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New Microsoft Dirty Tricks Revealed
Conrad Mazian writes "Robert X. Cringely has an article on the Technology Evangelist web site where he claims that Microsoft destroyed evidence in the Burst vs Microsoft case. Specifically Burst's lawyers had asked for certain emails, Microsoft claimed that they couldn't find the backup tapes the emails would be on, and while this was happening the tapes were in a vault at Microsoft — until they mysteriously disappeared. It's a fascinating story, and even names one person at Microsoft."
Oh, No! A corporation wrangles, delays, misplaces, obfuscates in the face of a lawsuit. Heaven's, what is the world coming to?
Microsoft must be the very first to EVER do this.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This is *real* journalism:
... the headline here said somehting about Microsoft's "NEW" dirty tricks? WTF?
- Nth hand unverified, information (My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious. )
- this is about stuff along time ago.
- There is a lot suspect in what's being claimed in the article as well.
Well, as the tagline says:
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Which is why Enron is still around...
Developers: We can use your help.
Enron is not gone because they broke the law and got obliterated for it, Enron is gone because the reality that they actually had no money overtook their fiction and they collapsed into overnight bankruptcy. Legal recourse against Enron only really began after it was long gone, and was against the company's directors.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
An even bigger issue is how Microsoft has lifted man kind...The PC would not exist without them...
Nonsense, if Micro$oft never bought the CPM rip-off 86-DOS and renamed it "PC-DOS 1.0" Gary Kildall at Digital Research would have just marked CPM directly to IBM and today we'd all be running GEM XP.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"They generate a large fraction of the US GNP, "
They do? And assuming they do, is that a get out of jail free card?
If so, why?
"they make the software that has made computers cheap and ubiquitous for everybody on the planet,"
There were many others in that game too, till they were crushed.
And they have made a very pretty penny from it.
And it is not like it would not have happened anyway ( there is nothing all that special about Microsoft
in that regard )
"and Bill Gates personally funds one of the largest charities in the world."
Again, is this a get out of jail free card? Why do you bring it up?
Is it OK to destroy evidence because you donate money to a charity?
"Now, if I can only get one of their salespeople to call me back about a large new installation I'm getting ready to do..."
Good luck on that.
emt 377 emt 4
Exactly. If this one company can't archive emails successfully, what does that say for the likely success of sarbanes-oxley compliance in the US business world?
I'm kind of confused why this story is being treated as it is in the comments. MS is supposed to be helping other businesses avoid the possibility of losing data... hmmmmm MS wants to be the preferred supplier of software to government agencies and this is a bad mark on them if you ask me. Sure, they might have lost tapes which is not part of their software per se' but they are supposed to be designing software / systems that provide REALLY good backup processes in mind. If you can't demonstrate that you know how backup processes should work, perhaps your software shouldn't be used by anyone with legal requirements to backup data?
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Because if the dude is serious at all, he knows, "Just hold out until Saturday at 7pm, and boom! All glory to Cobra Commander!" In a ticking time bomb situation, a terrorist who has the balls to murder a million people won't just pussy out because we pull out his fingernails or whatever. If we're asking him where the bomb will go off, he knows it hasn't gone off yet, so he just needs to send you off on a wild goose chase from now until it does.
Meanwhile, how do we know for sure that the military pulled the right guy off the street? It makes sense to have a trial to be sure about it. Once the trial is through, give him the electric chair. But don't go torturing people who you haven't proved are guilty and have nothing to gain from spilling the beans and everything to gain from making up some crap and waiting for the clock to hit zero hour.
Applying it to the innocent is bad, but even applying it to the guilty isn't that great -- So you cause so much pain that a guy will tell you anything to make you stop. That doesn't mean he'll tell you the truth. Kinda like bullying a kid until he says what you tell him to say. Doesn't mean he actually means it, or isn't just lying to get you to stop.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Courts of law are not about punishing the guilty they are about protecting the public from the government and from thugs in uniform. A terrorist suspect is only a suspect because some one 'thinks' or 'decides' they should be one, there is no proof, if there was, that person would be arrested and sent to the courts where the validity of the evidence could be tested and to ensure some incompetent ass wipe didn't falsify the evidence or just outright lied to get promotion or even to hide their own incompetence (if you can't catch the guilty then convicting an innocent can still get you re-elected).
Consider the long term ramifications. Through out history, torturers where isolated from the rest of the community because any individual they can achieve job satisfaction and a personal sense of accomplishment from the infliction of pain, suffering and degradation upon others, is a dangerously deranged psychopathic individual and a threat to the community. Honestly, would you want a US military approved torturer living next door to you and having access to your family (a thug that listened to the agonised screams of human beings 8 hours a day with out a qualm whilst eating undisturbed meals, sleeping peacefully and collecting what they considered to be their well deserved pay check).
How many thousands of CIA trained torturers will the US government be releasing upon an unsuspecting public, torturers who no longer have the legal means by which to fulfil those urges they have became accustomed too. Check with any real law enforcement authority and they will tell you exactly what kind of long term threat those individuals who voluntarily participated in that kind of abhorrent behaviour really are.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen