The rules were in place. The monopolies were traded for certain standards of service and public service when regulation first went into place. AT&T was happy to be regulated and block out local competitors. The (partial) deregulation of telcos and cable companies was a windfall to these companies. What did we get for it? A pocketful of mumbles -- empty promise from the telcos that we would all have fiber to the door by now.
The results of ignoring problems have been even messier in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries.
Government is hardly ever a perfect solution, but it often has done a good job of cleaning up messes that private enterprise has created.
Since the major players in internet service provision have all sucked at the teat of government from time to time and are in dominant positions because of that, there's no reason to worry that government regulation that forbids discrimination by private enterprises is going to be a burden on free enterprise.
Remember that the companies that are whining about this are companies that have a long history of government support to allow them to lay the copper, cable or fiber. From the day that Alexander Graham Bell won a questionable patent, telephony, cable and internet have always relied on government help to get what they wanted. Minor levels of regulation are not oppression, nor would they interfere with the companies' abilities to exploit the market. Until the providers show that they are being hurt by net neutrality, they need to offer it.
These are medical devices. There are ways to control costs, but hacking something up may not be a good idea given that QC is often the last item on the to do list.
FUD was the very short description of IBM's marketing program before the internet existed. "Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM" was the corollary. Selling fear, uncertainly and doubt to middle management is a breeze.
EULAs have won in court, so have handshakes.
Contracts do not have to be very formal, but consumer protection statutes do protect consumers from some of the most outrageous requests of a EULA.
In this case, consumer protection statutes will generally require the company to allow all innocent owners of the game who were turned off because their number was used improperly to have their money back or turn their accounts back on.
Judge Richard Posner, a good writer, has been blogging about IP and fair use at Lessig Blog. The series of entries are very informative and give a good background to IP.
As long as managers have an incentive to cheat, some of them will. Bonuses that are based, directly or indirectly, on the hours worked by employees, or on the overtime, will encourage them to lie. The real problem is not that managers do what they are paid to do, but that they have such an easy time changing the data to further their illegal behavior. Time clocks need to start giving receipts to employees.
I replaced my primary TV a few years ago. It was about 20 years old. Why throw away a television set with a good picture on it? Trinitrons have a history of working.
Sure, but I don't quite understand why you are implying that a republic cannot be democratic. Is the United States not a democratic republic? The fact that it is a representative democracy does not make it undemocratic.
A republic is a country that has an elected head of state, not a king or emperor. A representative democracy is what the US and all of the other democratic nations have. It has an elected legislature. So, yes, the United States is democratic and a republic, but it is not a democratic republic. A Democratic Republic is a pseudo-Marxist dictatorship, so it is neither democratic nor a republic.
1) They never talk about routers. You are right that they would need them to make the technology useful, but MASER routers at every transformer will easily offset the savings of reusing power lines.
2) Again, they offer no discussion of repeaters or line sync problems.
3) Buildable, but unbelievably expensive. One gets the idea that they are working in a universe where there is no signal attenuation, so they don't have any of the problems you remember from the class you "slept through".
I can almost buy that you can use the magnetic fields of the powerlines as MASER waveguides, but I saw nothing in the patent that explained how they solved the transformer problem.
There also appears to be a problem with propagation control. Will this be pure broadcast? That might work more easily, but it will eat the bandwidth very quickly. I'll guess that even if they can use the magnetic fields of high tension lines as waveguides, they have a long way to go before they invent the MASER router.
In the US the power grid is generally owned by the private power companies. If they could run intenet bandwidth, they would be happy to. Like most coddled monopolies, they won't have a clue what the value of their product is. Unless they can provide the bandwidth service for $US20+ISP fees, they're out of the game.
IF the case is settled out of court BEFORE a verdict is entered, the entire case dissappears, Findings and all. It would look to the record books just as if the the case was settled out of court before the trial began.
I would expect the state Attorneys General to want the FoF to be admissible for all civil suits. Certainly everything that had been brought into court will be fair game and public record. Do you really think that Microsoft will want to see how many judges will put up with their contemptuous behavior before throwing the lot of them into jail for contempt of court? Do you think Microsoft wants to get sanctioned for not producing the same emails they produced the last time? These facts are out there and I don't think Microsoft can make them go away.
Please name me one operating system that has to, and in many cases succeeds in inter-operating with so many other systems. The weight that Microsoft carries and the scrutiny under which it carries that weight should be a warning to everyone who wants them out of the way.
Huh? NT is supported on one platform. You get to interoperate with it. If MSFT doesn't like you, it breaks things. Ask Samba about MSFT games with SMB. You can run Linux on more machines than you can run MSFT software.
Here is to hoping that Atlas shrugs.
If MSFT shut down tomorrow the world would be a better place. Marketing companies do not improve the economy.
The biggest group of mistakes that these folks make is making static projections. OSI was developed to be the best network protocol. Token Ring was clearly better than ethernet. Unix was dead.
Unfortunately for the crystal ball gazers, the "inferior" technologies had major strengths that were overlooked. They had an installed base with a lot of people who were interested in how they work and they were extremely flexible and could be updated easily to meet newer demands.
In a reasonably fair fight, the more resilient technology will emerge victorious.
If Microsoft were... engaging in fraud or committing some other real crime...
They were. They stole, lied and defrauded. They did it all as part of their anticompetitive behavior. Read the FoF, it shows you what they did.
The moral issue is: is it right to punish Microsoft for using its well-earned influence in one market to promote its product in another market?
Maybe the moral issue is whether it is moral to justify the criminal behavior of others because you like them. Microsoft committed real crimes to further their dominance of desktop OSes. You squander your moral position by supporting the criminal activities of these criminals.
Not necessarily immoral. If settling would reduce the penalties they suffer, I wouldn't hold it against them. But I would rather see them fight it out, because if they settle they implicitly accept the false conclusions of Judge Jackson.
Don't you understand that the conclusions in the Finding of Fact were drawn because these were the facts shown to the judge during the trial. You can yell "biased" and "unfair" all you want, but Microsoft didn't put on a decent defense about the facts. If you think the case was unfair, it's because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to put up an honest or usable defense. They preferred to make statements on the steps of the courthouse, create bogus videos, and lie in court--how many Microsoft witnesses were caught in a lie?
The judge's conclusion, with which I heartily concur, tells me that Microsoft didn't put on a defense on the facts because the facts as presented by the Department of Justice were accurate and reliable. Microsoft has already fought on the facts, they lost because they had no facts on their side. They aren't likely to get another bite at this apple.
In fact they have not admitted guilt, nor should they. The FoF is a lot of high-sounding nonsense, which shows little more than "Microsoft has a large and stable market share, and works to aggressively defend that market share from competitors." Despite Judge Jackson's contentions, I see nothing immoral or illegal about that. He ignored several viable alternatives (most notably Apple) and more importantly he completely failed to demonstrate harm to consumers. Yes the FoF is bad for them and they will probably lose, but to admit their guilt would be big mistake, both legally and morally, since they are not guilty.
I didn't say they had admitted guilt. I said they had been found to have done the things that they were accused of. As for your Apple misdirection, the Judge discussed Macintosh and Linux, and explained why Microsoft, indeed had a monopoly--whether or not you include Macintosh. Was your copy of the FoF incomplete?
There is no need to show harm to consumers. Please, when you get back to work, tell the folks at Waggoner-Edstrom that harm to consumers is not relevent to the law. Because Microsoft has been waving this red herring around so long, the Judge chose to answer it and identified the harm that consumers suffered. Yes, harm was suffered by consumers--that is another fact.
Microsoft lies again and again to judges throughout America but you think it would be immoral for them to settle?
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Does the lighting law include the energy used to make and dispose of the product?
The rules were in place. The monopolies were traded for certain standards of service and public service when regulation first went into place. AT&T was happy to be regulated and block out local competitors. The (partial) deregulation of telcos and cable companies was a windfall to these companies. What did we get for it? A pocketful of mumbles -- empty promise from the telcos that we would all have fiber to the door by now.
The results of ignoring problems have been even messier in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Government is hardly ever a perfect solution, but it often has done a good job of cleaning up messes that private enterprise has created. Since the major players in internet service provision have all sucked at the teat of government from time to time and are in dominant positions because of that, there's no reason to worry that government regulation that forbids discrimination by private enterprises is going to be a burden on free enterprise.
Remember that the companies that are whining about this are companies that have a long history of government support to allow them to lay the copper, cable or fiber. From the day that Alexander Graham Bell won a questionable patent, telephony, cable and internet have always relied on government help to get what they wanted. Minor levels of regulation are not oppression, nor would they interfere with the companies' abilities to exploit the market. Until the providers show that they are being hurt by net neutrality, they need to offer it.
These are medical devices. There are ways to control costs, but hacking something up may not be a good idea given that QC is often the last item on the to do list.
FUD was the very short description of IBM's marketing program before the internet existed. "Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM" was the corollary. Selling fear, uncertainly and doubt to middle management is a breeze.
EULAs have won in court, so have handshakes. Contracts do not have to be very formal, but consumer protection statutes do protect consumers from some of the most outrageous requests of a EULA. In this case, consumer protection statutes will generally require the company to allow all innocent owners of the game who were turned off because their number was used improperly to have their money back or turn their accounts back on.
Judge Richard Posner, a good writer, has been blogging about IP and fair use at Lessig Blog. The series of entries are very informative and give a good background to IP.
"If you do \foo\, I will do \bar\" can be enforced because of reliance on the offer.
If your require performance of some sort to qualify for the 'gift' it is no longer just a gift.
As long as managers have an incentive to cheat, some of them will. Bonuses that are based, directly or indirectly, on the hours worked by employees, or on the overtime, will encourage them to lie. The real problem is not that managers do what they are paid to do, but that they have such an easy time changing the data to further their illegal behavior. Time clocks need to start giving receipts to employees.
I replaced my primary TV a few years ago. It was about 20 years old. Why throw away a television set with a good picture on it? Trinitrons have a history of working.
Sure, but I don't quite understand why you are implying that a republic cannot be democratic. Is the United States not a democratic republic? The fact that it is a representative democracy does not make it undemocratic.
A republic is a country that has an elected head of state, not a king or emperor. A representative democracy is what the US and all of the other democratic nations have. It has an elected legislature. So, yes, the United States is democratic and a republic, but it is not a democratic republic. A Democratic Republic is a pseudo-Marxist dictatorship, so it is neither democratic nor a republic.
1) They never talk about routers. You are right that they would need them to make the technology useful, but MASER routers at every transformer will easily offset the savings of reusing power lines.
2) Again, they offer no discussion of repeaters or line sync problems.
3) Buildable, but unbelievably expensive. One gets the idea that they are working in a universe where there is no signal attenuation, so they don't have any of the problems you remember from the class you "slept through".
BTW, what is a realistic bandwidth of a MASER?
There also appears to be a problem with propagation control. Will this be pure broadcast? That might work more easily, but it will eat the bandwidth very quickly. I'll guess that even if they can use the magnetic fields of high tension lines as waveguides, they have a long way to go before they invent the MASER router.
In the US the power grid is generally owned by the private power companies. If they could run intenet bandwidth, they would be happy to. Like most coddled monopolies, they won't have a clue what the value of their product is. Unless they can provide the bandwidth service for $US20+ISP fees, they're out of the game.
Moderators have to know something about puns...
I know this is pretty big for a hack, but would anything else have been possible without it?
I would expect the state Attorneys General to want the FoF to be admissible for all civil suits. Certainly everything that had been brought into court will be fair game and public record. Do you really think that Microsoft will want to see how many judges will put up with their contemptuous behavior before throwing the lot of them into jail for contempt of court? Do you think Microsoft wants to get sanctioned for not producing the same emails they produced the last time? These facts are out there and I don't think Microsoft can make them go away.
I doubt that an OEM is a partner for antitrust purposes and I doubt that they would say so either.
We have two ways to look at this:
- The OEMs have conspired as partners with Microsoft to keep customers from getting other operating systems on their desktop PCs; or
- The OEMs are victims of Microsoft's illegally anticompetitive behavior because MSFT would not do business with them if they did not fall into line.
When the first private lawsuit includes them all, what do you think the OEMs will argue?Huh? NT is supported on one platform. You get to interoperate with it. If MSFT doesn't like you, it breaks things. Ask Samba about MSFT games with SMB. You can run Linux on more machines than you can run MSFT software.
Here is to hoping that Atlas shrugs.
If MSFT shut down tomorrow the world would be a better place. Marketing companies do not improve the economy.
Unfortunately for the crystal ball gazers, the "inferior" technologies had major strengths that were overlooked. They had an installed base with a lot of people who were interested in how they work and they were extremely flexible and could be updated easily to meet newer demands.
In a reasonably fair fight, the more resilient technology will emerge victorious.
They were. They stole, lied and defrauded. They did it all as part of their anticompetitive behavior. Read the FoF, it shows you what they did.
The moral issue is: is it right to punish Microsoft for using its well-earned influence in one market to promote its product in another market?
Maybe the moral issue is whether it is moral to justify the criminal behavior of others because you like them. Microsoft committed real crimes to further their dominance of desktop OSes. You squander your moral position by supporting the criminal activities of these criminals.
Don't you understand that the conclusions in the Finding of Fact were drawn because these were the facts shown to the judge during the trial. You can yell "biased" and "unfair" all you want, but Microsoft didn't put on a decent defense about the facts. If you think the case was unfair, it's because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to put up an honest or usable defense. They preferred to make statements on the steps of the courthouse, create bogus videos, and lie in court--how many Microsoft witnesses were caught in a lie?
The judge's conclusion, with which I heartily concur, tells me that Microsoft didn't put on a defense on the facts because the facts as presented by the Department of Justice were accurate and reliable. Microsoft has already fought on the facts, they lost because they had no facts on their side. They aren't likely to get another bite at this apple.
There is no need to show harm to consumers. Please, when you get back to work, tell the folks at Waggoner-Edstrom that harm to consumers is not relevent to the law. Because Microsoft has been waving this red herring around so long, the Judge chose to answer it and identified the harm that consumers suffered. Yes, harm was suffered by consumers--that is another fact.
Microsoft lies again and again to judges throughout America but you think it would be immoral for them to settle?
Since they are (see the Finding of Fact), the faster they settle the smaller the likely punishment.