but you can only file a lawsuit for MONEY... you can't file a lawsuit say to compel the court to disolve their marriages and send their kids to CPS. You can't file a lawsuit to have them striped naked and paraded through prison for a week.... I'd even settle for a 7x7 whipping on the courthouse steps.
THOSE are the kinds of things that need to happen to stop these abuses.... hurtful, spiteful, public punishments.
im more for striped naked and caged right out in the open for their stay in the county jail.... where all the other inmates can taunt them, but not quite touch them. maybe be generous and offer them a rope to hang themselves for disappointing society.
we need a system that treats INCIDENTS as a whole and not "crimes". The charges were grievously wrong, as was the action of the police. In the course of dragging the person into court, the judge should be able to COMPEL the state's lawyers to file criminal charges against the police, and as officers of his court, compel the state's lawyers to do their best or face disbarment.
This is a case where it sounds fair to prosecute each person individually, but an increasing number of cases have prosecution giving rats favorable settlements while using bought testimony against the person least able to defend. In cases like this, the prosecution is only "filing charges" to prevent the defendant from filing abuse charges on his own.
I also think we need to bring back public whipping and a few other things. the punishment for these police needs to fit the crime, in this case PUNISHMENT is in order... seven lashes with a seven-corded whip would fix them right up. Right out on the court steps where everybody can see it.
I'm surprised they can't get these cases moved to SLAPP status... The same corp filing 3 cases in 3 courts over "defamation" sounds like they are using the courts to shut up people they don't want to hear from. These sites are naming names and events, so they might get them on technicalities... But then FOX news got a pass that FABRICATIONS were still not defamation... So the only possible purpose of the suits is to collect information to harass the readers later.
Part of the problem revolves around court culture. Lawyers are used to going to court and calling defendants, plaintiffs all kinds of names, making grand requests for judgements that are hundreds of thousands of dollars... Then packing their briefcases and going out to lunch with the other lawyers.
Judges don't like reporters going after the LAWYERS in a case because "it's just business". Except in these cases, the lawyers ARE the ones causing the problems.. Courts don't really censor what lawyers say in court... But then what they say HAS to be taken as intent to keep these threats...
It takes time for the judges to pick up that these guys are running the same thing in every town... The legal PROCESS can't keep up rules to prevent this stuff.
It takes somebody (who has their own share of EU investigations going on) that know how to say the RIGHT WORDS to get the courts action.
Of course Microsoft is happily making up FUD and telling the people regulating Microsoft to go big Google and Apple.
The moral of the story is that the tech companies have grown up and learned to use regulators as their personal toys. Of course if the companies all "did the right thing" there would be fewer things to snitch on.
I mentioned this last time, but if you are "just" doing assignments, then you are of minimal value. VALUE comes from interacting and making things BETTER than they were. If you just do "assignments" those can be pushed to anybody, especially when the manager has done all the work to write them up in an email so you can not visit the office.
I also agree this move was more about trimming more "dead weight" without having a "layoff". Yahoo has a lot of great services, but they don't interact hardly at all. They aren't "cool" they just work in the background. Somebody has to push them out where people remember Yahoo is around still.
Realize the capital of South Korea is an hour drive from the DMZ. If war starts NK WILL hit it out of pure spite... Not to actually keep it. It will turn into old fashion "raping and pillaging" by starving mobs pretty quickly... Our army has never really dealt with that type of threat.
It's the same with Nukes... NK will pick the DIRTIEST shot possible, just to kill lots of people. Will we have the balls to hold our ground and not nuke back?
NK goal is going to be escalation on as many fronts as they can... It's like the Joker in Batman... They've spent all their money on guns and knives and TNT... They know they can't WIN but they can set as much on fire as possible and hope they keep their seat.
The problem is that NK has an army of mostly soldiers, even HORSES still. That means they will be spread all over the field, so bombs and drones won't be very effective.
They don't stand a chance of WINNING, but they will make a terrible mess of the South because the South has 100x more value of factories, industry, business, people than the North does. Any war is just going to be a slugfest the North trying to break as much as they can, while the South defends and bombs "dirt" because that's all the Norths got.
The biggest problem is that the North will assuredly try to provoke China... That could put US and China troops accidentally shooting at each other...
Just force Microsoft to give up its cash. FORCE a payout of 120% the stated amount to shareholders (then you can tax the fuck out of them as punishment) AFTER the cash out, levy the $500Million fine.
Microsoft's real problem is that they are fighting the courts with SHAREHOLDER'S cash, not MANAGEMENT money. They need put into the position where they follow the law, or FIRE people to pay fines. No more paying with play money.
It's more like if you were Pepsi and bought chips to go with pop. But you made eating your chips with Coke get people slightly sick, but it didn't happen with Pepsi so people were encouraged to buy All Pepsi at the grocery.
That's the software world Microsoft created. And made us all sit in shit for 20 years.
Try being on probation sometime. It's common to be on probation 3-5 years with lots of conditions like community service, education, coinciding and such. Get to the last day of probation and not have done the additional things... The judge will send you right back to jail the day you should be getting unhooked. I have two jailbird brothers-in-law that just can't seem to understand that.
Microsoft is a giant company with expensive lawyers, they KNOW why they are doing. The problem is that you can't throw the LAWYERS and EXECUTIVES to the dogs.
The whole WebKit argument is non-equivelant. IE is like Taco Bell forcing every other restaurant out of business. WebKit is like saying wow! We found a pile of grandma's cookbooks and cooked at home for a DECADE because we don't like Taco Bell.
I'll get on my 120% horse again... The MANAGEMENT needs punished not the "company". The EU and US should force Microsoft to cash out 120% of their cash, and ban issuing more stocks. THEN slap the $500M fine on what's left.
Investors will take their money to Apple, then sue Steve and Bill forever. The sycophant management will be forced to slash staff, cut wages, and operate in the law because there will be no cash for lawyers. No more $5b to throw at losing money to starve completion, no more buying up products to kill them.
You would probably have to put some kind of lien on the company so it can't be split or parted out... It has to FIGHT. And it has to lose.
Business is expected to play by fair rules. Sure Lance got his medals stripped ten YEARS later, but how much did he get in fame and fortune? What goes the new "winner" get now? A hand-me-down medal and pst on the back?
It's the same problem in this case... Microsoft beat everybody up for their lunch money and made BILLIONS... After a decade of fighting over the lunch money people want their PLACE BACK... Not just a medal, not just their lunch money back.
The problem that people miss is that Microsoft needs to be HURT. My opinion is to force the board to dividend out 120% of their cash. That allows the current investors compensation for managements continued frauds. THEN levy the $500 million fine. MANAGEMENT should be punished, not investors cash knocked down. That will put Microsoft in a position to fight very hard NOT TO GET SUED in the first place.., like normal folks.
Employers lock things because keeping up with patches is a bitch. I almost think MS makes bad software just to keep the IT mice on their patching wheels... If I'm a boss and my staff are following MS to the letter and barely keeping up, why am I going anyplace else that doesn't have MS great tools???
That was the point of the "Halloween" documents long ago.. MS realized they can fight change just by forcing everybody in their system on the endless upgrades, incompatibility, overworked devs adding more bugs... So unless you give up and lock-in to their plan your people can't function. It worked great... Except that XP is STILL in such a minefield businesses can't afford to upgrade to MS OWN products.
The problem is that to make the fine truly FAIR, it should wipe out at least 1/2 Microsoft's worldwide cash.
The problem is that its SO much money involved its hard for governments to justify it to themselves.
Maybe the solution is to take PROPERTY away, not MONEY. What is a Product line worth? Maybe the EU takes Internet Explorer trademarks, copyrights and patents away and makes Microsoft rent a browser from somebody else? How much is $500m in patents??
Standard Oil and AT&T were broken up with LESS market share than Microsoft at its peak. Medium size companies with key patents can find themselves on the wrong side of being a "monopoly" with only a few hundred million in sales... I work for a company like that.. But we were a "monopoly" to our customer/market even though we were just a fraction of a larger market.
The measure is "misusing contractual power" not raw size.
If this was a real person, the court would put you in jail for contempt... Which is at the judges discrediting and has no limit.
They really should do something similar and lock all the Microsoft offices and disconnect all their server farms from the EU until the matter is fixed. Turn "Microsoft" off. At the size if the fine that's probably a month of daily operations... It will suck to be employees not getting paid, users not getting emails, Xbox live gone dead.... Forget the money and go for HURTING them.
That is how "meat persons" are treated by the courts.
First, Microsoft is STILL under punishment after taking a DECADE to settle. Microsoft is sort of like Lindsey Lohan here. They get into trouble for something different before they get thru court for the first thing they got picked up for that they are still on probation for Unlike Ms Lohan, Microsoft keeps getting sympathy because it takes... So.... Long.... To complete court the public is upset about something else.
Second, there is no "monopoly" involved with Apple. Apple makes ONE phone and ONE OS to run on phone. Apple's suits for privacy, or bookstore collusion move much faster than Microsoft's cases... Apple pays their fine and/or fixes the problem, then moves on... They don't try to wear the court down like babies.
Again, comparing Microsoft to Lindsey Lohan, they keep trying to wear down the judges, personally, rather than being adults about their behaviors and accepting responsibility for their actions. Again, for some reason businesses don't get that Bill and Lindsey are doing the same thing...
You realize they are fined AGAIN after almost a DECADE of being beat up over this. The problem is that in a multinational company NO BODY is responsible.
Frankly, this is Contempt of Court. If this was you or I we would be sitting in the Court's basement until our lawyer got the thing the court wanted done. I think they need to lock out Microsoft EU office rather than fine them. Not just the offices, but lock out EU registered domain names, network connections to server farms, as well as anything that forwards to third parties... Stop access to their bank accounts... So they can't pay workers. In short put "Microsoft" under house arrest for all of EU.
This judgement is only a few weeks of income, but it might make the rank and file start openly rebelling and whistle blowing on this stuff... When THEY don't get paid because of a few illegal actions at the top.
The difference is between YOU CAN, and somebody running a business can. Once you take money for doing something, you have to follow a lot more laws.
The FAA/FCC aren't really guys you want investigating... They dole out COMMERCIAL fines and don't really "get out of bed" for anything less than $10k bills. YOU can get away with YouTube videos, but your TV station isn't going to take those chances.
And as a Ham you'd know that non-licensed hardware has much lower limits. Not to mention that certain uses become "commercial" and you cannot legally mix the two purposes. Again, as a Ham, you would be operating LICENSED FCC electronics on an UNLICENSED FAA platform which isn't legal.
Almost every suggestion here while using "off the shelf" parts is bending distance or power outside the "sold as" parameters. As soon as you put that out-of-license electronics on an out-of-license flying platform, you better not be using it for any commercial purpose or the fines are steep.
That's why TV News reporters can't just send up an AR.Drone to watch traffic in the afternoon, even though its right outside their studio.
Slashdot Mirror
but you can only file a lawsuit for MONEY... you can't file a lawsuit say to compel the court to disolve their marriages and send their kids to CPS. You can't file a lawsuit to have them striped naked and paraded through prison for a week.... I'd even settle for a 7x7 whipping on the courthouse steps.
THOSE are the kinds of things that need to happen to stop these abuses.... hurtful, spiteful, public punishments.
im more for striped naked and caged right out in the open for their stay in the county jail.... where all the other inmates can taunt them, but not quite touch them. maybe be generous and offer them a rope to hang themselves for disappointing society.
we need a system that treats INCIDENTS as a whole and not "crimes". The charges were grievously wrong, as was the action of the police. In the course of dragging the person into court, the judge should be able to COMPEL the state's lawyers to file criminal charges against the police, and as officers of his court, compel the state's lawyers to do their best or face disbarment.
This is a case where it sounds fair to prosecute each person individually, but an increasing number of cases have prosecution giving rats favorable settlements while using bought testimony against the person least able to defend. In cases like this, the prosecution is only "filing charges" to prevent the defendant from filing abuse charges on his own.
I also think we need to bring back public whipping and a few other things. the punishment for these police needs to fit the crime, in this case PUNISHMENT is in order... seven lashes with a seven-corded whip would fix them right up. Right out on the court steps where everybody can see it.
I'm surprised they can't get these cases moved to SLAPP status... The same corp filing 3 cases in 3 courts over "defamation" sounds like they are using the courts to shut up people they don't want to hear from. These sites are naming names and events, so they might get them on technicalities... But then FOX news got a pass that FABRICATIONS were still not defamation... So the only possible purpose of the suits is to collect information to harass the readers later.
Part of the problem revolves around court culture. Lawyers are used to going to court and calling defendants, plaintiffs all kinds of names, making grand requests for judgements that are hundreds of thousands of dollars... Then packing their briefcases and going out to lunch with the other lawyers.
Judges don't like reporters going after the LAWYERS in a case because "it's just business". Except in these cases, the lawyers ARE the ones causing the problems .. Courts don't really censor what lawyers say in court... But then what they say HAS to be taken as intent to keep these threats...
It takes time for the judges to pick up that these guys are running the same thing in every town... The legal PROCESS can't keep up rules to prevent this stuff.
It takes somebody (who has their own share of EU investigations going on) that know how to say the RIGHT WORDS to get the courts action.
Of course Microsoft is happily making up FUD and telling the people regulating Microsoft to go big Google and Apple.
The moral of the story is that the tech companies have grown up and learned to use regulators as their personal toys. Of course if the companies all "did the right thing" there would be fewer things to snitch on.
I mentioned this last time, but if you are "just" doing assignments, then you are of minimal value. VALUE comes from interacting and making things BETTER than they were. If you just do "assignments" those can be pushed to anybody, especially when the manager has done all the work to write them up in an email so you can not visit the office.
I also agree this move was more about trimming more "dead weight" without having a "layoff". Yahoo has a lot of great services, but they don't interact hardly at all. They aren't "cool" they just work in the background. Somebody has to push them out where people remember Yahoo is around still.
Realize the capital of South Korea is an hour drive from the DMZ. If war starts NK WILL hit it out of pure spite... Not to actually keep it. It will turn into old fashion "raping and pillaging" by starving mobs pretty quickly... Our army has never really dealt with that type of threat.
It's the same with Nukes... NK will pick the DIRTIEST shot possible, just to kill lots of people. Will we have the balls to hold our ground and not nuke back?
NK goal is going to be escalation on as many fronts as they can... It's like the Joker in Batman... They've spent all their money on guns and knives and TNT... They know they can't WIN but they can set as much on fire as possible and hope they keep their seat.
The problem is that NK has an army of mostly soldiers, even HORSES still. That means they will be spread all over the field, so bombs and drones won't be very effective.
They don't stand a chance of WINNING, but they will make a terrible mess of the South because the South has 100x more value of factories, industry, business, people than the North does. Any war is just going to be a slugfest the North trying to break as much as they can, while the South defends and bombs "dirt" because that's all the Norths got.
The biggest problem is that the North will assuredly try to provoke China... That could put US and China troops accidentally shooting at each other...
Just force Microsoft to give up its cash. FORCE a payout of 120% the stated amount to shareholders (then you can tax the fuck out of them as punishment) AFTER the cash out, levy the $500Million fine.
Microsoft's real problem is that they are fighting the courts with SHAREHOLDER'S cash, not MANAGEMENT money. They need put into the position where they follow the law, or FIRE people to pay fines. No more paying with play money.
It's more like if you were Pepsi and bought chips to go with pop. But you made eating your chips with Coke get people slightly sick, but it didn't happen with Pepsi so people were encouraged to buy All Pepsi at the grocery.
That's the software world Microsoft created. And made us all sit in shit for 20 years.
Try being on probation sometime. It's common to be on probation 3-5 years with lots of conditions like community service, education, coinciding and such. Get to the last day of probation and not have done the additional things... The judge will send you right back to jail the day you should be getting unhooked. I have two jailbird brothers-in-law that just can't seem to understand that.
Microsoft is a giant company with expensive lawyers, they KNOW why they are doing. The problem is that you can't throw the LAWYERS and EXECUTIVES to the dogs.
The whole WebKit argument is non-equivelant. IE is like Taco Bell forcing every other restaurant out of business. WebKit is like saying wow! We found a pile of grandma's cookbooks and cooked at home for a DECADE because we don't like Taco Bell.
I'll get on my 120% horse again... The MANAGEMENT needs punished not the "company". The EU and US should force Microsoft to cash out 120% of their cash, and ban issuing more stocks. THEN slap the $500M fine on what's left.
Investors will take their money to Apple, then sue Steve and Bill forever. The sycophant management will be forced to slash staff, cut wages, and operate in the law because there will be no cash for lawyers. No more $5b to throw at losing money to starve completion, no more buying up products to kill them.
You would probably have to put some kind of lien on the company so it can't be split or parted out... It has to FIGHT. And it has to lose.
The issue is more like sports doping.
Business is expected to play by fair rules. Sure Lance got his medals stripped ten YEARS later, but how much did he get in fame and fortune? What goes the new "winner" get now? A hand-me-down medal and pst on the back?
It's the same problem in this case... Microsoft beat everybody up for their lunch money and made BILLIONS... After a decade of fighting over the lunch money people want their PLACE BACK... Not just a medal, not just their lunch money back.
The problem that people miss is that Microsoft needs to be HURT. My opinion is to force the board to dividend out 120% of their cash. That allows the current investors compensation for managements continued frauds. THEN levy the $500 million fine. MANAGEMENT should be punished, not investors cash knocked down. That will put Microsoft in a position to fight very hard NOT TO GET SUED in the first place.., like normal folks.
Employers lock things because keeping up with patches is a bitch. I almost think MS makes bad software just to keep the IT mice on their patching wheels ... If I'm a boss and my staff are following MS to the letter and barely keeping up, why am I going anyplace else that doesn't have MS great tools???
That was the point of the "Halloween" documents long ago.. MS realized they can fight change just by forcing everybody in their system on the endless upgrades, incompatibility, overworked devs adding more bugs... So unless you give up and lock-in to their plan your people can't function. It worked great... Except that XP is STILL in such a minefield businesses can't afford to upgrade to MS OWN products.
The problem is that to make the fine truly FAIR, it should wipe out at least 1/2 Microsoft's worldwide cash.
The problem is that its SO much money involved its hard for governments to justify it to themselves.
Maybe the solution is to take PROPERTY away, not MONEY. What is a Product line worth? Maybe the EU takes Internet Explorer trademarks, copyrights and patents away and makes Microsoft rent a browser from somebody else? How much is $500m in patents??
89% in a market they created.... And they have dropped faster than you could get to court.
Microsoft is STILL well over 90% on desktop sales. After 2 decades and antitrust suits on multiple continents.
Standard Oil and AT&T were broken up with LESS market share than Microsoft at its peak. Medium size companies with key patents can find themselves on the wrong side of being a "monopoly" with only a few hundred million in sales... I work for a company like that.. But we were a "monopoly" to our customer/market even though we were just a fraction of a larger market.
The measure is "misusing contractual power" not raw size.
If this was a real person, the court would put you in jail for contempt... Which is at the judges discrediting and has no limit.
They really should do something similar and lock all the Microsoft offices and disconnect all their server farms from the EU until the matter is fixed. Turn "Microsoft" off. At the size if the fine that's probably a month of daily operations... It will suck to be employees not getting paid, users not getting emails, Xbox live gone dead.... Forget the money and go for HURTING them.
That is how "meat persons" are treated by the courts.
First, Microsoft is STILL under punishment after taking a DECADE to settle. Microsoft is sort of like Lindsey Lohan here. They get into trouble for something different before they get thru court for the first thing they got picked up for that they are still on probation for Unlike Ms Lohan, Microsoft keeps getting sympathy because it takes... So.... Long.... To complete court the public is upset about something else.
Second, there is no "monopoly" involved with Apple. Apple makes ONE phone and ONE OS to run on phone. Apple's suits for privacy, or bookstore collusion move much faster than Microsoft's cases... Apple pays their fine and/or fixes the problem, then moves on... They don't try to wear the court down like babies.
Again, comparing Microsoft to Lindsey Lohan, they keep trying to wear down the judges, personally, rather than being adults about their behaviors and accepting responsibility for their actions. Again, for some reason businesses don't get that Bill and Lindsey are doing the same thing...
The USA is about 300 million people, the EU is over 500 million with all the recent additions post Cold War.
You realize they are fined AGAIN after almost a DECADE of being beat up over this. The problem is that in a multinational company NO BODY is responsible.
Frankly, this is Contempt of Court. If this was you or I we would be sitting in the Court's basement until our lawyer got the thing the court wanted done. I think they need to lock out Microsoft EU office rather than fine them. Not just the offices, but lock out EU registered domain names, network connections to server farms, as well as anything that forwards to third parties... Stop access to their bank accounts... So they can't pay workers. In short put "Microsoft" under house arrest for all of EU.
This judgement is only a few weeks of income, but it might make the rank and file start openly rebelling and whistle blowing on this stuff... When THEY don't get paid because of a few illegal actions at the top.
The difference is between YOU CAN, and somebody running a business can. Once you take money for doing something, you have to follow a lot more laws.
The FAA/FCC aren't really guys you want investigating... They dole out COMMERCIAL fines and don't really "get out of bed" for anything less than $10k bills. YOU can get away with YouTube videos, but your TV station isn't going to take those chances.
And as a Ham you'd know that non-licensed hardware has much lower limits. Not to mention that certain uses become "commercial" and you cannot legally mix the two purposes. Again, as a Ham, you would be operating LICENSED FCC electronics on an UNLICENSED FAA platform which isn't legal.
Almost every suggestion here while using "off the shelf" parts is bending distance or power outside the "sold as" parameters. As soon as you put that out-of-license electronics on an out-of-license flying platform, you better not be using it for any commercial purpose or the fines are steep.
That's why TV News reporters can't just send up an AR.Drone to watch traffic in the afternoon, even though its right outside their studio.
Well with Sim City 5 so bad they have to leave version 4 to bit rot because its competition.