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Microsoft to Fight Crime With Spammer's Millions
daria42 writes "It looks as if the $7 million Microsoft won from spam king Scott Richter won't go into a Swiss bank account and never be seen again after all. The company plans to dedicate a cool $5 mil to helping law enforcement agencies address computer-related crimes. Another $1 million will go to New York State to "expand computer-related skills training for youths and adults", with the rest being flagged to pay Microsoft's legal costs."
Does this mean we're going to see Bill Gates in a bizarre spandex outfit combating spammers around the world? I smell a Ben Affleck film!
Crimes like piracy of Windows ?. Patent policing ?. More SCO like allegations on newer projects that imitate or duplicate Microsoft products ?.
Another $1 million will go to New York State to "expand computer-related skills training for youths and adults"Train them to use Outlook, Word and Excel or do they mean .NET,C# and Monad ?. Sort of catch them young approach ?.
I've seen a lot of Microsoft charity - it's often just building a new market for themselves, locking in an expanding market or blatant tax evasionary steps . They sent 250 XP Cds to a school and mark the cost as donations. I went on TV to help FSF guys call foul on that in Kerala - apparently it seems to have made some impact there (they teach about using OpenOffice and FireFox now).Essentially the money is in Microsoft's pockets and they are trying for Maximum ROI, rather than paying it out as dividends to their shareholders right now.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
This appeared to be a straightforward case, but somehow I can still see the lawyer, holding his pinkie to his mouth and saying "Sure, I can help you prosecute this spammer. For one million dollars!"
It's called charity for a reason; they're giving of their own free will. Who are you, or anyone, to tell somebody else how generous they should be?
Charity, when compelled through coersion or threat, is just a nice word for slavery.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
1. Bash Microsoft no matter what they do.
2. Get mod points
3. ???
4. Profit!
As always this is slashdot. If MS closed up shop, put their source code in the public domain, and gave all their money to starving street kids, close to half the posts would be insulting them or questioning their motives.
East Coast Brewers
If it's going to law enforcement, It'll end up going to the "OMG Kiddie PorN!!!!!!!! It's teh evil!!!!!" fund.
Don't get me wrong. Child pornographers deserve their own special ring of Hell. But it seems that to law enforcement, computer crime == kiddie porn. Period. No other crime occurs on a computer. Ever. Just child porn. Nothing else. End of line.
There are other crimes occuring involved the magic, glowing grey box.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
The bitterness with Microsoft got old and stale 10 years ago.
Oh ... and there I was under the impression that the anti-MS sentiment was about the fact that the company actually continues to behave unethically to this day, not about whether or not it was "fashionable" or "not fashionable" to be anti-MS ... silly me. I didn't realise bashing Microsoft "was, like, so yesterday!"
Your post reminds me of how Nike successfully turned around rising negative sentiment against the company over their sweatshop labour practices by creating a clever youth-targeted ad campaign that manipulated young people into simply thinking it was no longer "cool" to whine about the sweatshop labour because the topic was, well, 'so yesterday'. Of course they never stopped the sweatshop labour practices.
Are we so divorced from reality that our opinions about serious, real-life problems are now mostly based on how "hot", "current" or "fashionable" a topic is, rather than on, you know, facts?