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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?"
it's just fucking rediculous what these asshats are trying to get away with.
Not as fucking ridiculous as your spelling.
Except there are no games for OSX or linux so we can't switch.
:(
They have a monopoly for a reason
I was acually going to take the time to respond to this in an intellegent and well thought out manner. But I'm *really* tired, so let me just say: What a complete and utter load of grabastical fucktarded bullshit.
I'll eat the 'flamebait' mod on this one and just go back to sleep.
I think you guys are overshooting the point. The only reason these additional costs exist is because MS is a monopolist. (Actually, they're a dominant firm operating alongside a competitive fringe, speaking economically). If MS was anywhere from a price taker (perfectly competitive, rarely exists) to a loose oligopolist, they wouldnt have any additional settlement costs to pass onto their consumers. The convenience store analogy is also not a good one, because convenience stores can be assumed to sell a homogenous set of goods, while MS is highly differentiated wrt its competitors. It's something we'll all have to live with. MS has these costs not because they're a monopolist, but because someone decided to sue them for it and won. The penalty wasn't high enough to make Microsoft rethink its competitive strategy, just high enough to raise the selling price of its software. Maybe nobody should have sued them. That would've been the socially optimal outcome.
So now I got a video card worth well over $400 and I should trash it to go back to a crappier card because Linux doesn't support it?
You spent $400 on a silly graphics card, and one that doesn't support the development of Open Source drivers at that? You're not an 'average user' or a 'power user' -- I think you're what most people on Slashdot would call a 'mug'.