Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
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
Well, if the customers are being fucked, they should stop buying MS stuff. And if their business partners are being fucked, then they should stop being partners with Microsoft. And as for competitors, which one, exactly makes a better operating system for x86 machines that normal human beings would want to use? And which one makes (ever made) a better office suite? Who makes a better media player? Answer: Nobody (Well, quicktime runs fairly well on my mac). That *does not* mean MS stuff is grandly spectacular, it just means their competitors are more litigious than they are innovative.
Oh, and someone will now say how the competitors remark meant that MS is anticompetitive, using their monopoly to blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. "OH NO! MS is selling windows for cheap to vendors who bundle it with their PCs! That makes them cheaper for customers to buy and so they only buy windows PCs!! *AND* they package a (crappy) web browser with the OS!" As Jim Ross might say, "Damn their black souls!"
Firefox is a good example of how if a competitive product is released that people actually have a good reason to use, it will be adopted, even by people without a CS degree. Linux is coming along nicely too, but is definitely not ready for mom's desktop.
One thing I do know is my powerbook has been giving me wet dreams, and MS stormtroopers aren't banging down my door.
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.
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
I never understood why cross subsidization was a problem.
Cross-subsidization is one of the core items of anti-trust regulations, as it is used to maintain monopolies and screw the consumer.
Let's go back in history to the 1950s. Standard Oil (split up into Amooco, Exxon, and many others long ago) owned the gas station market in the US. If you were foolish enough to open a gas station near a Standard Oil station they would reduce their prices to below cost until you went out of business, then raise them again and rip the customers off. They could afford to do that, and ended up with little competition.
Go back another 40-50 years or so. Before refrigerators there were ice boxes. You got ice delivered to keep your beer (and other food) cold. There were ice trusts that owned the ice delivery market. If you tried to compete, same thing, they would price you out (or send Bubba and Louie to take care of you physically, things were rougher then). As soon as you were gone, prices went back up. Again, competition eliminated, so carte blance to screw the customer as they have no viable alternative, the competition has been squashed.
This is all the same now with Microsoft. You try to compete, they squeeze you out of the market in one way or another. The big pie is at risk, so they take a loss in that little area until you are dead and they dominate. They just use different tactics. Next thing you know, you are locked into a $300 OS.
Take Wordperfect. Once they squashed them (arguably with a better product in this case) they dumped the documented RTF format, and used the ever changing, proprietary, doc format. They could get away with a proprietary format as they ruled the roost. Problem is, competition is essentially locked out due to format issues.
Anyway, cross-subsidization is evil. The big guys use this to crush competition wherever it rears up. End result, few can compete, the monopolist remains the owner and screws their customers. This is why monopolies are split up or regulated. To remove this ability to screw the consumer by crushing competition. It is at the core of any capitalist system, to keep things in check.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
The main problem with Microsoft is that they have also locked in the file formats. It's absurd that a closed, proprietary format should become the defacto standard. They use this to force upgrades that people don't need and keep the competition out of the marketplace. Yes Adobe has pdf, but many programs can also make pdf files. The .doc and .xls should have been made open in the DOJ trials. They did nothing, and nothing will change until the viruses and spyware hit critical mass... then maybe people will try alternatives.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.