, but what you say about the monetary penalty being applied to a per-unit cost may be true. This would mean that Microsoft is assuming to incur more penalties that will be based on how many copies of Windows they sell. I am not sure, though, that they would be able to get enough accurate data to estimate how much loss per copy of Windows sold in the future they will incur. It would be interesting to find the total amount of damages based on per copy of Windows sold over the past few years.
Looking at the California case, the court put the price Microsoft overcharged
Being a monopoly IS NOT a crime. Abusing monopoly IS. Repeat this ten times. You're dealing with monopolies on a daily basis. Open your faucet - there you go, you're buying water from a monopoly. Turn on your light. There you go again. Have you tried to switch electricity and water/sewer providers lately?
Implication: microsoft COULD choose to increase prices if it felt that keeping them low(er) wasn't strategically worthwile.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
WTF??? This didn't add anything to the discussion, other than telling us how much you hate the Bush Administration...and how all the evils in the world are due to Republicans. Get a grip my friend, join the real world.
If MS could increase their prices arbitrarily, and they didn't, then they're idiots for leaving money on the table. This isn't a circumstance where a business with a tiny margin has to pass costs on to avoid taking a loss. MS gets enormous margins, and an obscene amount of cash on hand, so this judgement made no difference to their business, really. So if windows could have been selling for more before, it should have been.
Ultimately, I think they're just being petulant, and trying to get the public on their side from some sort of grassroots outrage, because the evil state attorneys general made windows more expensive. Good luck guys.
Somehow, they'll argue this also increases the TCO of linux. ;)
Its already been proved that the BBC is the most viciously anti-American news organisation on the entire planet.
They make even Al Jazera look like the Boys Scouts, seeing that the BBC has had far,far more practice at spewing out vivious anti-American hatred, anti-American propaganda and pure hatred for DECADES..
The BBC is now universally recognised by clear thinking people everywhere as nothing but the propaganda, dirty tricks and disinformation department of Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein.
This attack against Microsoft is just another cheap shot at a very succesful American company by the evil BBC.
Its of no irrelevance, its immaterial and incompetnet.
It goes striaght to the garbage can, to join all the other rubbish that comes out of the BBC everyday.
So these lawyer clowns from California think they should be paid $3000 per hour for basically copying huge swatches of passages from the Microsoft Federal anti-trust case ruling and presenting them before a judge?
When did cutting and pasting become worth $3000 an hour?
Are these two-bit lawyers rocket scientists or did they just discover the cure for cancer? No.
So how on earth do they work it out that the amount they want to claim is actually more than have been claimed by all consumers so far in this case?
If any proof were needed for how sleazy, corrupt, greedy, nasty and vicious lawyers are, this has got to be it.
Luckily, these evil lawyers stand very little chance of winning anything close to the outrageous amounts they are trying to steal.
They should really bring in new laws to put such thieving lawyers in jail for a very long time for atempted robbery, extortion and terorism!!
This is the fundamental folly of settling an antitrust case with an actual monopolist for dollar relief, in lieu of structural relief or limitations on how such settlements will be paid for.
This is not a problem with Microsoft for doing nasty things, it is a problem with Microsoft's overreaching by using a structural monopoly power to do the nasties. They do it BECAUSE THEY CAN. If they can do those things, they can also charge more for their product, particularly if they have so weakened potential competitors that the potential competitors can no longer leverage the fact of that increase to approach the marketplace.
This fact, that damages for Microsoft's conduct will get passed along, probably with impunity, to the consumer who does not have a meaningful alternative to choose, is an argument against settling the case. But since Justice wanted to settle (after a change of administrations to a president whose warchest was well-littered with lawful donations from Microsoft), there was no real check other than the judge, whose ability to approve or disapprove the settlement is narrowly circumscribed to clearly unreasonable deals.
Juries are handing out huge rewards to people who sue doctors for malpractice, insurance companies see this and increase the premiums, doctors/hospitals see the increased insurance payments and have to increase what they charge.
It doesn't matter whether or not MS is a monopoly (although I'd argue that it's a natural monopoly). People will continue buying for sake of convenience.
Back in the day, if all your friends had VHS, would you go out and buy a Beta?
Another analogy: gas stations along the same road will charge different prices, if things were perfectly competitive, like many people claim, why aren't all the prices the same? Do certain gas stations have a "monopoly" over a section of the road?
If Apple ever decides to release OS X for x86 commercially then he has me as a customer for sure, I wonder how many others would switch?
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
It always amazes me when I hear the bloodlust of people raving in favor of higher corporate taxes, since they're actually begging to pay higher hidden taxes themselves.
--- Bill
Lawyers are making a fortune from MS software, and the one's paying the cost are ultimately the consumers. So, not only does antitrust legislation infringe on MS's right to free trade, it doesn;t even help the people it was designed to help. Instead, antitrust legislation helps companies unable to compete steals revenue from companies that the consumers have chosen as the winners. Antitrust legislation is only necessary for govt granted monopolies such as power companies and phone comanies, and we should start questioning why the govt. has granted these monopolies.
Vote for Pedro
At this rate, we will all die from the protections the government places on us.
--- Bill
This occured in the late 20s from what I recall. It lead to explosive growth of corporations and turned the US into the powerhouse it is today.
Now, granted, corporations are physcopaths, but they probably get that from the government which is just slightly nuttier
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Mr. Robert Rosenfeld Is practicing rhetoric, this is nothing more then a political statement. Industry does this same crap all the time. For example, there was a law that was being considered in the state I live in to improve water quality. It's beneficial to the community, right? Well, a company stopped that bill from occurring by threatening job loss. It's a case of FUD.
Just like in this case, Microsoft is using FUD to make the users of their software mad at the litigators instead of Microsoft. They want to trying to create resistance by the general public to those who litigate against Microsoft. Joe Public, sees an increase in cost. His mind wonders why?
Microsoft provides the answer. So now, Joe public is mad at the litigators. Instead of a company that was doing things wrong. Terrorist do this same thing when they bomb a building and say "It's the US's fault".
So the pattern is:
1) Something bad happens by instigator (Microsoft, terrorist, ect...)
2) Victims get mad
3) Instigator justifies action by "imaginary balance"
This "imaginary balance" is exactly what causes groups of people to get into arguments and wars. Eye for and eye. It ends up being an infinite loop. Until something breaks.
Have you ever watched two people argue?
There both trying to TEACH one another. They both want to be the teacher. To teach each other a lesson. So in this case Microsofts statement is a really saying
Were trying to teach you a lesson that litigators are bad.
So what will happen when the price goes up?
People will steal their software and justify it by saying they shouldn't of raised their prices all in order to keep the "imaginary balance" in check.
Assholes blame US treatmenent of our detainees for beheading another American (they probably would have killed him anyways).
Oil companies blame lunar phases for jacking up retail gas prices (funny how the gas in the ground at the gas station has already been paid for, so this makes that gasoline, when sold, even more profitable for the company. Prices don't go up when the next gas delivery is made, which might make more sense...). Oh, and while they might go up $.10 every two or three days, when they stop dropping, do they drop equivalently? Nope... takes a lot longer for prices to drop.
So Microsoft gets hit with a multi-million dollar settlement, and they say they have to raise prices. How much cash do they have sitting in the bank? Yes, this is just another excuse...
Microsoft's customers are not you or me or any other computer buyer, but the VARs (HPaq, Dell, Gateway, et al).
guess i'll just pass the cost on to my customers
Do a google search on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. You'll find references.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Any time a company sues, they claim user costs will go up. Oh really. Did they bother to make a spreadsheet on this. Exactly what are Microsoft's costs compared to their annual revenue????
Furthermore, don't forget that the lawsuit concerns allegedly "ill-gotten" gains. So the fine would be against money the company had already collected illegaly.
The bottom line for why Microsoft raises prices
The bottom line is that Microsoft is one of the most profitable corporations on the planet. They make money hand over fist. As I recall they just made a 4 billion dollar dividend recently.
For a monopolist price gouger, the money spent on defending it's monopoly truly is "The cost of doing business". If MS wasn't a monopoly, Windows would cost $50 per copy instead of $180.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
When you purchase VirtualPC. Microsoft still gets their cut.
Let's get some perspective here.
When Windows XP came out, there was a LOT of consternation in Windows Nation, about how many hardware devices did NOT work with XP out of the box, or only worked crappy, because the drivers MS included with XP sucked. There are entire printer lines, scanner lines, etc., that the manufacturers (HP, Epson, etc) essentially said, "we're not going to make XP drivers for them. Sorry." People either bought new printers or didn't upgrade to WinXP.
So how is this any different?
You have a piece of hardware that you just bought recently and you want to run it on a different OS (That it is Linux and you currently have XP is kind of a red herring. You could just as easily have Win98 and be upgrading to XP...). Of course, you didn't buy the card keeping an eye on future environments for using it. Just about everybody does this anyways, so what is the point?
This is up there with someone who just bought a killer piece of hardware just about when the Mobo makers are switching to different interfaces, and they find out that they will not be able to use said hardware on newer mobos because the new mobos don't have SIMM slots, VESA slots, etc.
As far as the video card goes, Linux is dependent on the hardware vendors either writing binary-only drivers or releasing the specs to others who can write those drivers. In other words, you're blaming the wrong entity here.
Enjoy your video card in XP. Linux runs just fine with a $100 NVidia or ATI PCI-based video card as well.
Besides, since there are not too many games available on Linux that require the killer properties of your video card, it's kind of pointless anyways.
Did you check ATI's website to see if they list your card as having any drivers for Linux available for it? Probably not.
So you have a piece of hardware that only works in XP. And it's Linux's fault.
Corporations do pay taxes on profits, IIRC, but because in the US the requirements for SEC filings (i.e., profits reported to stock investors) are completely different than IRS reporting for taxes, it is way too easy for a corporation to report net profits to investors and report no profit or a net loss to the IRS, through write-offs, etc., which means they don't pay any net taxes.
most people only talk about linux to sound "le3t0" and then play CounterStrike on their Windows XP "box" with the "case mod" and shit.
i finally gave up freebsd on my pc (now 1.2ghz, 1gb of ram) for win2k pro, and use my ibookg4 also w/ panther. i hate linux. i also hate hypocrites... i can't spell greek.
it's not offtopic. it's called an analogy. it's where you compare things.
will the a/c
Create a company Become a monopoly Get sued by Gov. Raise product prices Blame lawsuit Profit!!
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
if demand is inelastic, raising prices increases revenues by definition. it also reduces quantity sold, and thus cost of production. revenue increases, cost falls, thus profits increase. so, the monopolist NEVER chooses a price where demand is inelastic. basic economics.
*italian mofioso voice*
Heya buddy,
Da boss, he just said you have to pay more for protection this week. Apparently, da coppers are asking questions they shouldn't be, and our costs have gone up as a result.
If you don't like it, tell the coppers not to do their job.
"Microsoft: We Break the Law and You Pay (TM)"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Reading all the replies its a good thing Slashdot isnt running the world's corporations... standards of living would plummet.
:D
-
Tech people make fun of business people because they dont know any tech stuff. Business people dont say anything to tech people when they dont know about business stuff. They like having the higher salaries
Seems to sum it up.
Companies can write off legal expenses, even for corporate wrong doing, on their taxes. Oh yeah, the highly profitable Microsoft has paid no US taxes for years..... just like churches, ironically...
This is silly. MS already charges all the market can bear. If not, their marketing department should be fired for leaving money on the table. So, in MS's case, it will be impossible to pass on these legal expenses to consumers. Remember, this is not a public transportation company. It is that simple...
Lsiten, this is not a platform for the "John Kerry Disinformation, Dirty Tricks and Propaganda Campaign" or the "Hate-America French Looking Weasels(John Kerry) Department".
If you want to spew out liberal media hate-Bush nonsense, go join Dan Rather at CBS or the American-hating Canadian weasel Peter Jennings at ABC, so the public recognise you for what you really are, and continue to boycott you accordingly.
This is clearly not the platform for the Bush-hating, left wing extremist weasels!
Get a life, creep!
Did anyone else read this Rumsfeld?
"Hey, you are car sounds like a dying go-kart"?
Jesus. Do they even bother teaching English in school nowadays?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
-- Line by mfdinthea Line ...
You got the nads for that?
Or are you all just two-bit hate phrases?
Here we go: .
.
.
The Bush Administration Bullies Its Electorate
Jack, come on ... this one is so loaded, even a mind-blind big-R repubican like you can see reality in -- oh, but you're the one being used to stop the government (congress and senate???) from giving the Bush Administration just about anything they say... come on. gimme a little refutation on the facts there Jack!
(p.s. you still might be having cro-magnon moment, so just click REPLY TO THIS, again before the latte-like froth spewing from your mouth drips away into a tell-tale stream of drool... )
Granted, 'Dictators' was strong, so consider that retracted (meaning you need to find some extra bile somewhere else -- ummm, how about "HEY JACKASS, CHENY'S SPAWN IS A LEZZIE!' -- hows that work up that gall-bladder? Fair replacement?) So its retracted ... but you gonna say something on the POWER OF CHOICE OVER PRODUCT PRICING? As far as I can tell, the government DEBT is really a BILL sent to all CHILDREN for $50,000 to each of them, due in 15 years How would you like YOUR DAUGHTER 'Jackie' come up to you and say "Daddy Jackass, why do I have to pay for something I didn't want?" -- Well, you might already know what to say right, "Jackie, just you put your head in the sand outside and play" ...
You got a piece for that Jack??? (or are we personal now and I can just call you by your nickname, 'ASS'??!)
Now Jack -- even 'Sir Jack' -- you gonna speak anything that a 'WAR PRESIDENT' like W is saying we NEEEEEEED HIM to keep our kith and kin safe from Al?? Thats what he told me on the TEEVEE -- he's the WARPRESIDENT and we NEEED HIM.
Speak o Sage -- even MS has the decency to keep the drugging to mild euphoria (you use Onenote? its pretty durned euphoric) -- TBA's favorite drug seems a cocktail of booze, oxycontin, and cipro -- after prolonged use you really do start to feel like you've been fdinthea! -- Jack?
....(get your bile stick out!!)
the 'Unifier' Ticket: KERRY/MCCAIN
and before you say a damned word, remember the terrorists video was IN DIRECT RETALIATION for what happened with those prisoners -- so before you bite your tongue off about what those monsters did to that kid on the video, if democracy was working in iraq that kid would still be alive ...
Okay now vomit and throw it at the screen Jack
Dont you think?
and another way of looking at this comment directly is the sunset provisions in the Pat Riot act ... we don't NEED to upgrade to the PERMALICENSE do we???
Whether you're talking about the influence customers have over microsoft or the electorate has over the bush adminstration, it seems the original post is saying the POWER SHOULD LIE WITH THE PEOPLE, and that an honest effort to communicate this to the powers that be, can, and will, work.
Well, I know one thing sure, come November 3rd, we'll know who is right...
Jack this is your last chance to refute any of these parallelisms
According to the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock, Bill Gates's current wealth is $57.9b.
According to the Microsoft Museum timeline, Microsoft was founded 28 years ago.
There are 2000 working hours in a year, at 40 hours/day, 50 weeks/year. As Gates is an officer and presumably exempt, he isn't compensated directly for overtime.
$57.9b/56,000 hours = $1,033,928/hr.
Note that the bulk of his wealth came following Microsoft's IPO in 1986, and most of it in the past ten years -- 1994 - 2004, if you follow the stock price. For the past ten years, his hourly equivalent is closer to $2,895,000/hr. While running what is still an illegal monopoly with a long, long, long track record of ongoing abuses.
Those lawyers are working for peanuts. Ain't no money in justice.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Your problem Seems to be that you're using Fedora Core, never have gotten that to work reliably at all. Hav had catascrophic failures, loss of filesystem, authentication system failed, system hust. . I dunno . .died. Don't like linux problems, bugs switch to debian, slaskware, try Mandrake, or gentoo. Those are good distributions. The major, system wide problems caused by non-interoperability could be fixed if there were a OS-wide consortium of accepted standards. The reason this doesn't exist is because it would remove choice from the operating system, it's primary strength. Choice is the free market economy based on quality. although encouraging developers to write inter-operable software would definitely be a positive thing in my eyes.
btw: Kudzu should be replaced with hotplug asp.
also: when windows XP just "works" I'll switch back... My initial installation routine of Windows XP includes, but is not limited to: manually creating a non-administrative user, removing most of the active services, instaling sygate personal firewall, installing panda-softs anti-virus software, disabling sytem resore, patching, service-packing, removing animation and windoing special affects, installing 3rd party graphics drivers, troubleshoot wifi (unless it's it's intel, cisco, major company), install various other cracks and patches that allow me to uninstall windows somponents like msn explorer and msn messenger, just to name a few. ther's quite a bit more, but my fingers are tired. I do have to do most of these things with red-hat, but then, I use gentoo linux which allows me to select these thiings at install time. Also take into acocunt that after you configured your wifi, it thereafter worked. Also, it's doubtful that you installed sonn after that, which is why it's not really a big deal to invest a day into installing a source-based distribution, it'll last long enough to make the install worthwhile. Don't know how long it will take me to get used to not reinstalling before a LAN Party, I just don't know. </rant></plug type='shameless" url="gentoo.org"> that said, the linux desktop is not for everyone, but it's far closer that you seem to have experienced.
Can I be a Luddite too?
Hey. People don't hate MS because it is MS. They hate it because of its shoddy products and bad business practices. MS has worked very hard to earn the shitty reputation that it has among techies. If you want praise of MS and hagiographies of ole Chariman Bill, then go to an MBA site. If you come to a tech site, then be prepared to deal with the aftermath of decades of 2nd and 3rd rate products and illegal business maneuvers.
"A company that is convicted of being a monopoly can't be sued into behaving."
I don't disagree with your point, but I do have semantic correction to make: A company cannot be convicted of being a monopoly, as being a monopoly is not an illegal offense. A company can be convicted of abusing the powers that they possess as a monopoly and THAT is what MS got in trouble for.
-=(Lord Crosis)=-Andy Rooney of Borg: "Ya ever wonder WHY resistance is futile?"