> In other words, do you really think Caldera truly expected to get $1.6G from Micros~1? Do you know anyone >who has really expected to get what they sue for?
I don't know where Caldera came up with their number, but if it had any justification, I'd assume they'd settle for a figure much closer to that $1.6x10^9.
If you figure that the lawyer costs usually run 20% for settling out of court, 30% if it goes to trial & 40% if it goes to appeals, then it would make sense for them to settle for a quarter to half of what they wanted. Caldera would only settle for 10% of their claimed damages if they realised that their case wasn't anywhere near as solid as they thought -- in other words, they needed a way to retreat without losing face or suffering more damages.
If this is the case, Micros~1 in effect gave them a quarter to go bother somebody else. Which would be odd, since up to this moment, it looked as if they had a very solid case against Micros~1.
I'll wait for further verification. This just might be smoke & mirrors, like the FOAF who claimed Micros~1 was willing to settle with the DOJ by making Windows ``open source."
>As much as I dislike Microsoft, is it really right to take their money in this fashion?
Well, let's look at this from an ethical point of view.
Corporate ethics -- & this applies to any corporation, not just Microsoft or high-tech ones -- are simple: maximize shareholder value by any arguably legal means possible. And the ``arguably legal" is a point that I may be wrong about: after all, corporations have done cost-benefit studies to see if the cost of a repair or a modification is cheaper than liability lawsuits, then chose the solution based on the bottom line.
In other words, Microsoft does not care if a product costs the consumer more: it only cares if the product makes Microsoft more money. Customer satisfaction, loyalty or even safety are a distant & subordinate second priority.
And corporations will carefully read contracts & study agreements with each other in hope of exploiting ambiguities to their advantage.
And if the corporate officers don't act this way? The price of the corporation's stock goes down, & the officers get to look for ``other opportunities" -- after all, CEOs, COOs, & others of that ilk never seem to get fired.
Now if you talk about interpersonal ethics, then we worry about doing what is right or fair because this will effect how people treat us in the future. Generosity to others has the possibility of returning to us.
Generosity to any corporation only adds to its bottom line & stock value -- & probably not to the well-being of even its employees.
This was not theft: Microsoft did something stupid. And thousands of people took advantage of Microsoft's stupidity. Just as Microsoft would take advantage of another corporation's stupidity.
You left one detail out of this otherwise right-on account:
The true problem callers are the distinct minority of all callers. The rule ``80 percent of your time will be taken up by 20 percent of your customers" definitely applies in this case. And the average caller -- the guy who needs the DUN settings for the ISP, someone who calls with a known problem, & gets the packaged answer before she or he even finishes their question -- they are forgotten before the next break.
And if we didn't laugh at the jerks, the lusers, the alternative would not be pretty. I know several people who did their tech-support time for Netscape who would like to meet George Gilder's brother late some night with baseball bats & tire irons. And maybe George Gilder, too, while they're at it.
LL makes lots of good points here. My $0.02 into the pot is as follows . . .
There are three cost/profit points with software:
1) writing it; 2) maintaining it; 3) supporting it.
Microsoft's model is based on charging for the first point, & pushing the cost of the third onto a third party (e.g., you contact Compaq or Dell for help with Windows). Due to their policy of ignoring or thwarting backwards compatibility, they evade the cost of maintaining their code.
``Enterprise level" models charge a token amount for the first point, with the idea of making money on the second & third points. (Last I heard, Sun charges $250K a year just to talk to someone on the phone. I have a hard time comprehending that the average company can use that much support, even if we calculate it as $500/ an hour.)
The Open Source model is that an individual invests her/his time on the first point, then shares the software with the general public in hope that they will repay her/him with help with the second point. And in theory, both parties make money charging for the third point (e.g., teach classes, do consulting, etc.)
As LL points out, the first model is inherently broken: we pay for software that ends up imperfect, & we have no way of fixing -- either by ourselves or thru the company. The second model has a proven track record -- the software is more reliable, & companies make money -- but the price to users in that model is far greater than the one Microsoft uses.
The Open Source model promises a way to meet both desires: reliable software at an affordable rate. The question now, though, is if this model can fulfill this promise.
If Time wants to highlight the idea of ecommerce, why not nominate someone who has figured out how to make money from it?
Amazon's original model was the bait of an online forum for discussing books, & the hook of selling every one of these books to the public at a discount. Obviously it did not work, since (1) they have not made money from it, (2) Amazon has resorted to spamming people at different times, (3) they decided to go into selling other items.
If you want to be a middleman on the Internet, you have to find a way to bring the manufacturer & customer together & make a profit from it. Omidyar has, & countless ebusiness sites -- including Amazon -- have followed his lead.
ObBadModeration: expressing one's opinion thoughtfully, & with a lack of profanity is not flamebait. Even if you don't agree with what is said.
The lusers come for you at night, drag you helplessly from your warm bed into the converted warehouse filled with second-hand cubicles, tie you down to a chair & tape a headset to your head, forcing you to spend hours supporting a product you never saw before for people who are genetically unable to tell which end of a floppy disk does into their computer.
No wait. That was a dream I had the other night. Never mind.
My guess is that someone noticed that the game tries to connect to the internet when the player wants to save the high score, & assumed the worst. I've played it enough times to seriously doubt that it's a trojan -- it's just a cheesy & fun little game.
You can also follow the thread in alt.comp.virus, too -- although last I looked it had degenerated into a flamewar.
At first read, this whole story sounds like an Urban Legend. Million-dollar piece of equipment turns up in NYC, so NYC's Finest tracks it down, breaks down the door & takes it back. They even manage to track it down to recipient's father's apartment, where they brought the missing equipment only a few moments before.
The only thing that kept me from entirely dismissing this story was the fact they had a name for the recipient. And that fact made me wonder what the WHOLE story was.
And now that RedX has uncovered it, & shared the link to it with us, case closed.
Boy, what Urban Legend will next appear about Microsoft? Will we hear about a certain video tape BillG & his wife made turning up at a Redmond Blockbuster? Perhaps it will recount how the Mrs brought Billg to, uh, a successful compile by reciting the SAT scores of female Microsoft employees?;-)
>AOL Is not going to get a penny. Do you really think that these spammers have that kind of money?
You're probably right. These mooks said they consulted their lawyer at each point, who if effect told them ``don't bother responding. They can't do anything to you."
On the other hand, evading paying of a debt will get them into trouble: AOL can sell the debt to another group of bottomfish, who will eager spend the next few years harassing them (perhaps in the form of **SPAM**?) until they pay up. Even if they go bankrupt, the judgement will stand for several years.
Your aunt got better treatment than my great-grandmother.
It was the late 1940's, she was showing signs of what might have been either Alzheimers or just plain senility. What was the accepted cure in that time?
Frontal lobotomy.
To say that it failed to cure the problem is an understatement. At least with medications, one can always stop taking them if they don't work.
Well, I'm the one who said they were ``Black Magick", so blame me. Although Hubbard claimed to have broken up a ring of Satanists, & this is as close as he got to any such group.
What he didn't say is that he fully assisted in the rite of Babalon Rising, & the manner he broke up the group was just as AC said: ``Ron made off with the lodge's treasury, the leader's boat, and the leader's wife."
>Me, I blame Heinlein for the Scientologists. He and Hubbard had a bet over which one of them could start a major religion first. Guess who won? > You're being too harsh on Heinlein. I figure Heinlein thought they were making a joke, & besides he had better things to do with his time. Like write, visit with fans, & live his life.
Hubbard seemed enamored with the idea of starting a religion. First thing he did after leaving the service was connecting up with a Black Magic group in Pasadena that was affiliated with Alester Croweley. Then he convinced a number of people (including John Campbell the editor & A.E. van Vogt the writer) to help him start Dianetics. (Campbell & Vogt later left Dianetics when Hubbard demonstrated his inability to tell the difference between his own wallet & the Dianetic Foundation funds, a handicap that contributed to the downfall of that organization.) Then, about 9 years after that, he finally incorporated the Church of Scientology (as well as three other self-described churches). Never mind that any time Hubbard writes about God, it sounds much like what an atheist who did all of his research playing D & D (or watching old ``In Search of..." reruns) would write.
By that point, almost every science-fiction writer who had known Hubbard before the Second World War had disassociated himself from Hubbard. In a subculture that most Americans considered a little nutty (at best), he was considered a whole 'nother fruitcake.
>> If they lose, they take it to a higher court. > >Actually, they do not. The entire cult of scientology could be destroyed by a single hostile ruling from a high court.
Were that possible.
Several high-ranking members of the CoS (including Hubbard's own wife) were arrested, tried & convicted of staging their own espionage against US government agencies in the late seventies. (The CoS has been investigated time & again by the FDA & the IRS.) It was an activity worthy of the KGB, & is why one spokesperson has stated that the CoS has an intelligence agency that is second only to the FBI.
And if you ask a devoted Scientologist about this, if you get any sort of answer, he or she will mutter that they don't do that sort of thing anymore, you shouldn't hold them responsible for prior acts, & that all they did was misuse a few photocopiers.
And what about the IRS? For about 20 years the IRS & the CoS were engaged in a life-or-death battle over the CoS' tax status, which was settled with much secrecy in 1992. Six years later, the Wall Street Journal finally uncovered the terms of this settlement which can be summarized in four words: the IRS caved in. I guess filing over 2000 suits aginst the IRS & every known employee will do that.
Imagine organizing several thousand people to dig a hole from Kansas to China -- & actually having dug several miles into the ground, despite cave-ins, privation, exposure to open weather & being unable to solve the problem of where to put the soil & rock moved. That is the kind of fanaticism & stupidity that the CoS demonstrates on a daily basis -- & with similar results. Except a hole to China would have some value as a tourist attraction: only the most twisted would visit Clearwater, Florida to see what the CoS have done to that once sleepy town.
I have had trouble writing this post because I find I keep writing things about the Cos that can be summarized by ``They are **weird**, man. They are so weird that you have to see what they do to believe it. And they get away with all of this weird stuff because no one believes they do it!" And I have seen what they have done, read the accounts, & it leaves me speechless.
>I know the cult reads slashdot. You're going down.
Eventually they will go down. This group grinds thru people at an appalling rate, & the pool of people they can recruit from is growing smaller. However, they will destroy countless families, lives, & companies before then.
Judge Jackson's FOF singled out Bill Gates in several places as the instigator of Microsoft's monopolistic actions. Some have seen this as suggesting that Gates may suffer some of the penalties from this suit.
My understanding is that as an officer of a corporation, Gates is shielded from any liability in any suit of law against MS. Is my understanding correct? Could Gates be held liable & punished with fines, or being forced to divest his MS stock holdings -- or similar penalties?
Could another lawsuit use this FOF & put Gates at risk for penalties?
(Sorry if the above sounds convoluted when the title basically says it all.)
>"Provided it did occur, there would be precious little time to spend making pleas on usenet or elsewhere." > >Ok. Let's think about this for a minute. Anyone dropping shiny boxes that talk and allow you to connect to the internet would (logically) be >dropped by someone sympathetic to your plight. How hard would it be to make your home site the default homepage of the box? How >tough would it be to build a GPS into the box? How about 512 bit encryption?
The problem we have here is one of triage. That is, when you a crisis you have to know which victims can be helped & which cannot. To use an analogy, if you are a doctor in a town with a pandemic of plague (aka The Black Death), who do you give the antidote to first -- the healthy, the sick, or the dying?
Giving these web devices to the desperate in North Korea is akin to giving the antidote to plague to the hopeless cases.
I would expect that this farmer would trade this web device for food. Given this is North Korea, the chances anyone has food to trade with is slim or none, so this item is worthless -- actually it's less than worthless, because if the soldiers found it they'd kill this farmer.
Remember: the peasants did not start the French Revolution because they'd been starving for years, they started it because they had a good harvest or two after starving for years, & were finally able to get their strength back & do something about the privation they had suffered.
>" It probably won't get an 'A', but atleast it'll get moderated up a point, maybe even two." > >That's not very funny.
I didn't think anyone was making a joke. No one gets a warm fuzzy feeling when she/he admits someone is about to die & there's not a thing that can be done about it.
>Forcing them to release the source to their operating systems is probably the most brutal and unlikely thing that could happen. Open source is a >pop phenomenon. There's no proof anywhere that it's a sustainable business idea. Yes, Redhat's doing great, as is Cobalt, and everyone else is >lining up to get in on the IPO's, but there's no reason to believe that in the long term, it will be sustainable (not trying to bash anyone here, but >opensource has only been in the mainstream for a year or two now).
Actually you can make a living from Open Source: look at Cygnus (or whatever their name is now -- maintainers of gcc) or Aladdin Software (maintainers of ghostscript): by being the expert source on the freely available code, each has made a comfortable living from doing maintenance or consulting.
Now look carefully at what I just said: one company per software package is doing well. If you get several, there's commercial pressure to fork the code base.
And if the courts forced MS to surrender their source code to all of the versions of Windows & DOS out there, MS could still keep their monopoly by selling themselves as ``the best source for expertise with Windows," then return to their abusive old habits by distributing their ``original & best" version in the same abusive manner as before.
Even though I feel that Gates & Co. are guilty & deserve punishment, I strongly suspect that they won't be hit with the appropriate penalties. Especially since even the computer geeks & nerds (that is, everyone who understands the technology) disagree what the appropriate penalties should be.
Heard about cases where landlords were sentenced to live in their own slum housing? In at least one case, the landlord spent the money to make his apartment liveable, whie the rest of the building continued to crumble around him.
Gates & Ballmer would probably work out a deal with the PHBs at the support company to make their time far more pleasant: second line support (i.e. no calls along the line of ``which one is the backslash key again?"), a cubicle they could actually stand in, permission to have a radio & their own coffeemaker, & guards to protect them from the vengeful Bobs around them, wanting to give them a personalized BSOD.
>However, it's being bought up as fast as it's being >sold...probably by investors who now consider it a buying opportunity.
Or by MSFT, for several reasons:
1) To calm investors' fears (gotta use that multibillion war chest now or never); 2) To prepare to meet the demands of employees who will be shortly fully vested with their 4,000 shares of stock (most of whom will shortly bail); 3) Because buying their own stock is a good investment in MSFT's own eyes (YMMV).
We'll know if this is the case in a couple of weeks when the SEC releases the insider trading records.
I see a small error in your reasoning. Try the following substitution:
s/arbitrary/subjective/g
There, your argument makes more sense.
If we say that a certain activity is wrong, say selling beer on a Sunday, making a law against it is arbitrary, & we justify it by appealing to a common ideology: e.g., we are all religious, Sunday is an important religious day, & drinking beer on Sundays is sacrilegous.
Being persuaded by this appeal to the common ideology is mostly subjective: we all want to be religiosly good, so any activity that reduces sacrilege *must* be good.
Yes, you can get into antitrust trouble for ``dumping". Or overcharging. Or price fixing. These, however, are used as evidence of abusing a monopoly position.
If someone sells a product at too low a price, it may be because you are trying to destroy your competition. If someone overcharges or fixes a price, this may be because the person is exploiting the fact no other company can successfully compete with said businessman.
Or it may be because said businessman sucks at running a company.
That is why we had a careful, extended trial to ascertain the evidence. To make an objective determination, not a subjective one. One of the most damning bits of evidence in Jackson's FoF (You have read this document, right? Or are you just arguing based on subjective feelings gained from reading a mediocre dead novelist?) was the fact Microsoft delayed work on badly needed bug fixes for Windows 98 in order to devote the manpower to tying IE more closely to the OS, in order to further deny Netscape access to their market.
In other words, when faced with a choice whether to give good service to their customer base or destroy a competitor, MS willingly shorted on service in order to destroy their competitor.
If that's not a crime to you, then I don't know how to reach you. Maybe suggest that you get out into the Real World(tm)?
>Someone ought to start a Buzzword Bingo for Microsoft and their press releases. Its pretty obvious everyone >speaking for them have been told to use the words "innovate", "innovative" and "great technology" as many >times as absolutely possible.
So I'm not the only person who noticed how BillG's little speech sounded like the speechifications of some PHB CEO?
No, I didn't see or hear him give the speech. But reading it on the MS website a few minutes ago, I felt that these are the exact same words that any B-school graduate in a black suit, pressed button-down shirt & red power tie would say, having learned that his company has just been convicted of criminal behavior. (And perhaps calculating just how fast & quietly he can cash in his stocks & options before the US Marshalls come for him?)
The Findings of Fact the honorable jurist Jackson has released is a crippling body blow against MS. The next few years will not be fun ones in Redmond, no matter what this PHB says, or whether he rants how this is ``the most stupid thing he has ever heard", lacing his language with spittle-lipped profanity, or ``respectfully disagrees."
>No, that's ``wrong'' as in morally wrong. The Sherman Antitrust Act is arbitrary law.
Uh, all law is ``arbitrary". A lot of it is based on appeals to some expression of ideology, or to legal due process (such as precedent), but when all is said & done, law is what the designated people in a government say it is.
Explain yourself in more detail. Or be content with being nothing more than a flake. Who spouts gibberish that sounds arguably Libertarian.
Geoff
Re:Weenies, Crybabies, Money-grubbers, Fakers, Los
on
NetSlaves
·
· Score: 1
>This is not a troll. I believe these guys are in it for the money. They know zip about the high-tech working poor or other mistreated entities; they >just thought they could make a killing on a book.
I was wondering about that. As I've metioned elsewhere, I've been toying with putting in somekind of form my own horror stories about life at the bottom of the high tech food chain. At one point I was thinking of submitting this for use on their website until I noticed that they retained all present & future copyrights to material published there.
Yeah, right. I might not care if I ever see a cent from my writings, but if anyone's going to make money from it, I want to be first in line.
Slashdot Mirror
>I'll wait for further verification.
Hokay, I saw Caldera's press release at www.drdos.com. I admit this is for real.
For shame.
Geoff
> In other words, do you really think Caldera truly expected to get $1.6G from Micros~1? Do you know anyone
>who has really expected to get what they sue for?
I don't know where Caldera came up with their number, but if it had any justification, I'd assume they'd settle for a figure much closer to that $1.6x10^9.
If you figure that the lawyer costs usually run 20% for settling out of court, 30% if it goes to trial & 40% if it goes to appeals, then it would make sense for them to settle for a quarter to half of what they wanted. Caldera would only settle for 10% of their claimed damages if they realised that their case wasn't anywhere near as solid as they thought -- in other words, they needed a way to retreat without losing face or suffering more damages.
If this is the case, Micros~1 in effect gave them a quarter to go bother somebody else. Which would be odd, since up to this moment, it looked as if they had a very solid case against Micros~1.
I'll wait for further verification. This just might be smoke & mirrors, like the FOAF who claimed Micros~1 was willing to settle with the DOJ by making Windows ``open source."
Geoff
>As much as I dislike Microsoft, is it really right to take their money in this fashion?
Well, let's look at this from an ethical point of view.
Corporate ethics -- & this applies to any corporation, not just Microsoft or high-tech ones -- are simple: maximize shareholder value by any arguably legal means possible. And the ``arguably legal" is a point that I may be wrong about: after all, corporations have done cost-benefit studies to see if the cost of a repair or a modification is cheaper than liability lawsuits, then chose the solution based on the bottom line.
In other words, Microsoft does not care if a product costs the consumer more: it only cares if the product makes Microsoft more money. Customer satisfaction, loyalty or even safety are a distant & subordinate second priority.
And corporations will carefully read contracts & study agreements with each other in hope of exploiting ambiguities to their advantage.
And if the corporate officers don't act this way? The price of the corporation's stock goes down, & the officers get to look for ``other opportunities" -- after all, CEOs, COOs, & others of that ilk never seem to get fired.
Now if you talk about interpersonal ethics, then we worry about doing what is right or fair because this will effect how people treat us in the future. Generosity to others has the possibility of returning to us.
Generosity to any corporation only adds to its bottom line & stock value -- & probably not to the well-being of even its employees.
This was not theft: Microsoft did something stupid. And thousands of people took advantage of Microsoft's stupidity. Just as Microsoft would take advantage of another corporation's stupidity.
Geoff
You left one detail out of this otherwise right-on account:
The true problem callers are the distinct minority of all callers. The rule ``80 percent of your time will be taken up by 20 percent of your customers" definitely applies in this case. And the average caller -- the guy who needs the DUN settings for the ISP, someone who calls with a known problem, & gets the packaged answer before she or he even finishes their question -- they are forgotten before the next break.
And if we didn't laugh at the jerks, the lusers, the alternative would not be pretty. I know several people who did their tech-support time for Netscape who would like to meet George Gilder's brother late some night with baseball bats & tire irons. And maybe George Gilder, too, while they're at it.
Geoff
> So, what does that make me? A tight-arse, pighead with an attitude?
If the shoe fits, wear it.
Geoff
LL makes lots of good points here. My $0.02 into the pot is as follows . . .
There are three cost/profit points with software:
1) writing it;
2) maintaining it;
3) supporting it.
Microsoft's model is based on charging for the first point, & pushing the cost of the third onto a third party (e.g., you contact Compaq or Dell for help with Windows). Due to their policy of ignoring or thwarting backwards compatibility, they evade the cost of maintaining their code.
``Enterprise level" models charge a token amount for the first point, with the idea of making money on the second & third points. (Last I heard, Sun charges $250K a year just to talk to someone on the phone. I have a hard time comprehending that the average company can use that much support, even if we calculate it as $500/ an hour.)
The Open Source model is that an individual invests her/his time on the first point, then shares the software with the general public in hope that they will repay her/him with help with the second point. And in theory, both parties make money charging for the third point (e.g., teach classes, do consulting, etc.)
As LL points out, the first model is inherently broken: we pay for software that ends up imperfect, & we have no way of fixing -- either by ourselves or thru the company. The second model has a proven track record -- the software is more reliable, & companies make money -- but the price to users in that model is far greater than the one Microsoft uses.
The Open Source model promises a way to meet both desires: reliable software at an affordable rate. The question now, though, is if this model can fulfill this promise.
Geoff
If Time wants to highlight the idea of ecommerce, why not nominate someone who has figured out how to make money from it?
Amazon's original model was the bait of an online forum for discussing books, & the hook of selling every one of these books to the public at a discount. Obviously it did not work, since (1) they have not made money from it, (2) Amazon has resorted to spamming people at different times, (3) they decided to go into selling other items.
If you want to be a middleman on the Internet, you have to find a way to bring the manufacturer & customer together & make a profit from it. Omidyar has, & countless ebusiness sites -- including Amazon -- have followed his lead.
ObBadModeration: expressing one's opinion thoughtfully, & with a lack of profanity is not flamebait. Even if you don't agree with what is said.
Geoff
You never escape tech support.
The lusers come for you at night, drag you helplessly from your warm bed into the converted warehouse filled with second-hand cubicles, tie you down to a chair & tape a headset to your head, forcing you to spend hours supporting a product you never saw before for people who are genetically unable to tell which end of a floppy disk does into their computer.
No wait. That was a dream I had the other night. Never mind.
Geoff
It's a hoax. Look at
a me.hoax.html
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kg
My guess is that someone noticed that the game tries to connect to the internet when the player wants to save the high score, & assumed the worst. I've played it enough times to seriously doubt that it's a trojan -- it's just a cheesy & fun little game.
You can also follow the thread in alt.comp.virus, too -- although last I looked it had degenerated into a flamewar.
Geoff
At first read, this whole story sounds like an Urban Legend. Million-dollar piece of equipment turns up in NYC, so NYC's Finest tracks it down, breaks down the door & takes it back. They even manage to track it down to recipient's father's apartment, where they brought the missing equipment only a few moments before.
;-)
The only thing that kept me from entirely dismissing this story was the fact they had a name for the recipient. And that fact made me wonder what the WHOLE story was.
And now that RedX has uncovered it, & shared the link to it with us, case closed.
Boy, what Urban Legend will next appear about Microsoft? Will we hear about a certain video tape BillG & his wife made turning up at a Redmond Blockbuster? Perhaps it will recount how the Mrs brought Billg to, uh, a successful compile by reciting the SAT scores of female Microsoft employees?
Geoff
>AOL Is not going to get a penny. Do you really think that these spammers have that kind of money?
You're probably right. These mooks said they consulted their lawyer at each point, who if effect told them ``don't bother responding. They can't do anything to you."
On the other hand, evading paying of a debt will get them into trouble: AOL can sell the debt to another group of bottomfish, who will eager spend the next few years harassing them (perhaps in the form of **SPAM**?) until they pay up. Even if they go bankrupt, the judgement will stand for several years.
Geoff
Your aunt got better treatment than my great-grandmother.
It was the late 1940's, she was showing signs of what might have been either Alzheimers or just plain senility. What was the accepted cure in that time?
Frontal lobotomy.
To say that it failed to cure the problem is an understatement. At least with medications, one can always stop taking them if they don't work.
Geoff
Well, I'm the one who said they were ``Black Magick", so blame me. Although Hubbard claimed to have broken up a ring of Satanists, & this is as close as he got to any such group.
What he didn't say is that he fully assisted in the rite of Babalon Rising, & the manner he broke up the group was just as AC said: ``Ron made off with the lodge's treasury, the leader's boat, and the leader's wife."
Geoff
>Me, I blame Heinlein for the Scientologists. He and Hubbard had a bet over which one of them could start a major religion first. Guess who won?
>
You're being too harsh on Heinlein. I figure Heinlein thought they were making a joke, & besides he had better things to do with his time. Like write, visit with fans, & live his life.
Hubbard seemed enamored with the idea of starting a religion. First thing he did after leaving the service was connecting up with a Black Magic group in Pasadena that was affiliated with Alester Croweley. Then he convinced a number of people (including John Campbell the editor & A.E. van Vogt the writer) to help him start Dianetics. (Campbell & Vogt later left Dianetics when Hubbard demonstrated his inability to tell the difference between his own wallet & the Dianetic Foundation funds, a handicap that contributed to the downfall of that organization.) Then, about 9 years after that, he finally incorporated the Church of Scientology (as well as three other self-described churches). Never mind that any time Hubbard writes about God, it sounds much like what an atheist who did all of his research playing D & D (or watching old ``In Search of..." reruns) would write.
By that point, almost every science-fiction writer who had known Hubbard before the Second World War had disassociated himself from Hubbard. In a subculture that most Americans considered a little nutty (at best), he was considered a whole 'nother fruitcake.
Geoff
>> If they lose, they take it to a higher court.
>
>Actually, they do not. The entire cult of scientology could be destroyed by a single hostile ruling from a high court.
Were that possible.
Several high-ranking members of the CoS (including Hubbard's own wife) were arrested, tried & convicted of staging their own espionage against US government agencies in the late seventies. (The CoS has been investigated time & again by the FDA & the IRS.) It was an activity worthy of the KGB, & is why one spokesperson has stated that the CoS has an intelligence agency that is second only to the FBI.
And if you ask a devoted Scientologist about this, if you get any sort of answer, he or she will mutter that they don't do that sort of thing anymore, you shouldn't hold them responsible for prior acts, & that all they did was misuse a few photocopiers.
And what about the IRS? For about 20 years the IRS & the CoS were engaged in a life-or-death battle over the CoS' tax status, which was settled with much secrecy in 1992. Six years later, the Wall Street Journal finally uncovered the terms of this settlement which can be summarized in four words: the IRS caved in. I guess filing over 2000 suits aginst the IRS & every known employee will do that.
Imagine organizing several thousand people to dig a hole from Kansas to China -- & actually having dug several miles into the ground, despite cave-ins, privation, exposure to open weather & being unable to solve the problem of where to put the soil & rock moved. That is the kind of fanaticism & stupidity that the CoS demonstrates on a daily basis -- & with similar results. Except a hole to China would have some value as a tourist attraction: only the most twisted would visit Clearwater, Florida to see what the CoS have done to that once sleepy town.
I have had trouble writing this post because I find I keep writing things about the Cos that can be summarized by ``They are **weird**, man. They are so weird that you have to see what they do to believe it. And they get away with all of this weird stuff because no one believes they do it!" And I have seen what they have done, read the accounts, & it leaves me speechless.
>I know the cult reads slashdot. You're going down.
Eventually they will go down. This group grinds thru people at an appalling rate, & the pool of people they can recruit from is growing smaller. However, they will destroy countless families, lives, & companies before then.
Geoff
Judge Jackson's FOF singled out Bill Gates in several places as the instigator of Microsoft's monopolistic actions. Some have seen this as suggesting that Gates may suffer some of the penalties from this suit.
My understanding is that as an officer of a corporation, Gates is shielded from any liability in any suit of law against MS. Is my understanding correct? Could Gates be held liable & punished with fines, or being forced to divest his MS stock holdings -- or similar penalties?
Could another lawsuit use this FOF & put Gates at risk for penalties?
(Sorry if the above sounds convoluted when the title basically says it all.)
Geoff
Yes. It's Friday. In Europe, everyone gets to go home at 2:30p. In the US, we stay at our desks & malinger instead.
Geoff
>"Provided it did occur, there would be precious little time to spend making pleas on usenet or elsewhere."
>
>Ok. Let's think about this for a minute. Anyone dropping shiny boxes that talk and allow you to connect to the internet would (logically) be
>dropped by someone sympathetic to your plight. How hard would it be to make your home site the default homepage of the box? How
>tough would it be to build a GPS into the box? How about 512 bit encryption?
The problem we have here is one of triage. That is, when you a crisis you have to know which victims can be helped & which cannot. To use an analogy, if you are a doctor in a town with a pandemic of plague (aka The Black Death), who do you give the antidote to first -- the healthy, the sick, or the dying?
Giving these web devices to the desperate in North Korea is akin to giving the antidote to plague to the hopeless cases.
I would expect that this farmer would trade this web device for food. Given this is North Korea, the chances anyone has food to trade with is slim or none, so this item is worthless -- actually it's less than worthless, because if the soldiers found it they'd kill this farmer.
Remember: the peasants did not start the French Revolution because they'd been starving for years, they started it because they had a good harvest or two after starving for years, & were finally able to get their strength back & do something about the privation they had suffered.
>" It probably won't get an 'A', but atleast it'll get moderated up a point, maybe even two."
>
>That's not very funny.
I didn't think anyone was making a joke. No one gets a warm fuzzy feeling when she/he admits someone is about to die & there's not a thing that can be done about it.
Geoff
>Forcing them to release the source to their operating systems is probably the most brutal and unlikely thing that could happen. Open source is a
>pop phenomenon. There's no proof anywhere that it's a sustainable business idea. Yes, Redhat's doing great, as is Cobalt, and everyone else is
>lining up to get in on the IPO's, but there's no reason to believe that in the long term, it will be sustainable (not trying to bash anyone here, but
>opensource has only been in the mainstream for a year or two now).
Actually you can make a living from Open Source: look at Cygnus (or whatever their name is now -- maintainers of gcc) or Aladdin Software (maintainers of ghostscript): by being the expert source on the freely available code, each has made a comfortable living from doing maintenance or consulting.
Now look carefully at what I just said: one company per software package is doing well. If you get several, there's commercial pressure to fork the code base.
And if the courts forced MS to surrender their source code to all of the versions of Windows & DOS out there, MS could still keep their monopoly by selling themselves as ``the best source for expertise with Windows," then return to their abusive old habits by distributing their ``original & best" version in the same abusive manner as before.
Even though I feel that Gates & Co. are guilty & deserve punishment, I strongly suspect that they won't be hit with the appropriate penalties. Especially since even the computer geeks & nerds (that is, everyone who understands the technology) disagree what the appropriate penalties should be.
Geoff
If only.
Heard about cases where landlords were sentenced to live in their own slum housing? In at least one case, the landlord spent the money to make his apartment liveable, whie the rest of the building continued to crumble around him.
Gates & Ballmer would probably work out a deal with the PHBs at the support company to make their time far more pleasant: second line support (i.e. no calls along the line of ``which one is the backslash key again?"), a cubicle they could actually stand in, permission to have a radio & their own coffeemaker, & guards to protect them from the vengeful Bobs around them, wanting to give them a personalized BSOD.
Geoff
>However, it's being bought up as fast as it's being
>sold...probably by investors who now consider it a buying opportunity.
Or by MSFT, for several reasons:
1) To calm investors' fears (gotta use that multibillion war chest now or never);
2) To prepare to meet the demands of employees who will be shortly fully vested with their 4,000 shares of stock (most of whom will shortly bail);
3) Because buying their own stock is a good investment in MSFT's own eyes (YMMV).
We'll know if this is the case in a couple of weeks when the SEC releases the insider trading records.
Geoff
I see a small error in your reasoning. Try the following substitution:
s/arbitrary/subjective/g
There, your argument makes more sense.
If we say that a certain activity is wrong, say selling beer on a Sunday, making a law against it is arbitrary, & we justify it by appealing to a common ideology: e.g., we are all religious, Sunday is an important religious day, & drinking beer on Sundays is sacrilegous.
Being persuaded by this appeal to the common ideology is mostly subjective: we all want to be religiosly good, so any activity that reduces sacrilege *must* be good.
Yes, you can get into antitrust trouble for ``dumping". Or overcharging. Or price fixing. These, however, are used as evidence of abusing a monopoly position.
If someone sells a product at too low a price, it may be because you are trying to destroy your competition. If someone overcharges or fixes a price, this may be because the person is exploiting the fact no other company can successfully compete with said businessman.
Or it may be because said businessman sucks at running a company.
That is why we had a careful, extended trial to ascertain the evidence. To make an objective determination, not a subjective one. One of the most damning bits of evidence in Jackson's FoF (You have read this document, right? Or are you just arguing based on subjective feelings gained from reading a mediocre dead novelist?) was the fact Microsoft delayed work on badly needed bug fixes for Windows 98 in order to devote the manpower to tying IE more closely to the OS, in order to further deny Netscape access to their market.
In other words, when faced with a choice whether to give good service to their customer base or destroy a competitor, MS willingly shorted on service in order to destroy their competitor.
If that's not a crime to you, then I don't know how to reach you. Maybe suggest that you get out into the Real World(tm)?
Geoff
>Someone ought to start a Buzzword Bingo for Microsoft and their press releases. Its pretty obvious everyone
>speaking for them have been told to use the words "innovate", "innovative" and "great technology" as many
>times as absolutely possible.
So I'm not the only person who noticed how BillG's little speech sounded like the speechifications of some PHB CEO?
No, I didn't see or hear him give the speech. But reading it on the MS website a few minutes ago, I felt that these are the exact same words that any B-school graduate in a black suit, pressed button-down shirt & red power tie would say, having learned that his company has just been convicted of criminal behavior. (And perhaps calculating just how fast & quietly he can cash in his stocks & options before the US Marshalls come for him?)
The Findings of Fact the honorable jurist Jackson has released is a crippling body blow against MS. The next few years will not be fun ones in Redmond, no matter what this PHB says, or whether he rants how this is ``the most stupid thing he has ever heard", lacing his language with spittle-lipped profanity, or ``respectfully disagrees."
Geoff
>No, that's ``wrong'' as in morally wrong. The Sherman Antitrust Act is arbitrary law.
Uh, all law is ``arbitrary". A lot of it is based on appeals to some expression of ideology, or to legal due process (such as precedent), but when all is said & done, law is what the designated people in a government say it is.
Explain yourself in more detail. Or be content with being nothing more than a flake. Who spouts gibberish that sounds arguably Libertarian.
Geoff
>This is not a troll. I believe these guys are in it for the money. They know zip about the high-tech working poor or other mistreated entities; they
>just thought they could make a killing on a book.
I was wondering about that. As I've metioned elsewhere, I've been toying with putting in somekind of form my own horror stories about life at the bottom of the high tech food chain. At one point I was thinking of submitting this for use on their website until I noticed that they retained all present & future copyrights to material published there.
Yeah, right. I might not care if I ever see a cent from my writings, but if anyone's going to make money from it, I want to be first in line.
Geoff