IAAL, and I read Infinium's motion. I frankly think they make some good legal points. Retaining counsel in Texas and a claim of causing harm over the Internet in Texas does *not* equate to minimum contacts for jurisdiction. BUT if they lease office space here in Richardson (where I live), methinks that whole line of argument falls flat.
But they make some good points about the preemptive declaratory judgment action. I'll have to see what the [H]ardOCP lawyer said.
(Of course, my sympathies in this case are entirely with [H]ardOCP. Just commenting.)
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that 99.9% of patches in Windows Update are actually patching Internet Explorer, so this does not seem like a big issue to me. Me, I ignore Windows Update and try to keep a sharp eye on incoming e-mail and an effective firewall. Which I admit may be a mistake, but I don't trust Microsoft monkeying with my system.
(Yeah, I know: why don't you run Linux then? 'Cause I don't know how to get Peachtree Accounting, Timeslips, Matthew Bender Authority, Kleinrock's tax resources, and various other professional stuff working under it and am not motivated enough yet to figure it out.)
Just wondering: do you have the expertise to write a script to automate this for others? (I'm not being snotty: I don't have that expertise myself.) Or could you put up a Web page with specific instructions (or is there one out there already)?
There could be Part One: replacing IE with Mozilla/Firefox and making all IE stuff point to Mozilla/Firefox, and Part Two: de-IE'ing the system (e.g., making default URL and Internet Shortcut icons Mozillified, like I do).
I've done this myself bit by bit on my own systems, but would love a step by step set of instructions to get it done in one fell swoop.
That's a nice theory, and it is true the human brain can adjust for misspellings, but spelling errors distract the reader from the message and make one look uneducated. Every time (and it is pretty dratted often) I read some idiot using "loose" for "lose" I immediately think just that: "Idiot." Almost certainly unfair, but it's still my reaction.
The original judge (Pickering) was a Reagan appointee. Amazing, isn't it, that if he'd just kept his trap shut in talking to the press that the order to break up Microsoft would have been upheld!
Re: "It was a part, but a very small part. The bigger issue was the fact that the Federal government was trying to impose its standards on the southern States, leading to the seccession of South Carolina. Train track guages was a small factor - the big problem was that Lincoln's government was trying to dictate what the States could and could not do, imposing one set of standards for radically different geographies and economies."
You do know that South Carolina seceded in response to Lincoln's election, before he was even sworn in, right?
Lincoln made a big point in his speeches of not wanting to (or claiming to be able to) interfere with the South, BUT was firmly opposed to expansion of slave states at all. The South saw that, as the United States continued to expand, its influence would continue to wane since no new slave states would be added under a Republican administration.
On Firefox 0.8, Shift-click certainly *does* open a new window, so I don't know what you are talking about. However, I've gotten so used to middle-click (open in new tab), which is quicker, that I had not checked before. Get Firefox instead.
Quite: a house two blocks from mine completely exploded two years ago, killing two people. Natural gas had built up under the pier and beam foundation, and exploded when someone lit a cigarette. Created quite the pile of rubble, and it still hasn't been rebuilt.
Of course, this doesn't exactly happen every day, but natural gas isn't without its own problems.
See, the thing is that the Findings of Fact *are* good law. They are usable by other litigants, and needn't be included in the final judgment.
The monopoly was acquired *prior* to the bundling, and incorporating IE within Windows, although not contributing to the acquisition of monopoly status, *was* an abuse of that monopoly.
Sure, Microsoft did not acquire its monopoly illegally. The problem is that once they *did* acquire that monopoly, they abused it. You're focusing on the process of Microsoft *becoming* a monopoly, whereas the important thing is what they did *after* they became a monopoly.
Re: "I don't have an answer to that. All I can say is that it's nowhere near as clear-cut as the anti-MS zealots out here pretend it is."
Go read the actual findings of fact in the case. I'm afraid it *is* pretty clear-cut. What most people do not understand is that the behavior Microsoft engaged in is perfectly fine UNLESS you are a monopoly. Then you're not allowed to conduct business in certain anti-competitive ways.
Sorry: it was *not* a DOJ ruling, but rather a finding of fact by a Federal court, which finding was upheld on appeal (the only thing reversed was the penalty). In terms of law, Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly and violating antitrust laws. That case is closed and of public record.
The alternate explanation: domestic animals. Many diseases are carried by domestic animals, which whom the European societies lived in close proximity (e.g., pigs, chickens). The upshot: the European explorers had lots of diseases they were immune to, whereas the American aborigines, for example, had been exposed to a much smaller set in their history. Guns, Germs and Steel goes into just *why* Eurasians had more domestic animals, too. I thought it was a terrific book, although it *does* need to be taken with a grain of salt or two.
His speech, on the other hand, could be a campaign ad for Ralph Nader.
There *was* something like Lotus Agenda: WordPerfect/Novell/Corel InfoCentral. A free form relational database. Still works great, and has its own macro language which I enjoy working with.
The IR power of a Palm is anemic, yes. But not so with recent models of the Sony Clie, starting with the NR-70 (I have the NR-70V): I can use it as a remote 30 feet away from the television.
Sorry; I'm using Mozilla 1.3 under Windows 2000, and that's the way the page down keyboard button behaves already. I don't know why it would work differently under Linux.
Assuming you've got a three-button mouse, you don't *need* a close widget on each tab. A middle (or wheel) click on the tab closes it. Yet another little nifty feature I didn't know about myself until a few months ago.
I am a lawyer: The original poster on this thread was correct, and was referring to the concept of a "contract of adhesion." That is, there can be other circumstances around the formation of a contract that render some or all of its terms unenforceable. Simple example: suppose the EULA for Microsoft Office said "Microsoft reserves the right to use force to enter your premises, remove all computing equipment, and retain it for the purpose of performing an audit of your machines, and shall not be liable for any direct, incidental, or consequential damages from its actions." Sorry, no way in the world a court would enforce that. And it's not far from what is actually in these EULAs.
In response to: "Any case law you can point out that supports this? Even if BSA audits you and you cannot show proof of purchase, they still must show that based on the preponderance of the evidence, you did not legally come by it."
It's the software licenses themselves that put the burden of proof on the consumer.
Yes, "innocent until proven guilty" is not applicable to civil suits, but it's a fair analogy. It is the contracts themselves that make anyone using this software "guilty until proven innocent." Other than the misplaced thought about Constitutional rights, I felt the comment was quite insightful and accurate.
Because, when you get right down to it, writing humor is a lot harder than writing something serious. Sure, Dave Barry's columns *appear* to be flippant and juvenile, but it is exceptionally difficult to create something like that. Consider how few really good humor columnists there ever have been, versus the scores of serious ones. Dave Barry, Art Buchwald, and another fellow whose name I disremember at present.
"Just so a corporation can make some more money?" I've got news for you: corporations, much like Soylent Green, are composed of people. The whole idea behind them is that people may invest money in a business venture, while having their liability limited to the amount they invest. That way, if I buy three shares of stock in, say, Ben & Jerry's, if Ben & Jerry run off to Brazil with the profits, I won't lose my house to the people who were cheated. If I had to put all my personal livelihood on the line to invest in any business, I sure would be less likely to invest in anything. It's called "economics," and is something worth learning about.
The less tax you are required to pay, the more money *people* get to keep. Perhaps, in your ideal world, everything would just go to the government so that nobody, corporations or individuals, would have to worry about "making some more money." Unfortunately, history proves that is not the optimum way to provide for prosperity for everyone.
Yes, Greed is a bad thing. But Greed may be defined as wanting more than one deserves or is entitled to: and who decides what each individual is entitled to?
Sorry to rant, but although there are indeed potential and actual abuses inherent in business getting too large and disconnected from its shareholders, plus problems related to too much market dominance, the knee-jerk reaction that "corporations are bad" is frankly naive in the extreme. "Corporations are good" is equally naive, of course.
Why would popups annoy anyone on Slashdot? I figure everybody here is either using Mozilla (or a Mozilla-based browser) or running something like Proxomitron. I haven't seen an unrequested popup in over a year, at least.
Sure there's a substitute for Quickbooks. I'm still quite happily using Peachtree Accounting version 7, which still lets you update your own tax tables. Later versions wipe this out, which is the only reason I have refused to "ugrade."
Someday all these chickens will come home to roost, as more and more people realize that "upgrading" means being required to buy into a glorified leasing program to keep functionality. More and more people will stick with what they have in lieu of surrendering ones autonomy to ones software provider.
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IAAL, and I read Infinium's motion. I frankly think they make some good legal points. Retaining counsel in Texas and a claim of causing harm over the Internet in Texas does *not* equate to minimum contacts for jurisdiction. BUT if they lease office space here in Richardson (where I live), methinks that whole line of argument falls flat.
But they make some good points about the preemptive declaratory judgment action. I'll have to see what the [H]ardOCP lawyer said.
(Of course, my sympathies in this case are entirely with [H]ardOCP. Just commenting.)
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that 99.9% of patches in Windows Update are actually patching Internet Explorer, so this does not seem like a big issue to me. Me, I ignore Windows Update and try to keep a sharp eye on incoming e-mail and an effective firewall. Which I admit may be a mistake, but I don't trust Microsoft monkeying with my system.
(Yeah, I know: why don't you run Linux then? 'Cause I don't know how to get Peachtree Accounting, Timeslips, Matthew Bender Authority, Kleinrock's tax resources, and various other professional stuff working under it and am not motivated enough yet to figure it out.)
Just wondering: do you have the expertise to write a script to automate this for others? (I'm not being snotty: I don't have that expertise myself.) Or could you put up a Web page with specific instructions (or is there one out there already)?
There could be Part One: replacing IE with Mozilla/Firefox and making all IE stuff point to Mozilla/Firefox, and Part Two: de-IE'ing the system (e.g., making default URL and Internet Shortcut icons Mozillified, like I do).
I've done this myself bit by bit on my own systems, but would love a step by step set of instructions to get it done in one fell swoop.
That's a nice theory, and it is true the human brain can adjust for misspellings, but spelling errors distract the reader from the message and make one look uneducated. Every time (and it is pretty dratted often) I read some idiot using "loose" for "lose" I immediately think just that: "Idiot." Almost certainly unfair, but it's still my reaction.
The original judge (Pickering) was a Reagan appointee. Amazing, isn't it, that if he'd just kept his trap shut in talking to the press that the order to break up Microsoft would have been upheld!
Re: "It was a part, but a very small part. The bigger issue was the fact that the Federal government was trying to impose its standards on the southern States, leading to the seccession of South Carolina. Train track guages was a small factor - the big problem was that Lincoln's government was trying to dictate what the States could and could not do, imposing one set of standards for radically different geographies and economies."
You do know that South Carolina seceded in response to Lincoln's election, before he was even sworn in, right?
Lincoln made a big point in his speeches of not wanting to (or claiming to be able to) interfere with the South, BUT was firmly opposed to expansion of slave states at all. The South saw that, as the United States continued to expand, its influence would continue to wane since no new slave states would be added under a Republican administration.
I've seen this referenced on legal humor sites, with appropriate citation. It's real.
On Firefox 0.8, Shift-click certainly *does* open a new window, so I don't know what you are talking about. However, I've gotten so used to middle-click (open in new tab), which is quicker, that I had not checked before. Get Firefox instead.
Quite: a house two blocks from mine completely exploded two years ago, killing two people. Natural gas had built up under the pier and beam foundation, and exploded when someone lit a cigarette. Created quite the pile of rubble, and it still hasn't been rebuilt.
Of course, this doesn't exactly happen every day, but natural gas isn't without its own problems.
See, the thing is that the Findings of Fact *are* good law. They are usable by other litigants, and needn't be included in the final judgment.
The monopoly was acquired *prior* to the bundling, and incorporating IE within Windows, although not contributing to the acquisition of monopoly status, *was* an abuse of that monopoly.
Sure, Microsoft did not acquire its monopoly illegally. The problem is that once they *did* acquire that monopoly, they abused it. You're focusing on the process of Microsoft *becoming* a monopoly, whereas the important thing is what they did *after* they became a monopoly.
For what it's worth, IAAL.
Re: "I don't have an answer to that. All I can say is that it's nowhere near as clear-cut as the anti-MS zealots out here pretend it is."
Go read the actual findings of fact in the case. I'm afraid it *is* pretty clear-cut. What most people do not understand is that the behavior Microsoft engaged in is perfectly fine UNLESS you are a monopoly. Then you're not allowed to conduct business in certain anti-competitive ways.
Sorry: it was *not* a DOJ ruling, but rather a finding of fact by a Federal court, which finding was upheld on appeal (the only thing reversed was the penalty). In terms of law, Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly and violating antitrust laws. That case is closed and of public record.
The alternate explanation: domestic animals. Many diseases are carried by domestic animals, which whom the European societies lived in close proximity (e.g., pigs, chickens). The upshot: the European explorers had lots of diseases they were immune to, whereas the American aborigines, for example, had been exposed to a much smaller set in their history. Guns, Germs and Steel goes into just *why* Eurasians had more domestic animals, too. I thought it was a terrific book, although it *does* need to be taken with a grain of salt or two.
His speech, on the other hand, could be a campaign ad for Ralph Nader.
There *was* something like Lotus Agenda: WordPerfect/Novell/Corel InfoCentral. A free form relational database. Still works great, and has its own macro language which I enjoy working with.
The IR power of a Palm is anemic, yes. But not so with recent models of the Sony Clie, starting with the NR-70 (I have the NR-70V): I can use it as a remote 30 feet away from the television.
Sorry; I'm using Mozilla 1.3 under Windows 2000, and that's the way the page down keyboard button behaves already. I don't know why it would work differently under Linux.
Assuming you've got a three-button mouse, you don't *need* a close widget on each tab. A middle (or wheel) click on the tab closes it. Yet another little nifty feature I didn't know about myself until a few months ago.
Speaking of Michael Cowpland, how many people know that Corel stands for COwpland REsearch Labs?
I am a lawyer: The original poster on this thread was correct, and was referring to the concept of a "contract of adhesion." That is, there can be other circumstances around the formation of a contract that render some or all of its terms unenforceable. Simple example: suppose the EULA for Microsoft Office said "Microsoft reserves the right to use force to enter your premises, remove all computing equipment, and retain it for the purpose of performing an audit of your machines, and shall not be liable for any direct, incidental, or consequential damages from its actions." Sorry, no way in the world a court would enforce that. And it's not far from what is actually in these EULAs.
In response to: "Any case law you can point out that supports this? Even if BSA audits you and you cannot show proof of purchase, they still must show that based on the preponderance of the evidence, you did not legally come by it."
It's the software licenses themselves that put the burden of proof on the consumer.
Yes, "innocent until proven guilty" is not applicable to civil suits, but it's a fair analogy. It is the contracts themselves that make anyone using this software "guilty until proven innocent." Other than the misplaced thought about Constitutional rights, I felt the comment was quite insightful and accurate.
Because, when you get right down to it, writing humor is a lot harder than writing something serious. Sure, Dave Barry's columns *appear* to be flippant and juvenile, but it is exceptionally difficult to create something like that. Consider how few really good humor columnists there ever have been, versus the scores of serious ones. Dave Barry, Art Buchwald, and another fellow whose name I disremember at present.
What about http://www.thawte.com/ ? Free digital certificates. I haven't used them, but is there a catch?
"Just so a corporation can make some more money?" I've got news for you: corporations, much like Soylent Green, are composed of people. The whole idea behind them is that people may invest money in a business venture, while having their liability limited to the amount they invest. That way, if I buy three shares of stock in, say, Ben & Jerry's, if Ben & Jerry run off to Brazil with the profits, I won't lose my house to the people who were cheated. If I had to put all my personal livelihood on the line to invest in any business, I sure would be less likely to invest in anything. It's called "economics," and is something worth learning about.
The less tax you are required to pay, the more money *people* get to keep. Perhaps, in your ideal world, everything would just go to the government so that nobody, corporations or individuals, would have to worry about "making some more money." Unfortunately, history proves that is not the optimum way to provide for prosperity for everyone.
Yes, Greed is a bad thing. But Greed may be defined as wanting more than one deserves or is entitled to: and who decides what each individual is entitled to?
Sorry to rant, but although there are indeed potential and actual abuses inherent in business getting too large and disconnected from its shareholders, plus problems related to too much market dominance, the knee-jerk reaction that "corporations are bad" is frankly naive in the extreme. "Corporations are good" is equally naive, of course.
Why would popups annoy anyone on Slashdot? I figure everybody here is either using Mozilla (or a Mozilla-based browser) or running something like Proxomitron. I haven't seen an unrequested popup in over a year, at least.
Sure there's a substitute for Quickbooks. I'm still quite happily using Peachtree Accounting version 7, which still lets you update your own tax tables. Later versions wipe this out, which is the only reason I have refused to "ugrade."
Someday all these chickens will come home to roost, as more and more people realize that "upgrading" means being required to buy into a glorified leasing program to keep functionality. More and more people will stick with what they have in lieu of surrendering ones autonomy to ones software provider.