Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the you-knew-it-would-happen dept.
mochaone writes "The NY Times has an article [free reg. req.] about some lawyers in California who plan on filing a suit Monday - that's today - on behalf of some victims of Microsoft's monopoly power. Can you say, 'Open the floodgates?'"
/. isn't liable because of common carrier status. But they were take down this post, then they would be liable for all simular future posts.
How about a new moderation category "copyright violation"?
--
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Re:Make moderators accountable
by
tzanger
·
· Score: 2
Slashdot should just allow all users the ability to check who moderated any post. Essentially moderators get to act as anonymous cowards in regards to their moderation. There's no accountability, so anyone who wishes to try and surpress a viewpoint through moderation, does so with no worries.
That's what Meta Moderation is all about. The system knows who moderated who to what. Meta Moderation, if in disagreement, costs the moderator a little karma, if I'm not mistaken.
As far as filtering based on score, that's exactly what moderation is about. And for those who don't have the time nor the inclination to read 180 messages, setting their filter to 2 or 3 is great. Yes you will miss some good comments, but you will also miss most of the useless ones. Let's be honest -- in 180 comments, how many are truly "big" enough to warrant being read? Maybe a dozen. The information scourers like myself will stay at zero to see (almost) everything, but most busy people will sit at the higher levels to just skim.
MS reduced the cost of the OS (not upgrade) to the large OEMs in order to make sure that their OS was installed there.
On the other hand, the consumer cost of the OS upgrade is too high, but since newer programs require the upgrade (that is, as Joe Public sees it), they can charge higher for it.
MS is playing both sides of maintaining their monopoly while still raking in hugh profits.
--
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Actually, the FoF specifically states that MS could have easily sold Win98 for $49 and still made a profit, but instead sold it for $89. That's $40 per copy of Win98 sold. I think that's pretty good proof of 'damages'. IANAL.
--
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Forced, no. But have they made it impractical to use anything else? Sure.
I was a longterm Amiga user who loved those machines. Criticise me if you will, but I like Amigas. Now, I'm not trying to blame Microsoft for the death of the Amiga - contributory factor, perhaps, but it went thanks to massive incompetence at Commodore in the main. So, I looked at the market, wanting a new platform. I couldn't get another Amiga seriously. I couldn't get a BeOS machine. I could get a Mac (which I actually quite like...) but I'd then be in a very similar position to that which had made me dump Amigas - little or no software. So, much to my displeasure, I get a Windows 98 PC. The OS is horrible in most respects, the hardware is a triumph of engineering effort over basic design and it shows in some big ways. Do I like the machine? No, not really. Did I have a practical choice? No, not really. Do I think Microsoft have harmed the market? Of course.
Greg
--
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant) Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
For those without passwords...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5
November 22, 1999
Microsoft Faces a Class Action on 'Monopoly'
By STEVE LOHR
Lawyers say they will file a class-action suit against Microsoft on Monday on behalf of millions of Californians, in the first of what legal experts say could become a flood of private litigation springing from the Justice Department's antitrust action against the company.
The suit, to be filed by three longtime class-action lawyers, will accuse Microsoft of using its monopoly in operating systems software to overcharge buyers of Windows 95 and Windows 98. The complaint does not estimate the financial impact to Windows users, but the lawyers are seeking triple damages if the suit leads to an eventual finding of financial harm.
The big software maker's vulnerability to private suits increased sharply earlier this month when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft. Jackson concluded that Microsoft is a monopoly whose anticompetitive acts have stifled innovation and harmed consumers.
Unlike conclusions of law, a judge's findings of fact in a federal antitrust case are not generally considered admissible as evidence in private suits. But Jackson's findings agreed so strongly with the case presented by the Justice Department and 19 states that antitrust experts say his final verdict, expected early next year, will almost surely find that Microsoft is a monopoly that violated the law.
The biggest financial threat to Microsoft may come not from corporate suits, but from class actions on behalf of the millions of users of the company's industry-standard Windows operating system. Such consumer suits, legal experts say, have the potential to cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, in damage claims. "This is the start of the race to get to the courthouse," observed Stephen Axinn, a partner in Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider who is an antitrust litigator. "It could be like the tobacco litigation, in the sense that you have lots of plaintiffs lawyers in different states sharing information."
Reducing the financial risk from such litigation, according to legal experts, should be a powerful incentive for Microsoft to seek an out-of-court settlement in the government case. The chances of a settlement appeared to increase last Friday when Jackson appointed Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge and leading antitrust scholar, as mediator in settlement talks between Microsoft and the Justice Department and the states.
"The prospect of a flood of private follow-on cases -- with their triple damages in private antitrust cases -- are lawsuits with potentials that Microsoft simply cannot ignore," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa law school.
Yet, publicly at least, Microsoft insists that its risk from private antitrust suits is exaggerated. "That litigation is something we're prepared to defend and defend aggressively, if necessary," said Tom Burt, a Microsoft lawyer.
In consumer class actions, legal experts say, Microsoft has defenses that will lessen its potential liability and present formidable obstacles for plaintiffs. For example, most computer users do not purchase Windows directly from retail software stores in shrink-wrapped boxes. Generally, the operating system is already loaded on personal computers when they are purchased. An estimated 90 percent of Windows 98 users got it preloaded on new machines.
The legal significance is that a 1977 Supreme Court ruling -- the Illinois Brick Company vs. the State of Illinois -- declared that indirect purchasers of goods could not recover damages in class-action antitrust cases.
Since 1977, however, 18 states including California and New York have passed laws allowing indirect purchasers to qualify for triple damages in antitrust class actions.
And while Jackson's findings do provide a road map for plaintiffs' lawyers, there remains a lot to prove in court. Jackson, for example, found that Microsoft has a monopoly, but he did not say precisely when it achieved monopoly status. He found consumers were harmed by Microsoft, but the class-action lawyers must put a figure on how much users were overcharged.
"The econometrics on damages will be very complex," Axinn said. "There's no question that Microsoft has some good cards to play on defense."
Still, Jackson provided class-action lawyers with some tantalizing details. In asserting that consumers may have paid more for Windows than they would have in a competitive market, he cited a Microsoft study suggesting possible prices of $49 and $89 for the retail upgrade to Windows 98. Microsoft chose to charge $89, which the study identified as the "revenue maximizing" price.
"That portion of the judge's findings was an invitation to a class-action lawsuit," said Robert Litan, a former senior official in the Justice Department's antitrust division who is now at the Brookings Institution.
Microsoft replies that the November 1997 study was garden-variety pricing analysis. Trying to estimate an optimal, or revenue maximizing, price is something that every consumer product company routinely does for each of its offerings.
The judge's discussion of the Microsoft pricing study, according to Terry Gross of Gross & Belsky in San Francisco, is "a clear marker." But, he said, it is mainly the overall drift of Jackson findings that provides a solid starting point for the class-action suit that he and his colleagues are filing.
"Throughout the judge's findings," Gross said, "he makes it clear that all Windows users were harmed by paying too high a price for Windows."
The class action, which the lawyers plan to file in California Superior Court in San Francisco, does not specify the number of members in the class of both individual and corporate users of Windows. But Gross estimated that the number in California was "at least 10 million," and he said the suit covers Windows users since the introduction of Windows 95. The complaint does not estimate the financial damage to Windows users in California.
Earlier this month, a small New York advertising company that purchased Windows, Seastrom Associates Ltd., sued Microsoft and sought class-action status to represent thousands of similar corporate customers in New York state.
But to take on Microsoft in a class action, legal experts say, will require experience, skill and resources. They note that the three lawyers behind the California suit -- Gross, Daniel J. Mogin of San Diego, and Francis O. Scarpulla of San Francisco -- are experienced state class-action lawyers who have worked for two decades on antitrust cases involving products ranging from snack foods to tires.
The lawyers say they will continue their litigation even if the federal case is settled out of court. Jackson's findings of fact alone, they insist, ease the way for suits like theirs.
"A settlement in the government's case wouldn't make our case go away," Gross said. "We still have these findings that Microsoft is a monopoly that abused its power by overcharging consumers."
Typically, only a final ruling -- not the findings of fact -- can be used as evidence in other cases. But a judge's fact findings and final ruling are ordinarily issued at the same time. Jackson took the unusual step of separating his findings of fact from his findings of law, which gave his fact findings greater importance.
Still, legal experts say Microsoft will surely challenge any attempt by class-action lawyers to build a case on the findings of fact alone.
Reposted without permission. Feel free to moderate down or delete if you need to CYOA, slashdot owner types.
Not even then. In the main, tyres are mounted on wheels in a very standard way which anyone can use. There's a few odd ways Michelin use, but they're still open standards IIRC. And oil? One may be better at the job than another, but there's nothing fundamental that stops interoperation. It's pretty well known how to make automotive lubricants:)
The problem here is the barrier to entry. It's huge, which isn't the case with the car parts analogy.
Greg
--
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant) Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I was the *non-lawyer*, but I'll offer some comments as the others are staying away from this flame-ridden topic;^)
First, Hawk and many others had already warned that many such lawsuits were to be expected given the damning evidence in the FoF.
Second, the FoF have little standing outside of their own case until/unless they become part of a final court decision. But they provide an excellent roadmap for anyone else to follow, including what conclusions to pursue, what witnesses to call, and how Microsoft will attempt to respond. The $49 vs. $89 snippet alone could be fantastically helpful if it can be backed up.
The class action suit(s) and the Caldera private suit could constrain some of the proposed remedies, because it may be quite complicated to apportion major monetary damages across multiple new companies if Microsoft is split up. If Microsoft's cash hoard and its Win9x monopoly business go together, that would be the one to take the money from, but that risks all the real Microsoft talent fleeing to a new company that has all the real forward-looking assets. At any rate the private liability accumulated by Microsoft will have to be consciously planned for during the remedies phase and also in any possible settlement.
Sorry, you're rather unobservant
by
Chris+Johnson
·
· Score: 2
I don't _use_ Windows: I'm typing this from a Mac- and MS still found ways to harm me. They systematically exterminated all the software companies they could and did everything they could to ensure that nobody would write software for anything but _their_ operating system. This _is_ covered in the findings of fact as one of the types of damage they inflicted. They did this so well that _your_ instinctive reaction is to behave like there is no software for anything else. That's how close they came to scorching the earth for the entire computer industry, and I can name off a long list of products which didn't really have to be Windows-only. I can quite legitimately blame Bill Gates for screwing up the market for Mac software, or indeed for Linux software or Be software: it's all the same argument, by abusing their monopoly they screwed up the normal operation of the free market. The FoF covers this, and the drying up of alternatives is considered one of the most subtly harmful results of the abuse of monopoly.
If/. hadn't rejected the story I submitted a few weeks back, we'd all know that a web site is getting sued for copying stories from two or three newspapers and that they lost their preliminary motion to dismiss the case citing "Fair Use" since the stories were being used to generate comments. The papers in question make a case that the web site is causing them lost revenue since they make a good bit of money selling archived stories.
Sorry I can't be more specific but I seem to have lost the link at the moment. Linking to a story should be OK (Though some web sites don't like "deep links" either) but copying one verbatim crosses the line.
While/. should be relatively safe from a lawsuit for a user posting a message like this, someone might be able to supoena Rob's web logs and go after the real perpitrator (And maybe even the moderators who moderated it up.)
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Re:OVERCHARGED? UNDERCHARGED???
by
SoftwareJanitor
·
· Score: 2
monopolies will usually lower their prices to kick competitors out
That is only until they have effectively eliminated the competitors. MS-DOS 6.x+Windows 3.x was sold much cheaper than Windows 95. By the time Windows 95 came out, the Amiga and Atari were dead, OS/2 and the Mac were already in severe decline and Linux hadn't started to take off much yet. Microsoft raised the price of Windows 98 compared to 95, despite the fact that it was mainly bug fixes and window dressing on top of 95. The prices of MS-Office have also gone way up as competition has gone down.
The traditional monopolistic pricing pattern is certainly there with Microsoft, make no mistake about it.
Yes, they did! Unless you've built your own computers for the past decade and a past, not only did someone MAKE you buy a copy of Windows, they probably MADE you buy a copy of DOS 3.3, 5.0 and 6.0 as well. You may have specified that you didn't want anything on the system, but you certainly did pay for a license, whether you wanted it or not. That's one of the things the DOJ is on about (Though they spanked MS for per-processor licensing a few years back, the status quo has remained in the industry to this DAY or we wouldn't have had a Windows Refund Day a while back.)
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Re:I'm gonna sue Microsoft
by
Mr.+Slippery
·
· Score: 2
There's a reason you shoot to kill in cases of home invasion. Hard to sue if you're dead, huh?
One does not shoot to kill in a self-defense situation, one shoots to stop. If I was going to shoot to kill, after the bad guy was down and no longer a threat I'd go over and put a round in his head. And if I did so, no only would I be charged with excessive use of force, I would probably be sued vigorously by the intruder's family.
Of course, I may be arrested and/or sued for shooting to stop, but I have a much better legal (and ethical) position when my goal is clearly to stop the threat to my safety.
-- Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog You cannot wash away blood with blood
The original poster was anonymous...
by
Wakko+Warner
·
· Score: 2
...yet you appear to have no problem with that.
As for "freedom of choice" when it comes to operating systems, it has been pointed out time and time again that it is impossible to purchase a laptop computer without paying for Microsoft Windows. That blows your pie-in-the-sky freedom theory out of the water.
Now, as to the previous poster's comment about Microsoft and your subsequent condemnation of it: I really don't know why so many people think that corporations are physical entities and, as such, should be given the same treatment as one would to, for instance, their grandmother. Why should I kowtow to Microsoft? If I think they suck, I sure as hell have every right to say so. It's not like Microsoft's feelings will be hurt -- they're not human beings! I can't piss them off; I can't punch them in the stomach, much as I'd like to sometimes. It's bad enough that corporations have been endowed with the same property rights as human beings have in this country; do we really have to start ascribing emotional attributes to them too? Some would have it that way, though, it seems... it's a shame.
- A.P. --
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Class Actions and Social Policy
by
werdna
·
· Score: 3
Several of our colleagues have observed that class actions of this kind are being brought by law firms with only $$$ in their eyes. Yea, verily this is probably the truth. Class action plaintiff firms are indeed an entrepreneurial bunch.
But several of these messages suggested that the truth of this proposition also implies that class actions so brought do not serve the purposes of justice. Here (though I primarily practice law on behalf of commercial defendants in such actions), I will part company with my/. colleagues and will speak on behalf of my bretheren at the plaintiff's bar.
It is not uncommon for businesses to engage in commercial activities in violation of the law and the policy set by legislatures, rulemakers and the courts. In many cases, there is no "real harm" to any one member of the public, but hundreds of thousands of dollars can be made, scattering the costs over millions and tens of millions of customers, each suffing only at most a few pennies or dollars of damage at most. A primary example occurs in the mis-collection of sales taxes from consumers.
Indeed, few people would even monitor this conduct, least of all the government, whose enforcement resources are limited at the end of the day. Were there no enforcement by the government, why would businesses tow the line?
The answer: because there exists a small cabal of class action plaintiff law firms who specialize in this kind of practice. They investigate these micro-violations, and bring civil actions on behalf of the consumers who were overcharged, each only pennies at a time.
True, consumers will get a pittance back at the end of the day compared to what was taken, but they will get something they would not have gotten otherwise, and at little cost and with minimum disruption to their lives. More important, the bringing of such actions STOPS the bad practices, and deters companies from "overreaching by neglect." It is easy to look the other way when your "mistakes" are making you money.
If such actions could not be brought, there would be no check on this kind of microviolation. Class action disputes of this kind (see also qui tam actions) are the only meaningful engine to assure enforcement of certain kinds of social policies.
Why let lawyers get rich at the expense of a Microsoft or other company, with little revenue actually flowing to the victims? The answer is simple: so that the company will be deterred from microviolation conduct in the future. Here is where you will find the justice.
Think ahead: a statutory class action remedy for excessive spamming by or on behalf of commercial entities!
McDonalds serves (served?) their coffee at a higher temperature (180 vs 150-160 degrees fahrenheit) than other drivethroughs. If you're going to serve coffee in that way, you (as a business) should take reasonable precautions to prevent these sorts of accidents, especially after HUNDREDS of other incidents. Serve it at a lower temperature, make the cups as strong and secure as possible, possibly put the cup in an additional safe container, etc. If you as a company can't prevent grevious injuries from mishaps which even intelligent people will have, then you shouldn't serve coffee through the drivethrough.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I recall seeing it available for the Dimension. However, their linux site is a bit of a mess now, and it's not clear what's going on.
In the meantime, there's a ton of good linux hardware shops ( such as http://www.tcu-inc.com )
Re:Another little econ lesson...
by
itachi
·
· Score: 2
Perhaps I'm not explaining the mechanism very well, but it's not really a choice on the part of the monopoly. Intentional or not, they do end up with a higher price than a fair market porducer selling the same good to the same consumers. Now whether or not consumers should be re-imbursed for the damage done to them by a monoploy is a seperate issue. Personally, I think that they should. A monopoly does really bad things to the market and to development of the good. However, since monopolies aren't an everyday situation, maybe this should be dealt with as part of the final ruling. My point is just that the entire market has been hurt by this, particularly including consumers. They are right in claiming they've been hurt, but dealing with that is a seperate issue.
This is why its bad to hurt M$, the only winners will be the bottom feeding scum sucking lawyers.
I'm thinking of trying to organize an anti-outrageous class-action lawyer fee system.
Basically, the idea would be something like "The undersigned refuse to be considered the member of any class in a class action lawsuit unless the lawyers agree to the following fee schedule, based on total cash payments to class members: 30% of damages up to $200,000, %20 of damages from $200,000 to $1,000,000, %10 of damages from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, 5% of damages from $2,000,000 to $50,000,000, and 1% of damages above that $50 M. (All this working like tax schedules, so for $500,000 in damages, it would be 30% of $200,000 + 20% of $300,000.) For coupons or vouchers, fees would be based on half of the amount of coupons actually redeemed within one year of issuance."
If very large numbers of people signed such a statement and it was given legal weight, the bottom-feeders wouldn't get so rich and would have to work towards getting actual money for their clients, not just useless coupons that no one redeems.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I'd be careful about giving legal opinions if you're not a lawyer (I'd be even more careful if you are a lawyer). The facts as I understand them is that common carrier status for websites is a somewhat murky subject. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes the limits to liability much more explicit, but also requires that a service like Slashdot remove materials that they know about and which are objectionable. --
As a disgruntled Windows 98 user, I have suffered extreme amounts of emotional damage from using windows, and I demand compensation! Why just last night I was downloading a 200 meg Swedish teenage lesbian erotica video on my box, and the damn thing BSOD'ed on me after 6 hours, while I was 98% done! Realizing my hours of downloading were in vain, I not only sobbed uncontrollably, but I have also lost all sexual function and have been forced to undergo months of therapy to regain it. My sex life has been destroyed thanks to MS and its buggy OS, and had I not been forced to run Windows, I would be having a delicious pr0n spree right now. Running Windows has ruined my life, and it's your fault, MS! Oh, and all that little monopoly stuff wasn't that nice either.
All she asked for was payment of the medical fees. McDonalds refused. They got slapped. The Jury awarded punitive (that means punishment) because McDonalds had been warned and sued many times and had made no changes. The award was about 1 day's coffee receipts for McDonalds and was reduced on appeal. --
Plaintiffs' expert, a scholar in thermodynamics applied to human skin burns, testified that liquids, at 180 degrees, will cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds. Other testimony showed that as the temperature decreases toward 155 degrees, the extent of the burn relative to that temperature decreases exponentially. Thus, if Liebeck's spill had involved coffee at 155 degrees, the liquid would have cooled and given her time to avoid a serious burn.
Cars kill a lot of people. But people understand and accept the risks when they purchase and drive a car. There are substantial regulations pertaining to auto safety, which also gives the manufacturers some protection from liability. But in the end, if a company knows of a significant safety problem relative to other vehicles in the same class and does not correct it, they are potentially liable. --
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Re:Hey I want in!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
Agressive consumer legal action is the most effective tools American consumers have to curtail abuse of corporate power.
Submitted for your approval, the facts about the McDonald's coffee suit.
And in addition (aand I've said this here before), lawyer's and plaintiffs should NOT be allowed to profit from punitive damages (they are PUNISHMENTS, not rewards). The punitive fees should be distributed to the community (somehow).
--
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Let's see. It used to be that you couldn't buy a PC without windows installed. Even if you didn't want windows, you still had to pay for it. Hmmm.... that doesn't sound like being offered alternatives. Sounds like windows refund day.
-- It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
This is ridiculous
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
OK, I was naive. I thought that the idea behind class action lawsuits was to benefit large groups of consumers harmed by corporations and various other entities.
What this lawsuit clearly shows me is that class action lawsuits are there to make lawyers rich. You just have to be there first. It's lotto for lawyers.
If you saw Regarding Henry, you'll see that shooting a lawyer in the head makes them good and nice... I'm not advocating shooting them, but perhaps requiring a partial lobotomy upon passing the bar could restore sanity to these idiots.
Does anyone know the details of microsoft's OEM pricing scheme? Besides the obvious bully tactics, what does it amount to, on average, per computer for it to come pre-installed with Windows '98?
Would OEMs, especially the ones not in bed with M$, be able to bring lawsuit against M$ to recover damages? Or purchasers of those OEMs products?
When I worked for a local computer store (actually worked in 2 different ones), we got maybe $10 or so less than retail, but charged the retail price to the customer, even if it came preinstalled. That IS a consumer cost. I'm not sure how big OEMs get charged, but if the cost is relegated to the consumer in ANY WAY, one would think that the consumer would be able to recover those costs.
Of course, not many would bother if it comes down to a couple bucks/computer, triple damages, minus a third for the lawyers cut: you'd get many $10 out of it.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Just unpacked our first Dell Linux preloads at work today. Dell's OEM rate for NT-WS must be around $125-$150, because the price difference between NT-WS and Red Hat preloads is $75 (with Linux being cheaper). The Red Hat preload systems come with support from LinuxCare and a plastic shrink-wrap with install manual and CD/floppy kit, much like the NT OEM one in fact - figure those at $50-$75 total, hence the figure. You also get a nice pamphlet from Microsoft on how to use a mouse (yes, really) which comes with the 2.5 button rodent (little wheel) supplied.
I think Win98 OEM's at around $30-40 in bulk, and around $75-85 for mom 'n' pop shops - many "build you own" places in the UK will resell Win98 OEM kits at this latter kind of rate, if bought with certain components (ISTR it's actually the HD, not the motherboard, that counts).
If you check into successful MS-Tax refund stories you might get more data; when Toshiba did it I think they used to sink the full "list" price of an OEM, rather than disclose their pricing deal with Micro$oft.
.. this is the result of the lack of success of the people realizing the cost of buying oem copies of software they don't want, MS responding by sorta allowing refunds until they pushed it to the computer sellers. Then with this whole monopoly buisness, the time is right and more proof exists.
Great, bloated, stable-if-you're-lucky software. I've had it crash on me with excellent hardware, and with a fine setup. Tell me, how can you tell a crappy install, since 98 and NT do most of the install without asking the user anything (because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron). My setup is good. It works fine, but every once in a while, something happens and windows randomly freezes. Is it the OS? Is it an app I am using? It should be able to kill bad apps, or at least leave error logs as to what caused the error. NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN. As you later state: But for the average user who can't learn how to "double click" or how to "go to the file menu and click print," linux isn't the answer. Can't learn? Sounds to me like refusal to learn. Like the quote says, "Windows hasn't increased computer literacy, it's just lowered the standard". More On Hardware: A system should be able to tell you your system is bad. If your system is crapping out due to bad memory, it should be able to tell you that to your face. Until then, to most people that Bluescreen is a fault of the OS. Most system reliability problems lie with microsoft from what I've seen. Brand new PCs from the likes of HP and compaq for home users still die. I can sit here all day and say that my linux box crashes all the time, but I know deep down inside, the memory may be bad, and I probably did a bum job of installing it. You try making the same idiots who are "incapable" of learning how to double click figure that out, especially since their copy of 98/NT probably came preinstalled. Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it. They don't want it to crash, so they make it that way. Microsoft has no need to care, because according to their EULA, they don't have to! Better put some cotton in those ears, because it looks like it's going to be a while.
Major brand name pc without windows but with a big, corporate warranty. Sure, today you can go to VA. How many consumers know of VA? Does VA have the years of household recognition that a name like compaq has? True, I'd much rather own a VA box than a compaq anything (expect a ds10 _would_ be nice....), but we have to look at the joe average population.
Once again, someone who has posted a pro-MS message on Slashdot gets moderated down, although the message is no less appropriate than most of the other ones around here.
For the record: I think MS is a band of gangsters and that both the anti-trust suit and the coming class action suits are richly deserved justice.
Nevertheless, this guy is entitled to his opinion, and stated it with arguments and no more flamage than most of the anti-MS posters. Moderation is not meant to be censorhip for unpopular viewpoints.
Will someone please moderate it back up? Meanwhile, I'm going meta-moderating until I can find this one.
Re:Another little econ lesson...
by
itachi
·
· Score: 2
I forgot one important point which is relevant here. The suit is about the fair price, not the option to purchase. Being unfairly overcharged because there was no other way to use a joe average home PC. Sorry.
wtf. sounds like poetry. deep down inside you're a fag.
Dude, that's not cool. Bigotry sucks. Open your mind, life goes easier that way.
Linux users class-action suit for refunds
by
Get+Behind+the+Mule
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· Score: 2
Remember Windows Refund Day? How many people have successfully obtained their refunds for unused MS software? Is MS still throwing up barriers against collection of refunds? Are they still hoping that no one notices that they ever promised any such thing?
I think that Linux users ought to bring a class action suit to force MS to pay their refunds.
Judging from the posts made so far, I suppose a lot you will say, "No way, I'll never do that, class action suits and anything involving lawyers are Inherently EVIL, and I'll have nothing to do with it." I think this is ideological and naive. MS has collected about a hundred bucks from you for absolutely nothing. If you're willing to tolerate something like that, then would you please send some of your money to me, too? After all, I haven't done anything for you either.
Seems to me that this is a no-brainer. The EULA specifically states that those who choose not to use Windows are entitled to a refund, and yet experience has shown that people trying to exercise that right are systematically hindered. MS has no right to money for nothing. If contracts are to mean anything at all in this world, then MS should be forced to pay.
(because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron).
Sort of like a lot of the new installation programs for the comercially popular linux distributions. Yeah, yeah, they still allow you a higher degree of control... but if you notice, the direction they are going in is to automate as much as possible. Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because thats what normal consumers want? Besides, neither you nor I might be the normal consumer, but I'm sure we could both still benefit from better (well... anythings better than the almost non-existant) hardware detection.
NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN.
This doesn't make any sense, of course things should be made as easy as possible. First of all, this is what consumers want. You aren't going to be competative if you don't listen to your customers. And if you haven't noticed this is exactly the direction many linux distributions are going. And your statement that you should "MAKE THEM LEARN" also doesn't make any sense. Computers are supposed to make life easier for people, they don't need or want to sit down and learn a large set of arcane commands and formats for 50 different configuration files (well.. I like to do that, but thats just me), they just want to sit down and get something useful done.
It might not have dawned on you, but ONE (I'm not saying its the only) major reasons why windows is dominant today, is that its relatively easy to use, even for someone who has never touched a computer before (well... macs are even more like that, but they lost for other reasons).
What I will agree with you on, is that it is nice to have the abillity to get down and dirty with the operating system and bypass all of the dumbed down controls... maybe with a little (well... a lot) more work kde or gnome will give us just that.
Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it.
Okay, this is just wrong. If you take a look at Part 11 of the GPL its pretty clear that there is, I quote, "NO WARRANTY".
The linux community might be a little more helpful when it comes to fixing bugs than microsoft, but when it comes to the court room they are not any more accountable than microsoft.
--
-- Point? None! Cob.
This comment is "Insightful", moderators?
by
Wakko+Warner
·
· Score: 2
I'm sure everyone who's ever bought a laptop with Windows preinstalled on it simply because there was no other way to purchase a laptop will agree with you. Oh, but, yeah, they should probably just be lugging around typewriters, that's right.
Why is it that only stupid people seem to be Microsoft apologists?
- A.P. --
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Another little econ lesson...
by
itachi
·
· Score: 3
So far I've seen a lot of comments where people are yelling at each other as to whether or not MS being a monoploy hurt consumers, and if so, which consumers. So, here's the basic free market lowdown on monopolies (Which should apply to most readers, whether you like it or not)
In a normal market, you have supply and demand. Pretty basic. Price on the vertical axis, supply on the horizontal. S & D look like an x. As price rises, producers are willing to make more. As price falls, consumers want more. For instance, say 5 people would want a pc if it costs 1 million USD. 10 people want one if it costs 750,000 USD. etc on down to a whole lot of people if it costs roughly 2,000 USD. Same deal for supply - producers will make x pc's at price n. 2x pcs at price 2n. These two curves intersect at some point. Assuming that nobody interferes with the market, the intersection of the supply and demand curves will show you the price per unit of the good and the total production of the good. Now, if you can't differentiate between the various versions of the good (butter is butter is butter, no brand names), then the only difference is price. So one company charges more, and their version doesn't sell because it's more expensive. When brand names and quality get added in, it gets more complicated, but the same basic notions are there. It's an issue of paying for the consumer preferences. Take beer. Nobody could mistake Guiness for Bud, no matter what. Now, Guiness has a higher price per volume, but since consumer preferences for beer vs. pisswater come into play, Guiness can be sold at a higher price because some consumers are willing to pay more for actual beer rather than buying cheaper pisswater. However, bud and miller are priced pretty similarly, because the two goods are very very similar, and price can very easily be a differentiating factor.
I'll assume everyone is following so far. So now we have our consumer market for operatin systems. Way back when, in those long ago days of the Carter years and early Reagan years, you could buy several commercial operating systems for your computer. And they were priced in a way not too different from the beer pricing I described above. Sure, server OSes might cost more, but the consumer of server OSes feels okay because they are getting a serious OS, as opposed to something like ms-dos, which fits consumer needs but certainly wont be driving your big, bad, company mainframe. Then, time goes by. For whatever reasons, the number of OSes starts to fall. Soon, we only have the MS OS family.
Before, we had two products that were competing, and the differences between the two, as far as the market cared, were price and consumer preferences. The existance of competition kept the prices close. If consumers were indifferent to which OS they used, price was the only differentiation. Now, with just Windows left on the market, there's nothing holding prices down. So prices go up. Which means that, for any physical good, quantity produced drops. After all, putting that extra money into production just raises our costs. And, as a monopoly producer, we want to minimize costs while maximizing price. This is profit maximization. If we make software, this means skimping on the product testing while notching the price up as much as the consumers will stand. Now, our monoploy is going to set it's price based on the lowest possible production costs. Now, the lowest possible production level is going to be expensive - you build a single prototype car, you have to pretty much handbuild it from scratch. Build a limited run - you have dicounts for buying/building a part in bulk, etc. But costs scale back up as you start to use up limited resources - if you try to buy every sparkplug ever made, it's starts to get pricey. Software mucks with this, since once it's compiled, duplicating it is nearly free, so it's not entirely clear to me what the monopoly effect would have on a software company. However, there are some costs. The CD/floppy that it ships on, the manual, the box, the plastic wrap and paper with the EULA on it. So each shipped copy costs somewhere between a dollar and 10, depending on the quantities shipped. Well, it's a monopoly, so they'll make as many copies as they need to to get the lowest possible price. And they set the selling price based on that. So the consumer ends up paying more for the good than the market indicates the good is worth. Which, pardon the pun, isn't good.
If the above doesn't make sense, I probably left something out. I don't think I did, but it's been a while...
So, the conclusion, the whole point. MS is a monoploy, for whatever reasons, and abused it. Given the fact that a monopolies goods are priced higher than they otherwise would be, MS has hurt anyone who has bought a computer since MS became a monopoly. Higher prices hurt consumers - less money left to spend on other goods. And not just computer consumers, either. Because artificially high price of windows kept consumers from having that money to spend on alternate goods. Whatever the difference between the market price for an OS and the price that was charged for monoploy Windows is money that should have gone into other markets - computer games, waterskis, water buffalo, whatever. So any market that you didn't spend money in because of the inflated price of Windows was hurt by MS. Now, IANAL, nor am I an expert witness in the area of economics, but I do know economics, and I have studied economics as applied to law, and I feel relatively confident that this conclusion isn't too far out in left feild. I wouldn't try to file a class action suit on behalf of the waterski industry, but I will say without a doubt that MS has done a serious injury to free market consumers and should not be allowed to just walk away.
is this copyright violation?
by
jemfinch
·
· Score: 3
I'm pretty sure this qualifies as copyright violation. Considering that registration is free, I can't see any reason this should be supported by slashdot.
Legally, can slashdot copy someone else's news word for word? These companies make money from banners, and slashdot is bypassing that. You guys need to watch yourselves.
Re:Greed is the root of evil
by
itachi
·
· Score: 2
The argument brought by this suit isn't that consumers were forced to buy windows. The argument is that the price of windows was artificially high due to the fact that MS had monoploy power. The suit simply claims that the consumers who did buy the good from a monoploy are entitled to be reimbursed now that the monopoly has been declared to be such.
Look at the price range for consumer pc OSes between the first PCs and the beginning of the MS monopoly. Average, then adjust for inflation. We should be left with the average consumer OS price in a non-monoploy environment. Then, figure the top and bottom end prices also. Each person in the suit can define how happy they were with windows on a 1-10 scale, 10 being overjoyed, and 1 being suicidal due to windows. Fit the prices to the 1-10 scale, and MS pays each person the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Well, the jury is still out on the question of
whether 70+ year old ladies should go around wearing tight spandex.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
/. isn't liable because of common carrier status. But they were take down this post, then they would be liable for all simular future posts.
How about a new moderation category "copyright violation"?
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Slashdot should just allow all users the ability to check who moderated any post. Essentially moderators get to act as anonymous cowards in regards to their moderation. There's no accountability, so anyone who wishes to try and surpress a viewpoint through moderation, does so with no worries.
That's what Meta Moderation is all about. The system knows who moderated who to what. Meta Moderation, if in disagreement, costs the moderator a little karma, if I'm not mistaken.
As far as filtering based on score, that's exactly what moderation is about. And for those who don't have the time nor the inclination to read 180 messages, setting their filter to 2 or 3 is great. Yes you will miss some good comments, but you will also miss most of the useless ones. Let's be honest -- in 180 comments, how many are truly "big" enough to warrant being read? Maybe a dozen. The information scourers like myself will stay at zero to see (almost) everything, but most busy people will sit at the higher levels to just skim.
On the other hand, the consumer cost of the OS upgrade is too high, but since newer programs require the upgrade (that is, as Joe Public sees it), they can charge higher for it.
MS is playing both sides of maintaining their monopoly while still raking in hugh profits.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Could one of those lawyers who previously answered to some Slashdotters' questions give a quick comment on this?
Forced, no. But have they made it impractical to use anything else? Sure.
I was a longterm Amiga user who loved those machines. Criticise me if you will, but I like Amigas. Now, I'm not trying to blame Microsoft for the death of the Amiga - contributory factor, perhaps, but it went thanks to massive incompetence at Commodore in the main. So, I looked at the market, wanting a new platform. I couldn't get another Amiga seriously. I couldn't get a BeOS machine. I could get a Mac (which I actually quite like...) but I'd then be in a very similar position to that which had made me dump Amigas - little or no software. So, much to my displeasure, I get a Windows 98 PC. The OS is horrible in most respects, the hardware is a triumph of engineering effort over basic design and it shows in some big ways. Do I like the machine? No, not really. Did I have a practical choice? No, not really. Do I think Microsoft have harmed the market? Of course.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Microsoft Faces a Class Action on 'Monopoly'
By STEVE LOHR
Lawyers say they will file a class-action suit against Microsoft on Monday on behalf of millions of Californians, in the first of what legal experts say could become a flood of private litigation springing from the Justice Department's antitrust action against the company.
The suit, to be filed by three longtime class-action lawyers, will accuse Microsoft of using its monopoly in operating systems software to overcharge buyers of Windows 95 and Windows 98. The complaint does not estimate the financial impact to Windows users, but the lawyers are seeking triple damages if the suit leads to an eventual finding of financial harm.
The big software maker's vulnerability to private suits increased sharply earlier this month when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft. Jackson concluded that Microsoft is a monopoly whose anticompetitive acts have stifled innovation and harmed consumers.
Unlike conclusions of law, a judge's findings of fact in a federal antitrust case are not generally considered admissible as evidence in private suits. But Jackson's findings agreed so strongly with the case presented by the Justice Department and 19 states that antitrust experts say his final verdict, expected early next year, will almost surely find that Microsoft is a monopoly that violated the law.
The biggest financial threat to Microsoft may come not from corporate suits, but from class actions on behalf of the millions of users of the company's industry-standard Windows operating system. Such consumer suits, legal experts say, have the potential to cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, in damage claims. "This is the start of the race to get to the courthouse," observed Stephen Axinn, a partner in Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider who is an antitrust litigator. "It could be like the tobacco litigation, in the sense that you have lots of plaintiffs lawyers in different states sharing information."
Reducing the financial risk from such litigation, according to legal experts, should be a powerful incentive for Microsoft to seek an out-of-court settlement in the government case. The chances of a settlement appeared to increase last Friday when Jackson appointed Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge and leading antitrust scholar, as mediator in settlement talks between Microsoft and the Justice Department and the states.
"The prospect of a flood of private follow-on cases -- with their triple damages in private antitrust cases -- are lawsuits with potentials that Microsoft simply cannot ignore," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa law school.
Yet, publicly at least, Microsoft insists that its risk from private antitrust suits is exaggerated. "That litigation is something we're prepared to defend and defend aggressively, if necessary," said Tom Burt, a Microsoft lawyer.
In consumer class actions, legal experts say, Microsoft has defenses that will lessen its potential liability and present formidable obstacles for plaintiffs. For example, most computer users do not purchase Windows directly from retail software stores in shrink-wrapped boxes. Generally, the operating system is already loaded on personal computers when they are purchased. An estimated 90 percent of Windows 98 users got it preloaded on new machines.
The legal significance is that a 1977 Supreme Court ruling -- the Illinois Brick Company vs. the State of Illinois -- declared that indirect purchasers of goods could not recover damages in class-action antitrust cases.
Since 1977, however, 18 states including California and New York have passed laws allowing indirect purchasers to qualify for triple damages in antitrust class actions.
And while Jackson's findings do provide a road map for plaintiffs' lawyers, there remains a lot to prove in court. Jackson, for example, found that Microsoft has a monopoly, but he did not say precisely when it achieved monopoly status. He found consumers were harmed by Microsoft, but the class-action lawyers must put a figure on how much users were overcharged.
"The econometrics on damages will be very complex," Axinn said. "There's no question that Microsoft has some good cards to play on defense."
Still, Jackson provided class-action lawyers with some tantalizing details. In asserting that consumers may have paid more for Windows than they would have in a competitive market, he cited a Microsoft study suggesting possible prices of $49 and $89 for the retail upgrade to Windows 98. Microsoft chose to charge $89, which the study identified as the "revenue maximizing" price.
"That portion of the judge's findings was an invitation to a class-action lawsuit," said Robert Litan, a former senior official in the Justice Department's antitrust division who is now at the Brookings Institution.
Microsoft replies that the November 1997 study was garden-variety pricing analysis. Trying to estimate an optimal, or revenue maximizing, price is something that every consumer product company routinely does for each of its offerings.
The judge's discussion of the Microsoft pricing study, according to Terry Gross of Gross & Belsky in San Francisco, is "a clear marker." But, he said, it is mainly the overall drift of Jackson findings that provides a solid starting point for the class-action suit that he and his colleagues are filing.
"Throughout the judge's findings," Gross said, "he makes it clear that all Windows users were harmed by paying too high a price for Windows."
The class action, which the lawyers plan to file in California Superior Court in San Francisco, does not specify the number of members in the class of both individual and corporate users of Windows. But Gross estimated that the number in California was "at least 10 million," and he said the suit covers Windows users since the introduction of Windows 95. The complaint does not estimate the financial damage to Windows users in California.
Earlier this month, a small New York advertising company that purchased Windows, Seastrom Associates Ltd., sued Microsoft and sought class-action status to represent thousands of similar corporate customers in New York state.
But to take on Microsoft in a class action, legal experts say, will require experience, skill and resources. They note that the three lawyers behind the California suit -- Gross, Daniel J. Mogin of San Diego, and Francis O. Scarpulla of San Francisco -- are experienced state class-action lawyers who have worked for two decades on antitrust cases involving products ranging from snack foods to tires.
The lawyers say they will continue their litigation even if the federal case is settled out of court. Jackson's findings of fact alone, they insist, ease the way for suits like theirs.
"A settlement in the government's case wouldn't make our case go away," Gross said. "We still have these findings that Microsoft is a monopoly that abused its power by overcharging consumers."
Typically, only a final ruling -- not the findings of fact -- can be used as evidence in other cases. But a judge's fact findings and final ruling are ordinarily issued at the same time. Jackson took the unusual step of separating his findings of fact from his findings of law, which gave his fact findings greater importance.
Still, legal experts say Microsoft will surely challenge any attempt by class-action lawyers to build a case on the findings of fact alone.
Reposted without permission. Feel free to moderate down or delete if you need to CYOA, slashdot owner types.
Not even then. In the main, tyres are mounted on wheels in a very standard way which anyone can use. There's a few odd ways Michelin use, but they're still open standards IIRC. And oil? One may be better at the job than another, but there's nothing fundamental that stops interoperation. It's pretty well known how to make automotive lubricants :)
The problem here is the barrier to entry. It's huge, which isn't the case with the car parts analogy.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I was the *non-lawyer*, but I'll offer some comments as the others are staying away from this flame-ridden topic ;^)
First, Hawk and many others had already warned that many such lawsuits were to be expected given the damning evidence in the FoF.
Second, the FoF have little standing outside of their own case until/unless they become part of a final court decision. But they provide an excellent roadmap for anyone else to follow, including what conclusions to pursue, what witnesses to call, and how Microsoft will attempt to respond. The $49 vs. $89 snippet alone could be fantastically helpful if it can be backed up.
The class action suit(s) and the Caldera private suit could constrain some of the proposed remedies, because it may be quite complicated to apportion major monetary damages across multiple new companies if Microsoft is split up. If Microsoft's cash hoard and its Win9x monopoly business go together, that would be the one to take the money from, but that risks all the real Microsoft talent fleeing to a new company that has all the real forward-looking assets. At any rate the private liability accumulated by Microsoft will have to be consciously planned for during the remedies phase and also in any possible settlement.
I don't _use_ Windows: I'm typing this from a Mac- and MS still found ways to harm me. They systematically exterminated all the software companies they could and did everything they could to ensure that nobody would write software for anything but _their_ operating system. This _is_ covered in the findings of fact as one of the types of damage they inflicted. They did this so well that _your_ instinctive reaction is to behave like there is no software for anything else. That's how close they came to scorching the earth for the entire computer industry, and I can name off a long list of products which didn't really have to be Windows-only.
I can quite legitimately blame Bill Gates for screwing up the market for Mac software, or indeed for Linux software or Be software: it's all the same argument, by abusing their monopoly they screwed up the normal operation of the free market. The FoF covers this, and the drying up of alternatives is considered one of the most subtly harmful results of the abuse of monopoly.
Sorry I can't be more specific but I seem to have lost the link at the moment. Linking to a story should be OK (Though some web sites don't like "deep links" either) but copying one verbatim crosses the line.
While /. should be relatively safe from a lawsuit for a user posting a message like this, someone might be able to supoena Rob's web logs and go after the real perpitrator (And maybe even the moderators who moderated it up.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
monopolies will usually lower their prices to kick competitors out
That is only until they have effectively eliminated the competitors. MS-DOS 6.x+Windows 3.x was sold much cheaper than Windows 95. By the time Windows 95 came out, the Amiga and Atari were dead, OS/2 and the Mac were already in severe decline and Linux hadn't started to take off much yet. Microsoft raised the price of Windows 98 compared to 95, despite the fact that it was mainly bug fixes and window dressing on top of 95. The prices of MS-Office have also gone way up as competition has gone down.
The traditional monopolistic pricing pattern is certainly there with Microsoft, make no mistake about it.
Yes, they did! Unless you've built your own computers for the past decade and a past, not only did someone MAKE you buy a copy of Windows, they probably MADE you buy a copy of DOS 3.3, 5.0 and 6.0 as well. You may have specified that you didn't want anything on the system, but you certainly did pay for a license, whether you wanted it or not. That's one of the things the DOJ is on about (Though they spanked MS for per-processor licensing a few years back, the status quo has remained in the industry to this DAY or we wouldn't have had a Windows Refund Day a while back.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Of course, I may be arrested and/or sued for shooting to stop, but I have a much better legal (and ethical) position when my goal is clearly to stop the threat to my safety.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
As for "freedom of choice" when it comes to operating systems, it has been pointed out time and time again that it is impossible to purchase a laptop computer without paying for Microsoft Windows. That blows your pie-in-the-sky freedom theory out of the water.
Now, as to the previous poster's comment about Microsoft and your subsequent condemnation of it: I really don't know why so many people think that corporations are physical entities and, as such, should be given the same treatment as one would to, for instance, their grandmother. Why should I kowtow to Microsoft? If I think they suck, I sure as hell have every right to say so. It's not like Microsoft's feelings will be hurt -- they're not human beings! I can't piss them off; I can't punch them in the stomach, much as I'd like to sometimes. It's bad enough that corporations have been endowed with the same property rights as human beings have in this country; do we really have to start ascribing emotional attributes to them too? Some would have it that way, though, it seems... it's a shame.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Several of our colleagues have observed that class actions of this kind are being brought by law firms with only $$$ in their eyes. Yea, verily this is probably the truth. Class action plaintiff firms are indeed an entrepreneurial bunch.
/. colleagues and will speak on behalf of my bretheren at the plaintiff's bar.
But several of these messages suggested that the truth of this proposition also implies that class actions so brought do not serve the purposes of justice. Here (though I primarily practice law on behalf of commercial defendants in such actions), I will part company with my
It is not uncommon for businesses to engage in commercial activities in violation of the law and the policy set by legislatures, rulemakers and the courts. In many cases, there is no "real harm" to any one member of the public, but hundreds of thousands of dollars can be made, scattering the costs over millions and tens of millions of customers, each suffing only at most a few pennies or dollars of damage at most. A primary example occurs in the mis-collection of sales taxes from consumers.
Indeed, few people would even monitor this conduct, least of all the government, whose enforcement resources are limited at the end of the day. Were there no enforcement by the government, why would businesses tow the line?
The answer: because there exists a small cabal of class action plaintiff law firms who specialize in this kind of practice. They investigate these micro-violations, and bring civil actions on behalf of the consumers who were overcharged, each only pennies at a time.
True, consumers will get a pittance back at the end of the day compared to what was taken, but they will get something they would not have gotten otherwise, and at little cost and with minimum disruption to their lives. More important, the bringing of such actions STOPS the bad practices, and deters companies from "overreaching by neglect." It is easy to look the other way when your "mistakes" are making you money.
If such actions could not be brought, there would be no check on this kind of microviolation. Class action disputes of this kind (see also qui tam actions) are the only meaningful engine to assure enforcement of certain kinds of social policies.
Why let lawyers get rich at the expense of a Microsoft or other company, with little revenue actually flowing to the victims? The answer is simple: so that the company will be deterred from microviolation conduct in the future. Here is where you will find the justice.
Think ahead: a statutory class action remedy for excessive spamming by or on behalf of commercial entities!
IT WAS COFFEE. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE HOT
McDonalds serves (served?) their coffee at a higher temperature (180 vs 150-160 degrees fahrenheit) than other drivethroughs. If you're going to serve coffee in that way, you (as a business) should take reasonable precautions to prevent these sorts of accidents, especially after HUNDREDS of other incidents. Serve it at a lower temperature, make the cups as strong and secure as possible, possibly put the cup in an additional safe container, etc. If you as a company can't prevent grevious injuries from mishaps which even intelligent people will have, then you shouldn't serve coffee through the drivethrough.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
In the meantime, there's a ton of good linux hardware shops ( such as http://www.tcu-inc.com )
Perhaps I'm not explaining the mechanism very well, but it's not really a choice on the part of the monopoly. Intentional or not, they do end up with a higher price than a fair market porducer selling the same good to the same consumers. Now whether or not consumers should be re-imbursed for the damage done to them by a monoploy is a seperate issue. Personally, I think that they should. A monopoly does really bad things to the market and to development of the good. However, since monopolies aren't an everyday situation, maybe this should be dealt with as part of the final ruling. My point is just that the entire market has been hurt by this, particularly including consumers. They are right in claiming they've been hurt, but dealing with that is a seperate issue.
This is why its bad to hurt M$, the only winners will be the bottom feeding scum sucking lawyers.
I'm thinking of trying to organize an anti-outrageous class-action lawyer fee system.
Basically, the idea would be something like "The undersigned refuse to be considered the member of any class in a class action lawsuit unless the lawyers agree to the following fee schedule, based on total cash payments to class members: 30% of damages up to $200,000, %20 of damages from $200,000 to $1,000,000, %10 of damages from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, 5% of damages from $2,000,000 to $50,000,000, and 1% of damages above that $50 M. (All this working like tax schedules, so for $500,000 in damages, it would be 30% of $200,000 + 20% of $300,000.) For coupons or vouchers, fees would be based on half of the amount of coupons actually redeemed within one year of issuance."
If very large numbers of people signed such a statement and it was given legal weight, the bottom-feeders wouldn't get so rich and would have to work towards getting actual money for their clients, not just useless coupons that no one redeems.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
#include
I'd be careful about giving legal opinions if you're not a lawyer (I'd be even more careful if you are a lawyer). The facts as I understand them is that common carrier status for websites is a somewhat murky subject. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes the limits to liability much more explicit, but also requires that a service like Slashdot remove materials that they know about and which are objectionable.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
As a disgruntled Windows 98 user, I have suffered extreme amounts of emotional damage from using windows, and I demand compensation! Why just last night I was downloading a 200 meg Swedish teenage lesbian erotica video on my box, and the damn thing BSOD'ed on me after 6 hours, while I was 98% done! Realizing my hours of downloading were in vain, I not only sobbed uncontrollably, but I have also lost all sexual function and have been forced to undergo months of therapy to regain it. My sex life has been destroyed thanks to MS and its buggy OS, and had I not been forced to run Windows, I would be having a delicious pr0n spree right now. Running Windows has ruined my life, and it's your fault, MS! Oh, and all that little monopoly stuff wasn't that nice either.
Let's see. It used to be that you couldn't buy a PC without windows installed. Even if you didn't want windows, you still had to pay for it. Hmmm.... that doesn't sound like being offered alternatives. Sounds like windows refund day.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
OK, I was naive. I thought that the idea behind class action lawsuits was to benefit large groups of consumers harmed by corporations and various other entities.
What this lawsuit clearly shows me is that class action lawsuits are there to make lawyers rich. You just have to be there first. It's lotto for lawyers.
If you saw Regarding Henry, you'll see that shooting a lawyer in the head makes them good and nice... I'm not advocating shooting them, but perhaps requiring a partial lobotomy upon passing the bar could restore sanity to these idiots.
Would OEMs, especially the ones not in bed with M$, be able to bring lawsuit against M$ to recover damages? Or purchasers of those OEMs products?
When I worked for a local computer store (actually worked in 2 different ones), we got maybe $10 or so less than retail, but charged the retail price to the customer, even if it came preinstalled. That IS a consumer cost. I'm not sure how big OEMs get charged, but if the cost is relegated to the consumer in ANY WAY, one would think that the consumer would be able to recover those costs.
Of course, not many would bother if it comes down to a couple bucks/computer, triple damages, minus a third for the lawyers cut: you'd get many $10 out of it.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
.. this is the result of the lack of success of the people realizing the cost of buying oem copies of software they don't want, MS responding by sorta allowing refunds until they pushed it to the computer sellers. Then with this whole monopoly buisness, the time is right and more proof exists.
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Great, bloated, stable-if-you're-lucky software. I've had it crash on me with excellent hardware, and with a fine setup. Tell me, how can you tell a crappy install, since 98 and NT do most of the install without asking the user anything (because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron). My setup is good. It works fine, but every once in a while, something happens and windows randomly freezes. Is it the OS? Is it an app I am using? It should be able to kill bad apps, or at least leave error logs as to what caused the error. NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN. As you later state: But for the average user who can't learn how to "double click" or how to "go to the file menu and click print," linux isn't the answer. Can't learn? Sounds to me like refusal to learn. Like the quote says, "Windows hasn't increased computer literacy, it's just lowered the standard". More On Hardware: A system should be able to tell you your system is bad. If your system is crapping out due to bad memory, it should be able to tell you that to your face. Until then, to most people that Bluescreen is a fault of the OS. Most system reliability problems lie with microsoft from what I've seen. Brand new PCs from the likes of HP and compaq for home users still die. I can sit here all day and say that my linux box crashes all the time, but I know deep down inside, the memory may be bad, and I probably did a bum job of installing it. You try making the same idiots who are "incapable" of learning how to double click figure that out, especially since their copy of 98/NT probably came preinstalled. Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it. They don't want it to crash, so they make it that way. Microsoft has no need to care, because according to their EULA, they don't have to! Better put some cotton in those ears, because it looks like it's going to be a while.
Major brand name pc without windows but with a big, corporate warranty. Sure, today you can go to VA. How many consumers know of VA? Does VA have the years of household recognition that a name like compaq has? True, I'd much rather own a VA box than a compaq anything (expect a ds10 _would_ be nice....), but we have to look at the joe average population.
That and laptops.
Once again, someone who has posted a pro-MS message on Slashdot gets moderated down, although the message is no less appropriate than most of the other ones around here.
For the record: I think MS is a band of gangsters and that both the anti-trust suit and the coming class action suits are richly deserved justice.
Nevertheless, this guy is entitled to his opinion, and stated it with arguments and no more flamage than most of the anti-MS posters. Moderation is not meant to be censorhip for unpopular viewpoints.
Will someone please moderate it back up? Meanwhile, I'm going meta-moderating until I can find this one.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
I forgot one important point which is relevant here. The suit is about the fair price, not the option to purchase. Being unfairly overcharged because there was no other way to use a joe average home PC. Sorry.
wtf. sounds like poetry. deep down inside you're a fag.
Dude, that's not cool. Bigotry sucks. Open your mind, life goes easier that way.
Remember Windows Refund Day? How many people have successfully obtained their refunds for unused MS software? Is MS still throwing up barriers against collection of refunds? Are they still hoping that no one notices that they ever promised any such thing?
I think that Linux users ought to bring a class action suit to force MS to pay their refunds.
Judging from the posts made so far, I suppose a lot you will say, "No way, I'll never do that, class action suits and anything involving lawyers are Inherently EVIL, and I'll have nothing to do with it." I think this is ideological and naive. MS has collected about a hundred bucks from you for absolutely nothing. If you're willing to tolerate something like that, then would you please send some of your money to me, too? After all, I haven't done anything for you either.
Seems to me that this is a no-brainer. The EULA specifically states that those who choose not to use Windows are entitled to a refund, and yet experience has shown that people trying to exercise that right are systematically hindered. MS has no right to money for nothing. If contracts are to mean anything at all in this world, then MS should be forced to pay.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
(because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron).
Sort of like a lot of the new installation programs for the comercially popular linux distributions. Yeah, yeah, they still allow you a higher degree of control... but if you notice, the direction they are going in is to automate as much as possible. Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because thats what normal consumers want? Besides, neither you nor I might be the normal consumer, but I'm sure we could both still benefit from better (well... anythings better than the almost non-existant) hardware detection.
NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN.
This doesn't make any sense, of course things should be made as easy as possible. First of all, this is what consumers want. You aren't going to be competative if you don't listen to your customers. And if you haven't noticed this is exactly the direction many linux distributions are going. And your statement that you should "MAKE THEM LEARN" also doesn't make any sense. Computers are supposed to make life easier for people, they don't need or want to sit down and learn a large set of arcane commands and formats for 50 different configuration files (well.. I like to do that, but thats just me), they just want to sit down and get something useful done.
It might not have dawned on you, but ONE (I'm not saying its the only) major reasons why windows is dominant today, is that its relatively easy to use, even for someone who has never touched a computer before (well... macs are even more like that, but they lost for other reasons).
What I will agree with you on, is that it is nice to have the abillity to get down and dirty with the operating system and bypass all of the dumbed down controls... maybe with a little (well... a lot) more work kde or gnome will give us just that.
Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it.
Okay, this is just wrong. If you take a look at Part 11 of the GPL its pretty clear that there is, I quote, "NO WARRANTY".
The linux community might be a little more helpful when it comes to fixing bugs than microsoft, but when it comes to the court room they are not any more accountable than microsoft.
-- Point? None! Cob.
Why is it that only stupid people seem to be Microsoft apologists?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
So far I've seen a lot of comments where people are yelling at each other as to whether or not MS being a monoploy hurt consumers, and if so, which consumers. So, here's the basic free market lowdown on monopolies (Which should apply to most readers, whether you like it or not)
In a normal market, you have supply and demand. Pretty basic. Price on the vertical axis, supply on the horizontal. S & D look like an x. As price rises, producers are willing to make more. As price falls, consumers want more. For instance, say 5 people would want a pc if it costs 1 million USD. 10 people want one if it costs 750,000 USD. etc on down to a whole lot of people if it costs roughly 2,000 USD. Same deal for supply - producers will make x pc's at price n. 2x pcs at price 2n. These two curves intersect at some point. Assuming that nobody interferes with the market, the intersection of the supply and demand curves will show you the price per unit of the good and the total production of the good. Now, if you can't differentiate between the various versions of the good (butter is butter is butter, no brand names), then the only difference is price. So one company charges more, and their version doesn't sell because it's more expensive. When brand names and quality get added in, it gets more complicated, but the same basic notions are there. It's an issue of paying for the consumer preferences. Take beer. Nobody could mistake Guiness for Bud, no matter what. Now, Guiness has a higher price per volume, but since consumer preferences for beer vs. pisswater come into play, Guiness can be sold at a higher price because some consumers are willing to pay more for actual beer rather than buying cheaper pisswater. However, bud and miller are priced pretty similarly, because the two goods are very very similar, and price can very easily be a differentiating factor.
I'll assume everyone is following so far. So now we have our consumer market for operatin systems. Way back when, in those long ago days of the Carter years and early Reagan years, you could buy several commercial operating systems for your computer. And they were priced in a way not too different from the beer pricing I described above. Sure, server OSes might cost more, but the consumer of server OSes feels okay because they are getting a serious OS, as opposed to something like ms-dos, which fits consumer needs but certainly wont be driving your big, bad, company mainframe. Then, time goes by. For whatever reasons, the number of OSes starts to fall. Soon, we only have the MS OS family.
Before, we had two products that were competing, and the differences between the two, as far as the market cared, were price and consumer preferences. The existance of competition kept the prices close. If consumers were indifferent to which OS they used, price was the only differentiation. Now, with just Windows left on the market, there's nothing holding prices down. So prices go up. Which means that, for any physical good, quantity produced drops. After all, putting that extra money into production just raises our costs. And, as a monopoly producer, we want to minimize costs while maximizing price. This is profit maximization. If we make software, this means skimping on the product testing while notching the price up as much as the consumers will stand. Now, our monoploy is going to set it's price based on the lowest possible production costs. Now, the lowest possible production level is going to be expensive - you build a single prototype car, you have to pretty much handbuild it from scratch. Build a limited run - you have dicounts for buying/building a part in bulk, etc. But costs scale back up as you start to use up limited resources - if you try to buy every sparkplug ever made, it's starts to get pricey. Software mucks with this, since once it's compiled, duplicating it is nearly free, so it's not entirely clear to me what the monopoly effect would have on a software company. However, there are some costs. The CD/floppy that it ships on, the manual, the box, the plastic wrap and paper with the EULA on it. So each shipped copy costs somewhere between a dollar and 10, depending on the quantities shipped. Well, it's a monopoly, so they'll make as many copies as they need to to get the lowest possible price. And they set the selling price based on that. So the consumer ends up paying more for the good than the market indicates the good is worth. Which, pardon the pun, isn't good.
If the above doesn't make sense, I probably left something out. I don't think I did, but it's been a while...
So, the conclusion, the whole point.
MS is a monoploy, for whatever reasons, and abused it. Given the fact that a monopolies goods are priced higher than they otherwise would be, MS has hurt anyone who has bought a computer since MS became a monopoly. Higher prices hurt consumers - less money left to spend on other goods. And not just computer consumers, either. Because artificially high price of windows kept consumers from having that money to spend on alternate goods. Whatever the difference between the market price for an OS and the price that was charged for monoploy Windows is money that should have gone into other markets - computer games, waterskis, water buffalo, whatever. So any market that you didn't spend money in because of the inflated price of Windows was hurt by MS. Now, IANAL, nor am I an expert witness in the area of economics, but I do know economics, and I have studied economics as applied to law, and I feel relatively confident that this conclusion isn't too far out in left feild. I wouldn't try to file a class action suit on behalf of the waterski industry, but I will say without a doubt that MS has done a serious injury to free market consumers and should not be allowed to just walk away.
I'm pretty sure this qualifies as copyright violation. Considering that registration is free, I can't see any reason this should be supported by slashdot.
Legally, can slashdot copy someone else's news word for word? These companies make money from banners, and slashdot is bypassing that. You guys need to watch yourselves.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
The argument brought by this suit isn't that consumers were forced to buy windows. The argument is that the price of windows was artificially high due to the fact that MS had monoploy power. The suit simply claims that the consumers who did buy the good from a monoploy are entitled to be reimbursed now that the monopoly has been declared to be such.
Look at the price range for consumer pc OSes between the first PCs and the beginning of the MS monopoly. Average, then adjust for inflation. We should be left with the average consumer OS price in a non-monoploy environment. Then, figure the top and bottom end prices also. Each person in the suit can define how happy they were with windows on a 1-10 scale, 10 being overjoyed, and 1 being suicidal due to windows. Fit the prices to the 1-10 scale, and MS pays each person the difference.
Why on earth did you buy it with "Bill's junkware" installed if you wanted to run linux on it ?