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Microsoft Admits to Secretly Paying for "Independent" Ads
This has been submitted a fair amount, although it came out on the 18th. Microsoft has admitted to paying for ads from a California insitute. The institue, The Independent Institute got 240 academic experts to sign a document saying that the anti-trust case was bad for the consumer. Basically, it appears that the Institute ran the ads, while Microsoft reimbursed them for the cost of placing the ads, and the travel involved. Mmm...dirty tricks.
For immediate release
Microsoft, a large technology company based in Redmond, WA, today announced Independent2000, a new suite designed to objectively evaluate Microsoft products and corporate moves.
Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, stated, "We feel that it is in the best interests of our customers to do a truly objective self-analysis. This should prove to any and all critics that Microsoft is dedicated to improving competition in the marketplace."
The new program suite will monitor MSN.com, Microsoft.com, and other web sites for news about the technology giant and condense product reviews found there for a fair, unbiased comparison. The product will be hitting shelves with an estimated street price of around US$249.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
This happens far too often, and i think it happens more than we (the consumers) know it, or would like to beleive it. Makes me wonder how much MindCraft got paid.
Dan Noe http://resonator.physics.sunysb.edu/dan/
Not bad. A self-proclaimed independent institute claims MS never gave them more than "$10,000 per year, like our other 2000 members" and "the ads were paid out of our general funds". But the truth comes out! Microsoft paid them over $150,000 in compensation for the ads!
Microsoft is not "just a software company".
Look at what they did to Borland. Renting a floor of a hotel nearby, inviting their technical staff, and having recruiters handy to brain-drain them. Illegal, and they settled out of court, near the end of the trial.
Stac? A signed contract to use Stac with DOS. Instead, they copied chunks of the source verbatim, released their own compression scheme, and claimed the contract was void. Once again, MS settles out of court near the end of a lengthy trial.
Sun? Java? We know all about that one.
They are other examples.
Microsoft is a criminal organization, run by a megalomaniac, intent on controlling the minds of everyone on the planet. With hopes to someday control the minds of other planets!
Harsh, overboard statement? They are criminal, I already stated three big cases. Unconvicted, but they paid dearly to maintain their "innocence".
Bill Gates? A megalomaniac? Look it up.
Mind control? One gui, one method of accessing information, and a company that has already been caught altering facts in their dictionaries when such facts contradicted the "Microsoft Vision". Suppose a child sees nothing but MS screens, clickables, and doctored information day one through adulthood? Arguably, there could be a profound psychological backdrop to such a thing.
Other planets? Heh, they've pretty much got this one wrapped up unless the US gov. can rise above corruption, bribery and influence and lay the smack down on Billy the Borg.
If not, it's going to be up to the rest of the world to band together, and improve Linux to the point where it can kill off the beast.
Does this mean a bunch of MS tesimony is tainted and can be thrown out?
The Constitution give the people the right to free speech. Microsoft is not a "people", it is a corporation. It is financially considered a person, but not so in the strictest legal sense. Microsoft cannot vote, nor can it be arrested or imprisoned. It is not a person.
None of this stops Bill Gates from saying whatever he wants and using his personal fortune to get the message out, but neither Microsoft nor any other corporation has inherant rights as outlined by the Bill of Rights.
Congress has the right to legislate this and other marketing activities (like current regs on tobacco and drug advertising) because it has the right to regulate interstate commerce. You could argue that such restrictions do not apply to sole proprietorships (where the company is the owner), but not for a corporation.
The concept of a corporation is really a legal divorce between the owner(s) and the company, where the owner(s) declare that they are not the company. This gives them certain protections, the most important being that the owners are no longer personally responsible for financial obligations of the company. In response, the company no longer is an extension of the person but becomes its own legal entity (though not a person).
Obviously, if there are no laws that prohibit Microsoft's actions, they can do them by default. However, if there are such prohibitions (possibly contempt of court, obstruction of justice, or something similar), they cannot hide behind the right to free speech.
--The basis of all love is respect
I guess that Bill more or less honestly thinks that the world would be a better place if everything ran Windows. The fact that some of us don't agree only means that some people haven't seen the "light" yet. and that's where spin doctors can help...
So of course he smiles. He is going to rid us of this nasty diseasy called "choice".
Is that M$ didn't invent it. They licensed the code from SpyGlass.
SpyGlass came in one morning and found that they had been put out of business by M$ releasing thier browser free. People who were paying Spyglass for the code dumped them and took M$ browser (which was technically the same thing).
So don't get all gooey eyed about something until you know it's history.
Their reputations just started a power dive to the lowest levels of hell. Relatively few people will trust them to have an opinion that isn't rented out to the highest bidder from here on in. Past opinions will be called into question. So long as people remember and associate them with this, they're screwed. I'd be pissed off if I were them.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Oh yeah? Buy a share of MS stock and you can sue him till the cows come home. Winning is another matter, but you can sue him.
Personally, I think it's nuts that corporations (which are, like copyright laws, supposed to be for the common good and as often as not are perverted) get a privileged status so readily. And no one ever revokes corporate charters anymore either (which is quite legal to do, if they aren't serving the common good, though the judicial system has forgotten this lately).
However, I don't recall that corporations have freedom of speech, certainly not (de facto at any rate) at the interstate level.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I think everyone at Slashdot is jumping to conclusions. Microsoft would never undermind a research study! They would not try to spin the results in its own interests. Come on people!
(This advertisment was paid for by Microsoft)
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Microsoft claims that the case is hurting the consumers just as bad as it is hurting them. :) :)
Given that M$ is the producer of the biggest OS in the market and also has applications such as M$Office and NT, how can the consumers not get hurt....
Its just a simple fact that when a company gets hit by costs, the costs have to be transferred down to the consumers. Now all this is simple economix.
What i want to know is how come Sun/Sgi/Ibm/Apple dont pick up on these things and make some media noise on their own ? Its dirty tricks like these that upset most people more than the fact that WinXX crashes every few times
Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that these companies should go down to that level of flinging dirt, but just some tastefull comments should not hurt them.
dont get mad at Gates.... get his marketers
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
Well what did we expect? This sort of stuff happens all the time. Remember the DivX "fan pages"?
Sosumi. just kidding. DONT!
i had a DIVX FAN PAGE because it is such a great technology! much much better than dvd! you just wait!!! it is not gone forever, they are just improving it even more and will bring it back and it will imbarass dvd even worser than it did before! HOO BOY, divx rules!!!!!!
i can get "prince of egipt" and lots of other k-rad dizney movies and watch it for just about a DOLLER or so WHENEVER I WANT to. on the other hands you dvd loosers pay FIFTY DOLLERS or so per dvd and then you probably only watch it once or twice if you watch it twice thats like paying TWENTY DOLLERS per veiwing. thats just dumb. sorry, but hoo boy DIVX ROX!!! and i am glad that i made the correct decison and bot a DIVX PLAYER!!! i will fight dvd to the death!!!!!! ohohohohohohhhoh
windows is cool too, use windows, don't use linux or any other operating system unless you want to run the risk of pissing off bill gates. that is not a position you want to be in!!!! so the moral is use WINDOWS AND DIVX and shun linux and dvd! oh and microsoft didnt pay anybody to tell people good stuff about WINDOWS because they dont need to because WINDOWS IS JUST AS GOD AS DIVX
Copyright (C) 1999, All-Purpose Trolls, Inc.
If I was one of the 150 people who participated
in the advertisements. These people DIDN'T KNOW
that they were being taken for a ride.
Now their reputations are in question. Who
should they sue?
PS: Have you visited www.windows2000test.com lately? It's up and down like a mad whore's drawers.
So what? So what? There is something called ethics. Ethics covers areas that the law does not cover. What Microsoft did was unethical, bottom line. Just because it is not codified by law does not make it right.
Well, clearly "independent" means something different in Microsoft's vocabulary. Mindcraft was "independent" too. They also experienced having their name dragged thru the mud. If Microsoft keeps ruining these "independent" organizations, there may not be one available when they need one someday.
The full page ad in the NYT was brought up in the anti-trust trial. Interesting to speculate whether perjury occurred, or if the judge could decide part of Microsoft's case was no longer credible as a result.
No need to topple Microsoft, I think, just stand back, they're doing quite well all on their own. Does one yell "Software!" when a behemoth starts to fall?
>>"He should have told us," Simon Hakim, a Temple University economist, said when told yesterday of the financing. "I would not have >>participated if I had known. It's not right to use people as a vehicle for special interests."
>Which indicates that the study was no way biased >by Microsoft's funding of the published results
Ah, but it doesnt indicate that. Would the gentleman in charge have been quite as willing without the airfare, the 150k fat payment? I dont think so.
>I also agree with the last comment in the article about the DOJ trial being used by Netscape as a last ditch effort because they couldn't >compete in a real market.
Oh absolutely. How could they? They were the leader, and Microsoft came in and gave away for free a competing product and bundled it with 90% of the consumer market PC's. There isnt any inherent advantage there, no...
"REAL" markets dont exist.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
>You know what's really telling about this article? It's that slashdot readers don't even really feel
>like commenting. We just take it as read that Microsoft does these kinds of things. It's not even news anymore.
Or it's the pattern that repeats every time MS is caught red-handed astroturfing support a la the Steve Bartko affair, or in 1997, when they tried to convince hundreds of journalists that public opinion thought an HTML browser *should be* part of the operating system:
1) nerds hear about this, many get upset, & respond in various fora with angry messages;
2) other nerds respond, defending MS, saying in effect ``well, everybody else does it" but neglect to provide examples;
3) discussion soon deteriorates into individual flame wars & OS religion wars, generating more heat than light;
4) Microsoft reacts (at least overtly) by waiting another year or two before repeating another astroturf attempt.
In other words, MS will continue to do this until they burn thru their multi-billion dollar warchest, no matter what we say or do.
Then again, there are more useful ways for them to burn their money, so maybe we shouldn't complain too much about this manner.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Is there an equivalent offense under US law, and have Microsoft committed it?
Yes and no. Yes, there is a law against obstruction of justice. No, this isn't against that law becuase the court is only supposed to rule on the evidence presented in court and not based on newspaper ads, articles or editorials. It generally is not against the law to lie in ads, articles and editorials unless it is done (a) to intentionally damage somone's reputation (i.e. libel and slander) or (b) to make (demonstrably) false claims about a product.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Of course, QueSO and LWP reveal that the "Independent Institute's" Web site runs on Solaris and Apache. Just an interesting aside.
Is there an equivalent offense under US law, and have Microsoft committed it?
The Independent Institute reply also claims that the stolen info is wrong because their financial computer crashed and destroyed files. I wish they had mentioned what operating system it was using...
What does that tell us about Microsoft's standing in the technical communities?
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