Companies can do this, government bodies can not by law and it is called bribery and/or kick backs and people have gone to jail over this exact thing. Government bodies accepting money to award a contract to a specific group or person is illegal. That is exactly what happened here.
The problem is you are not a government body, so the laws are different for government bodies which is what the university is. If anyone pays a government body to be awarded a contract that is bribery and/or kickbacks and that is illegal. It doesn't matter what you spend the cash on, taking cash to award someone a government contract is illegal. People have gone to jail for doing the exact same thing in city governments and state government departments as well as state universities. You also can not award a government contract unless three valid closed sealed bids are received. So writing a bid request that only one company can fill is not allowed either. You can accept a bid that is higher because more things are thrown in that doesn't exist in the lowest bid, for example a 2 year support contract included in the bid and the lowest bid doesn't have a support contract.
The problem is the laws that government bodies have to abide by are not the same laws that consumers have to abide by. If I can con someone into giving me a product for free and then paying me cash on top then I am legally allowed to try and do that. Any time a state university or city or state gets paid to award a contract that is bribery and/or a kickback and that is illegal and people have gone to jail over it. That is exactly what happened here. Microsoft said if you award us the contract we will whip out our checkbook and cut you a check for $250,000 and that is exactly what happened. The University has $250,000 cash that they didn't have before. It doesn't matter what they spend it on it is still a bribe to award the contract and that is illegal.
There is a world of difference between a discount and whipping out the checkbook to write someone a check for buying your product, especially at the government level which is what the University is. The University ended up with $250,000 more in their bank account that they didn't have before. Doesn't matter what they spent it on. That is clearly a bribe or kick back and is illegal as hell. Someone at Microsoft and the University should be going to jail over this. This is anti-competitive. Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopoly by the US and the EU. When you are a convicted monopoly the rules of the game are completely different for you since you broke the law. I am bothered that no one at Microsoft ever went to jail over the monopoly convictions. Microsoft jacked around with the trial and lied and all they got was a slap on the wrist. Clearly Microsoft paid someone off give how other monopoly convictions punishments have been handled in the past. They should have been broken up in to three companies and not allowed to sell to each other. That's what happens when you break the law on such a grand scale.
Doesn't matter if it was public or not. If you pay someone cash they didn't have before then it is a bribe or kick back and that is illegal. The University has $250,000 more in the bank from Microsoft. It doesn't matter if they spent it on consultants. They were given cash they didn't have before for picking Microsoft and that is illegal.
If Cingular cut you a check for $36 to spend however you want then yes you are being bribed. Microsoft cut them a check to be used however they wanted. The fact they used it on consultants doesn't matter. It is $250,000 cash that they didn't have before in their bank account. That is clearly a bribe or kick back and someone should be in jail. Microsoft has to play by different rules than everyone else because they are a convicted illegal monopoly by the US and the EU.
That is clearly a bribe. If you give the university cash that they didn't have before just so they pick your product then that is a bribe or a kick back and is completely illegal. Someone at Microsoft should be going to jail and someone at the university should be joining them in jail as well. This wasn't a we will reduce the amount you pay us by $250,000 so you can afford hire people to do the converting. It was here is a check for $250,000 to spend however you want because you picked us.
There is everything in the world wrong with a cash incentive. It is illegal as all get out for government groups to accept that. It is called a bribe or kick back and usually results in someone going to jail because they did not follow legal procedures for contract procurement. Contracts are suppose to be sealed bids by at least 3 bidders or they are invalid, and the requirements must be publicly announced so anyone can bid on the contract. Some one clearly needs to learn how government contracts work and are awarded. The university is a government body of the state. This is exactly the kind of monopoly behavior that Microsoft got convicted by the US and the EU. When you are a convicted illegal monopoly the rules of the game are completely different for you because you broke the law. Clearly Microsoft is breaking the law again and trying to make it look like it is no big deal when it is a huge deal.
Probably not a big enough payment or donation given that Office doesn't default to DOC files any more. They default to ODT and then DOCX. Which Open/Libre Office supports as well. If compatibility is the complaint then someone needs to spend more time with corporations who trade files with other companies and see that even Microsoft has problems with this, because newer versions of office have problems reading older version files. This is a known issue with Office. Companies often call who they are sending the document to, to find out what version of Word they use and save it to that version to try and help it open better, but usually it doesn't help at all.
You mean the ODT format that Microsoft supports in Office and that Libre/Open Office support? Or do you mean RTF or DOCX or UOT or what? Both Office and Libre/Open Office support all those formats. You do know that DOC is not the default for Office any more right? You also know that Office itself has a hard time correctly reading old DOC formats right? This is pretty common knowledge in most companies that different versions of Word produce different DOC files that may not be able to be read properly (usually) by newer versions of Word. Microsoft themselves are not even compatible with themselves and you complain about Libre/Open Office? That is rich, really rich. Clearly you are blindly supporting Microsoft or you don't work with lots of different DOC versions like most business do when they trade around files with other companies. No one expects a DOC file they send to another company to open perfectly and be formated perfectly because they may not have the same version of Word. I have even seen companies call and ask what version of Word they have and try and save the file as that version to help it open better, and even that doesn't always work. This has been a known issue for a very long time with Microsoft Office products.
You would be wrong, as Microsoft is clearly paying them to switch to their software. If you cut a check for someone to switch to you as a vendor you are clearly paying them to use your products. It doesn't matter how it was spend you gave them cash that they didn't have before. Normally that is called a kick back and is illegal as all get out. Vendors are suppose to compete on the price and quality of their products especially when it involved government groups like a public university.
Personally I think the AG should look in to this as it is absolutely no different from a kick back or bribe which is illegal. I want to know if the software change was sent out as a request for sealed bids and had at least 3 companies bid on it like is usually required for most government contracts. If you ask me Microsoft is playing fast and loose and needs to smacked down hard, because they are doing the same exact monopoly actions that got them convicted by the US and EU. When you are a convicted monopoly the rules you have to play by are completely different from everyone else since you broke the law.
You can't say yea but. You are agreeing with the guy and admitting you were wrong and then trying to add a qualifier as to why you were in fact correct. That makes no logical sense at all. Either you were right or you were wrong and in this case you were wrong. If Microsoft gives them cash, no matter why, it is not a discount but in fact clearly a payment. If it was a discount it would simply reduce what they pay and Microsoft would not be sending them cash. You can claim anything you want but the bottom line is Microsoft said "Look, use our product and we will cut you a check for $250,000, to use for whatever you want or need." Microsoft very clearly paid the University to switch to their software and it clearly wasn't a discount. Will Microsoft make up the money in the long run? Probably, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft paid them cash to switch to their product.
I would love to know why the software industry is allowed to disclaim everything and even say their software isn't guaranteed to work or do what is claimed or written/shown on the outside of the box. I would love to know why the software industry is allowed to change the purchase contract (I bought the software at the store I didn't sign a license agreement) after you have paid for it and you don't get to know the terms until after you buy it. You also can't return it to the store you bought it from if you don't like the contract because they won't let you return opened software. The software industry even writes their EULAs up so that they can change the EULA anytime they want and you get no say about it. That right there is a complete scam. Why the commercial software industry is allowed to be so different from every other product that consumers purchase in a retail store I will never understand. I am personally waiting until some Judge or politician gets screwed by some EULA and takes the whole software industry out back and smacks them around.
I personally think the whole commercial software industry needs to be b**ch slapped. I especially think the computer game industry needs to be b*tch slapped given how many rights they make people give up like interoperability and hacking it up to be more like you want.
I personally think if you don't have the consumer sign a contract before the sale then you should not be allowed to add one after the sale. If I can't read the contract and have it explained to me at the store then it should not be allowed. I should have to sign it at the store before the sale for it to be legally binding. I also think software contracts if they are even allowed should have to be fair, balanced and equitable to all parties rather than slant so extremely far in favor of the software industry.
Microsoft can not be sued over Word eating your documents. You need to closely read that EULA you agreed to when you installed Word. They are not liable if it destroys your data. The only thing you can from them is the cost of the software you bought. So if you bought it on sale or under some discounted bulk license agreement then that amount is the most you will be able to get from Microsoft. Yep it pretty crappy how the software industry disclaims everything and all liability. They even go so far as to say they don't guarantee it will work, or work as advertised or work like the box says. Modern software EULAs are basically a pig in a poke. They think you should count yourself lucky that they even allow you to buy the software, now sit down and shut up and do exactly what the software company says. Remember they can change the contract any time they like and you don't have any choice about other than stop using the software, which you never owned in the first place. Why software is allowed to be so different than anything else the average consumer buys I will never understand. Personally I think it is time for the government to step in and smack the commercial software industry around and make software follow all the same laws that everything else does and no EULA can change it, and that consumers do in fact own their software.
If they are paying part of the cost to build the factory then they are in deed an investor. Instead of taking a cash payback they are taking an exclusive contract and probably a reduced price rate as well. Apple is very much an investor in these plants they are helping to build.
There is no free market anywhere in the world. Every market has some kind of artificial barrier to entry created by governments. The more regulations you have the more artificial barriers are created. The phone companies and cable companies have used government regulation and laws fantastically to their advantage to knock everyone else out of the Internet connectivity game. We need less regulation which leads to more competition. You want a free market then remove all regulations other than companies must completely detail to customers the exact level of risk for using the product when purchasing anything. Corporations play more games to hide the risks of their products than anything else. The software industry is the worst. The software industry writes agreements where you can't sue if it blows up and takes all your data with it. In fact it may not even work as said or shown on the box. They remove all liability for anything and take no responsibility for anything. I know of nothing else like it that the common consumer buys, and I have no idea why the software industry is allow to pull that crap. If you saw an auto maker pull that kind of crap they would be sued out of existence and the government would rain fire and brimstone down on them. I do not understand why the software industry gets a pass.
You really want to mess with corporations out spending the little guy. The fix would be everyone is randomly assigned 1-2 lawyers and that is it. You could even make it a little better and have lawyers list their specialties and pull randomly from that pile for legal cases. It would instantly cause these out spend you into the poor house cases to disappear. It would also mean you better have a pretty good case and be pretty sure you can win because you don't know what lawyer you are going to get.
The other thing you could do is left the judges step in and say look clearly corporation XYZ is trying to spend the little guy into the ground, so here is a cap of what you can spend for this trial and if your caught playing games with pay rates to get more people the lawyers will be censured and you instantly loose the case. Lawyers repeat that crap and they are disbarred. That would instantly put an end to the spending game and it would put lawyers asses on the line to make sure things were fair. Judges could (I think they already do) have the ability to assign lawyers pro-bono so a judge could assign a lawyer that was as good as the corporations lawyer in that specific area of the law. That would also balance the scales as well.
There are easy ways to fix this, but the legal system isn't about to fix itself when it would cost lawyers money. It is up to the people to demand a change and so far it seems the average person could care less. That is typical of most people, if it doesn't effect them then they don't care about it.
Well I have bought about 4 games for Linux in the last 6 months, and all of the Humble Bundles. You might want to look at the Linux sales figures for the Humble Bundles. So yes FOSS people pay for software.
Linux users when given a choice are even more willing to pay more than those on other Operating Systems. Windows users are cheap skates and always want something for nothing.
There are no articles other than people complaining that Windows games think every gamepad is an XBox 360 controller so they show those button layouts and it pain sometimes to remap, if they even allow it. So yes the XBox 360 controller is common on the PC. If I remember correctly to get a game certified Windows that you must support the XBox 360 controller on the PC as one of the interface options. Microsoft has pushed the XBox 360 controller on the PC in a big way.
If I were an indie developer I wouldn't even bother trying to run my own e-store for my apps. You have to deal with merchant accounts, charge backs/fraud and going with Paypal isn't much better given they have frozen accounts over and over just like they did to Mindcraft, not to mention just plain seized accounts as well. Just do a web search to see all the problems with Paypal.
If it were me I would look at something like Desura (http://www.desura.com/) where they will host and sell any game for anyone as long as it is mostly finished and playable, but not illegal or porn. They have all the tools to create a community for a game and it doesn't cost the developer anything. They do take a slice of what they sell, but then so does Steam and other places. I have heard a few horror stories about how much Steam takes from some of the little guys, up to 65%-70% is what I have heard. Desura does Windows now but I have heard they are eventually suppose to support Linux and Mac at some point.
Some of the gaming portals out there will sell your game for you too after taking a slice of the pie. Personally I would rather someone else deal with all that mess.
Wow I wasn't aware that Belfast had become like a third world country where the judge without a trial or hearing declares guilt and meets out a punishment right there on the spot. I guess he thinks he can be judge, jury and executioner and screw due legal process. The judge has no legal clue if the kid is guilty. He automatically assuming the kid is the thief which has not been proven in a court of law yet. The comment by the judge was completely out of line and shows his clear bias in this case. The judge is not ruling by law but by what he thinks without legally proven facts. The judge should be immediately removed from the bench and censured for this. This is clearly a judge out of control, spouting out his opinion on the results of the case before the case has even had opening arguments.
Remind me to never go anywhere near Belfast given they have out of control judges and don't follow common law practices.
If you mean Loki Software the problem wasn't that no one bought them. The problems was corporate mismanagement. When you buy 100,000 ( or whatever the insane number reported was) metal tins for Quake 3 for a Linux release when none of your other games have sold anywhere near that amount, you know you have a serious management problem. When you pay way too much for the license and make all kinds of weird and strange deals with the game companies, you are going to have problems. Loki ported 19 games over about 2 years. That is pretty impressive. The problem comes when you sign bad contracts and don't manage your money properly then your company is going to go down in flames and make a really nice explosion when it hits bottom leaving a giant crater.
It is not impossible to get large numbers of people to keep their mouth's shut under threat of national security and being thrown in jail in a deep dark hole. For an example see the Gulf of Tonkin incident that the CIA finally released documents about it being faked. Your talking about what 2 destroyers and several fighters worth of crew told to shut up and never say a word or go to jail basic forever. What about the stealth fighter and stealth bomber. The US government is really good at threatening people to keep their mouths shut.
You already have this. Cities pass ordinances that some people like and other find really annoying or wrong. So exactly how would this change anything? You don't like something then get people to rally around it and get it voted on to be removed or added or whatever. It happens at the local level and its the people directly around you deciding how they want to live rather than someone far away who has never been to your town telling you how you have to do things.
Read the papers written before and after the US Constitution. Each of the states fought hard to limit the power of the federal government and to decide for themselves how they wanted things done. I have no idea how we got away from that idea, but we have. I guess some people think they have the right or they know better than everyone else what every single person in the country should be allow and not allowed to do, even though they never met them and never set foot their town.
The whole concept behind IP laws has been so ignored and distorted that it isn't even funny. Corporations are stealing from our society's culture and then selling it back to us at the highest possible price they can get legislated. The whole idea of IP law was to allow the public domain and culture be expanded by content creators sharing their work rather than hiding it. That is absolutely no longer an issue. People will create content, products, songs, books, movies basically everything protected by IP law regardless of IP protections. We have stunted science and technology more in the last 40 years, even more in the last 20 years, due to fights over copyrights and patents than the fields have advance, let alone could have advanced.
Content creators should be thrown in jail because the agreement was **LIMITED** time protections and then it would go into the public domain for all of society to use and build upon and become part of the culture. Our culture is dying and soon we won't have any culture to bind us as a society. Instead it will be groups who have the money to purchase culture grouped around the corporations who are selling culture at the highest price they can get.
I have a very simple test to see if content corporations are screwing the public over and stealing from us. If your company is over 50 years old, how many copyrights did you file for this year, and exactly how many copyrights held by your corporation expired this year and the content entered the public domain? If the answer is none or some insanely low number then they are thieves and should be thrown in jail and all their copyrights revoked. Anyone who takes public money and then copyrights or patents the work should jailed for theft. The public paid for it it belongs to the public and so it belongs in the public domain so that society that paid for it can use it freely with no restrictions.
Disney is by far the most public offender of this. I would bet that nothing or damn close to nothing Disney has ever created is in the public domain now. That is a crime.
Every book publishing house and every record company and almost every movie company should be having their products fall in to the public domain every year. It should be a fairly significant amount because they do not product tiny amounts in a year to stay in business. Most publishing houses actually own the copyright because they buy the novel from the author and then attempt to make money off it, the big authors are the exception to this. The music studios work the same exact way. Movie studios are the same they end owning the copyright on the movie even though they have investors for the film. All of them should have products falling in to the public domain every year but they don't and that is crap. That isn't the agreement for IP laws. They are stealing from the public and stealing on a massive scale and then repackaging that material and trying to sell it to us again.
Personally I think 10 maybe 15 years should be the length of copyrights and patents. If you can't turn a profit in 10 years on your material then you have a problem and society shouldn't be stolen from just because you can't get your act together. I think patents on drug should only be 3-5 years. They can easily recover R&D costs in that time and make a large profit, a lot of which are paid by government grants. Drug companies spend more on advertising than they do R&D or drug production. R&D is even less than drug production costs annually. Drug R&D costs are just not that particularly high. There are drug products never brought to market not because they won't make money but because they won't make as much money as if they put those production costs into something else. Clearly drug companies are not starving for money or they would market everything and try and to make every possible penny of profit they could. Just look at their SEC filings. Government regulations have help to create that messed up system. It's criminal how corporate America abuses the IP system.
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Companies can do this, government bodies can not by law and it is called bribery and/or kick backs and people have gone to jail over this exact thing. Government bodies accepting money to award a contract to a specific group or person is illegal. That is exactly what happened here.
The problem is you are not a government body, so the laws are different for government bodies which is what the university is. If anyone pays a government body to be awarded a contract that is bribery and/or kickbacks and that is illegal. It doesn't matter what you spend the cash on, taking cash to award someone a government contract is illegal. People have gone to jail for doing the exact same thing in city governments and state government departments as well as state universities. You also can not award a government contract unless three valid closed sealed bids are received. So writing a bid request that only one company can fill is not allowed either. You can accept a bid that is higher because more things are thrown in that doesn't exist in the lowest bid, for example a 2 year support contract included in the bid and the lowest bid doesn't have a support contract.
The problem is the laws that government bodies have to abide by are not the same laws that consumers have to abide by. If I can con someone into giving me a product for free and then paying me cash on top then I am legally allowed to try and do that. Any time a state university or city or state gets paid to award a contract that is bribery and/or a kickback and that is illegal and people have gone to jail over it. That is exactly what happened here. Microsoft said if you award us the contract we will whip out our checkbook and cut you a check for $250,000 and that is exactly what happened. The University has $250,000 cash that they didn't have before. It doesn't matter what they spend it on it is still a bribe to award the contract and that is illegal.
There is a world of difference between a discount and whipping out the checkbook to write someone a check for buying your product, especially at the government level which is what the University is. The University ended up with $250,000 more in their bank account that they didn't have before. Doesn't matter what they spent it on. That is clearly a bribe or kick back and is illegal as hell. Someone at Microsoft and the University should be going to jail over this. This is anti-competitive. Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopoly by the US and the EU. When you are a convicted monopoly the rules of the game are completely different for you since you broke the law. I am bothered that no one at Microsoft ever went to jail over the monopoly convictions. Microsoft jacked around with the trial and lied and all they got was a slap on the wrist. Clearly Microsoft paid someone off give how other monopoly convictions punishments have been handled in the past. They should have been broken up in to three companies and not allowed to sell to each other. That's what happens when you break the law on such a grand scale.
Doesn't matter if it was public or not. If you pay someone cash they didn't have before then it is a bribe or kick back and that is illegal. The University has $250,000 more in the bank from Microsoft. It doesn't matter if they spent it on consultants. They were given cash they didn't have before for picking Microsoft and that is illegal.
If Cingular cut you a check for $36 to spend however you want then yes you are being bribed. Microsoft cut them a check to be used however they wanted. The fact they used it on consultants doesn't matter. It is $250,000 cash that they didn't have before in their bank account. That is clearly a bribe or kick back and someone should be in jail. Microsoft has to play by different rules than everyone else because they are a convicted illegal monopoly by the US and the EU.
That is clearly a bribe. If you give the university cash that they didn't have before just so they pick your product then that is a bribe or a kick back and is completely illegal. Someone at Microsoft should be going to jail and someone at the university should be joining them in jail as well. This wasn't a we will reduce the amount you pay us by $250,000 so you can afford hire people to do the converting. It was here is a check for $250,000 to spend however you want because you picked us.
There is everything in the world wrong with a cash incentive. It is illegal as all get out for government groups to accept that. It is called a bribe or kick back and usually results in someone going to jail because they did not follow legal procedures for contract procurement. Contracts are suppose to be sealed bids by at least 3 bidders or they are invalid, and the requirements must be publicly announced so anyone can bid on the contract. Some one clearly needs to learn how government contracts work and are awarded. The university is a government body of the state. This is exactly the kind of monopoly behavior that Microsoft got convicted by the US and the EU. When you are a convicted illegal monopoly the rules of the game are completely different for you because you broke the law. Clearly Microsoft is breaking the law again and trying to make it look like it is no big deal when it is a huge deal.
Probably not a big enough payment or donation given that Office doesn't default to DOC files any more. They default to ODT and then DOCX. Which Open/Libre Office supports as well. If compatibility is the complaint then someone needs to spend more time with corporations who trade files with other companies and see that even Microsoft has problems with this, because newer versions of office have problems reading older version files. This is a known issue with Office. Companies often call who they are sending the document to, to find out what version of Word they use and save it to that version to try and help it open better, but usually it doesn't help at all.
You mean the ODT format that Microsoft supports in Office and that Libre/Open Office support? Or do you mean RTF or DOCX or UOT or what? Both Office and Libre/Open Office support all those formats. You do know that DOC is not the default for Office any more right? You also know that Office itself has a hard time correctly reading old DOC formats right? This is pretty common knowledge in most companies that different versions of Word produce different DOC files that may not be able to be read properly (usually) by newer versions of Word. Microsoft themselves are not even compatible with themselves and you complain about Libre/Open Office? That is rich, really rich. Clearly you are blindly supporting Microsoft or you don't work with lots of different DOC versions like most business do when they trade around files with other companies. No one expects a DOC file they send to another company to open perfectly and be formated perfectly because they may not have the same version of Word. I have even seen companies call and ask what version of Word they have and try and save the file as that version to help it open better, and even that doesn't always work. This has been a known issue for a very long time with Microsoft Office products.
You would be wrong, as Microsoft is clearly paying them to switch to their software. If you cut a check for someone to switch to you as a vendor you are clearly paying them to use your products. It doesn't matter how it was spend you gave them cash that they didn't have before. Normally that is called a kick back and is illegal as all get out. Vendors are suppose to compete on the price and quality of their products especially when it involved government groups like a public university.
Personally I think the AG should look in to this as it is absolutely no different from a kick back or bribe which is illegal. I want to know if the software change was sent out as a request for sealed bids and had at least 3 companies bid on it like is usually required for most government contracts. If you ask me Microsoft is playing fast and loose and needs to smacked down hard, because they are doing the same exact monopoly actions that got them convicted by the US and EU. When you are a convicted monopoly the rules you have to play by are completely different from everyone else since you broke the law.
You can't say yea but. You are agreeing with the guy and admitting you were wrong and then trying to add a qualifier as to why you were in fact correct. That makes no logical sense at all. Either you were right or you were wrong and in this case you were wrong. If Microsoft gives them cash, no matter why, it is not a discount but in fact clearly a payment. If it was a discount it would simply reduce what they pay and Microsoft would not be sending them cash. You can claim anything you want but the bottom line is Microsoft said "Look, use our product and we will cut you a check for $250,000, to use for whatever you want or need." Microsoft very clearly paid the University to switch to their software and it clearly wasn't a discount. Will Microsoft make up the money in the long run? Probably, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft paid them cash to switch to their product.
I would love to know why the software industry is allowed to disclaim everything and even say their software isn't guaranteed to work or do what is claimed or written/shown on the outside of the box. I would love to know why the software industry is allowed to change the purchase contract (I bought the software at the store I didn't sign a license agreement) after you have paid for it and you don't get to know the terms until after you buy it. You also can't return it to the store you bought it from if you don't like the contract because they won't let you return opened software. The software industry even writes their EULAs up so that they can change the EULA anytime they want and you get no say about it. That right there is a complete scam. Why the commercial software industry is allowed to be so different from every other product that consumers purchase in a retail store I will never understand. I am personally waiting until some Judge or politician gets screwed by some EULA and takes the whole software industry out back and smacks them around.
I personally think the whole commercial software industry needs to be b**ch slapped. I especially think the computer game industry needs to be b*tch slapped given how many rights they make people give up like interoperability and hacking it up to be more like you want.
I personally think if you don't have the consumer sign a contract before the sale then you should not be allowed to add one after the sale. If I can't read the contract and have it explained to me at the store then it should not be allowed. I should have to sign it at the store before the sale for it to be legally binding. I also think software contracts if they are even allowed should have to be fair, balanced and equitable to all parties rather than slant so extremely far in favor of the software industry.
Microsoft can not be sued over Word eating your documents. You need to closely read that EULA you agreed to when you installed Word. They are not liable if it destroys your data. The only thing you can from them is the cost of the software you bought. So if you bought it on sale or under some discounted bulk license agreement then that amount is the most you will be able to get from Microsoft. Yep it pretty crappy how the software industry disclaims everything and all liability. They even go so far as to say they don't guarantee it will work, or work as advertised or work like the box says. Modern software EULAs are basically a pig in a poke. They think you should count yourself lucky that they even allow you to buy the software, now sit down and shut up and do exactly what the software company says. Remember they can change the contract any time they like and you don't have any choice about other than stop using the software, which you never owned in the first place. Why software is allowed to be so different than anything else the average consumer buys I will never understand. Personally I think it is time for the government to step in and smack the commercial software industry around and make software follow all the same laws that everything else does and no EULA can change it, and that consumers do in fact own their software.
If they are paying part of the cost to build the factory then they are in deed an investor. Instead of taking a cash payback they are taking an exclusive contract and probably a reduced price rate as well. Apple is very much an investor in these plants they are helping to build.
There is no free market anywhere in the world. Every market has some kind of artificial barrier to entry created by governments. The more regulations you have the more artificial barriers are created. The phone companies and cable companies have used government regulation and laws fantastically to their advantage to knock everyone else out of the Internet connectivity game. We need less regulation which leads to more competition. You want a free market then remove all regulations other than companies must completely detail to customers the exact level of risk for using the product when purchasing anything. Corporations play more games to hide the risks of their products than anything else. The software industry is the worst. The software industry writes agreements where you can't sue if it blows up and takes all your data with it. In fact it may not even work as said or shown on the box. They remove all liability for anything and take no responsibility for anything. I know of nothing else like it that the common consumer buys, and I have no idea why the software industry is allow to pull that crap. If you saw an auto maker pull that kind of crap they would be sued out of existence and the government would rain fire and brimstone down on them. I do not understand why the software industry gets a pass.
You really want to mess with corporations out spending the little guy. The fix would be everyone is randomly assigned 1-2 lawyers and that is it. You could even make it a little better and have lawyers list their specialties and pull randomly from that pile for legal cases. It would instantly cause these out spend you into the poor house cases to disappear. It would also mean you better have a pretty good case and be pretty sure you can win because you don't know what lawyer you are going to get.
The other thing you could do is left the judges step in and say look clearly corporation XYZ is trying to spend the little guy into the ground, so here is a cap of what you can spend for this trial and if your caught playing games with pay rates to get more people the lawyers will be censured and you instantly loose the case. Lawyers repeat that crap and they are disbarred. That would instantly put an end to the spending game and it would put lawyers asses on the line to make sure things were fair. Judges could (I think they already do) have the ability to assign lawyers pro-bono so a judge could assign a lawyer that was as good as the corporations lawyer in that specific area of the law. That would also balance the scales as well.
There are easy ways to fix this, but the legal system isn't about to fix itself when it would cost lawyers money. It is up to the people to demand a change and so far it seems the average person could care less. That is typical of most people, if it doesn't effect them then they don't care about it.
Well I have bought about 4 games for Linux in the last 6 months, and all of the Humble Bundles. You might want to look at the Linux sales figures for the Humble Bundles. So yes FOSS people pay for software.
http://www.wolfire.com/humble/
http://www.humblebundle.com/
Linux users when given a choice are even more willing to pay more than those on other Operating Systems. Windows users are cheap skates and always want something for nothing.
There are no articles other than people complaining that Windows games think every gamepad is an XBox 360 controller so they show those button layouts and it pain sometimes to remap, if they even allow it. So yes the XBox 360 controller is common on the PC. If I remember correctly to get a game certified Windows that you must support the XBox 360 controller on the PC as one of the interface options. Microsoft has pushed the XBox 360 controller on the PC in a big way.
If I were an indie developer I wouldn't even bother trying to run my own e-store for my apps. You have to deal with merchant accounts, charge backs/fraud and going with Paypal isn't much better given they have frozen accounts over and over just like they did to Mindcraft, not to mention just plain seized accounts as well. Just do a web search to see all the problems with Paypal.
If it were me I would look at something like Desura (http://www.desura.com/) where they will host and sell any game for anyone as long as it is mostly finished and playable, but not illegal or porn. They have all the tools to create a community for a game and it doesn't cost the developer anything. They do take a slice of what they sell, but then so does Steam and other places. I have heard a few horror stories about how much Steam takes from some of the little guys, up to 65%-70% is what I have heard. Desura does Windows now but I have heard they are eventually suppose to support Linux and Mac at some point.
Some of the gaming portals out there will sell your game for you too after taking a slice of the pie. Personally I would rather someone else deal with all that mess.
Wow I wasn't aware that Belfast had become like a third world country where the judge without a trial or hearing declares guilt and meets out a punishment right there on the spot. I guess he thinks he can be judge, jury and executioner and screw due legal process. The judge has no legal clue if the kid is guilty. He automatically assuming the kid is the thief which has not been proven in a court of law yet. The comment by the judge was completely out of line and shows his clear bias in this case. The judge is not ruling by law but by what he thinks without legally proven facts. The judge should be immediately removed from the bench and censured for this. This is clearly a judge out of control, spouting out his opinion on the results of the case before the case has even had opening arguments.
Remind me to never go anywhere near Belfast given they have out of control judges and don't follow common law practices.
If you mean Loki Software the problem wasn't that no one bought them. The problems was corporate mismanagement. When you buy 100,000 ( or whatever the insane number reported was) metal tins for Quake 3 for a Linux release when none of your other games have sold anywhere near that amount, you know you have a serious management problem. When you pay way too much for the license and make all kinds of weird and strange deals with the game companies, you are going to have problems. Loki ported 19 games over about 2 years. That is pretty impressive. The problem comes when you sign bad contracts and don't manage your money properly then your company is going to go down in flames and make a really nice explosion when it hits bottom leaving a giant crater.
It is not impossible to get large numbers of people to keep their mouth's shut under threat of national security and being thrown in jail in a deep dark hole. For an example see the Gulf of Tonkin incident that the CIA finally released documents about it being faked. Your talking about what 2 destroyers and several fighters worth of crew told to shut up and never say a word or go to jail basic forever. What about the stealth fighter and stealth bomber. The US government is really good at threatening people to keep their mouths shut.
You already have this. Cities pass ordinances that some people like and other find really annoying or wrong. So exactly how would this change anything? You don't like something then get people to rally around it and get it voted on to be removed or added or whatever. It happens at the local level and its the people directly around you deciding how they want to live rather than someone far away who has never been to your town telling you how you have to do things.
Read the papers written before and after the US Constitution. Each of the states fought hard to limit the power of the federal government and to decide for themselves how they wanted things done. I have no idea how we got away from that idea, but we have. I guess some people think they have the right or they know better than everyone else what every single person in the country should be allow and not allowed to do, even though they never met them and never set foot their town.
The whole concept behind IP laws has been so ignored and distorted that it isn't even funny. Corporations are stealing from our society's culture and then selling it back to us at the highest possible price they can get legislated. The whole idea of IP law was to allow the public domain and culture be expanded by content creators sharing their work rather than hiding it. That is absolutely no longer an issue. People will create content, products, songs, books, movies basically everything protected by IP law regardless of IP protections. We have stunted science and technology more in the last 40 years, even more in the last 20 years, due to fights over copyrights and patents than the fields have advance, let alone could have advanced.
Content creators should be thrown in jail because the agreement was **LIMITED** time protections and then it would go into the public domain for all of society to use and build upon and become part of the culture. Our culture is dying and soon we won't have any culture to bind us as a society. Instead it will be groups who have the money to purchase culture grouped around the corporations who are selling culture at the highest price they can get.
I have a very simple test to see if content corporations are screwing the public over and stealing from us. If your company is over 50 years old, how many copyrights did you file for this year, and exactly how many copyrights held by your corporation expired this year and the content entered the public domain? If the answer is none or some insanely low number then they are thieves and should be thrown in jail and all their copyrights revoked. Anyone who takes public money and then copyrights or patents the work should jailed for theft. The public paid for it it belongs to the public and so it belongs in the public domain so that society that paid for it can use it freely with no restrictions.
Disney is by far the most public offender of this. I would bet that nothing or damn close to nothing Disney has ever created is in the public domain now. That is a crime.
Every book publishing house and every record company and almost every movie company should be having their products fall in to the public domain every year. It should be a fairly significant amount because they do not product tiny amounts in a year to stay in business. Most publishing houses actually own the copyright because they buy the novel from the author and then attempt to make money off it, the big authors are the exception to this. The music studios work the same exact way. Movie studios are the same they end owning the copyright on the movie even though they have investors for the film. All of them should have products falling in to the public domain every year but they don't and that is crap. That isn't the agreement for IP laws. They are stealing from the public and stealing on a massive scale and then repackaging that material and trying to sell it to us again.
Personally I think 10 maybe 15 years should be the length of copyrights and patents. If you can't turn a profit in 10 years on your material then you have a problem and society shouldn't be stolen from just because you can't get your act together. I think patents on drug should only be 3-5 years. They can easily recover R&D costs in that time and make a large profit, a lot of which are paid by government grants. Drug companies spend more on advertising than they do R&D or drug production. R&D is even less than drug production costs annually. Drug R&D costs are just not that particularly high. There are drug products never brought to market not because they won't make money but because they won't make as much money as if they put those production costs into something else. Clearly drug companies are not starving for money or they would market everything and try and to make every possible penny of profit they could. Just look at their SEC filings. Government regulations have help to create that messed up system. It's criminal how corporate America abuses the IP system.
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