AMD Subpoenas to Stop Document Destruction

cyberfunk2 writes "It appears that a court has granted AMD a "no-shred" request with respect to documents related to its' charges of Intel anticompetitive behavior. 9 of the 32 companies subpoenaed so far have said they will adhere to the order. The 9 are Acer, Gateway, Lenovo, NEC, Rackable Systems, Sony, Sun, Tech Data and Circuit City. Others have promised to respond soon."

Comments

lol

[pigger]

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GNAA sues the CDC for patent violations

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About G.R.I.D.S.

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Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

http://malfeasance.50megs.com/

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Trigun]

AMD

* Outsourcer of jobs to overseas, according to CNN's Lou Dobbs, at a time when huge numbers of US tech workers are unemployed.

Ooooh, that's a huge misdeed, and I trust Lou Dobbs with my life!

And from the same link:
"The purpose of the new capitalism is to shoot the wounded."
Andy Grove, Intel Chairman
[leading to monopolies? to cartels? to fascism?]

* Class-action suit alleging that the Pentium IV is slower than the Pentium III despite Intel's marketing hype. Info here

* Supported California Proposition 64, which prevents many just lawsuits against corporate criminals. info

* Theft of $1.969 billion as "tax breaks" from US Taxpayers between 2001-2003, thanks to legally-bribed politicians. Information here.

* Intel received $300 million in tax breaks from localities over 30 years ending 1993 despite being a major polluter. More information here.

* Intel was caught in a $600 billion tax-evasion scheme. Info.

* Intel tried to have an ex-employee Kenneth Hamidi prosecuted for trespassing when he sent emails to former ex-coworkers at their work email addresses. His emails contained criticism of the company. Intel ultimately failed. More info here and here.

* Intel is currently polluting at Corrales, New Mexico

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[/ASCII]

You point the finger at AMD and talk about their misdeeds, and what do you have to back this up? A homepage saying that AMD has been outsourcing work to other countries. That is a pretty lame misdeed in my book.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Vo0k]

Hmm. So we know both are "evil".
What happened to other players in the x86 market? Cyrix is dead, Transmeta is dead, are there any others left? Any one NOT evil?

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod down. It's an advertising site that links to litigation companies.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Slack3r78]

Not only that, but the majority of AMD's outsourced jobs don't go to places like India, but rather to Germany, another first-world nation to workers that are making wages similar to, if not better than, those that their American counterparts. Sure, I'd prefer that money stayed at home, but in all fairness, I can't lump sending that money to another country where workers are generally treated a little bit better than the US as far as benefits go in the same category as sending programming jobs to India to save money. Lou Dobbs is a fairly smart guy, but he's got a huge nationalist streak, and it shows in reports like this.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[jcr]

Outsourcing isn't a misdeed.

AMD has no duty whatsoever to employ anyone in the first place, and they're perfectly entitled to have work done overseas if it makes financial sense to do so.

-jcr

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

So when outsourcing goes to first world nations it's OK, but when the business goes to places that actually need the money it's bad?

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[korekrash]

If this is true, then in my opinion the fact that they are outsourcing and not saving money is worse than outsourcing to India. Why outsource then? What is the benefit? They surely are benefiting in some way, probably monetarily, with the outcource or they wouldn't have done it. Why would they waste money to move opperations if there was no benefit??

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[sholden]

After all what really matters is that the wealth is kept in the hands of the wealthy and as little as possible ends up in the hands of those dirty poor people.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[InvalidError]

Cyrix is not dead, it was taken over by VIA after NatSemi gave up on pushing it as a mainstream chip. NatSemi still makes some x86 chips for embedded applications. VIA's Epia also targets embedded and SFF applications.

Neither (NatSemi, VIA) is aiming for high-performance or mainstream markets, this is why the Cyrix legacy is pretty much forgotten.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

a) big support from local government trying to rebuild industry of east germany.

b) a lot of unemployed GOOD engineers there as far as I know. As far as I rememer, Robotron was in Dresden? It was one of the most famous computer companies in soviet block.

The AMD guys in Dresden have pulled off some quite impossible jobs. Germans are the best engineers after all... I don't think AMD made a bad choice moving there.

--Coder

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[cp.tar]

Maybe they are not saving money on workers, but rather on some other things?

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[m50d]

I'll agree as soon as I'm allowed to import products from there for the same prices they're paying, then I could work for the same wage. At the moment companies are allowed to have the work done elsewhere, but at the same time you can't buy the cheaper products there and sell them over here.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Leto-II]

I'll agree as soon as I'm allowed to import products from there for the same prices they're paying, then I could work for the same wage. At the moment companies are allowed to have the work done elsewhere, but at the same time you can't buy the cheaper products there and sell them over here.

Last I checked, prices in Germany weren't that much different than prices here in the US. Some things are even more expensive.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking scoundrel.

You only like outsourcing when the jobs go to a nice aryan country, is that it?

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[faraway]

Nobody asks you whether you agree or not. AMD can sell processors at 20 times the price they cost to produce them. Companies are in business to make money, and if there's people willing to spend 20 times the production cost, AMD will sell them at that price. I assume you don't agree with pretty much everything produced outside the US/Western Europe/Japan area, as all of it has been produced at a lot lower cost than the selling price. I suppose its time for you to stop buying cars, clothes, foodstuffs, and almost everything else you take for granted because you don't agree with it. Who is stopping you from importing goods from another country? If I could find processors cheaper in another country, I'd buy/import them, but the trend is usually quite the opposite if you've had a chance to travel between the US, and Europe - prices in Europe are generally higher, partly due to VAT I assume. So if I'm looking to buy a processor, or almost all other wares, I don't buy from Europe (even without VAT prices are almost always higher). "At the moment ... can't buy them there and sell them over here", sure you can. You can import them like every other retailer, you could even fly to Malaysia or wherever the processor is manufactured and buy one in the country but I guarantee you you won't find them to be any cheaper in the poor countries - in fact, technology is generally way more expensive in the poorer countries than in the US. Noting your usage of plus.com, I assume you're British (or some other kind of Western Euro). Oh yeah! That's right, socialism is big over there, not very fond of capitalism are we? Commies without a dictator.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they should be raping these dirty poor people. $0.15 an hour? How could they not be getting some of that?

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[ozzee]

So when outsourcing goes to first world nations it's OK, but when the business goes to places that actually need the money it's bad?

Are you suggesting that AMD should outsource to countries that "need" money where the country clearly has inadequate laws that prevent employees from being exploited ?

I believe the parent poster intended that Germany has employee protections and benefits that are superior to the U.S. and hence you can't complain that the "cheap" (read exploited) labor is the reason for the offshoring.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am not. If you had read my comment carefully you would see that I was asking the poster if he/she thinks that a first world countries should receive preferential treatment because it is first world.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[seifried]

Building microchips uses a LOT of very toxic chemicals (such as powerful acids/etc to wash product between stages). I would rather these extremely toxic chemicals be used in a country with some of the stricted environmental laws around then in a country with weak, if any real environmental laws (assuming they get enforced, which I rather doubt in places like China and India where corruption and bribery is still rampant). Not to knock these countries, Germany almost killed the Ruhr river with pollution 30 years ago, but since then they have learned, unfortunately this is still a ways off in India and China.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[ozzee]

No, I am not. If you had read my comment carefully you would see that I was asking the poster if he/she thinks that a first world countries should receive preferential treatment because it is first world.

I think the parent poster intends preferential treatment where the labor laws meet standards that as as good or better than those of the US. Otherwise it's basically undermining the labor laws of the U.S. to be displacing jobs in the US (with protections of the US laws) with jobs in another country that have inadequate protections.

This is not a new concept.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[SteeldrivingJon]

Actually, the ability to import "stuff" cheap won't help you all that much. The things that keep our cost of living high are mainly things like rent, transportation, healthcare, saving for retirement, etc.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[sholden]

How much do you think the children working the coal mines and textile mills in England in the 19th century got paid? And what were the working conditions like?

How about today?

Ever considered that maybe this exploitation of the poor is a step on the path to a middle class and a better standard of living for the poor? Subsistance farming is not a pleasant life, and neither is third world factory work. But in England and America at least the increase in overall wealth resulted in the poor being better off in an absolute sense.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[m50d]

I can import them personally I think, but if you try and do that large scale it's called parallel importing and against the law. Amazon's divisions in poorer countries (china and india iirc) were recently sued for letting european customers buy the (cheaper) goods from there. I think it's wrong that doing that is illegal but outsourcing the labour over there isn't. Yes I'm British, we believe in socialism because we've seen the effects, e.g. we've lived with and without a national health service, and know which we prefer. Personally I'm very much a commie, but even the purest of capitalists must see that laws against parallel importing are a distortion of the market.

What about electronic shredding ?

[Arthur B.]

I guess they have many electronic documents as well... Does the order apply to "not deleting the file". More specifically, how do they intend to enforce this order ! They can't obviously sit and ensure that no shredding is performed or no document is deleted !

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[rokzy]

the point is that now this order is made, if someone claims they "accidentally" deleted something then they still go to jail. it shifts burden of proof from AMD proving the document was incriminating to other people proving it wasn't.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[Maagma]

All of these companies have document retention policies and this includes digital files (as well as email!), but most digital files are stored on hard copy anyway. An employee could lose his job for deleting or destroying a file outside of normal document retention policies. In general it is more advantageous to keep files for a short while because it saves headaches of getting that information from a person if the company is involved in a court battle.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[Alex P Keaton in da]

My wife would be awesome at a document preservation job- she still has birthday cards from her grandmother from 20 years ago, and the movie stub from our first date.
Maybe these companies could hire armies of "scrapbookers." Imagine all the emails and docs saved artisticly, with cute frills and interesting stamps. Your Honor, the document in question, is the one with the unicorn sticker on it...
I know Banks have very strict retention requirements, but seriously, who is going to pay for all this storage capacity...
And is it just a prohibition on shredding? Does that mean they can burn the docs?

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[enigmals1]

BUWAHAHAHA!!! OMG dude! I SO wish I had mod points...

Someone get this man a +5 FUNNY

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[megalomang]

It hardly shifts the burden of proof such that all deleted documents must now be proven to contain no incriminating data. What school of law did you attend again?

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[Foolomon]

I guess you'd have to order employees to stop biting their fingernails too.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[nacturation]

it shifts burden of proof from AMD proving the document was incriminating to other people proving it wasn't.

WTF? So instead of innocent until proven guilty, the court order means that Intel and others will be guilty until proven innocent? Shredding documents now means that the companies will be in contempt of court, not that they will be automatically incriminated by a now non-existent document.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[skarphace]

> WTF? So instead of innocent until proven guilty...

Innocent until proven guilty really only applies as the -black and white- form in criminal cases. Since this is a civil suit, there are degrees of guilty and innocent.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[nacturation]

Innocent until proven guilty really only applies as the -black and white- form in criminal cases. Since this is a civil suit, there are degrees of guilty and innocent.

Yes, but one is still presumed innocent unless the prosecution can convince a judge/jury otherwise. The burden of proof is less -- preponderence of evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt -- but it still does require proof.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[mccabem]

IANAL, but I would think that Intel would theoretically be guilty of something like Contempt of Court if there were evidence of shredding after the fact.

Perhaps the penalty is more than this due to measures like the Sarb-Ox Act?

In any event, I doubt it would make their guilt/innocent significantly more or less in question.

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no prosecution in civil.

man you really need to brush up

these court orders are agreed upon also.
ie, that other side had to say yes in this case.

they are doing it to save the trouble later.

there is no concept of guilty / innocent in civil court like there is in criminal. hence that innocent till proven guilty doesnt even apply.
go read about civil court before spouting off about it

Re:What about electronic shredding ?

[Skevin]

> What school of law did you attend again?

I don't know about him, but *my* law degree starts with the initials, "IANAL". It sounds pretty prestigious, because I see a lot of other slashdot posters with the same law degree as me. It also seems to inspire confidence and awe, because everytime I open my arguments with these initials, the judge chuckles quietly and my opponents shake their heads in disbelief (regardless of whether they represent the plaintiff or the defendent). I know I still lose a lot of cases, but I'm sure that is because I'm merely a recent graduate... but hey, my legal fees are still very reasonable.

Solomon Chang

How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[DanielMarkham]

The nature of the complaint sounds awful, and AMD certainly has a very competitive product that Intel is trying to quash. I can't help but wonder, though, at how difficult it is going to be to prove the charges AMD makes, and even if they are proved, by the time years have passed and the judgement is made, the market will be way down the road. Look at the Microsoft browser case: while there was relief granted, did it really make a difference by the time it was given?
In addition, the sheer volume of paperwork requested (38 companies) indicates that this is going to be huge and take time to prosecute. While that's great for the lawyers, I'm not so sure it serves the interests of their client. Aside from a insignificant (relatively speaking) award and the lawyers getting paid, I can't remember one tech company suing another and actually coming out on top of the market years later. Perhaps they are doing this for deterrence purposes? ie, to keep Intel from continuing its practices during the trial?

Easy For You to Say

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[cybersaga]

Aside from a insignificant (relatively speaking) award and the lawyers getting paid, I can't remember one tech company suing another and actually coming out on top of the market years later. Perhaps they are doing this for deterrence purposes? ie, to keep Intel from continuing its practices during the trial?

Remember that AMD's sales are not declining because of Intel, as Netscape usage shrunk because of IE. AMD has been growing, but has seemed to hit a cap, or a block in the road that they can't pass because of Intel's actions. So during this trial, they won't be losing or dying, but they'll simply be at a stand-still. Once Intel's actions are eliminated, AMD will be free to continue growing.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Glock27]

Perhaps they are doing this for deterrence purposes? ie, to keep Intel from continuing its practices during the trial?

Yes, Intel will have to be much more careful since if they engage in illegal practices and the vendor decides to nail them, it will look very bad in court. "Despite ongoing legal proceedings, Intel has engaged yet again in...".

It'll be interesting to see if there's a perceptible uptick in AMD marketshare after this...

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[AvitarX]

A good Intel lawyer will make sure that it can't happen like that though.

They will say everythign has to be within the time frame of the fileing date backwards by the statatory limitation on whatever they are suing for (allowing for a little more time soley to establish background).

Of course AMDs lawyers will ask open ended questions to the defense hoping that someone slips up and opens the window for a line of questions about the continuing practice.

As to the Grandparents subject, I don't know for sure how much specific lawyers do, but a case I worked where about 13,000 pages were admitted into evidence the lawyers could see something (or hear it in court) and pretty much name a document number that was relevent (there were 1,300+ documents each 10 or so pages).

In another case with far less admitted into evidence, but with 40 cases of documents produced the expert witness I met had read all 40 cases himself and then re-read about half of it that he deamed sort of relavent and then focused on more.

The first case was quite large (one of the richest 20 people on the planet was there)

The other was a realitivly small case that had a large vengance factor (less then $5,000,000).

So lawyers can handle a lot of paper.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[megalomang]

I'm not so sure it serves the interests of their client

How can you even think this PR free-for-all isn't serving their client's interest? This whole thing is all about publicity. Think about it... First the court case which has doubious legal standing at best. The complaint was a hand-crafted PR piece. Did you read it? The 1-page ads in the papers the next day? The constant daily spewage of press releases since then? Deterrence purposes my ass... this is purely PR motivated.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Dan Ost]

Also, even if the court battle drags on for years and never resolves, in the
meantime, Intel is pressured to not engage in the types of behavior that this
battle is about. Essentially, just starting the court battle protects AMD
from additional actions by Intel that might appear anti-competative.

It's also free advertising for AMD and hurts Intel's public image.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[bsytko]

I would have to disagree that AMD has it a cap. I mean to me, it seems like their more popular than ever. With all their latest processors proving to be better than Intel's, it seems like all my friends have AMD's these days. Now, I can see where the big PC vendor market has a lot more effect than what my buddies buy, but eventually, it trickles around and it seems as more people would start to buy AMD.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[I_Want_This_ID]

Yes, AMD has a better product in my own opinion than Intel.

Open up the advertising for Best Buy or Circuit City or any other retailer that sells computers. How many of the systems do you see containing AMD chips versus Intel chips? Why is it for every AMD computer I see, I see 10 or 20 Intel computers?

More people ARE buying AMD chips, but AMD is arguing that even MORE people would buy them if Intel wasn't using anti-competetive practices against them.

As a side note: You and your friends are a great and important segment for AMD, yet they really want to be mainstream and they can't quite seem to leap that hurdle

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[huckda]

Riding the wave of the press to promote one's company does not make the suit any less significant. Monopoly practices are FAR from having "dubious legal standing".

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also free advertising for AMD and hurts Intel's public image.

FREE? Tell me where to get those free lawyers so I can start my own lawsuit against a huge corporation!

And no, /. armchair lawyers don't count.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[jozeph78]

Actually, a lawyer (or legal team) can process an insane amount of paperwork rather swiftly.

I work for a company that provides document scanning software to do OCR, document endorsing, tagging and other scanning related tasks. We market our high volume product to what is coined a "copy-shop", where a litigation firm will take several boxes containing tens or hundreds of thousands of documents. On some scanners our high volume product is capable of scanning and processing > 6000 documents per hour. We also have lower volume scanning product that some litigation firms purchase to do in-house scanning. Either way, turing 100,000 pieces of paper into searchable, bookmarked PDF's that are perpared for court submission with location information (box/folder/paperclip/staple), endorsing and proper Bates Numbering isn't as difficult as one might assume (provided they use our's or a similar product).

Conversly, we also offer a product that can print out scaned images from PDF's or MTiff's to paper, so if you decided to sue me I could send a truckload of paper as opposed to a searchable cd or two. This technique is known as "blow back" and , IMHO, is aligned with the level of ethics associated with most legal matters.

It's a weird market I had no idea about until I began my job here a month ago. But we are a thriving company that started in the midst of the tech burst, so while niche there is a big market.(shameless plug) www.ribstoneusa.com

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[iminplaya]

...AMD will be free to continue growing.

Into what? Who needs another Intel? We need to take the Alpha chip's IP away and get it back on the streets. The factory that picks up on it will make a bundle. Dumb and dumber is not competition. And with Apple taking the low road, that goes double. Now we lost the PPC, leaving us with Intel and a wannabe.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Zoshnell]

You work in Downtown LA?

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[jozeph78]

Chicago

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Anonymous Coward]

And no, /. armchair lawyers don't count.

What about the /. IANA Lawyers???

or is it I ANAL?

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Zoshnell]

Ah so there is another compnay out there that uses Ribstone too, I thought they were lying about that :)

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[jozeph78]

heh... are you a client of ours? If so what company?

One of our developers just got back from LA where one of our biggest clients is.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[chelecossais]

"Proved" is not an english word. You probably mean "proven". Carry on.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[fbg111]

and even if they are proved, by the time years have passed and the judgement is made, the market will be way down the road. Look at the Microsoft browser case: while there was relief granted, did it really make a difference by the time it was given?

The difference is, AMD has revenue, Netscape didn't, or any revenue to speak of at least. AMD's roadmap is competitive, and they've also been competing against Intel for so long that they know how to run lean. There's no comparison b/t this case and the MS anti-trust case.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually think this is hurting Intel's image. When you see this story on the 6 oclock news on all the local stations around the world please tell me. Until then the only people who even care are geeks. What, are we geeks gonna change the world and force all the non geeks to use AMD. Not likely. THis hasn't hurt Intel at all. Don't be foolish. Not a single person in the general public cares.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Dan Ost]

I saw it on CNN before I read about it on slashdot.

The general public may not care, but this will still raise the public's
awareness of the AMD brand and the alledged practices of Intel.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Zoshnell]

Used to be with Whitmont,you work for Ribstone?

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[jozeph78]

Just started. Interesting field but I'm just looking for the Java/Linux experience. So far it's a good place to work.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[Zoshnell]

Good luck with that man. They seemed a cool bunch of people, but we had to keep on them for some issues that should have been resolved.

'scuse my ignorance

[Linker3000]

How can you tell whether an organisation is shredding or not if they do it covertly? After all, if you have something to hide why are you going to worry about someone telling you to stop if you think you can cover your tracks - or is this like the infamous "have you stopped beating your wife?" question?

Re:'scuse my ignorance

[UnknowingFool]

It's really on the honor system. No one will be standing by the shredder to prevent shredding. However, the courts are displeased when companies and people defy an order. Most of the respondents were supposedly victims of Intel's anti-competitive behavior and don't really have much to hide. The one that seems they have most to hide is Toshiba. Maybe there are records unrelated to Intel that they do not wish revealed.

Re:'scuse my ignorance

[Sique]

There are things like archive numbers and stuff. And it looks suspicious, if suddenly those numbers aren't complete anymore.

Re:'scuse my ignorance

[mrscorpio]

If they ask for "incriminating document #23521 from 5/6/03" and they don't have it, but have "unincriminating documents #23520 from 5/5/03 and #23522 from 5/7/03", they're fucked and the responsible parties (and their boss, and their boss's boss) will go to jail.

The point in a document retention policy is:

1. Having a written policy
2. It needs to make sense (e.g. that deleting all e-mail after 60 days one in another post sounds a little shady)
3. It needs to be followed consistently (e.g., these documents are kept for this long and then shredded within this amount of time. Any significant deviation from this is bad)

Re:'scuse my ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD alleges that Intel coerced these other companies to not buy from AMD. In other words, it made sense for those companies to buy from AMD, but they didn't due to Intel's threats. So it's not just AMD that was harmed by Intel's predatory practices, but those other companies, too.

That same coercion keeps them from going public with complaints. The court order gives them cover, as they not only *can* provide the documents to AMD, but they *must* do so. If Intel were to suggest that they lose the documents, that would tip Intel from a civil anti-trust case to a criminal tampering with witnesses or evidence case.

I'd be surprised if AMD's lawyers weren't given lists of exactly which documents they should ask for.

Re:'scuse my ignorance

[kelleher]

It's mainly the honor system "enforced" by two things: 1) the more people that know about something the harder it is to keep it secret and 2) most people aren't willing to go to jail just to protect their company's shareholders.

Look like there is a case...

[ID000001]

Otherwise the court won't ask the company to keep their document/file. This case probably will take a while to settle...

Waiting to respond

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have promised to respond soon.

Yeah, hang on, we'll send in our response as soon as we're done shredding these last few tons of paper.

Heh

[rsax]

Others have promised to respond soon.

Once we have shredded the necessary documents.

Re:Heh

[miscz]

It's in the best interest of those who had to comply to Intel's terms to help AMD. Thanks to this they will be able to offer wider range of hardware and therefore be more attractive to customers.

Good news for AMD

[cybersaga]

Even without Toshiba, or the other 22 comapanies that have not responded or made a decision yet, AMD still has some big guns on their side.

Those 9 companies are big names and could win the case for them if indeed they have the evidence AMD is hoping for.

LINUX SUCKS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it really really does.
Go use a real OS like Win2k / Win2k3 or Free/Open/NetBSD.

"Promised to respond soon"?

[Cyberax]

Please wait... Here, last document....

OK, now we promise we won't destroy any more documents.

Re:"Promised to respond soon"?

[shawn(at)fsu]

"Promised to respond soon"?
I think the conversation went something like this...

Ring Ring
Hello? WHAT? I can barely hear you, YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP! Can you hold on a second.
How many times do I have to tell you, you can't put that many pieces of paper through at once.
Sorry I'll have to get back to you our shredders are working oevrtime trying to get rid of all these documents

Fuck..

[Anonymous Coward]

to die. I Will jam lagged behind, on an endeavour of Jordan Hubbard Discuusion I'm sales and so on, be a lot slower can no longer be Since then. More The future holds

Others will respod soon....

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as the shredder cools down a bit.

So difficult to do business anymore.

[bigtallmofo]

Imagine you work at one of these 32 companies and you're dilligently working on a project that's going fantastically. Suddenly because of some lawsuit that you have nothing to do with and the company only tangentially has any relationship with one of the two parties, you have to stop working on your project so that you can immediately begin a document preservation project.

I'm not saying AMD isn't within their rights, I'm just making the observation that it's getting so difficult to do business anymore. Bad enough companies have to dodge copyright, trademark and patent infringement cases all day for things they actually do. Add to that cases that they had little or nothing to do with, but they might have some document that some other company sent to them.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Vo0k]

No, you don't have to stop. Just don't delete your old mail, and drop all your spare papers in a separate box instead of a waste basket. You're not requested to produce any kind of evidence, just not to dispose of any you have already.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[bigtallmofo]

Just don't delete your old mail, and drop all your spare papers in a separate box instead of a waste basket.

How nice for you that you don't work at a company that has an email retention policy that is automatically enforced. Many large companies do today. If I leave an email in any folder for more than 60 days, it's automatically deleted. Oh, and my deleted bin in Outlook is cleaned out every night automatically. Oh, and corporate has disabled the use of PST files. Of course, all these things can be bypassed by a very technical user, but the point is, many corporations have spent a lot of time and energy on automatically not keeping things.

In cases like this, they must then temporarily reverse all those decisions and create actual projects to undo the work.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[DarkSarin]

That sounds like a poorly designed policy. It also doesn't mean that all incoming emails aren't automatically stored on the mail server, regardless of what the user does. The server that we use keeps ALL emails that are sent or received through it. That's just the way it works.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[CoderBob]

Dear sweet mother of Odin, that's a bad policy to have in place! From an IT perspective it is just stupid. And as someone who has to manage such things, "a lot of time and engery" is a gross overstatement of how much effort it takes server side to change those policies.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then that is your companies policy which is fine. Our policy is 30 days for backups and the server auto deletes mail over 2 years old. The problem is if you CHANGE or suddenly start enforcing your policy after recieving some type of court order.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[sud_crow]

Bad enough companies have to dodge copyright, trademark and patent infringement cases all day for things they actually do. Add to that cases that they had little or nothing to do with, but they might have some document that some other company sent to them.

I dont know what you have been reading, but they had something to do with it, thats why they are being ordered to stop shreding documents!

If i tell you to jump to the river and you do it, and die in the process, is your fault for being stupid (maybe if there are prossecutors, there could be allegacies about psicological disorder and could sue your pants off, who knows), BUT, if i tell you to jump to the river, and give you money for doing it, then im much more liable if something happens to you.

The same applies to Intel and every company who accepted the pressures not to sell AMD cpus, they are as guilty as Intel.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[ShoobieRat]

Pththt!!!

Retention policies don't factor in. Company's are required by law to be able to put a hold on their documents as needed, regardless of the company's retention policies. If there's an automatic retention schedule going on, and the courts say "no shredding", someone stops the retention schedule. Failure to do so results in legal consequences (such as "destruction of potentially incriminating data").

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Mr2cents]

Why on earth would anyone want to delete e-mail? Mine isn't only preserved forever and ever (unless if it's spam), it's also backed up. You're not telling me you never wanted to search for an old e-mail sent to you a year ago.

All those thousands of mails won't take up 20$ worth of diskpace.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Austerity Empowers]

I'd say that is the case here and we are not bothered by AMD's lawsuit. Our managers have informed us of the case and gave the coordinates of our lawyer responsible for it. That's pretty much it, life is normal.

I can't imagine anyone being sidetracked for a document preservation project. To me this case is good for those 32 companies (unless one is Intel), it will ensure that we continue to get the best prices on our product without being forced into vendor lock in. If only we could find a way to put Microsoft in its place (practically).

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[ChrTssu]

I know you're saying that AMD has a right to sue, but you're still placing the onus of blame on them, and not on Intel, who, it appears, is guilty of anticompetitive behavior. It is Intel, not AMD, who is to blame for these companies' wasted time. If they hadn't broken antitrust laws, then there would be no lawsuit (assuming, of course, Intel is guilty).

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the amount of users. We have a two year no touch policy (mail not touched in two years gets deleted) and this still puts our mailbox stores at about 2TB and growing about 6-8GB a day. Yes, 2 TB is not really that expensive but at certain intervals, requires a complete change in the storage system or network used as limits and capacities are approached. Add the fact that the backups to tape take a LONG time. For those without MS Exchange, there are advantages to doing fulls/brick/partical/diff backups depending on your backup software, media, and recovery tools available to you. Remember, people still write to tape and ship off site.

The other reason to delete email.. For some people, it is a liability to have mail that old. I've read in the past that MS themselves have a 30 day retention policy.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Rich0]

I couldn't agree more, although companies usually have retention policies not as a cost saving matter, but as a legal matter.

If the company auto-deletes all email more than 30 days old, then when a lawsuit comes along alleging that two years ago the company took some damaging action, nobody can subpoena all the emails from back then and see what really happened.

Of course, companies still get in trouble. They get sued over something and stop destroying some class of documents. Then they say something stupid in an email which is then retained under the no-shred order. Then somebody else sues them and finds the email. You would think that when you are actually being sued over something that you would be more careful about the emails you send that you already know have been subpoenaed...

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How nice for you that you don't work at a company that has an email retention policy that is automatically enforced. Many large companies do today. If I leave an email in any folder for more than 60 days, it's automatically deleted.

Then it's probably not your problem. If your company gets a no-shred policy and they don't disable the policies you describe, you really have no way to comply, so it probably won't come down on your head.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

I used to work for a company that had a similar policy and we actually got a "do not shred" order. It is actually VERY easy to comply with these orders (at least the one we got). It doesn't say where anything has to be stored or anything. We just kept the normal policy in place, but the tapes of nightly backups were just kept. This cost a little bit more as we needed quite a bit more tapes than usual (since we had a rotation system and now we kept them all), but not a big deal.

Just because you need to keep the files/emails doesn't mean you need to keep them on your regular production machines. Leaving your systems runnign just like normal, but keeping archived tapes works just fine (again at least in our case).

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Khyber]

If only we could find a way to put Microsoft in its place (practically).

Two words....

Electromagnetic Pulse. just send MS back to the stone age. Let's see them rebuild when everything's been wiped, or damaged.

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

I myself in my own work email box get approx 200MB/week of email. Now luckely for me I don't do most of my work with email, this is just the email that is sent to me, to usually help me do my job etc...must be nice to be able to keep all of your email PHEW...

On a side note we have no 'retention' poloicy for emails, just a flexable space limit (the IT guys start yelling at you when you hit over 500MB stored email)....So at that point you can save attachments to other places, and delete email, most the email of course I'm able to delete within 24 hours as its information that is 'current' but no longer needed..., and yes after my 3 days off I do have to spen around 40minutes at the start of my 'monday' to sort my emails..

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[gstoddart]

Why on earth would anyone want to delete e-mail? Mine isn't only preserved forever and ever (unless if it's spam), it's also backed up. You're not telling me you never wanted to search for an old e-mail sent to you a year ago.

Well, there's two perspectives on that. And individual users can really confound a company.

By law, certain types of records must be kept for a period of time.

If, at the end of that time, nobody has filed court action, you not only can delete the file, you almost legally must (or at least, your legal department will insist you do).

This is because once you've gone past the retention date of a document and aren't involved in legal proceedings, deleting the documents keeps them from coming back to bite you in the ass for other potential legal situations. Deleting before the end of the retention period, or once you're involved in court proceedings will get you in jail.

Individual users backing up their e-mail within a corporation and retaining them beyond the corporate document retention schedules could actually cost the company in a legal situation in the long run, because someone might find out the documents still exist -- and then they become legally admissable after they should no longer exist to be a legal liability.

I'm with you, I have an archive of all of my e-mails going back over a decade.

Cheers

(Yes, I know I'm a little late for anyone else to read this, but since you asked, that's the legality of the retention policies)

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Mr2cents]

Thanks for the reply.

But why should an e-mail record be viewed only as something negative, you could also make your case of innocence with it. I think deleting e-mail creates an image that the company is using dirty tactics (maybe falsely). Isn't this mostly an irrational fear without a real basis? Or am I naive, and is every company trying to screw their competitors with every conceivable illegal tactic they can think of?

Screw Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope AMD succeeds in kicking those bastards at Inetl. Intel & M$ mofos have stifled innovation & fair competetion.

Fuck Intel.

- A proud Anon Cow who has used only AMD/Via chips in the last 8 years

We apologize for the inconvienence

[Sierpinski]

Those responsible for shredding the important documents, have been sacked. ...

We apologize again for the inconvienence. Those responsible for sacking the people who were shredding documents have also been sacked. ...

A moose once bit my sister...

Re:We apologize for the inconvienence

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a shredder? LUXURY! Is that an intel processor? SLOTH! Is that a lawyer? VANITY!

No Shred Request?

[Evil W1zard]

Man it is totally unfair to not allow them to skateboard during this!

Re:No Shred Request?

[PhoenixPath]

roflmao!!!! That was AWESOME!

Re:No Shred Request?

[Belial6]

You can skateboard. Just not well. You are also allowed to play guitar. Just no screaming metal riffs.

Re:No Shred Request?

[LesPaul75]

I agree. Funniest one-liner of the day. Now, why it's modded as "insightful" is another matter...

Outsourcing is not a 'misdeed'. It's a competitive

[Anonymous Coward]

necessity.

Would you rather AMD go out of business?
Their competition outsources and so must they.

nntznnr

qualms

[Rinisari]

My only qualms about this lawsuit have to do with AMD's wonderful pricing. We all know that lawsuits take time and, most of all, money. AMD can sue Intel all it wants, but they cannot pass on the price of the lawsuit to their customers, lest its prices be raised nearer to that of its sworn enemy.

Re:qualms

[Calyth]

That ain't going to happen unless Chipzilla would actually release something worthy of competition at the same time as being sued.

Re:qualms

[denobug]

eh, passing the cost to the customer? No No No my friend. They raise the price to MAKE MORE MONEY! This lawsuits ensure that then CAN raise the price of their products (like the new FX) and make more money. Obviously they have consider the litigation cost into the "operating cost" of profiting more from the new CPU with fatter margin.

Its'?

[Radak]

Are we just putting apostrophes anywhere we damn well please now? It's bad enough when people think "it's" is a proper possessive (it isn't), but now you're just sticking them places to your heart's content?

The Angry Flower can help you. See rule 3. http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

Re:Its'?

[Tx]

I agree with most of your point, but the rule on possesives is stupid, and stupid rules should be changed. If an inanimate object can be placed in a possesive construct in exactly the same way as a noun object, then it should be punctuated the same way. It's silly unintuitive gotchas like that that cause confusion and lead to people sticking apostrophes all over the place.

Re:Its'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Radak, if you would only put your superior grammatical intellect to use where it is needed, you could solve 70% of wrong addresses on PEOPLES' driver's licenses'. Think about it.

Re:Its'?

[Radak]

Think of its (the possessive) the same way you think of mine, yours, hers, his, ours, and theirs. Pronouns are NOT nouns and possessive pronouns do NOT have apostrophes. Its is not the only one, it is not an exception, and therefore it is not an unintuitive gotcha.

Re:Its'?

[ringman8567]

consider my, our, your, his, her, their. count the apotrophies. Why sould its be different.

Re:Its'?

[pseudorand]

I dont know about you guys, but I agree with Radak totally. Apostrophie's just can't be used lightly. Bush put a lot of money into No Child Left Behind, and I'm disgusted at it's inability to teach American's proper grammer. Its sickening. If you don't know how to use apostrophys' then there are schools', books', web'sites', and all kind's of resources for you to better your's'e'l'f.

Re:Its'?

[mph]

Think of its (the possessive) the same way you think of mine, yours, hers, his, ours, and theirs. Pronouns are NOT nouns and possessive pronouns do NOT have apostrophes. Its is not the only one, it is not an exception, and therefore it is not an unintuitive gotcha.

The unintuitive gotcha is, of course, the pronoun that does take an apostrophe in its possessive: one's.

Re:Its'?

[TheScorpion420]

ha, grammar nazi made a spelling error.

Re:Its'?

[cyberfunk2]

You know people.. when i was typing the story in, I knew it was wrong.. I saw it, and my english teaching said.. nooooo.. but then the rest of me said.. I Dont CARE !

I Would Assume Many Companies...

[geoffrobinson]

if Intel is doing what AMD alledges, I would assume many third-party companies resent what Intel is doing. Shred? They may secretly help AMD behind the scenes for all we know.

They may not want to be held hostage.

Re:I Would Assume Many Companies...

[Anonymous Coward]

if Intel is doing what AMD alledges, I would assume many third-party companies resent what Intel is doing.

What, you mean offering massive discounts and advertising dollars? Yeah, I'm sure they're really resent getting some chips for close to nothing.

Lame Joke, Sorry...

[VeganBob]

Man, it looks like AMD is really putting Intel through the shredder.

Old news

[Cranst0n]

Yep.. this is only 2 days old... Guess its not stuff that matters. ;P

I Predict...

[jcr]

AMD will win, Intel will appeal, and after about a decade of litigation, Intel will pay AMD about a billion dollars in a settlement. In the meantime, Intel will not in any way alter its behavior.

-jcr

No shred?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly lawyers. Just burn the papers instead.

you're right, very serious.

[SuperBanana]

I guess they have many electronic documents as well... Does the order apply to "not deleting the file". More specifically, how do they intend to enforce this order ! They can't obviously sit and ensure that no shredding is performed or no document is deleted

Files can be deleted, but if tapes go missing or don't pass integrity checks, you know someone was mucking around.

Even fairly small corporations/businesses use complex backup plans, with redundancy, off-site storage, etc.

You're also assuming most of these companies don't want to cooperate. If Intel was strongarming [ducks]

Maybe we can get

[KingBahamut]

Larry Ellison to hire a bunch of PIs to hang out at the dumpster.

=)

What's the Big Deal?

[sweetnjguy29]

This is a typical motion granted by judges in litigation. The order simply states that the company preserve its documents. The company under the order has to implement certain policies to preserve documents for litigation. That would include not shredding files or deleting electronic files. Keep in mind that questioning the bejeezus out of company executives about how documents are handled is a very effective litigation technique since most large companies, if they are smart, have detailed document retention policies. And most employees don't follow them to the letter. Which looks very bad.

Yeah it can be really bad...

[The Creator]

If you are in the testing phase of a shredder development project.

GRna4

[Anonymous Coward]

Incompatibilitie5 OpenBSD leader Theo OF AMERICA irc my resignation in ratio of 5 to [idge.n3t] live and a job to [MIT.EDU] FOUND formed his own if I remain

Others have promised to respond soon.

[uniqueUser]

...As soon as we take out the trash!

AMD

[IPFreely]

Attornies of Mass Destruction
Attornies of Mass Documentation

Behind the scenes at Intel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have promised to respond soon.

"What? I can't hear you!" an Intel spokesperson calls out while feverishly shoving papers into a shredder.

Old Enron/Sprint Joke

[sconeu]

We told them to "Ship the Enron documents to the Feds", but what they heard was "Rip the Enron documents to shreds".

It was all just a case of bad cellular.
</VOICE>

Dell?

[FatherOfONe]

Why did they not bother with Dell?

Is seems obvious to me that Dell is getting something for not using AMD chips. A company that was so open about wanting to build a freaking Macintosh X86 computer would not EVER use an AMD chip?

So on one hand they will build a computer, that "may" be radically different than any other they have produced, for say 2% of the market, and of that market a large percentage would still only buy from Apple. But they won't use AMD for ANY systems??? I am willing to bet that AMD would make up far more than the fraction of a percentage of their sales...

Re:Dell?

[xenocide2]

I'm no lawyer, but I presume that AMD may wish to use this lawsuit to sell to Dell. If they truely are getting a fringe benefit for playing Intel exclusive, I would imagine there is some law out there that punishes them as well for participating. At the very least, an ongoing suit with Intel suggests that Dell start offering AMD computers unless they WANT to be added to the list...

Re:Dell?

[cyberfunk2]

They did bother with Dell, and they said they'd respond in time.

RTFA

Re:Dell?

[FatherOfONe]

Got me :-)

I will read the article next time. I just thought it was weird that it wasn't mentioned in the headline. Dell being the largest PC company.

FP DOLL

[Anonymous Coward]

to happen. My partner. And if of FreeBSD Usenet then disappeared 'firSt post' to look into Usenet is roughly lead developers Jesus Up The SLING you can declined in market they want you to For it. I don't against vigorous recent article put Is busy infighting that comprise is dying and its politics openly. accounts for less irrecoverable The failure of Another cunting Numbers continue Like they are Come (I always bring my all parties it's obligated to care surveys show that the future of the escape them by Of all legitimate

Remember the Martha Stewart case?

[PxM]

She was convicted of obstructing justice rather than actual stock fraud. This court order gives AMD another thing to choke Intel & co. with since people now have to start worrying everytime they hit the delete key. There might even be a chance that they could get blackmail material on Intel if they find out that someone did shred something. E.g. we won't go after you for violating a court order and send you to prison if you help us take out your company"

Respond soon

[clickster]

"Others have promised to respond soon."

Just as soon as we're done shred...I mean, we'll get back to you.

Wouldn't be the first time...

[SeanDuggan]

I worked at Intel as a co-op a few years ago. It seems that at one point they had "Pack Rat Days," basically, a day in the year when everyone went through their desks, took all of the old and unused papers and such, and tossed them in a provided dumpster. I asked after the tradition while I was there. They said that anti-trust suits had made them stop.