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FTC Opens Formal Antitrust Investigation of Intel
andy1307 writes to tell us that according to the New York Times, The Federal Trade Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation of Intel. Reversing the decision of former FTC chairperson Deborah P. Majoras, the new chair William E. Kovacic is pushing the investigation to look into Intel's pricing policies. "Since it will almost certainly be many months before the commission decides whether to make a case against Intel, as European and Asian regulators have already done, the investigation could mark an important early test for the next administration on antitrust and competition policy."
Not that I have ever had a problem with Intel (though I have always bought AMD), but I never understood how why Microsoft gets ALL the blunt of the anti-trust stuff. Intel made a killing with their "Intel inside" campaign, but was it THAT great? I think more architectures for home PCs would be a major benefit to open source software, and a big hit to the stranglehold M$ has had over the sheeple for a long time. I have wanted to get a sparq for a long time, but it has felt a bit to risky to just make a statement. I really hope something comes of this investigation, if Intel was really playing unfair.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
I hope people remember that there are some good reasons to avoid AMD besides pressure from Intel. More than a few people got burned by the poor support for OEM cpus that were DOA. I was one, and avoid AMD to this day because if it. Yes, they are better now, but I have a long memory.
Intel has been using their size, money and influence to keep competitors out of use in their customer's systems. This is anti competitive, and when on a scale of this size, is considered monopolistic. Intel owns over 80% of the microprocessor market, plus they design specs for systems, such as their PCI spec.
If Intel is guilty of keeping other processors out of machines by being anti competitive, they are going to see some sanctions and fines.
Also, for those of you (like me) who were wondering what exactly they did:
You don't have to have a monopoly to comit illegal business practices. Conversely, you can have a legal monopoly that doesn't violate antitrust laws.
Intel violated the concept of competition by threatening companies unless they only carried Intel products. They threatened to hold off shipments of paid products, etc. etc.
They've already been found guilty of antitrust in other countries. AMD claimed to have a mountain of evidence, and several companies willing to testify. I'm shocked it has taken this long to even really open the case in the US. The sad thing is that it almost worked out for Intel, that by breaking the law, they almost drove AMD out of business. At that point, a fine doesn't matter because they would have total market share.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I can definately see the reasoning behind AMDs push to get this investigation underway.
I used Intel when they were fastest and AMD when they were, and now I am using Intel Chips again.
If Intel used its position to force vendor lock-in and exclude AMD, and AMD can prove they lost a healthy chunk of market for the Athlon 64 that, most likely, would have went to resolve the teething problems with Phenom so that it made its original launch date and frequency...then Intel is going to have to break out the checkbook and make sure they got a lotta ink in the pen, cause it's gonna cost them a LOT.
If it's proven that actions resulted in events like this, you can bet Intel will settle all allegations before a final finding of fact is ever released...and pay a healthy sum to AMD to just shut up.
I just hope that, if these allegations are true, they are forced to pay an equitable amount to AMD and not fight it for years because these two companies vying for my business keep prices low enough for us to get some great gear these days...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Why is this happening now instead of years ago? The harm Intel has created is egregious and has been obvious for a long time.
Did someone at the White House get up on the wrong side of bed one morning? Maybe the White House didn't like what the Executives were doing with their political action funds?
Why now?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Sorry...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Lets say they do get declared a monopoly. What happens to them? From the record of late, nothing. They walk away with a token slap, while they keep their market share.
And we tax payers got to foot the bill.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah. They would be shown some new backdoors and have their interfaces expanded to accept all sorts of new peripherals.
So, Intel does the R&D on a product that everyone needs and wants, then gets rich because of their invention.
Thne along come some other people, who make clones of Intel's chips. No one wants to buy the chips from the competitors, because they have no significant cost savings, no significant performance increase, and lack the feeling of being a "genuine" article.
So, all these companies that are trying to ride the coat-tails of Intel, and failing, get together and complain to the government that its not fair?
Maybe they should have tried coming up with their own ideas and hoping that people would want to buy them instead of just trying to hop on a bandwagon and complaining that they got there too late and there is too little space.
no one is saying you have to buy an x86 cpu. SPARC and PPC work and do a good job. If Intel has solidified a market dominance that's pushed out OTHER architectures, that's more to do with Microsoft than it is to do with Intel.
There are such things as natural monopolies from simply making better products.
However, it's different when you squash the competition. You can do better than them, that is completely acceptable, but to force everyone to not buy their stuff, is not acceptable.
Difference: I own the world market on water. Someone else wants to produce water too. Do I continue to produce safer and better water (aka compete and also give a reason for my competitor to do better), or do I abuse my market control by doing something financially that the competitor cannot compete with (and/or making people agree to such things).
Another fine example (which I suspect will hit monopoly issues/etc) was when (MS was it?) made a company sign an agreement to agree to not produce HDDVDs (or was it bluray discs) with a major manufacturer. Legal? 100%, actually. Monopoly abuse/attempt? 100%.
That a company can engage in "unfair" business practices, which are illegal, without being a 100% monopoly. You will then be told how Intel did unpleasant things to customers in order to force them into positions favorable to Intel.
If you're anything like me, you'll roll your eyes and pretend this nothing story matters.
This can be written also as "Intel serves over 80% of the microprocessor market and their open standards like PCI are widely accepted."
Every time Intel has started acting like it "owned" the market, somebody has started drinking their milkshake.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Major buzzkill, man.
My blog
It used to be you got the Intel chip, chipset by whoever, a video card and a NIC. Now buy an Intel based computer and you get an Intel processor, Intel chipset, Intel video, and Intel NIC. So with the bundling you save a lot of money but it in effect shuts out a lot of other companies.
But personally I never have any problems with Intel chip + Intel chipset... It always just works. It seems any time I have problems it is when I use some other chipset.
The scope is computer microprocessors, by which I think they mean home PC. Also, AMD is much more x86/x86_64 than anything else. I am just curious, while they operate in very different markets, how does ARM compare to Intel for embedded devices? I can't seem to find much information on the issue.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
back in the good old days, the FTC and courts actually did their jobs and broke up abusive monopolies.If Intel is guilty of keeping other processors out of machines by being anti competitive, they are going to see some sanctions and fines.
Not anymore
I guess that means we need new laws to compel the executive and judicial brances to actually enforce the law? or maybe establish a saddam-esque paranoid circle jerk of watchers watching watchers?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Intel was a single source supplier for CPUs. IBM wanted a second source or they would not deal with Intel. Intel then sourced production of pre 486 CPUs to AMD. However, they did not restrict AMD from selling them as their own, which they did. Then, AMD was developing their own chips based on the instruction set and specification that intel developed. Intel sued for trademark infringement, knowing that AMD had the license to produce likewise chips. The courts in the US ruled that Intel could not trademark a number, which is why there was no 586, but rather the "Pentium" with the 5 prefix Pent. This is a trade-markable name.
Being more agile than Intel, and being willing to accept thinner margins than Intel, AMD and competitors were pricing very attractively to OEMs. Intel, however, looked disfavorably on this. They punished their customers with "shortages" of their chips and chipsets, knowing it would allow their customer's competitors, also their customers, to gain an upper hand. They also offered special pricing, not for volume, but for "loyalty." They would give their customers a break if they were 100% intel customers and not "Buy 10,000 units and get 200 free, which would likely have been legal.
The issue is not substandardness nor the inability to compete. Instead, it was that after the original Athlon, AMD was able to out maneuver the challenges that intel through in its way and was able to out innovate them in many areas. The FSB that intel still uses can cause memory bottlenecks as well as poor scaling to multiple sockets and cores, but that is a topic for another discussion. Intel was abusing their customers, their competitors, and consumers with their methods of market manipulation. But, to quell your intent to show that AMD et al were simply riding on Intel's coat tails, ask yourself "Who built the spec to extend x86 to 64bits with extended register counts?"
Is Godwin having a slow news day?
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
http://h20219.www2.hp.com/integrity/cache/342254-0-0-0-121.html
or http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4600/specs.xml
PCs may have higher shipping volume, but servers are no slouch either, and produce higher margins.
Windows on a SPARC? That just makes me cringe.
I think, or have always passively believed, that Intel is great, but that Microsoft dragged them along for a ride on the success train. I don't think 90% market share should be usable as evidence of monopolistic practices, but it is reasonable suspicion to warrant an investigation, IMHO.
Also, by comparison, Cisco was investigated for the same reason, but discovered to have simply done business better through innovation and such, not underhanded dealing. There are a lot of BAD Cisco wannabe knockoffs out there, but do you really believe Cisco v. D-link is comparable to Intel v. Sun, IBM, et al?
I really am curious.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
I think you need a history lesson. When AMD released the original Opteron in late 2003/early 2004, it had numerous desirable, innovative features that Intel's offerings at the time did not have:
AMD has alleged that Intel used its monopoly position to exclude Opteron and other K8 derivatives (Athlon64) from major OEMs for 2 years, from its release in late 03 until sometime in 2005, when the antitrust allegations were filed. During that time, the problem was not poorer, "cloned" products which offered no advantages over Intel's. Basically, anyone who followed the x86 processor market during that time knew that Opteron/Athlon64 was better than P4, for a competitive price.
I submitted an article yesterday (still pending, but you can imagine it's future). It was based around a Reuters article which points out that there are several legal actions pending now. The article is at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0540220820080605?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
Sorry I couldn't get it accepted. As a journalist, I'm a complete lamer. But it's an interesting article, and it may even be around for a bit--I don't know Reuter's policies, vis-a-vis demanding registration to articles more than x weeks old, etc. I never reference the NYT, for instance, as I don't much like their access policies. They could learn a lot from the Europeans.
Anyway, you may want to have a look at the Reuters article. I'm becoming more and more ashamed to admit that I used to work for those guys.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Intel, shmintel. Who cares about Intel?
But Microsoft has to be watching this very, very closely. If the post-Bush FTC is willing to go after Intel, you have to think they're going to get after Microsoft, too.
Best regards.
Sorry I squandered my last set of mod points. That was funny.
The dirty little secret of the industry has been that Intel has been guilty of unfair business practices for a long time. Basically, they say to their customers, if you cut out AMD we will give you cut rate prices. If you don't we will only give you a limited supply of chips and your competitors will kill you on price and volume. They are like the mafia in business suits.
The European commission made a estimate of the damage Intel did to the market and it came to $60 billion. I would like to see that much given to AMD but I am not holding my breath.
It's not really discounts, but "marketing support". Which is why nearly every ad for a PC has the Intel chimes/logo at the end.
This plan was really devious because not only does it encourage OEMs to use Intel, it also made "Intel Inside" into consumer religion.
Well now there you going using the ACTUAL and REAL facts to get in the way of someone trying to present some sort of "facts."
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Didn't AMD win out with the standard for 64-bit x86 instructions?
Back when apple was talking about going to x86 amd was kicking intel's ass.
They even had better dual cpu systems vs the intel ones with FB-DIMMS and a poor bus with a weak pci-e setup VS the dual amd of the time with lower cost and less heat ECC ram as well the better Hyper Transport bus with alot more pci-e lanes. The nforce pro chipsets of the time of the time had dual pci-e x16 with SLI+ 2 x4 with dual gig-e with tcp/ip off load and teaming VS the intel chipset at the time that used FB-DIMMs and had less pci-e lanes then the g5's had also intel used pci-e for part of the NB to SB link and some of the pci-e lanes came from SB in the Mac pro also with AMD you had the choice of useing a few differnt NB chips unlike intel.
You can even have a Hyper Transport to pci-x link on there as well.
I said this back when the intel mac pro came out as well.
Apple could of had a system with 2gb of ram 4x512 2 per cpu at the same or lower cost then the mac pro with 1gb of FBDIMM and apple wanted $300 per gig back then.
also Nvidia and ATI that much better on board video then what ended up going in to the mac mini at the time as well.
Apple was useing Hyper Transport in the g5 so why not go to a amd system with 2 cpus and Hyper Transport links?
AMD was also full 64bit back then unlike intel and apple had a few apple system with 32bit intel cpus back then as well.
How exactly would you break up Intel in any way that makes sense?
No, the "Water" example is using something simple to showcase a problem. The but about the agreements has occurred.
MS has a history of refusing to do OEM agreements with a company if that company wants to offer more than MS Operating Systems. AFAIK they are still doing similar to this – it's one of the reasons Dell took so long to offer Linux – but now it's differences in licensing cost.
So, AC, it appears you are either misinformed as to the truth, or you are just an idiot. I'd like to think that it's the first, but know that it's probably the first with the cause being "willful ignorance". Now go away.
should be "the bit about the agreements" - I missed the typo. (not the first time I've missed a typo, but it makes me feel bad)
And you can run your Windows-only bespoke apps on PPC and SPARC can you? Will libertarians ever stop pretending that one over-powerful company dominating a market is good for consumers and should be left alone until a competitor magically appears and isn't squished by all sorts of very difficult to compete against tactics.
How was AT&T broken up in any way that made sense?
Had AT&T been broken up by service layer instead of service area, we might actually have good telecommunications and true competition in the US
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
Monopolies aren't "punished for success" as I heard a few thousand too many times during the MS anti-trust trial. Monopolies are punished for parlaying that success and resulting market power into back room deals designed to prevent any competition from getting a leg up.
The enemies of Democracy are
Taiwan and the EU were coming down on issues from 2003-2007. I'm not sure if the practices are still happening or not, but I haven't seen anything that suggests they've stopped the practices of bullying and extortion.
The issue isn't the price of the CPUs, but rather forcing vendors to exclude other products, or refusing to ship products they've already paid for, and other such nonsense.
If you want references, try Google and Wikipedia. Perhaps you've heard of them.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
... why not go to a amd system with 2 cpus and Hyper Transport links?The short answer is "I don't know." My assumption was that it was some combination of:
Of course, it's pure speculation.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
AMD went to on die memory controllers for x86 CPUs. They did away with the front side bus with their HT (formerly LDT) system, they have also gone on to be the first to 1Ghz in the x86 arena, using alpha technology and also, their 3DNOW! technology was one of, if not THE first SIMD architecture to handle FP calculations.
All this is NOT BAD for a company whose total worth is less than Intel spends on marketing.
ARM competes with Intel in the embedded market by:
1) Licensing the core design to be manufactured by the company using the core in their designs.
2) Making core designs that have 1 or 2 magnitudes less power consumption.
I believe ARM, MIPS, and PPC are the major players in the embedded market for the same reason.
Essentially, Intel has no stake in the high end embedded CPU market except as a manufacturer of ARM-based Xscale chips when they still made those.
When AMD filed the initial suit, the claim was something like 300 pages, with a whole slew of companies cooperating in the suit, willing to testify.
Still you miss the point entirely. This has little to do with price.
And Intel has already been found guilty of antitrust violations in other countries, because of the exclusionary contracts.
Dell, as you may know, the biggest PC company out there, refused to carry AMD processors even when AMD processors where smoking the P4 line.
There was also some accusations of shady practices when Intel stole the Apple contract away from AMD out of the blue. Apple had been openly courting AMD, and then signed with Intel when no one even thought Intel was being considered. At the time the deal was signed, AMD's processors ran faster, were cheaper, and used less power. Perhaps Apple had the foresight to see that Intel was going to regain the performance upper-hand, but there were certainly allegations again of bullying/threats that landed the exclusive contract.
I believe Intel is currently in trouble in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the EU and now the States for antitrust. Yet you insist clearly they've done nothing wrong.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
4 is likely the news about the amd intel lawsuit came out around the time apple said that they where going to intel and people said that intel may of did some anti-competitive stuff to get that deal. Also soon after that dell said that they will start useing amd cpus so parts of the apple deal may end up in court / FTC report.
Wow. AMD, a company which in 2006 had 10% of the revenue of Intel, managed to hand Intel its hat in the CPU performance game for a couple of years, an you dare to say that they've never innovated?
Moving the memory controller onto the die and making multi-core mainstream is innovative.
Killing Intel's own preferred IA-64 and making them follow AMD's AMD64 is also a sign that AMD innovated where the market wanted to go, even though Intel pushed as hard as it could.
Put identity in the browser.
While I know I'd be getting a better product, I'd rather make sure my money goes to a company I support instead of one who tries to force people out of business instead of JUST making better products and letting consumers decide what they like best.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Does anyone remember (given that there is no mention of it) the skype-intel controversy - where skype used a software check to determine if the running processor was AMD and disabled certain features if it was (regardless of the processor's performance)?
Either way, all the non built-in processors on my machines are AMD. My eee is the only computer running an intel processor - and even that wouldn't be case if I could pick. I care about performance, sure, but not as much as integrity.
But you forget the Republicans run everything now and it may be an attempt to wring more money out of INTEL for the election. Also you will probably see that all INTEL people get a pardon. Color me use to seeing the Republicans are far more crooked than the Democrats (not that they are immune either).
I am not seeing the pernicious effects of Intel's "anti-competitive" behavior looking at Dell prices. J6P can buy an essentially Supercomputer class machine in the $300+ range. If I remember correctly, in a monopoly, price increases (as in gas prices ?). Why waste government resources on a product that an average person spends a couple of days wages anyway. If they really want some work, they can target Big Oil, because that IS going to cause a severe recession!
Now while I am the first to admit that I have always been an Intel user,since back in the days of the superclockable Celeron 300, AMD had numerous chances to really take a chunk out of the market,but they were just too damned cocky and arrogant for their own good. From the power suckage of Turion to the so horribly crippled it isn't usable for squat Sempron,AMD just seems to keep taking the opportunities they are handed and blowing them. So IMHO this has less to do with Intel rigging the game than with AMD dropping the ball. But that is my 02c,YMMV. And this conversation reminds me that I have a nice Barton core Duron board sitting in the closet so I think I'll get to building. Have a great weekend y'all!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> They also offered special pricing, not for volume, but for "loyalty." They would give their customers a break if
....) products.
> they were 100% intel customers and not "Buy 10,000 units and get 200 free, which would likely have been legal.
To be more accurate, AMD claims that Intel offered a break to customers if they were 100% Intel.
While Intel has stated that they did not do that, but only offered breaks based on absolute volume numbers.
(ie. Intel claims they would tell the OEM you get X price for Y volume. And if the OEM got Y volume that's the price they got, whether they sold just Y volume of Intel products or sold Y volume of Intel products and N volume of AMD (or cyrix or idt or via or
Intel salespeople *KNOW* that any deal they make - for that matter, anything they say - can be used against Intel in an antitrust investigation of Intel. And if they were to make a deal such as you suggest, IMO they would be fired as soon as their manager found out. (Unless you believe that their manager, and all the way up the chain of management the people are incompetent... Given their success in the marketplace, I don't think they're incompetent)
Personally, I believe that Intel's management and salesforce are competent enough to stay just on the legal side of the antitrust laws.
I would bet that in 18 months, this investigation will have found basically nothing - no smoking gun like some AMD fans think is out there - and the investigation will be closed without a trial.
> If the senior management were likely to get thrown in prison, could we make jokes about "Intel Inside"?
They could replace their jingle with the sound of clanging jail bars. Ding ding DING !
I think what really hurt AMD was Intel's release of the Conroe-core Core 2 Duo CPU. The Conroe core--if I remember correctly--was based heavily on the excellent Pentium III Mobile CPU, hence the reason why the Core 2 Duo CPU ran so much cooler than the competitive AMD Athlon64 x2 CPU.
AMD can't compete in the market so they use government against its competitor. Who's the anti-competitive one now?
Intel no longer makes ARM chips. They sold that business last year to Marvell for $600m.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The licensing is very important. Many embedded applications have higher processing demands than the ARM core can handle (or, if it can handle them, it will flatten the battery too quickly). Companies like TI take an ARM-designed core and add some custom coprocessors, typically an efficient DSP or two, onto the same die and then sell the result. Customers like Nokia then get a final CPU which can run general-purpose ARM code and specialised DSP code for things like video encoding. Intel can't really compete with this, because every ARM licensee adds their own extra features and so there is always an ARM chip that runs your off-the-shelf, commodity, OS and still has the extra features that you need. This didn't matter on the desktop, because eventually the desktop CPUs got fast enough to do everything the special-purpose chips were doing. In the mobile arena, it does matter, because special purpose hardware is more power-efficient than general-purpose chips.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It boils down to two things. First, Intel had the Pentium M, and were about to launch the Core (slightly improved Pentium M) and Core 2 (new, lower power, microarchitecture) lines. Apple were selling more laptops than desktop and this trend has continued. The Mac Pro is a tiny, tiny fraction of their turnover and profit - it's a showpiece, while the machine that actually sell are the laptops. AMD had nothing comparable in the mobile CPU and (importantly - one of the reasons for the switch was that Apple wanted to stop designing their own chipsets) chipset arena.
The other problem is volume. Motorola and IBM had both had problems supplying Apple. When they switched to Intel, they became responsible for about 5% of Intel's demand. If they had gone to AMD, they would have been responsible for 50%. If Apple double their market share, Intel needs to grow by 5% to accommodate them. AMD would need to grow by 50%. Which do you think is more likely to happen?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...into pricing arrangements with suppliers are convinced Intel is guity. AMD IS in a position to argue claims about Intel's behavior, but anyone who thinks AMD description of Intel's business practices isn't filtered though their bias is pretty naive. You can probably take anything you read on this subject skeptically - I'd wait until FTC or other 3rd party evaluations and I certainly would not take AMD's assertions as fact until proven.
I would add to this list "volume". Apple, moreso than most other computer companies, tries to keep their product line relatively narrow, with only a few configurations for any given platform. This means whoever builds their chips needs to deliver on volume in a big way, and it's possible, if not probable, that AMD wasn't prepared to give them the numbers they needed.
IMHO all the had to do was advertise and keep a good Duron out there for an alternative to the Celeron. You know,for the folks harping on it,I have found for general computing the Celeron makes for a great general purpose PC. Mine plays the games I want to play and makes for a great little PC. And in the under 2Ghz day the Duron was an even better chip and could have EASILY cleaned up the low end while the Athlon killed on the high,all it needed was a little marketing and TLC. Instead they never bothered to advertise,and worse the killed the Duron and replaced it with the Sempron,which is the only chip I've ever seen to cause someone to get so mad they kicked the machine. Even the bottom of the line Celeron stomps the top of the line Sempy. And once you have them hooked on your brand it is easier to get them to upgrade their CPU or have their next PC come with your chips because you already have your foot in the door.
But instead of capitalizing on Intel's blunders they just sat back and watched the market slip through their fingers. Not since Cyrix in the old 200Mhz days had I seen a company that had a shot of really cutting a chunk out of the x86 market. With a little push "powered by AMD" could have been as common as "Intel inside". But instead I can't think of a single non gamer who even asked about AMD during the height of the Athlon and I had to quit stocking AMD machines since the non gamer folks thought it must be substandard since they had never heard of it. And while I hope that AMD sticks around if for no other reason than to keep Intel on its toes,I really don't see short of a miracle AMD being able to turn it around for at LEAST the next 3 years due to blowing their capital on the disaster that is ATI. If I had to bet it would be longer,probably closer to 5 years. And ultimately I think someone like Sanyo or Toshiba will end up buying out AMD once they completely hit the skids. They simply can't keep bleeding money like they are. But to try to blame it on Intel when Netburst practically gave them the market on a silver platter is just IMHO sour grapes. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't agree with "flamebait", as it was just meant to be funny.
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