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Microsoft faces Monopoly Lawsuit (again)
james_in_denver writes "Forbes magazine is reporting
that Microsoft will be sued in California for predatory pricing. This lawsuit appears to differ from earlier challenges to MicroSoft's marketplace dominance by entertaining the possibility of a Class-Action lawsuit. This would allow individual users/licensee's to participate in the lawsuit. A notable quote from the full text states: "It's anticompetitive, it's predatory, and it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers, the benefits of innovation that a free marketplace should provide,""
Translation: Lawyers get rich, users/licensees get worthless vouchers.
Oh come on, really, can you really say that just because their OS costs more than most pieces of hardware predatory?
Microsoft is anti-competetive. But this raises the question: ;)
Is the market really free if the state of California tries to regulate it?
I say this is a good thing, but im not that much of a free market lover
And to quote Nelson: "HAHA!"
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Some people like to say that the USA is the home of pure capitalism. However, that's an oversimplification of how our system really functions. I'd rather call it capitalism with gutters on either side of the bowling lane so that when something starts to go off course in a bad way, the law kicks in and makes sure that the bad shot both fails to score, and also cannot go further off course so that it impacts the scores on other lanes.
Microsoft has been on the edge of falling into the gutter for quite awhile, and there's been a lot of people who so far have come close to pushing them in. This is yet another tale in a continuing series of stories about projects that have the potential to just do it this time.
Microsoft has brought some amazing things into the world of computing, but they are far from perfect and in no way deserve to have all of the business power they have successfully amassed. We have to depend on our justice system to take some of that power back from Microsoft and return it into the available pool for everybody else to draw from in order to adjust the situation in a way that corrects for effects of misdeeds done in the past.
I wish them luck... it's about the time market forces delivered us working and cool IT products again.
Yeah. Its always good to have a couple of free, non-refundable, coupons for WinXP Home edition. :\
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
I'm european so I don't know much what's going on there in USA. The thing I noticed is that most interesting news about OSS, and anti-microsoft seem to originate from California.
So I ask you: is that statement in my subject, true?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
"This lawsuit appears to differ from earlier challenges to MicroSoft's marketplace dominance by entertaining the possibility of a Class-Action lawsuit." Um, RTFA? At least 16 other states have had similar lawsuits, including the recent settlement here in Minnesota.
1. Microsoft gets sued, rather nastily, by a whole lot of disgruntled customers. Fear not, peons - Longhorn cometh, with so much added value that you'll be *begging* us to raise the price!
Unless you want WinFS. Or a pre-2006 ship date. Or an OS sans virii.
2. Microsoft's lawyers make a buck, so do everyone else's. Life goes on.
3. Millions of 31337 h4xx0rs stab at Microsoft, PA-Style
4. The YRO section grows ever larger...
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!
Linux is free to anyone who wants it. All the apps are free. How can anyone claim Microsoft is a monopoly that unfairly prices its products? This argument doesn't work anymore. It's a free market. Don't like MS? There's a free alternative. Stop whining.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
That only happens if there's a court-approved settlement before the verdict. If the "California Class Members" masively refuse such a settlement and chose to press forward with the trial, it could be the kind of verdict that bankrupts or at least puts a large dent in a megacompany.
> non-refundable, coupons for WinXP Home edition. :\
Ha! My old company* had a bunch of WinXp Home packages sitting round doing nothing because the way the purchased hardware before I arrived meant that every machine they ordered turned up with XP Home on it, which was then replaced with a volume-licenced copy of XP Pro.
not a sensible use of their money, I felt, so I found a supplier which would give us naked PCs, and dropped volume XP Pro straight on.
Anyway, I digressed but I was going to make a point about the difference between refundable and rebatable - you can get rebates if you don't use a bundled copy of the OS - so a free coupon wouldn't be such a bad thing. Or something. It's getting late here
* disclaimer: I don't work for them any more. I work for them if you see what I mean.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Same thing over and over again. State sues MS. MS challenges. MS Looses (the judges work for the state, right?)
MS "pays" restitution in free liscences. MS is even more entretched.
It's a dance called the:
"The PR Microsoft Litigation CircleJerk shuffle".
At the end of the dance the stains are a bit hard to get out, but the public gets it up the ass everytime.
it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers
Since when are we not all taxpayers? A consumer is almost always inherently a taxpayer in the U.S. A notable exception would be certain untaxed items in some locales, big ones being food and clothing. You also need to get the money somehow so that you can "consume" and that is usually taxed. I hate how we allow ourselves to be called taxpayers because what that means is that we are seen by the politicians as nothing more than those people who give them money. Call me a citizen or constituent, but not just some dumb taxpayer. Shit, I'd rather be called a "voter" than a taxpayer, because if there was only one activity associated with me that one would be better.
I am feeling fat and sassy
"Predatory pricing" is traditionally a term that refers to when a merchant tries to sell a product at a price that is vastly less than what the competitors are selling their product for.
In this regard, if one wants to go after so-called predators (and I'm not one of them) then the government should go after Red Hat and Suse and Mandrake, as they sell far more product in a box and at a far less price than Microsoft.
Once you go down the slope of the madness that is government interfence in the economy, all things are possible, mostly bad.
"In fact," she said, "we've built our business on delivering innovative software at low prices, and have been the market leader in reducing prices while increasing the value contained in software."
Since when is $100-$200 for an OS a 'low price'?
I wonder if this will have any impact on the proceedings? "Independent auditors" recommend Open Source, suggesting that California could save $32 billion.
Can't Microsoft point to reports like this and say, "Hey, look! There's competition!" These reports this might end up serving Microsoft, rather than OSS, in the end!
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
I see your posts.. it seems like that you want to whore karma so I am not surprised, but really..
Some people like to say that the USA is the home of pure capitalism
Who? When? The USA has never had anything resembling "pure capitalism" for a long long time. I would like to see the basis for your statement here because it makes no sense and has absolutely no bearing in history.
The US has not been pure capitalist for a long time. Think of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Even before that, it would not be fair to say the US was pure capitalist, so I do not know where you came up with that silly notion.
California has courts that are friendlier to lawsuits. The lawyers know very well how to use public opinion to get what would otherwise be frivolous lawsuits to work.
Essentially Ms was successfully portrayed as using their marketshare to "thwart" the will of the people. Since no one has taken Microsoft's place as number 1 in PC software Microsoft is automatically guilty AGAIN.
In other words,
Lawyers need new duds. The people get nothing more than a voucher if they are lucky, and everyone who buys a Microsoft product or does buisness with someone who does now pays a "lawyer" tax.
It is the same as the smoking lawsuits. Done under the guise of the "public good", where the public recieves some good and the states and lawyers receive the cash. Call it an embedded tax.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I dont recall anyone ever saying that government has no place in a free market economy. Without government there would be anarchy, and that seems to be bad for business ;).
Government does many things including provide for enforcement of contracts (legal system), provide pure public goods, ontop of busting up monopolies.
>>Microsoft will be sued in California for predatory pricing. This lawsuit appears to differ from earlier challenges to MicroSoft's
Does anyone edit any more?
Everyone gets sued in California. Nothing new about this.
Call me when Vermont or Montana sue MSFT...
Microsoft strategy is just to drag out court proceedings until a regime change in whatever entity is suing them. Pump money into the opposing campaign and -poof!- suddenly lawsuits lose their teeth and disappear.
-Electrawn
Microsoft creates more jobs in one month than you linux fags will do in a life time. Thank god our legal system is rational, microsoft will probably just have to pay a fine.
Why does the opposite of Microsoft have to be Free software? A fair market situation would be if e.g. at least 3 different OSes for PC were sold and would have an equal market share.
The fact that only a free os can compete with Windows proves how ill the software market is. A monoculture is always bad. Even for jobs. If there were real competitors to Microsoft, there would be more people employed. Have you ever questioned how many people lost their job because Microsoft ruined/bought their company?
This is one lame signature, please read the message above instead.
It's not our foult that all the fags work at Microsoft.
This is a very interesting language issue because so many conservative interests like to use the terms interchangeably in defense of Capitalism while they're really quite distinct and even incompatible.
In fact, free market ideas are dangerous to Capitalism. While the US is a good example of an economy that relies heavily on Capitalism, capitalist economies existed long before the US and are considered to have started in 15th Century Venice. Capitalism, as I'm referring to it, is a system where equity markets such as a stock, bond and commodities exchanges where inverstors use their capital to invest in shares play a central role in the economy. Clearly, such equities markets are very important to the US economy, so it is fair to say the US economy is heavily reliant on Capitalism.
But examples of a free market include ideas like international outsourcing. While globalization is clearly a good thing from a free market perspective, it is not necessarily a good thing for shareholders of American corporations or even for those corporations themselves. Taken to its logical conclusion, outsourcing could quickly gut a capitalist economy. So, what's good for free markets in general is not necessarily good for any particular instances of Capitalism such as the Dow or the NASDAQ.
Let's look at another example of a free market activity that hurts rather than helps Capitalist enterprises --second-hand sales. Again it is easy to see that second-hand sales are clearly free market activities, but if it becomes too popular, it begins to erode sales of new items. So, the general idea of free markets and the rather specific instances of Capitalism are often at odds rather than being interchangeable synonyms.
(MS Product->Who they stole or bought it from)
MS PowerPoint->Forethought Presenter
MS FrontPage->VTI FrontPage
MS Visio->Visio
MS SQL Server->Sybase SQL Server
MS Internet Explorer->Spyglass Mosaic
MS DOS->SCS QDOS
MS Visual Foxpro->Fox S/W FoxPro
MS Windows NT->Digital Equipment Corporation
MS DoubleSpace->STAC
Any other examples of the "Great Innovator"?
How about we sue California for predatory larceny of our paycheques ? CA has one of the largetst marginal income tax rates in the US:
http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/ind_inc.html
What about the fact that MS is a convicted monopolist? Is *that* legal factoid beyond your notice - or is your homophobic, redman-chewing attitude ignorant of that?
Microsoft isn't putting any $$$ in my pocket, so why should I put any in theirs?
They benefit from product lock-ins?
Well, then I benefit from product lock-out - specifically their products being locked out of anything I touch ...
So, please explain how that is not the essence of capitalism.
http://asia.cnet.com/news/software/0,39037051,3918 9680,00.htm Microsoft creates a special cut down version of Xp for developing countries, then sells it for $36 USD making it the cheapest windows version available. While selling copies here with a few more features for $200 to $300 USD kind of ironic.
Sure, /. loves to hate MS. But isn't this at some level an inevitable problem? Network effects make dominance of a particular OS inevitable at some level.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
a Rich Uncle Pennybags icon
Monstar L
It will result in the state settling for some relatively rediculously paltry sum, 50% of which will go to lawyers, and which will only reach consumers in the form of a $50 off coupon on any future Microsoft product they purchase.
Seriously, is there any way whatsoever this case could end in anything resembling a victory for consumers?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I've used various kinds of Unix for 25+ years, and I confess that, yes, I'm writing this on a Windows machine (belongs to work) and my home machine is also running XP (supports TurboTax) most of the time and Linux sometimes, and my mother-in-law's machine is running XP (supports AOL, and at least it's cleaner than Windows ME was.) I knew the XP disk had Windows on it when I bought it. It wasn't a Surprise. It was annoying to have to pay Bill Gates yet another $100 to get it, but the alternative was trying to get Windows ME re-installed, which had been supposed to fix up the Win98SE problems, which were supposed to fix the Win98 problems. I think the old PC came with Win95, but maybe Win98; I reinstalled enough times over the years that I've forgotten now. I don't remember if the 386 box ever ran Win95 or if it was only Win3.1 and DOS...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I find it highly ironic that someone would call us loving linux people 'fags,' considering that quite a bit of the Window's OS has some form of unix/linux code in it.
Ftp.exe, anyone?
Who knows what kind of code they have in their kernel that was ripped out of linux as well. Hell, they don't even have to take the code, they can take the innovations it's self from linux. Linux makes a new memory 'sandbox' that is byfar the best? Microsoft will take it, change it and make a billion dollars. (Modified and taken from anti-trust, the movie. But I ain't getting no billion dollars. Damn it)
The same principles still apply either way.
Hey Taco....
The link to the investor website is slashdotted...why did'nt you use a coral link...
"It's anticompetitive, it's predatory, and it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers, the benefits of innovation that a free marketplace should provide,"
What exactly does the free market place have to do with taxpayers? Are people who cheat on their taxes not entiteled to a competitivly priced OS?
And since when is innovation a "right"? If so when will iMacs be subsidized by the gov't?
MS,as scuzzy as they are, have the right to charge anything they want. It is their product! I personaly don't want it written down in the great history books of geekdom that Linux won by default. It's one thing to press charges over threatening companies into unreasonable, exclusive contracts (through monopoly power). It's another matter entirely to sue for "the right to competative priceing". Go to a dollar store for criminie's sake!
I would rather be ashes than dust!
But those vouchers you get aren't worthless. The lawsuit says that you paid too much money for your Microsoft software because Bill Gates is mean, nasty, ugly, greedy, and the only source for the stuff that you want, so if you're in the class of people who were allegedly "harmed", it's because you "needed" Microsoft software, so giving you _more_ of it must be a Good Thing.
If the vouchers were _worthless_ that would mean that Microsoft software wasn't something you really needed, so there'd be no more reason for an anti-trust suit against Microsoft than for an anti-trust suit against Britney Spears's record label which is the only source of _her_ products.
Besides, if you're the kind of greedy person who wants to sue Microsoft for being so mean as to _sell_ you their products, you deserve to be given more Microsoft products good and hard.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
From "AmosWEB:Gloss*arama":
I don't know how they can sue based on simple capitalistic economics. I mean go ahead, just don't get hyped up.
BTW, I hate MS's shit, it just seems silly at first glance. You can't sue until the price is right
Get your Unix fortune now!
The Silicon Valley area in Northern California does have a lot of Open Source interest - it's a very dynamic technical culture, and lots of people moved here because of the computer and Internet boom of the late 1990s. (The Internet means that you can do your work from anywhere in the world, so everybody moved to the same city....) Many of the projects people wanted to develop needed some kind of Unix platform, and Linux and BSD and other open-source projects gave them that platform, and open source was a good model for developing many of the tools they needed to develop their real applications.
One particular timing issue is that in the Internet business crash of the last 3-4 years, lots of computer people were unemployed, and they wanted to keep their technical skills strong, have fun, do something that got their name well-known, keep in touch with their friends, and maybe create a new business or new job, so writing open-source software was a popular thing to do. Also, for many people, they learned a lot of interesting technology during the boom, but were too busy with their jobs to have fun experimenting with it, but once they were unemployed, they had time to work on the projects they'd been thinking about.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well, I'm running a nice free OS on my laptop (although in reality I did pay Mandrake), but I _also_ had to pay Microsoft for an OS I had no intention of using and have never booted.
It's predatory because there is no way for me to buy a laptop within 100 miles of my house which does not include Windows. Either I pay MS and use their OS, or I pay MS and install another OS, but either way, I pay MS.
"It's anticompetitive, it's predatory, and it denies consumers, and in this case taxpayers, the benefits of innovation that a free marketplace should provide"
Sounds like they are describing the music industry's business model exactly.
You forgot MS Windows->IBM.
MS does innovate...but they have to buy time and a base product to do it. MS identifies a space which it has no market and sizes it up. It will then buy a struggling competitor with marginal share in that space and release that product as MS product. MS marketing then goes into hyperdrive to push that product everywhere.
MS adds something to these products, but it takes the third or fourth version for them to be better than or comparable to other products in the same space. By this time they usually have lead market share or a significant portion.
MS, "The Great Marketer..." (to pointy haired types.)
-Electrawn
Its the way of the land, if there is a lawsuit involved the only people that really make out are the lawyers..
Ironically both sides get rich, its one of the few careers that you can loose and still get paid...
THEY are why this country ( and soon world ) is in a mess...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Meanwhile, Microsoft's "business power" comes from giving people things they want in return for money, and using the money to develop more things that people want (or do more advertising so more people want the things they make.) There's entirely nothing wrong with that, and if you don't like it, you can buy a Macintosh instead, or buy QNX or WindRiver or Symbian or PalmOS or SCO, or use free Linux or BSD software, or write your own software. The justice system's job isn't to get you a refund on products you decided were worth paying for when you bought them, or to tell Microsoft to deliver products you like better than the ones you bought - it's to make sure that nobody assassinates Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs or RMS. And if you can't get the software you want on a the cheap PC hardware you want to pay for, don't blame Bill Gates, blame Steve Jobs.
Market Forces are less, not more, likely to deliver working and cool IT products if every time they're successful at it, some bunch of thugs comes and steals it through anti-trust laws. The Federal Government's anti-trust suits against Microsoft were one of the three main causes of the software industry crash of 2000: sure, the "sell dogfood on line and don't worry about profits" business model had had enough time for its weaknesses to become apparent, and Alan Greenspan jacking interest rates six times in month or so to cool down the economy in time for Bush to get elected had a major impact on a capital-funding-intensive industry, but one of the major business models of the Internet Boom was "make something cool, and if it's successful, sell out to Microsoft if it's software or Cisco if it's hardware." By threatening break Microsoft into little pieces and take all their money, the anti-trust thugs guaranteed that Microsoft wasn't going to be buying lots of interesting startup companies (so they were no longer as attractive to VCs who'd previously been funding them), and the demise of the dogfood-on-line hype was already making IPOs less attractive as a VC exit strategy, so the funding dried up very fast.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If the vouchers were for Apple products. I'd think that most of the people interested in suing Microsoft over price fixing wouldn't be particularly interested in Microsoft products, even if they were free. A voucher for (say) 100 dollars off an iBook, now THAT'd be interesting...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Some of them are wellfare queens
the pretense is that you are _not_ a valid citizen if you don't pay taxes -- in other words, disabled and criminals who are in prison should not have voting rights
A couple things to keep in mind are:
Fortunately, my salary is a lot higher than it would be in most other states, so I can afford it. Still kinda sucks though.
-- $SIGNATURE
I find it highly ironic that someone would call us loving linux people 'fags,' considering that quite a bit of the Window's OS has some form of unix/linux code in it.
Ftp.exe, anyone?
The code in the FTP client is from BSD, which is free for the taking. Nice try though.
Who knows what kind of code they have in their kernel that was ripped out of linux as well. Hell, they don't even have to take the code, they can take the innovations it's self from linux. Linux makes a new memory 'sandbox' that is byfar the best? Microsoft will take it, change it and make a billion dollars. (Modified and taken from anti-trust, the movie. But I ain't getting no billion dollars. Damn it)
I doubt there's any Linux code in the windows kernel, anything would require a serious rewrite to even work - the two kernels are quite different. As for taking "innovations", the Linux community would surely never take any ideas from Windows or other operating systems, right?
It seems to me that anything to deal with anti-trust and Microsoft is just a calculated facade designed to maintain the status quo.
Bob Cringely wrote an interesting article (covered in Slashdot)explaining the economics of these anti-trust suits and how Micro$oft actually benefits.
And since these companies don't pay taxes or get tax breaks from Republicans, these suits are a sort of different way for the people in Washinton to get paid. Except this time, the trial lawyers get paid too!
So, the lawyer$ sue Micro$oft so that they can take a huge cut of the money they are going to hand over to the politician$. With class-action lawsuits, they have private lawyers (read expensive lawyers) representing individual claimants, most of whom don't care if they ever get the $20 rebate good toward more Microsoft products (because that's probably all they'll get.) This is a calculated public payoff to those in power (lawyers and politicians) by Microsoft to maintain they're monopoly.
Government: Freeze Microsoft!
Microsoft: What do you want? We're busy screwing the marketplace and raping consumers!
Government: This is a shakedown! Give us what we want and we'll let you go about your business.
Microsoft: Here take it! Now get it out here!
So, why doesn't Microsoft just roll over that easy? Cause they're just trying to talk down the car dealer. It's the same reason parents shouldn't get their kids everything they want, because then they'll just become spoiled and want more and more. They guys just fight over how much to they agree to be extorted for, throw in some free software for schools and libraries (cause that's a good campaign story) allowing the violator of the law to further entrench himself on his gang-land turf.
You said it man. Nobody f#%ks with the Jesus.
A product etc, that incorporates copyrights or patents cannot play in a free market in any case as they depend on Government granted monopolies in the first place.
It may help us in assessing the situation if we understand this as a bedrock principle before we start.
Free market people cannot honestly and thoughtfully desire that the government not regulate items that are copyrighted or patented.
By Definition, the government regulates these items. The discussion needs to revolve around what is helpful regulation by the governemnt.
A Nony Mouse
Actually, I asked the AAI about this, and they were rather helpful.
I was told that the CA & MN settlements were the most favorable to consumers. Yes, California isn't the only state settling these. If you haven't already, you may well get a letter telling you that you're a party to these things. I'm in Arizona and I just got mine last week.
Now then, if you don't like the settlement (and I don't like the Arizona settlement), you have two options:
1) Opt-out. You get nothing, but you retain the right to sue Microsoft. This probably isn't that useful unless you're planning your own class-action lawsuit. I imagine that most of the agreements have a termination clause which says that if a few hundred thousand people opt-out, the agreement is nullified & they renegotiate (or something).
2) Object. Submit proof of your class membership along with a letter to the parties listed in the letter you should've gotten detailing why you think the settlement isn't "fair, reasonable and adequate." For example, I'm looking into opposing the Arizona settlement because it's inadequate--I don't think it's quite as good as the CA settlement (but I still have to finish my comparisons). Speaking of which, if any legal-types who know Arizona court rules & wouldn't mind helping me out are welcome to contact me -- mvenzke gmail com -- because the Arizona vouchers do seem rather crappy & calculated to funnel the money right back to Microsoft.
I am so tired of people to stupid to think calling intelligent people who can use computers names. You just keep playing with your retarded playschool computer and leave the thinking to the intelligent people please.
Beyond that, instead of believing the MS party line, do some research sometime. Microsoft has put countless numbers of people out of work. Its a fact. You just have to look beyond MS Lies.
While I'm not formally educated in economics - why not? Isn't the whole idea of outsourcing that it saves money (ideally) for the business? If the business saves money isn't it more profitable and capitalistic?
Either M$ should be banned to sell windoze which is crappy as hell and twisting OEM's like Dell, Hp and Gateway to sell windoze only desktops to consumers. They are making all vendors to keeps windoze as their prefered systems or they will be punished. M$ is even bribing OEMS vendors to publish in their sites like these text
"HP/Dell recommends windoze XP"
these kinda crap has to stop. Bribing and Monopoly by M$ will destroy the IT industry.
The core of your statement is correct. Just don't blame Republicans only. The sad fact is that M$, just like all major corporations dontes to both sides so that whoever wins will owe them. They buy leverage with every election cycle.
The fairest tax would be a flat tax with no loopholes. Everyone pays the same percentage, individuals & all businesses of any size. Then the expense of enforcing a bloated and unreadable code could be cut by 80%. The only people hurt would be the tax accountants and tax lawyers who would have to find "honest work".
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
There are only two ways for a society to address such taking advantage of a legal system. One way is to drag that legal system into the 21st century, which isn't going to happen in America. The other way is to dramatically simplify the legal system along the lines of nomadic justice where there are no prisons nor even capability for collecting damages, so all correction comes down to death or maiming. That isn't going to happen, either, so Microsoft wins.
-----
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Microsoft Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of Redmond correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Microsoft Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
Some define capitalism as free markets period. Others as a system whereby capital means are primarily owned by non-state entities. And then there's Marx.
Stock markets are just a by product, and don't actually contribute much to raising capital except for IPOs and additional offerings (in which a company sells its own stock, rather than day-to-day trades).
Commodity markets aren't about capital at all, they trade commodities.
Outsourcing in general should be good for the economy - wealth of nations, and all. However, that doesn't take into account the fact that there's no level playing field at the moment (e.g. agricultural subsidies, freedom of movement, etc.). Globalization is catching so much flack at the moment precisely because the "free trade" aspect is being implemented in such a way as to benefit multi-national corporations (and their shareholders), whilst giving the shaft to developing nations and out-sourced tech support people.
Second hand sales don't hurt Capitalism at all! In fact, they promote the efficient allocation of capital means, which is surely a good thing. After all, that's what the "Invisible Hand" is supposed to do!
You seem to have fallen for the the stock market myth of the need for ever-growing profits, an ever growing economy etc. There's really no need for all of that. Many small companies simply make a stable profit each year and don't feel the need to expand. In fact, a large chunk of the economy is chugging along happily, neither experiencing explosive growth or busts. That's because an ever-expanding economy is either unsustainable (both from an economic, as from an ecological perspective - yeah, I said ecological, very un-Capitalistic, but hey, oil will peak) or, more simply, a myth (i.e. you make more money, but you spend more too, and in the end you don't get any additional tangible thing in return.. That doesn't just include inflation, but cost-of-living/doing-business as well - lawyers will always have a rising income because there are always additional laws being made, rather than less - but they don't add value to your products.)
I liked the "second hand sales hurt Capitalism" bit though. Very RIAA-esque. If we don't expand copyright to stamp out second hand and public domain sales, then the world will come to an end because anything that's free has no value. Indeed, freedom has no value! Only (monopoly-)"rights" do.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Just out of idle curiosity, since the primary competitor(s) to Microsoft these days are in the OSS world, how does selling your work for a given price compete unfairly with selling your product for 'free'?
Don't do the crime. Microsoft has had a flagrant disregard for the law for many years. It is finally catching up with them in legal battles. Also, if their business ethics were better, they would not have such a problem with the courts. It is by their own actions they are finally being held accountable.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I believe he means in relation to a captialistic system where investors are important as well to a nation. While outsourcing may help companies, not having employees (who use their money to reinvest in the system) will eventually hurt those same companies. Of course, this is as long as those outsourced employees don't feel like investing (which they may not be able to do, depending on how cheap the labor is).
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
Lack of consumer education isn't microsofts fault.
I honestly believe that in the modern computing erra - the "network is the computer" and people should focus on securring the network to have a secure computer so that competant administrators are running a SECURE network instead of expecting every joe schmoe connected to it to understand that.
Microsoft makes it easy for the average joe to do the average job - that means office, excell, web browsing, graphics work, cad and what not.
Linux is just about there - but not quite. - Is that a fault of microsoft - no - its a fault of the advocacy simply spreading FUD vs spreading knowledge and facts.
free software is a choice for your computing solution - it isn't the answer. I chose windows because it gets the job done just like i chose linux for the very same reasons.
For development, i preferr linux - for day to day i preferr windows - simply because its easy. Easy to install, quick to boot, easy to support and short on requirements. I usually don't need to google on how to install photoshop or tweak my desktop. I just plug in and go and install a few updates (which is the same for any os..)
Again, secure the networks - Protect your networks from spam, protect your networks from virii, protect your networks from intrusions and setup a trusted computing platform based on a secure foundation.
The OS/PC is only a client to your network and the network is the foundation of your enterprise. Whatever TOOL you use ot solve your cient needs is irrespective of anything the government or courts are going to side - what should be happening is the government should be suing lame isp's, lame networks and lame schools for allowing blatent infringements on laws and lame security policies.
There is just NO way in todays world a software solution will be 100% secure - You have to protect your access from the base layer up.
"Commodity markets are not about capital at all."
Interesting approach. So, in your version of commodity markets you've decided to do away with futures contracts completely not to mention derivatives. You're basically defining commodity markets as barter exchanges? A down-to-earth approach as it were. Say, like a farmers market but everybody has really really big trucks and great big refrigerators for when they get home with their thousand tons of pork bellies? Something like that?
Yes, I see you've thought this through with some care.
In fact, free market ideas are dangerous to Capitalism
Why and how?
But examples of a free market include ideas like international outsourcing
International outsourcing is a symptom of capitalism gone awry with top heavy flow of capital. In a properly functioning capitalist system we wouldn't need to outsource because we would have an abundance of fairly priced services at home. The only reason why call centers are not profitable here has little to do directly with free market or capitalism and revolves mostly around greed and pyramidal corporate structure.
second-hand sales are clearly free market activities, but if it becomes too popular, it begins to erode sales of new items
Only if you make the extremely naive and silly assumption that products have an unlimited lifetime with no significant evolution or improvement. There's nothing unhealthy about feedback in a systems.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Lawyers get rich, users/licensees get worthless vouchers.
Exactly! and it works like a pump. First the bureaucrats spend tax money on expensive MS software, totaly ignoring the free (and better) alternatives. Then they start whining and spend more tax money on lawsuits. If successful, they get the penalty money for themsleves and the wortless compensation vouchers remain for the oh, so gulible, tax payers.
Free software should have been used in the first place.
Is Linux ever going to get sued for predatory pricing? How are you going to compete with free!
TODO: come up with a clever sig
You liberals think you're funny, but this Supertruck Commodities Exchange is REAL and its the lynchpin of Bush's economic plan expected to be unveiled Wednesday. Karl Rove drafted the plan himself personally.
Although I wasn't clear, I certainly don't blame just Republicans. Trial lawyers have come out whole heartedly for Kerry/Edwards. And as we should all know by now, Edwards gained his notoriety by suing companies. (discussing the merits of which would simply be off-topic).
It does seem to me, though, that the Justice department's policy toward M$ shifted from the Clinton to the Bush administration. The Bush administration settled with M$ on bozo terms. I'm not saying the Clinton administration wouldn't have done the same thing. But the rhetoric was stronger when the Democrats ruled PA avenue and John Ashcroft was too busy stealing civil liberties from the consumers that Micro$oft rapes.
You said it man. Nobody f#%ks with the Jesus.
no you
And by "wins" I don't just mean is successful. No, the winner in that game would end up with all the marbles. What we are finding out is that there really isn't room in the US for two massive retailers - Wal-Mart is pushing everybody else out. How? By winning the race to the bottom where the suppliers get almost nothing and the employees get a job. Not much of a job, but at least they have a job. There is no barrier against Wal-Mart selling the same kind of cheap Chinese-made junk that K-Mart was selling, and so there is no barrier to Wal-Mart utterly owning that market.
This is exactly what would happen without any barriers - like copyright - to music, movies and software. Wal-Mart (or their logical successor in that field) would dominate the market so completely you would have to hunt to find another way to purchase that stuff. Think the Internet is the answer? Yeah, so did Petsmart. People still buy things in stores and not everyone has a broadband connection.
And it's not just Microsoft doing it.
How about a class action lawsuit on those grounds? I've never heard of one on EULAs, and most need to be taken down a notch or two.
When I buy software, it's MINE and I'll do what I please with it, including reselling it for a profit, if I want to.
And yeah, copying and selling is clearly wrong - I'm not talking about that.
If I had a real
The answer is simple. Since MS Windows is ubiquitous, any attempt to replace it will cause problems when interacting with the other 99% of people still using Windows. Wouldn't be a problem if Windows's API and formats were public and patent-free, and if MS would stop adding intentional incompatibilities and "improvements" in their software to break competitors following the standards. But that is not the case, so Linux and F/OSS products are stuck as a second-class product (Samba vs CIFS, Open Office vs Office, Mozilla/Firefox vs IE).
Do you have any evidence to back up your assertions or have you subscribed to group think?
There hasn't been a market for "at least 3 different OSes" for PCs for years now. PC software developers in the 90s didn't want their market fractured. They wanted to develop for one platform and reach the greatest number of people. Windows has been that dominant operating system for years because open standards and interoperability didn't exist because software technology was not sufficiently advanced.
The fact that a free operating system is competing with Microsoft now is somewhat irrelevant. Linux is the Johnny on the Spot that IBM and co have picked up as a way to reclaim some of the market share that Microsoft gained by winning the first battle of the OS war. Now as hardware and software evolve to the point where an API implementation is no longer a key to a monopoly, the OS is becoming a point of competition again.
This talk about "market sickness" and anticompetitive behavior never addresses the technological cause of Microsoft's monopoly. Typical group think.
redundant and a troll?
:D
......?
think about it... whats it say about the article?
redundant in a way... but perhaps very recursive (for it sure is reaccuring) in the nature of MS mindset..
a troll to who? The pro MS commenters or pro software elite, or both?
abstractions, aren't the like everything you ever wanted but were afraid to
Damn, I knew that there was a reason for the Preview button.
Yeah, I'm sure billg will personally walk up to the judge and pay it out of his pocket change. MS won't notice the fine and everyone involved will probably get something like $3 each except for the lawyers.
Do these class action lawsuits ever serve anyone _but_the lawyers?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Microsoft forbids all versions of windows and office to be sold the Californian government.
DON'T FOCUS ON THE FINGER, or you will miss all that heavenly glory...
If you know how to shop you can still buy Microsoft software without overspending.
For people who are not interested in learning computers to a science, Microsoft provides a very workable do-it-yourself computer software that is compatible with a vast number of third party software and hardware. These people are all too happy to keep buying Microsoft - Microsoft became a monopoly due to people's buying habits. By and large Microsoft has lived up to expectations.
Somehow software that has attempted to rival Microsoft have not given the same level of satisfaction. I tried WordPerfect a few times but it was awkward and not intuitive. There are lots of non-Microsoft software packages that I use because they are good.
Simply if people really think Microsoft is getting too big for its britches, they should create a new company to compete. Microsoft's product is a proven source of profit. Apparently no one thinks Microsoft's business area is worth competing in. Apple sticks to its own computers. Sun, IBM, and their ilk stay out of the man-on-the-street business. Is Linux going to influence hardware makers to provide drivers?
It seems Microsoft is still the way to go although I'm still leery of installing SP2 for XP.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
First MS is sued in CA for charging too much, now they're being sued for not charging enough. Classic.
This is bs. Capitalism and free market have existed since 2 people made an agreement 2 exchange goods they though of equivalent worth but didn't have themselves. Capitalism has been under attack since a person had the idea of beating up another person with a club and taking his stuff without exchanging anything for it.
Vote for Pedro
Perhaps a better description of Microsoft is as a Consolidator. That's essentially what it does.
And it's also a great way to force MS to inject money into California's government. Wow, isnt extortion great?
I live in North Carolina. John Edwards accomplishments are well known here, Dr. moving out of state or leaving practice due to the cost of malpractice ins., 30%+ without health ins. due to cost. His specialty as a trial lawyer was malpractice. I wonder if anyone outside the state gets the connection?
Then he got elected Senator and has missed more than half the votes during his term, because he was confused, he thought he got elected Presidential candidate, not Senator. He has served only himself, never the people of NC. If he had run for re-election this year he would have lost. NC will be in the Bush column in Nov.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Secondly, the argument that there's no alternative is also bullshit. There are numerous vendors that offer to install GNU/Linux, and there are individuals who'll do that for money. E.g., RayServers. Furthermore, contracts between OEMs and MS to only sell their computers with MS Windows installed are voluntary private contracts that violate the rights of no-one. OEMs have the right to sell their PC's however they like to. No-one has the right to prevent them from only putting MS software on their PC's, or force them to put anythign on there that they don't want to. Doing such -- first and foremost -- is a violation of their property rights, which is also a violation of freedom of association (which really boils down to property rights).
Thirdly, anti-trust laws are nonsense. See The Case Against All Antitrust Legislation and The Truth About Sherman by Thomas DiLorenzo:
I would also suggest Monopoly and Competition from Murray Rothbard's treatise on economics, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market .
Regarding "predatory pricing" in particular, it is the most ridiculous and idiotic idea that anyone's ever come up with. To make a law protecting us from "predatory pricing" is really no different than making a law protecting us against "unicorns" or "witches" -- things that simply don't exist. Of course, that doesn't stop the witch-hunt.
What price-cutting refers to is cutting prices below the level of any competitors to drive them out of business, and then afterwards raising prices to extremely high levels. This, of course, is total humbug. If any of you think this is a good idea, try suggesting it to an executive at your company. You'll be laughed out of the company. Any company that tried doing such a thing would go bankrupt, because companies cannot operate on a loss for a sustained period of time (and it would take a sustained period of time to drive competitors out of business). Furthermore, the second part -- that they can then just raise prices to be very high -- is flatly wrong, since that would encourage competitors to enter the field, thus forcing them to lower their prices or go out of business. In reality, such a scheme has never been implemented in the real world, and never will, because it is impossible. See Monopoly and Competition.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
See Price Gouging Saves Lives, by David M. Brown.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Are just whining by inefficient competitors who simply can't compete through the voluntary method of competition -- by producing better products at lower prices that consumers want to buy -- those choose the coercive, political method of "competition": whining to The State.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
And they have. It's called Linux. And Apache. And OpenOffice. And PostFix. And Mozilla. And KDE. And FreeBSD. And so on... the fact that these are generally not companies as such doesn't stop them from being competition, and that's how Microsoft are treating them.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, who are still stupid enough to try to attack them as if they were a company but are rapidly wising up, they're able to compete in ways inaccessible to corporations and totally alien to Microsoft's usual modus operandi. Microsoft (and other large corps) do have some advantages in terms of political reach and sheer material resources, but it's probably not going to be enough.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...vouchers for free copies of competing FOSS products?
Done right, that could be an excellent publicity gimmick.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I just recently bought a DELL laptop and had no option to buy the machine without Windows, and DELL isn't the only company. Gateway and HP (except for the nx5000) told me the same thing. I want to run Linux, my flavour of Linux, why do I need to pay for a Windows licence when all I'm going to do is re-build the machine with Fedora Core ? - Also what if I already had a Windows Licence from a previous computer that I'm trashing. Why can that not be transfered over to this new machine ?
RayServer.com, among many many other examples of places that sell computers either without an OS or with Linux, or the OS of your choice. Buy it online and have it shipped to you, and quit your fucking bitching.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Ack!!! Microsoft is not a monopoly due to people's buying habits! That's way too easy an explanation. An Operating System is a very complicated software construct which has an exceptionally high cost in terms of man hours. The reason no company is competing with Microsoft is because no one can pay the enormous amount of money necessary to create any serious competition, and if someone was foolish enough to do that, they'd probably never recoup their initial investment.
But often it's done by talking somebody into investing money in the development effort, and usually people only invest money if they think they'll make a profit. One way to make that profit is to actually sell products for money (though the DotCom boom was a little sketchy on that concept), and another way is to sell your company to the public in an IPO, and another way is to sell your company to a big company with lots of spare cash, like Microsoft or Cisco. And the dotcom boom got a lot of people involved with developing really cool stuff, some of which actually got finished and most of which didn't, either because the business models were stupid and failed or because the developers weren't up to the level of work they'd really need to finish the job, but lots because the business models weren't strong enough to get investors to keep kicking in money during the development process. I don't know if you were watching the SF Bay Area market in mid-2000, but it looked a lot like the VCs yanked the intravenous cocaine drip out of everybody's arm, cutting off the huge flow of cash that was keeping everybody busy developing cool stuff and buying cars, toys, and rent they couldn't afford. And one of the reasons, besides the rapidly increased cost of money and the decreased credibility of IPOs as a liquidity event, was the sudden inability to cash out by selling out to MS.
The anti-trust suits struck me as pure greed - much of the agitation came from Netscape, ranting about how EVIL MS was for giving away their browser for free, when Netscape's fortune came from their market dominance which came from giving away their browser for near-free. To the extent MS may have had business practices that legitimately weren't kosher, they were in bullying computer vendors into buying DOS/Windows for all the machines they sold if they wanted to be able to buy any at OEM prices.
As far as the quality of MS products goes, I've found them annoying since I first started using them in the early 80s; they'd always been a company that was much better at marketing and developer/supplier synergy than at technology, too slow to get around to adopting better ideas from academia and other companies, more concerned with the next quarter's revenue than with improving quality problems, too convinced that the market will pay more for more bells and whistles than for solid quality, too unwilling to risk their installed base by producing an operating system that was better if it didn't have backward compatibility with the similarly-uninspired PC hardware design that everybody was using and the installed base of third-party applications . And they've made billions and billions of dollars at it, so in some sense it works, and the public keeps buying it even if they _could_ be buying Macintoshes or installing Linux From Scratch on their PC hardware, and apparently the public thinks it really _is_ more important to run Game_Du_Jour 50% faster on their PC hardware than to have an OS that doesn't get viruses and doesn't blue-screen twice a day (though the BSoD has pretty much disappeared with Win2K and WinXP, and the viruses are mostly in the applications.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Counterpoint: I've sat on my Windows 95 CD by mistake and hardly noticed.
Sat on an Ethernet card once, though, and it bit me. I call that predatory.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
"Government cannot interfere in a free market - IN ANY WAY - without distorting it."
;).
And 'distortion' is defacto bad? No. Monopoly is a distortion itself as it reduces quantity available to raise the price (harming the public in the process). Government can correct this harm.
There are also other times market failure can and does take place. The best, and perhaps only, way to fix many of these problems is by government intervention.
"There is no such thing as a 'pure public good' "
You have never heard of national defense? Perhaps public broadcasting? These goods are pure public good in that they are nonrivalrous and nonexcludable. How else, but from government, do you sell/provide a service that you cannot exclude people from enjoying?
"'Pure public goods' are a misnomer; they inevitably wind up "belonging" to a certain elite class at the continuing expense of the rest of the populace"
Your ignorance of the term is plain. If you knew what a pure public good was you would know they are nonexcludable, i.e. my use of the good does not prevent you from also enjoying it thus no one can 'own' or possess it. (If your still unsure, think of national defense, a cure for a disease, or the view of a mountain).
"Monopoly - total control of a particular industry - is a natural extension of regulation."
Thats an interesting definition, although not the usual one for monopoly. A monopoly is usually defined by how much monopoly power a firm possesses, i.e. the ability to set the price for a given good. How does one determine monopoly power? Usually by using a few tools a common being the Lerner Index (Price - Marginal Cost / Price). Since in perfect competition P = MC, the Lerner index would be 0. Monopoly is usually defined as being above a threshold, say 0.9, not 1 which would be your definition of 'total control'.
Another tool, which I am sure you know since you are an expert, is the Herfindahl Index - a measure of monopoly in an industry as a whole. 100% market share = 10,000 on the Index. Monopoly use usually defined by an index somewhat less then 10,000 which is in your definition 'total control'.
"You need a lesson or two in economics"
Thanks, I could always use another degree in economics. Perhaps it might be best to follow your own advice though by looking some of these definitions up before commenting - even armchair economics can be hard without some research before hand
"Other than the typical FUD about how society would turn into a conglomerate of raving lunatics who would eventually kill each other off... what's bad about it?"
:).
As I said in my origional post - without government who would enforce contracts, correct monopolies, and provide pure public goods?
Another major function is government is solving prisoner's dilemma senerios, PDs being particular problem for anarchy. For example, people are fighting over a particular common resource that will be depleated unless an agreement is made and enforced. The parties may chafe under the enforced agreement, but the alternative is a depleated resource which would be worse for everyone.
Another problem with anarchy is that some individuals would form coalitions to take on and extort individuals not in their on coalition. The resulting group of forced coalitions, likely each with their own hierarchy, isn't really anarchy anymore, is it?
"Care to name any [pure public goods]?"
Any good that is nonrilverous (my use doesnt prevent you from using it) and nonexcludable (you cannot prevent me from enjoying the good) is a pure public good.
-National defense: (If national defense is provided and you want to charge people for it, you'd encounter many free riders who would allow others to foot the bill while they would enjoy the protection for free.)
-Cure for a disease: (If you develop a cure for an infectious disease any individual would benefit. However, unless this person is infected, you would likely encouter free riders who would let others pay for the development of the cure).
If you can't exclude people from enjoying the good how do you provide a market for it? Can't - only government though taxation can provide these goods. How much does the government tax and spend on pure public goods for the optimal ammount of wellbeing in society? Well, that's a good question and you can begin to see the complexity that gives economists jobs.
"And turning them into legal cartels. No real difference."
Who is to say why these officals don't see the harm done from cartels, or not dealing with monopolies. I'd recommend more economics courses for them if they could stand it
A good place to find other anarchists was on IIP - I2P anonymous chat networks. They usually debated a lot of it. The arguements by Famatra below this one are some of the debates that happen there.
You can goto irc.freenode.net then join #I2P or #I2P-chat (non anonymous) to get more information.
So with a little funding and putting the right people in the right places corporations are able to keep the blinders on these groups so that they focus on issues that have no impact on the profitability of the corporations and allow the corporations basically to run amok.
This has gotten to the point where they focus on the leaders military record or which one in more religous than the other one or which one demonstrate the greatest nationalistic pride.
Some of these organisation bear a great deal of responsibility for the failings of government they helped to create, as they have taken it upon themselves to dominate US politics, but they fail to take any responsibility for their ignorance on most of the issues.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
No, that's trade and currency. That's not the same thing as Capitalism. Currency and trading take place under Socialism as well. You can't define Capitalism by something that is shared with Socialism, that's obviously too broad.
Bob?
TFPC?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...you will be consolidated.
Or possibly <arnie>I'll buy back</arnie>
So... "innovate" is now newspeak for "suppress innovation?"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing