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Novell's 2004 Case Against Microsoft Moves Forward
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Novell's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for destroying the market for WordPerfect and QuattroPro can now move forward. The Supreme Court denied certiorari to Microsoft's appeal of an appeals court ruling, which is the fancy legal way of saying they ignored Microsoft's appeal and let the previous ruling stand. Novell's complaint is an interesting read, because some of this sounds quite familiar, given how Microsoft is now forcing the standardization of OOXML. Statements like, 'As Microsoft knew, a truly standard file format that was open to all ISVs would have enhanced competition in the market for word processing applications, because such a standard allows the exchange of text files between different word processing applications used by different customers,' and 'Microsoft made other inferior features de facto industry standards,' sound a lot more recent."
Mod parent down. Images of amputations that should not be.
Shock images need to be bigger.
Fuckin' amateurs.
But why does MS have to adopt to the standard?
The problem is, matter of factly, that nothing competes with Office as it stands. Nothing. Not OpenOffice, not Apple's Keynote/Pages, or anything else.
Microsoft has to have its hand forced. Look at Internet Explorer. Firefox came out, was a BETTER browser, and now Microsoft is finally promising standards compliance in IE8. It may, or may not be the case that it will happen, but enough to realize that they have to beat Firefox on its own turf, since it is now the superior browser.
All I am saying is, that if you can beat the MS Office suite of products, then you can win against Microsoft. But that's a product that is really, really good.... and I don't see it as MS taking the fight lying down either.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If you find yourself striding through courtrooms with the judge on your side, do not be triumphant; for you aren't in Ellysium. Your market's already dead.
Ice Cream has no bones.
I remember using it in high school ('99?) and how the format you saved in, by default, was simply a type of marked up text; in the editor, you could go to a certain mode that would allow you to edit out the markup code itself (a lot like a wysiwyg editor for html, but... well, html isn't really known for any kind of real word processing). This was so powerful, and when I had a class on Word, I hated it didn't have that feature.
If WordPerfect could read/write ODF, I would go out and buy a legitimate copy (no, I don't even have a pirate copy - it's useless unless you don't need to share your document with others).
WordPerfect made sense. I'm glad justice is (possibly) on it's way to be served.
Looks like I picked a bad week to quit /b/.
Part of the reason WordPerfect lost favor was because Microsoft was dumping Office at a price WordPerfect couldn't compete at. It wasn't until after Microsoft established a majority presence that they raised Office's price to the prices we see today.
.doc format.
At that point, most businesses had already retrained their staff on Word and started saving files in
Before you ask, no, I personally don't have any references to back this up other than my memory.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Works for me.
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
Comparing proprietary document files, which can ONLY be read by the proprietary software when it first comes out, to HTML files, which might be rendered *somewhat* poorly on a different software, but most can be read just fine. HTML is pretty open already. I think THAT is the point. Apples and grapefruit.
Translation: It's money.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Same here.
/etc/hosts
As a side note, Groklaw's IP is 152.46.7.105 in case the GP needs to add it to
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I remember those days and I don't remember MS dumping. Yes, they were cheaper at the time IIRC, but dumping? No. Wordperfect back then was the king of the word processors.
Sorry, I think MS won that battle fair and square.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
"People were shifting between companies all the time back then. Microsoft weren't some alien group, they were people with exactly the same goals and level of experience as the competition. They just had the superior business model for the day. Back then things were nasty, but they were nasty all round, it's just fashionable to only remember microsofts bad deeds."
Business model has nothing to do with it. Talking key decision makers within the Federal government to standardize on Windows and Office has everything to do with it. Nobody I worked with at the time was gung-ho to switch to Windows or Office, we did so because our customers (the Feds) mandated that all future submissions had to be in Word or Excel format.
Microsoft as much as anything is a US Government created monopoly, and the Feds (using taxpayer money) funded a whole new round of spending on PCs and related software for which the existing infrastructure was ill prepared (and still hasn't recovered; witness continuing loss of e-mail and other documents due to conflicting or non-existent internal document standards).
Hopefully wide adoption of something like ODF (and not OOXML) by Europe and other countries will cause US decision makers to finally get a clue (I'm only cautiously optimistic though as they are a fairly clueless bunch). I remain concerned that some people mistakenly see support of Microsoft as the patriotic thing to do when in fact it has hastened the dumbing down of most of the people exposed to it. I know, you won't believe me anyway.
And it looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I refer the right honourable gentleman to the answer I gave, some moments ago...
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
OK, that explains a lot. Wonder why Telia did not notify its customers (me amongst them) as stated in that article? Also wonder what - apart from expensive multihoming - could be done to thwart these divide-and-conquer tactics by Cogent con sorte? Using a non-Telia-hosted proxy for now...
--frank[at]unternet.org
From Groklaw....
:)
Supreme Court rejects Microsoft appeal: Novell v. Microsoft can go forward - Update
Monday, March 17 2008 @ 12:57 PM EDT
Maybe its some weird Bush/Rove/Cheney conspiracy to deny Swedes access to American legal websites
What do you get when you do the following:
host www.groklaw.net
www.groklaw.net CNAME groklaw.ibiblio.org
groklaw.ibiblio.org A 152.46.7.105
Can you ping 152.46.7.105 ?
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
"...they lost. Boohoo, get over it."
It would appear that the fat lady hasn't yet sung.
It wasn't a fair contest, so they didn't lose in the way a tennis player loses. They lost in the way a mugging victim loses. What you refer to as a business model is what I call organized crime.
Fashion has nothing to do with why we remember microsoft's bad deeds. With so many M$ fanboys running around, it's quite unfashionable. We remember them because as professionals and as consumers, *we* are still being punished by what they have done and *they* have yet to pay for it.
> Yes, they were cheaper at the time IIRC, but dumping? No. Wordperfect back then was the king of the word processors.
:)
Yes, dumping. They forced OEMs to license Works (stripped-down Office), made parts of Word into components of Windows, and made sure that Word's file formats were known to no one else.
Ironically, this should be a technical case the judges can understand. Many law offices STILL use WordPerfect, because it was better.
> Sorry, I think MS won that battle fair and square.
You're mistaken, and the rulings thus far seem to back me up on that
it's just fashionable to only remember microsofts bad deeds. Remember their bad deeds? When did they have a good one? Microsoft has been doing bad deeds for so long now they even have the public believing what they do is correct. Microsoft knows only 2 rules: 1. Buy up the competition. 2. If #1 doesn't work, change the code so they cannot compete.
Dumping? What do you think the marginal cost of a copy of Word is? If its $5, I'd be shocked.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
If their software was so superior, why did WordPerfect die?
Like I responded to an earlier poster,
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=490544&cid=22778924
Microsoft effectively killed it with the Windows Monopoly.
They, just like Microsoft, were more interested in making money then they ever were in providing consumer choice,
Your argument is wrong on so many levels...
Word Perfect made its product available on the MacIntosh, Amiga, Apple ][gs, Atari ST, DOS, Windows, Solaris, and VAX systems. What platforms did Microsoft write Office for? What Windows fees did Microsoft charge computer makers for not bundling Microsoft Office/Works versus the ones who did?
Did Microsoft offer matching Marketing funds (paid by you for your non choice of an Operating System when purchasing a PC) to computer makers who bundled PFS Windows Works with their Windows based computers instead of computer makers who chose to bundle Office/Works? No, they didn't.
Is Microsoft evil? No. Are they greedy? Yes. Is there any room for competition within the Microsoft Windows sphere of influence? That remains to be seen. Am I running Linux? Yes. Am I biased? Yes. I haven't had to pay for upgrades or reinstall any Windows machines in my house since switching to Ubuntu. Zero downtime.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
playing with yourself is the easiest way to be exposed to a judge. If you have a monopoly in a market, you cant use it to give yourself the edge in another market (without allowing other competitors in the second market to do the same). This is simple competition law, IANAL so this competition law isn't quite that simple, but the ignorance of some people here, probably the fan boys, is shocking.
I can believe that novel wouldn't have done the same thing, in exactly the same way British gas didnt and sun didnt force its JVM monopoly on OpenOffice. Pushing the limits of competition law is normal, but blatantly crossing the line is something few companies do!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
More of the story about why the competitors lost market share:
1) Microsoft apparently was deliberately allowing piracy of Microsoft Office and other Microsoft products. I know this because I called the Microsoft legal department, accused them of allowing piracy, and forced them to stop some of the local pirate outlets. In response, Microsoft brought one court case. But the other pirates continued. Later Microsoft made it impossible to contact their legal department.
Legitimate suppliers of alternative products could not compete because computer customers were being offered pirated copies of Microsoft Office for $50 when bought with a computer -- or less.
2) The people who owned most of the WordPerfect stock did not WANT to compete. You can read the book about this written by the COO of WordPerfect, Almost Perfect, available online.
My opinion is that Microsoft allowed piracy, and that was the biggest contributing factor toward the failure of competitors.
"Listen" would be the theme for 1990.
In January Microsoft offered to make us a beta test site for Windows 3.0. We accepted their generous offer, but did little more than look Windows over. In hindsight, it is easy to see we should have done much more right away.
Some of us were ready to postpone OS/2 in favor of Windows, but the programmers in the OS/2 group, who had also been given the assignment of eventually creating the Windows version, were not ready to give up on OS/2. They were making good progress and hated the idea of starting over... They wanted to believe in IBM, as did the rest of us. The failure of OS/2 meant having to play on a field owned and operated by Microsoft, with Microsoft making the rules.
In May Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0, and our worst fears became a reality. Just at the time we were decisively winning in the DOS word processing market, the personal computing world wanted Windows, bugs and all. To make matters worse, Microsoft Word for Windows was already on dealer shelves and had received good reviews. That little cloud on the horizon, which had looked so harmless in 1986, was all around us, looking ominous and threatening. IBM's strength and size were no protection. Not even an elephant could ignore the impending storm.
WordPerfect Office was turning into a big problem. The program was useful, but it had a few weaknesses. The directory services, which listed all the people on the mail system with their electronic addresses, could not hold more than one or two thousand people. The schedular, which could be used to put together a meeting, was slow and sometimes unreliable. Installing the program was a very difficult process.
1991...was our year to "think."
Our biggest [problem] was the continued delay in the shipment of WordPerfect for Windows. Just one week after Fall COMDEX in 1990, the Windows programmers informed us that the dates we had given...would be impossible to meet. ... We were in deep trouble.
We...took too long to make our experienced DOS programmers get involved. They could have helped a little more, but we had a hard time convincing them that the Windows project was more important than anything else. With sales still going up, many thought things were going too well to be concerned.
One big problem was getting all the different Office development groups to work together. By now we had teams for PC networks, for the Macintosh, and for UNIX, DG, and DEC machines. Unfortunately, none of the groups seemed to be willing to work out their differences.
Our long term success was, I thought, dependent on diversity. If the world was filled only with Windows machines, then Microsoft would have a tremendous advantage. If instead the world was filled with DOS, Windows, OS/2, Macintosh, and UNIX machines, we could maintain our advantage in the personal computer word processing market.
Our theme for 1992 was "focus."
We were...disappointed by the lukewarm WPwin reviews. The reviewers complained that the product was a little slow and a little buggy, and they were right. Long gone were the days when I could take a WordPerfect review home and be certain I would enjoy reading it.
We needed to get a cleaner and faster version of WPwin out the door, but it would take some time. Microsoft was heavily promoting DDE (dynamic data exchange)... In theory, if we wrote our program to support Microsoft's specifications, a WPwin document could give and receive information to and from other programs. Instead of releasing another version of WPwin right away, the programmers wanted to delay the release so the new feature could be included..
We were in a battle to the death w
How many Microsoft software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb ?
Non, Microsoft defines darkness at the new standard.
RTFA!!!
I mean are you trolling or what? The article lists about a dozen anticompetitive actions MS took, including intentionally breaking compatibility with their own formats and breaking APIs Wordperfect used while using secret APIs only MS knew about in Word for better performance than any third party application could attain.
They, just like Microsoft, were more interested in making money then they ever were in providing consumer choice, or making it easier for us to transfer information. There was nothing stopping them keeping their product active.Wordperfect is still an active product. The point of the lawsuit was MS using the fact that they were also developers of Windows to artificially create problems with WordPerfect so it was in consumers' best interests to use Word instead.
I used to use WordPerfect. It was great. Then Microsoft outmaneuvered them, and they lost. Boohoo, get over it.And the fact that they way they did this was through criminal actions should be ignored? Sorry but it used to be that when you commit a crime for profit, you don't get to keep the profits.
Care to try and convince me that they wouldn't have done exactly the same thing to microsoft, given half a chance?Yeah and if a cow had a chance it would eat you and your whole family. Whether Novell or Corel would have broken the law if they thought they could get away with it is immaterial. Microsoft did break the law and so the courts are acting against them.
People were shifting between companies all the time back then. Microsoft weren't some alien group, they were people with exactly the same goals and level of experience as the competition. They just had the superior business model for the day.They still do. It is called "break the law to profit, then bribe politicians so that the fines and settlements are less than what they made by breaking the law in the first place." It works really well in our crooked system. Paying Novel fines is just part of MS's business plan, so I'm not too broken up about them having to actually return a small portion of what they made through their crimes.
...the new cozy agreements occurring on the partnering front between these two? By this I mean the whole SCO death, Novell = UNIX, MS-and-Novell-are-buddies-for-big-business thing.
Funny how the big players can be foes on one front and friends on another. Reminds me of Apple v. MS, IBM v. MS, IBM v. Apple, Novell v. MS (oops...again?), Apple v. Apple (now the Beatles catalog is on iTunes), and who knows how many more combos exist once Intel & Motorola are brought up.
Suits are like...well...suits, one can change them every day but they normally hang in the closet (if you're lucky.)
Proudly written on my new Mac,
- e
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
You pretty much nailed it. This might (should?) be modded off-topic, but Ron Paul was on the Daily Show a few months back and one of his talking points was "A company like Microsoft makes a useful product that we buy" referring to American economic hegemony. The Microsoft influence is incredibly strong in the United States and any kind of ruling against it is a win for the rest of us (in the US anyway).
I have quite a few clients who bought PCs with Office 2007 installed and the ones that didn't have Office 2003 CDs, are all over the moon with OpenOffice.org.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As someone who used Word Perfect, then Word Perfect Suite, for many years, I will tell you straight-up and without any question that it blew the doors off Word and Office. I've still got original editions of WP Suite 7 and Office Professional 9, though I've long-since been forced to put them on the shelf.
The triumph of Microsoft Office was a triumph of mediocrity and bloat over quality.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Well, didn't they spur the adoption of Linux by Bill Gates hometown? Wasn't Windows up to the task of dealing with the load the growth and construction of Bill's house put on the local government?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
That's not what dumping means.
Word Perfect made its product available on the MacIntosh, Amiga, Apple ][gs, Atari ST, DOS, Windows, Solaris, and VAX systems.
They also made WordPerfect for Linux, which (itself being closed source) was a massive commercial failure. Most Linux adopters at the time weren't interested in something that wasn't free. No doubt that whole debacle didn't help WordPerfect any either.
It's kind of an interesting footnote, in the sense that I often see people posting to Slashdot that more companies should release their software for Linux as well as Windows/Mac, and there's a great example of why most commercial software isn't.
sorry if that has been asked before, i cba to read it all. but isn't novell the company that has some sort of deal with ms? like playing together in the same team and stuff? i don't get it, this lawsuit business just drives me crazy.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
The Chinese Fire Drill.
You are telling me that WordPerfect: The Corporation was moving in every direction at once. You are also telling me that WordPerfect was obsessed with the cardboard box.
That WordPerfect feared an OEM install would disrupt relatioships with its retail distributers.
[I can't find a reference to an OEM WordPerfect before WordPerfect's purchase by Corel. Can you?]
I thought Novell were MS-friendly these days? Does this mean I can run OpenSUSE now?
MS Works isn't a trial version of anything.
I was a bit unclear there - I meant that OEMs typically provide MS Works and/or a trial version of MS Office, and that Works is basically the same thing as a trial of Office (it's simply a watered-down version, and the version OEMs distribute is filled with wonderful advertisements for other MS products). I'm aware that they're not the same program.
While twitter has at times shown zealotry, the GP post shows no signs of it. If you can't refute the post based on its actual content, don't resort to an attack on past character. If that's the best retort you have, perhaps you shouldn't respond.
Twitter, you seem to have forgotten to answer me on one of my posts. That's okay, I'll just post the question again here.
Did you really create a sockpuppet account with a name suspiciously like mine so you could troll in my honour?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Umm, dumping doesn't mean what you think it means. The competitor's selling point is immaterial, of course. It would be rather stupid to define "dumping" as having greater efficiency or lower costs. No, in fact dumping has absolutely nothing to do with how much your competitor needs to sell their product for. I'll let you go figure out what dumping really means.
Thank you
Finally someone remembers things the way I do. I was in the U.S. military at that time. MS Office had a market share, but wasn't dominant. Then the U.S. military stardardized on MS Office and everyone who wanted to do business with them had to use it. I've said it before once already today.
Put identity in the browser.
Can you hear the sound of the fiddle and the drum
Passing, then fade?
Can you hear the sound of chanting in the streets
Screaming for better days?
You've heard it all, yes we've all heard it all
So tell me what has changed?
You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all
So tell me what has changed?
And the palace stays the same
Only the guards ever change
So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
*violin solo*
And you've heard the singer sing protest songs,
Telling us what is wrong;
And you've read the books that say where to look,
Well, where's the answer gone?
You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all
So tell me what has changed?
You've read it all, yes we've all read it all
So tell me what has changed?
And the palace stays the same
Only the guards ever change
So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
(C) Chadwick/Miles/Cunningham/Heather/Sevinck, 1988. Notice under CDPA 1988 AA: This reproduction is believed to constitute Fair Dealing, because it accurately describes what I was genuinely feeling when I heard this "news" report.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Microsoft were looking the other way and whistling, while everyone who had one of the newfangled CD-writers was giving away copies of "MS Office 97 - Gold Disk Edition" for a big fat duck-egg. That's practically indistinguible from dumping.
There was no way that anybody who acquired a pirated copy of Office would ever have paid full whack for it; without the option of piracy, and because magazine type-ins had already disappeared but Open Source wasn't yet mainstream, they would have installed alternative third-party office software.
And the fact that MS Office deliberately couldn't export documents to other formats, while it was perfectly happy to import them, certainly wasn't helping anybody except Microsoft: effectively, once a document had been touched by Office, it had to remain forever in Office format.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Cutting an artery and waiting?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Don't believe everything you read - especially allegations in a lawsuit.
Back when Novell took over WordPerfect they had to adapt a fantastic DOS program to a GUI environment. They also decided to make an interoperable suite of products just like Office had started.
Models and openness aside - Novell killed WP by making a buggy and horrid application suite. I still use WP and have since the mid-80's but the first windows-based version of WP was absolute junk. I worked in the legal field at the time and witnessed first-hand how many businesses fled en masse for Office. Office was not perfect, but it was clearly better and business wanted the interoperability and stability (that is relative I know but remember the year) - WP/QuattroPro no longer had it. It sucked so bad many businesses were compelled to switch in order to get work done and by the time Novell dumped WP to Corel the damage was irreversible. Just looking at the market share switch at the time is good proof. Microsoft did nit have to do anything to win this one - all the wounds one the competitor's side were self-inflicted.
I fault Novell for fucking up excellent stand-alone programs which were market dominant at the time. After they had it a few years they drove it into the ground with bad programming and stupidity. You can yell and scream all you want about standards, back then people just wanted apps which worked well and Office did offer features no one else could touch. Novell is just riding the MS monopoly train so it does not have to face up to its own culpability in ruining WP.
You are telling me that WordPerfect: The Corporation was moving in every direction at once. You are also telling me that WordPerfect was obsessed with the cardboard box.
I'm not sure what your getting at. Microsoft also sold retail cardboard boxes for multiple platforms. (Flight Simulator for Atari, Apple etc). WordPerfect relied on authorized retailers for Sales and Support (Remember Businessland?). Word Perfect never had an OEM relationship like Microsoft because it sold a product for multiple hardware platforms.
[I can't find a reference to an OEM WordPerfect before WordPerfect's purchase by Corel. Can you?]
OEMs were not allowed to bundle non-Microsoft software. All this is recorded history http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/7885/MS/IBM-3.html
He also provided evidence of linkage by Microsoft between operating system and application sales, claiming that IBM would get better prices if it didn't ship Netscape Navigator and Lotus SmartSuite. For Microsoft Office bundles he was charged "IBM's price" of $250 per copy, considerably higher than the Compaq or HP price. Microsoft might have some justification for claiming volume discounts here, if IBM was shipping fewer copies of Office.
"Microsoft repeatedly told us that as long as we were shipping competitive products, such as Smart Suite and OS2, we would not be treated the same as Compaq and others," he said.
How about evidence from the Iowa anti-trust trial:
146. Another way that Microsoft found to circumvent the federal court's 1995 injunction forbidding its use of "minimum commitment/per processor" licenses was what Microsoft calls its "Market Development Agreements" ("MDAs"). Microsoft contrived the MDA as a device to evade the Court's decree prohibiting Microsoft from requiring OEMs to adhere to "minimum commitments." As Steve Ballmer (Microsoft's current CEO) acknowledged: "We have always given better prices to customers who work with us to make the market. Those used to take the form of commits [i.e., minimum commitments] which we do not do anymore as a result of the [federal court's] decree but we still believe in rewarding people who help us create demand. Hence the iMDA." Under the MDAs, Microsoft granted large discriminatory price concessions to those OEMs that would agree to market and promote Microsoft's Windows to the exclusion of any rival operating system. These discounts were calibrated so as to force the OEM to sell most of its computers with a Microsoft operating system in order to obtain the lowest price.
147. Because the OEM market is so competitive and profit margins are so thin, every OEM had to get the lowest price it could from Microsoft in order to survive. In March 2002, a Gateway marketing executive (Anthony Fama) testified before Judge Kollar-Kotelly in State of New York et al. v. Microsoft, Case No. 98-1233 (CKK), about how Microsoft used its MDA program in order to force OEMs to market Microsoft's operating system exclusively: "Given the substantial nature of these discounts, participation in the MDA, as a practical matter, is not optional. In other words, not receiving
148. One method for encouraging competition in the operating systems market would have been the sale by OEMs of "naked machines" (i.e., computers that are sold without
It's just the normal noises in here.
This was, in fact, a failing of WordPerfect, because Microsoft made sure you could import them the other way around.
And how do you figure that? Does Microsoft have a record of documenting its formats openly, in a way that's implementable by third parties? Does the acronym "OOXML" mean anything to you? Just possibly the same pernicious crap they pull today was being pulled in the 80s and 90s. Just possibly...
you had me at #!
Sorry, I think MS won that battle fair and square.
I'm not sure MS has ever tried to win anything "fair and square".
They're sure losing a lot of big court cases "fair and square", though. It's better than Mexican soaps. The fake tears are the same though.
you had me at #!
If you aren't big enough to be multihoming yourself and you want reliable connectivity to as much of the internet as possible then your best bet is to try and find an ISP large enough to be multihomed but small enough not to be playing theese games and preferablly to listen to you as a customer. Yes this will cost a bit more, yes you get what you pay for.
Afaict cogents buisness model is selling hosting bandwidth dirt cheap. As such it makes sense they would stop all traffic to an ISP they want to peer with in order to try and push that ISP into peering with them through complaints from it's customers. Cogents aproach to trying to get better deals from other ISPs is similar to SPEWs approach to trying to stop ISPs being so friendly to spammers.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Except I was naive enough to follow their advice, and it hosed our domain server. So when I called them back they wanted me to crack my wallet before they would fix the problem they caused. I sent through several levels of supervisors and finally got someone to promise to call me back... then I did what I should have done in the first place and checked online (Usenet, this was before Google) and had everything fixed and working by the time they got back to me.
Thanks for that, but would you care to answer my question instead of making some half-arsed attempt at making me look paranoid?
Any moron with half a brain can piece together the way you push your POV on Slashdot and resolve it to the (at least) 5 current identities that you use to shill the site.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
M$ is a drug dealer, and the DOJ is trying to legalize drugs.
It isn't a debate on whether or not the drugs are prescription, illicit, healthy, harmful, aspirin, crack, penicillin, or poison.
We all know it's poison, sold as penicillin, and marketed like a crack.
It is the marketing, the gang like protection / intimidation, territorial warfare, theft, murder, etc. that the DOJ has a problem with, as well they should.
Anyone that says that a crack dealer should be allowed to murder and steal because it is part of having a successful product line, and the only reason they are able to make money while treating customers like shit, is because they have better crack, has obviously been smoking too much of the topic in general.
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
I suspect you think I'm one of them. Mind un-foeing me if that's the case? I like what you say for the most part, but I think at one point we were at odds about mono in one comment thread. If you didn't think I was a twitter puppet then keep me foe'd because I meant everything I said, but if you foe'd me because you thought I was twitter, I'd prefer that be undone.
You? Never did... can't remember why I foed you, to be honest.
Undone.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien