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Storm Brewing over Microsoft on the Horizon?
SexyFingers writes "Robert X. Cringely, of I, Cringely discusses one of the last anti-trust lawsuit beleaguering Microsoft. It seems like Microsoft is looking bad on these bouts... words like, lie, dissemble, ignores were applied to Microsoft."
They'll worm their way out of it somehow, and after any publicity this generates dies down, they'll go right back to viciously fucking competitors, customers and business partners alike.
The kid is as smart as his mother and twice as smart as me.
He just admitted that his wife is twice as smart as he is. She must read his column.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Maybe Microsoft's mail servers were just having a bad day that day.
Wouldn't normally evidence that suggests that MS is doing naughty things (manipulation of evidence, etc.) invite a DoJ probe or something to see what exactly they're up to?
Or are actions like that limited to smaller companies that don't have the money to move to make problems "go away"?
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
Not for the first time, and not for the last time. It's all about exchanging. They're rich enough to be sued over and over.
I'm sure that Mr. Ashcroft will haul Mr. Ballmers ass in at once and the commander in chief will withdraw 10000 troups from Iraq, for the sole purpose of surrounding the Microsof campus and arrest everybody in sight!
All property including cash assets will be seized and distributed to education and social security, since Mr. Cheeney finally sees the wrongs of his fiduciary irresponsibilities quite drastically and sees the light.
Mr. Ashcroft will set all steps in motion right after finishing his doobie in a white house crapper stall.
Just wait and see; it oughta be mighty entertaining.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the way this article describes the actions taken by Microsoft in court were true.
If Microsoft really 'plain lied' to the DoJ in the antitrust case, they might be 'really' convicted after all.
sig not found
"words like, lie, dissemble, ignores were applied to Microsoft."
so what?
those words have been applied to any other major corporation in the world.
in fact, those words are almost an synonym for corporate america.
I own a pump action golf ball cannon. I made it myself.
... the guilty survives.
I hate the evil empire I really do, but I've got work to do here. Really, people are getting much too excited about this, Microsoft will eventually die, but not yet anyway. It just depends on how much Longhorn sucks.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
Even if its proven they lied/committed perjury.. I don't think its going to really matter much.
The government already has proven they aren't interested in doing the job that was needed, and gave Microsoft a 'pass'.
Sure they might pull out some token fine to make the people feel better, but it wont amount to anything more then a blip on the books...
Unlike ATT, when they were attacked, Microsoft has managed to take control of the situation and will in the end, win, regardless of the outcome.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I contract for a branch of the military and they have a policy NOT to keep emails after a certain period of time.
Why? The Freedom of Information Act. People are always filing them (damn you! Damn your FOIA rights!) and they use that time limit as more of a defense for themselves because in the words of legal, sometimes you don't want this stuff coming up.
Given who they are, you'll understand.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Scrooge McDuck swam in his money, he had good ethical behavior though.
If this were Joe nobody, they would come and take the relevant hardware from him. If this were Small Business Nobody... they would still take their equipment away from them.
However, because they are mega-huge corp... they ask for the information.
It's silly to think they are going to make it easy to screw themselves.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Do Not archive your email, Said Jim Allchen, in the pdf that was mentioned in the email. Heh. Don't be foolish, Don't get us in trouble, must be what they were thinking. Now what amazes me is that if this were say, a kiddy porn ring, or a AlQueda cell, I bet that they could dig out the big guns, like a nice scanning microscope, and sift through the erased 1's and 0's till they made sense of all of it. But no. This is Microsoft, and they just ask. They frikkin' ask nicely, and expect everyone to play by the rules here. Jeez luiz, Microsoft, in an ANTI-""trust"" case. Hmmm. trust. Sounds like expecting to be able to trust a company to do what you are asking is the wrong route in a case about NOT being able to trust...
sig!wind down the juuice, let the tubes roar with the glow of alternative powers, not they that be." me, today...
In theory, being from the kind of technical background that I am, I ought to fawn over every column, but, to be honest, I find his usual statements to be a bit feeble, a gentle puff, with no real gusto. He does pull his punches.
Normally.
However, this one has broken that mould. There were no punches pulled, and he completely nailed his colours to the mast. Good on him.
However, I'd be tempted to say that he's even made himself a target of Microsoft lawyers, as he has made allegations which could be, if false, be taken as libelous (or otherwise defamatory). (Not that I believe they are false.)
Will the posse of lethal attack-lawyers be set on him for it? Or will MS just hope it gets forgotten about as quickly as possible?
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Recall the video tape of how bad Windows was after most of the IE functionality had been disabled? It was submitted as an actual video tape of an actual experiment.
But somethings didn't seem right on the tape. Icons were changing between screenshots. But that's okay, because Microsoft just cut out some of the boring bits, but the tape is really a tape of an actual experiment.
But then it turns out that the machines are completely wrong. Well, Microsoft said it was only a dramatization of an actual experiment.
So the judge said Microsoft could do the experiment over, but that the DoJ could watch it.
Microsoft had problems re-doing the experiment because the Microsoft engineers could not get a reliable Internet connection from the hotel room.
So, the judge finds Microsoft guilty and a monopoly, appeals, etc, new administration, case dropped.
Microsoft? LIE? Say it isn't so? No, I don't believe it! Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are two of the most trust worthy people on the planet. When that security is their number one priority and I continually get attacked on a daily basis, I know it's because all those piles of money blocking the hallways in Bill's House was to blame. If only they coud figure out a way to put all that useless money to work solving their problems. Sigh.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Evil great and small can happen because people turn their back because it is to inconvenient to deal with it right now.
But microsoft is an easy evil. You are not going to be shot for going after ms or any other cooperation that has gotten out of control. Yet.
But leave it like this and the common american Sci-Fi theme of evil cooperations controlling the world, odd that in capatalist america hollywood movies often have cooperations as the evil enemy, will become true.
Your strategie seems to be that Longhorn will suck. I got news for you. Every fucking windows release ever has sucked. Note that all the MS apologists are saying stuff like "Well this new release is less crap then the old one" but mostly are pointing out how good the next one will be and that all your current troubles are your fault anyway.
So go right ahead and keep supporting MS with your computer tax and blind obedience. Others are fighting by not giving MS a penny and supporting those who help break out, (Have you bought your copy of Doom3 and Opera yet?)
For those objecting to the nazis being brought in to this discussion lets not forget that they and their kind (what is the difference between "gein juden" and "whites only") were in power and doing their petty hatred and corrupting long before the famous "final solution" was put into effect. All those years people cried out in protest and people like the above poster silenced them by saying they shouldn't make a fuss and let people get on with their jobs and that it all would work out okay.
I am not saying that MS will be rounding up people or anything similar. I do foresee a future were cooperations like MS but also like media have such a huge amount of control that being critical about them becomes impossible. Already controversial movies are being boycotted and tv series cancelled because the powers that be don't like them.
MS will not be the evil but may easily be an instrument. Just as radio tv and the newspapers have become controlled by a tiny handfull of rightwingers (the same families that gave contributions to the nazis) we might loose the net as the last bastion of free expression that can be heard.
Why else should MS be pushing to make DRM into every piece of media made? Exactly why should my home movies have DRM? To protect my interests or to make sure a protest movie can be easily traced?
Tin foil hat time or not but MS was caught recording what DVD's people watched. MS said it was a mistake when people found out and asked questions. It was a mistake alright. People never should have found out or am I just paranoid?
But that is the weird thing about paranoia isn't it. Your only paranoid if your wrong. Like those people who warned of the nazis and the many other horrors before until it is to late people like you have the majority. Afterwards you cry out, why did nobody do nothing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Actually, if they've been lying as accused, the company is largely finished. People will go to jail and Microsoft will be ripped to shreds. Arthur Anderson's corporate sins weren't as big as this and they're toast.
His point was this: Imagine that you are a small business that provides computational physics consulting to big companies. You don't make much money, but you have a big computer center which is most of your capital. Now, imagine that the feds investigate you for some reason (a competitor phones in an anonymous tip that you have warez on your servers or something like that). They bust in and take every computer that you own. In all, they have 50 terabytes of disk space.
Now, the feds don't have time to sort through 50 terabytes of disk space, so they just tinker with it little by little while they delay the court case while they try to build a case. In five years they give up and maybe return your computers.
Of course, you spent $50 million dollars on that computer hardware, and were making only a modest profit on the investment - before it was confiscated. For the next five years you make nothing and go bankrupt since you're still paying the loans on the computers that you can't use. Then, when you get them back they're worthless since they're slow by modern standards and you'll need all new servers to keep up with the competition. However, you can't get a loan for new servers since you defaulted on the loan for the old ones. They go on ebay and you recover a few hundred thousand dollars for your creditors.
Sure, this is a bit of a contrived example, but you can probably use your imagination to come up with similar scenarios. The feds don't care if they don't have enough resources to analyze the evidence - it isn't costing them anything to store it until they get around to it...
The government routinely kills small businesses in the course of investigations by confiscating capital equipment. They'd never do it to Microsoft, however...
Is this storm brewing on the horizon, or over Microsoft? I'm confused.
slashdot broke my sig
They will weasel their way out of it again. After all they have so much smearing cream ($$$$) in their pockets that law is a non issue for them.
equal a large jury verdict against MS and possibly support a punitive damages award too. A large verdict could represent a tipping point in any number of tactical efforts by MS, for example the ongoing war over consumer desktop space. . . . Okay I just like the idea of a significant verdict coming from a suit which is basically called, "Burst Microsoft."
I'm laughing at clouds.
Unless, that is, Burst has enough evidence to win.
Yes, but usually not with evidence and in a Court of Law
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Maybe things like "open file" and "paste" are very complicated to get right (god knows microsoft was unable to perform "save document" correctly for several years) but users expect these things to just work.
Yahoo's last financial profile for Burst.com (2002) had the company with two employees, and nine month revenues of $150,000 set against losses of $628,000. Profile: Burst.com
Burst.com has since raised enough capital to carry it through to trial. Message from the Chairman You could argue that buying stock in the company is simply buying a ticket in the lawsuit lottery. Burst.com has one product and a patent portfolio, neither of which seem to be setting the world on fire. burst.com Sales
To consider the lawsuit as a threat to Microsoft strikes me as just plain loopy. A bit of trivia: Richard Lang's last success was as the co-founder of Go-Video and co-inventor of the Go-Video dual deck VCR. Burst.com MS Q&A
These are things that I've seen MS-Word get wrong too, so no doughnut.
It's true that MS-Word does less of them, but it's also true that it will spontaneously corrupt documents from time to time (which OpenOffice will often fix), that MS-Word's HTML editing requires extensive therapy to come within hailing distance of standard, and that its autosave (in relative terms) sucks for reliability and intrusiveness.
The advantages cut both ways, which for the price - AUD$319 (RRP, basic OEM edition) vs AUD$0 - is wrong.
In fact, if you throw in a copy of XP Pro (AUD$279 RRP OEM) and a basic virus scanner (AUD$60), the cost of the software to do fundamental office work exceeds the cost (AUD$599 for Celeron 2.4, 256M, 40G) of the hardware to run it on. An increasing number of people have a problem with this.
It's also true that OpenOffice is steadily (in relative terms again) becoming more capable, and that the "headline" improvements (like PDF writing) are genuinely useful for mainstream and near-mainstream users. The next major release will also import PDFs.
Finally, MS-Word won't run on my system, at all, even under WINE.
PS, if you want to pick up all of the formatting from a web page, open the thing directly in your word processor. This works better for MS-Word, too, albeit it throws the resulting HTML into the bushes and jumps in after it no matter which way you import it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
No. Did you miss the part where MS Money "got better" ?
That wasn't competition in action.
Of course it was. Microsoft had to compete because their product wasn't as good. That they also tried to buy out the other product is irrelevant - that's *also* competition in action.
If MS had had its choice, there would be no Intuit right now.
Surely the decision whether or not to be acquired by another company should be the sole domain of the target company's shareholders or owners ?
And since Intuit is basically their only competition in that arena, MS Money would've disappeared and MS would have another monopoly.
And we'd still have a good product in Quicken.
But, they didn't, so now we have Quicken *and* a better MS Money.
Actually, the problem wasn't that MS added classes to their JVM, it was that they didn't implement part of the Java spec, but still marketed the JVM as a full Java implementation.
Not being a Java developer, or having a great interest in Java, I'll concede to not knowing a great deal of detail on the subject. I do remember, however, the problem not being with the functionality of Microsoft's JVM, merely the semantic details of how their additional functionality was accessed ("too easy for developers to make Microsoft-Java-only code" was one of the arguments used IIRC). Certainly from my end user's perspective, the Microsoft JVM was faster and worked with everything I ever tried.
I'm not complaining about MS dropping the price.
I'm not complaining about MS dropping the price.
I'm not complaining about MS dropping the price.
Are we clear on that now?
The problem is that Microsoft drop the price further iff the dealer ostracises any competitors. This is not a discount for bulk, for performance, for anything positive, this is an extra discount for telling competitors to nick off, for removing them from your advertising, catalogues etc, for shutting competitors out.
The bad effect of this is that soon there no effective competitors, and the price goes up. Those last 5 words are the key and core of monopoly power.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing