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Microsoft Loses Appeal of "Vista-Capable" Lawsuit
bfwebster writes "Microsoft has lost its appeal to remove class-action status for the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit that has already resulted in some embarrassing internal e-mails being released publicly. As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."' Given what's been released so far (158-page PDF), not to mention Microsoft's history of rather frank internal e-mails, that's probably putting it mildly. There could be some interesting reading ahead."
Microsoft's Goodwill? Everyone (including ISVs and OEMs) know how to work with Microsoft.
Does this mean, I can get a refund on the Turion X2/ATI X1100/1Gig RAM/120Gig HD laptop I got with the Vista Capable sticker? It was on sale (before Vista got out, for a good reason, I think), and I installed Ubuntu on it. I could use a little cash...
(For anyone not getting the joke: No I know I'm not getting cash from a class action suite)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If he wins... we get more coupons for Microsoft products... in 2024.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Microsoft's Goodwill" ?
You mean the way they try and extinguish open source initiatives, but don't destroy the developers houses?
What's depressing is that a number of the execs complained about the Vista Capable thing too (Mike Nash being one of them, but there are others who didn't complain in their emails).
The Vista Capable debacle happened the exact same way both the Challenger and Columbia disasters happened; the only reason those with objections went with the majority decision was due to group suppression of judgment. Psychological conformity, essentially.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I wonder, though, how much this will really cost.
Some of the machines that said "vista capable" were, some were barely capable. But they've been downplaying the minimum requirements forever. If you had a system with the minimum requirements for XP, it ran like a dog. Did people expect that buying something with the minimum requirements for Vista would generate better results?
In the end, I think some entertainment might come out of the trial, but the financial award will end up being little more than a slap on the wrist to Microsoft. Time will tell.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."'
Are they serious? "We're assholes, and we've been caught, and being caught being an asshole makes the world think you're an asshole, which would be bad for business. Therefore, we should not allow the courts to expose the fact that we're assholes. Our precious money stream relies on being able to be assholes without getting caught." I hope the judge hit their lawyer in the face with a shovel before saying, "denied."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Oh, please. You know as well as I do that "Windows 7" will be shipped no sooner than 2011, and will maybe contain only one or two of the many, many features they will be promising us in the meantime.
Ice Cream has no bones.
With whom? OEM manufacturers who were forced to stuff the system with "MS recommended" additional "content" (read: adcrap)? Resellers who were browbeat to sell MS systems, and MS systems only, if they wanted to be able to offer competitive prices? Users who have been subjected to activation procedures and data collection machinations that make even some secret services blush?
Anyone still got MS in high esteem?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, you do what you want.... But at home (where I'm typing) I migrated to Ubuntu 7.10. At work, I run Debian Etch. Sure, I'm technically not allowed to because it's not my machine, but nobody noticed yet....
You don't need Windows if you're not locked into Microsoft technologies.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Fsck the customers, they are merely corporate assets.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It might take M$ a while to recover from the Vista mistake. Maybe you should wait for Windows 22.
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill"
That soooo reminds me of one of the memorable quotes in LiarLiar (http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TISC7BK6BUTV)
Fletcher: Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Fletcher: Good call!
I suppose the short summary of their appeal case was "We'd like you to stop digging because you'll probably find more dirt." No, the legal system is supposed to work that way, thank you. (care to borrow my shovel? how about my backhoe?)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners." Isn't that just lawyer speak for: "Yeah, of course everything we say is a lie, but we can't have other companies knowing about that, or they might not trust us anymore!!! If they don't trust us, they'll never give us their money, and we'll end up alone and poor, which we know we obviously deserve, but there must be enough loop holes in the system for us to rig this so we don't look like the greedy pieces of crap that we are!" Uhh... yeah... that sounds about right...
quick reset it! thats the key give away that its not a windows machine >90% uptime.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
The thing is at these emails actually have relevance to the case, bad attitude and real bad attitude were nothing other than rants with no technical/buisness dealing in them, and microsoft still subpoena them.
In memory of mozilla, about:mozilla should have something really fitting in firefox 3: "And then the just as the rage of the hero had been shown when he first fell to the ground, the deceit, lies & horror of the beast were opened for the world to see" For bonus points somebody at Mozilla could grow some and stick a link to the court records of MSs emails as an update when they're all out!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
My business would be harmed by a lawsuit? DUH!
It reminds me of "Liar Liar":
Fletcher: Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Fletcher: Good call!
I like freedom and competition. Freedom is about my being able to choose what I like and need based on real information about real option--not just the advertising propaganda. Competition creates those options. Together they work to drive progress and the evolution of better products.
Microsoft's idea is that I should only be free to choose some flavor of Microsoft, and Microsoft gets to tell me what me needs are and what the options are. Change? Only when Microsoft has bled the revenue stream dry. Evolution? Only if the better ideas outside of Microsoft are getting too much cursed publicity.
I see this as a philosophic deadlock. However, there is an easy solution. Chop Microsoft into four or five pieces. Give each of them a copy of the source and let them compete with each other (and with Linux and Apple and the rest of the current crop of dwarfs).
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
...has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
I'm constantly amazed at peoples threshold for tolerating pain as long as they're told it won't hurt =)
So you're saying Microsoft is like the nurse who lies and says him/her taking some blood wont hurt, right before stabbing you with a massive needle and deliberately scraping the needle against the bone for 5 minutes only to tell you they couldn't find a vein and needs to try the other arm. You make some comment but ultimately you need a blood test to find out if the pound of flesh you had to give up to buy your 5Ghz Core4 PC with 24gig of ram barely able to run Vista has resulted in an infection of some kind.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Whitehouse/Government and just "lose" emails?:)
Microsoft lost its appeal many years ago. This is news?
Only goodwill with investors matters. MS does not really consider goodwill with OEMs or customers. They screw them around. The "install base" is just considered a corporate asset not worthy of goodwill.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It would be funny if microsoft abandoned email all together and resorted to paper and ink and barn fires for all their communications.
On the other hand, I am surprised that the White House did a better job of destroying emails that were suppose to be open, compared to these internal emails at Microsoft that were suppose to be proprietary!
FTA: The company argued that continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."
I think that what jeopardized their "goodwill" more than anything was their decision to actually release Vista! A bloated OS, that required major hardware upgrades, along with poor compatibility with many mission-critical software applications, and strong-arm marketing to attempt to force it on people. It's surprising that they think they have any goodwill left!
Don't get too excited the 9th Circuit court of appeals is the most often overturned court int he land. Maybe because they don't actually take the LAW into account when making their decisions. http://www.centerforindividualfreedom.org/legal/9th_circuit.htm
Pain threshold is very great when it is applied slowly but steadily.
As with any controversial decision coming from the 9th Circuit, take it with a grain of salt until it passes the next appeal level.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I really don't understand the minimum requirements. If you play Crysis with a computer that matched the "minimum requirements" list you'd ... well, the program would RUN.
And Vista RUNS. What exactly does a minimum requirement specify then? As far as I understand, it's what is actually required to run the actual program, not even necessarily run it enough to work with it well.
I don't like Vista even though I generally tend to be on the defend-XP side - but really, the double standard between minimum requirements for Microsoft and minimum requirements for any other product is frustrating.
But then, any anti-Microsoft comment on Slashdot typically gets modded up as insightful or interesting, even if it's redundant.
And, by the way, having everyone switch to Linux won't help that much. Linux is easy for computer nerds/techies to use. Windows is a ton easier for a lot of people, and it's not just what you're used to, it's getting your wireless card, sound card, or video card to work right. Windows does it, Linux doesn't always. :)
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case! http://www.google.com/search?q=unduly+prejudicial+evidence
Evidence gets tossed out of court all the time because, while it may be admissable, it is prejudicial to the defendant. The idea being that jurors may see guilt by association or guilt from inference where none should be found.
Judges can also declare certain lines of questioning as unduly prejudicial and instruct the lawyers not to pursue them.
This is all left to the Judge's discretion and the claim is frequently brought up on appeal.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
So please, in the future put more care and thought into your trolling. Remember that you are walking the path blazed by such luminaries as the GNAA and that you stand beside such greats as the shit eater troll and the ASCII goatse guy. So in the future try to remember the greats that came before you along with your trolling peers and live up to their high standards. Thank you for your time and may you have a successful career trolling here at slashdot!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
who's orchard.ms ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With their constant and blatant disregard of the law, one really has to wonder why they provide these mails at all, instead of "accidentally" deleting them come discovery time. Or maybe, just maybe, which even worse mails they did "forget" to include.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
With those stickers "Vista capable", they have done themself no good, because every computer which is not really vista capable, is "Ubuntu ready". More people will migrate away from microsoft technologies to linux. Especially small buisnesses, who are not yet completly embraced by microsoft.
Even those, who did not know before, what an operating system is and did not know its name, have registered vista with a negativism and may search for something else, which just works for them.
Bombastic
It is not surprising that the fire-breathing liberal 9th circuit judicial activism court ruled against Microsoft. They usually find some reasoning by which to rule against a corporate entity. They also usually get overturned on appeal because of their often specious reasoning and circular logic.
The 9th Circuit Court has the highest rate of review by the SCOTUS, being twice as likely to have a decision appealed to such as any other federal appellate court. Also, of all the cases the SCOTUS reviews from the 9th, fully 75% of them are overturned.
So, before the mass of slashpuppies declares "Mission Accomplished," let's see what the appeal says.
As long as I can remember, the minimum RAM as stated by Microsoft would run the OS fine but leave not much room for applications. As soon as you loaded an application that required significant amounts of RAM, the system would start to do heavy paging and performance went to hell. Doubling the "minimum RAM" usually gave OK performance.
I remember the above for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. Other versions may have the same problem, but with these I have enough experience to confirm the problem.
Back on topic:
I think even if IT professionals are aware of Microsoft's tendency to underspecify the hardware requirements, it is no excuse for Microsoft to do so. Especially when dealing with less experienced customers who might take those minimum requirements in good faith.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Yes, things like lock-in (which Microsoft is good at generating lots of) count as 'goodwill' too; the fact that customers currently use your software and therefore want to / have to / don't know anything else than to use Microsoft software is worth a lot of value to Microsoft. The estimated value of this will show up as 'goodwill' in Microsoft's accounts, and is likely to be worth a lot of money to them. If Microsoft didn't have any lock-in, and people did not currently use their products, it seems unlikely that Microsoft products would gain a substantial market share from a hypothetical other dominant company or platform unless they were improved.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
OK, I just read through the whole dumb 159 pages, and it looks like it comes down to, (in no particular order):
..oops WDDM manufacturing trouble in the first place.
1) MS people made a deal with HP for HP to supply their WDDM (I hate acronyms) graphics deal so that their computers would run Aero - which was originally the main reason why anyone would upgrade to Vista (i.e. for the whole "ui experience").
2) MS tried to make Dell/Intel happy by putting Vista "Capable" stickers on 915's because Intel didn't have the 945's ready in time for some hot selling season.
3) MS became concerned about so-called "cheap laptops" being hot sellers, and it's unclear whether or not they were able to run Vista at all.
4)HP became upset because MS was letting Dell get away with Vista stickers on their cheaper products when they had gone through all the WMD
5) MS execs made concessions, diluted their brand, and confused their distributers/customers/own employees about what features were being marketed with what name.
This was all in the effort to avoid "stalling the market", which is what happens when people, upon hearing of an upgrade that they want, RATIONALLY put off purchasing new hardware until they are certain that the hardware will properly run that upgrade. Meanwhile dell/hp/intel/everyone else is left holding a bunch of hardware that no one wants cause it's outdated. So MS thought they'd trick customers into buying all that junk by assuring them it would run the new OS.
When they initially started putting the "Vista Capable" stickers on everything, only 4% of the computers available were able to run "Vista Premium" a.k.a. Vista Aero, i.e. the only reason anyone would want run Vista. However, 90% of the computers ran XP just fine, 'cause that's what everyone had been building for. Therefore they added Vista Basic to the mix (distributers were complaining about a confusing set of skews they had to cherry pick through). It just so happened that this "cheaper" option turned any computer (top of the line ones too, except then it's called "Standard") into a bloated, you-would-be-better-off-with-XP-if-a-MS-product-at-all, "$2000 e-mail machine".
They even fooled their own employees into spending money on hardware they may not otherwise have bought.
To MS: Some (Free!) advice for marketing in the future - you're going to have market stalling, and it'll come soon after any information on your new product is leaked. Notify the manufacturers of your new requirements early, stick to them, and the ones who don't plan for it are going to be left holding a bag of rotten computer parts, as they should be the lazy butts. Finally, if you want to keep your customers, don't try to pass off chunky milk as cottage cheese.
The part about "they thought we'd never ship so they didnt start making drivers" and ballmer's "yeah they dont trust us" were kool
Truly, though as screen name clearly states, I am the anti tech. I do enjoy reading those things which I feel I (half-ass) understand and the rest I force my uber geek fiance to explain to me. (Complete with white board and colored markers!) Though I hold a PhD in a field totally unrealtd to all things technological, I fancy myself pretty intellifent for a girl from the deep south who should -per status quo- be missing as many teeth as I have children (the first conceived while IN high school, of course).
The thing I've come to fall in love with most here is the rapier wit. Frankly, there are insults I write down for later use at work because in the words of Dane Cook they're like little "brain bombs". I've said them and walked away before anyone realizes it's an insults. To hell with learning tech-type things....it's the brain bomb insults I'm after! I personally have a 3 page list from here and there complied (some from here). I would really appreciate it if trolls would maintain the sort of standards to which I've become accustomed because "yo mommma" and your face" just really don't cut the mustard in the corporate world. *sigh*
It's true - some people never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge. (TBR)
Faithfully,
Another super high UID jagoff.