Microsoft Flouting DOJ Settlement? 580
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is not adhering to the terms of its deal with the DOJ. Specifically, there are allegations that it is "trying to license key pieces of its technology at inflated rates" and "thwarting its antitrust settlement with the federal government". They're charging $100,000 just to see technical info about their communication protocols, and you only get $50,000 back if you decide you don't want to license them. Whoda thunk?"
He will have to invade Syria (Score:1, Informative)
Re:supose... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a "Wonderful Life" (Score:5, Informative)
It is a great movie and stands as one of the classics.
Enron flourishes under Bush? (Score:1, Informative)
So, Enron is now stronger than ever, just like Arthur Anderson. Nothing bad has happened to either of them, right?
[FYI: you might think this is true. However, both companies have been greatly damaged. As for Ken Lay, the problem is that what he did was legal during the Clinton Administration. He could not get away with doing it now, however, thanks to reform bills that Bush signed.]
Re:supose... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There is no corporatism (Score:2, Informative)
I love how anything anti-Israel is anti-semetic. The UN resolutions were that Zionism (which is the official idealogy of israel) is rascist. WHich it is. One country for one people with the exclusion of others is rascist.
How can you say Kyoto has nothing to do with the environment. Reducing emissions is all about the environment. Another one of those unbackable statements.
No doubt you will pick up on my typos/grammar errors to slap me down and prove u are right.
Re:Reasonable and non-discriminatory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reasonable and non-discriminatory (Score:5, Informative)
This is unfair competitive practices. The whole reason they are to disclose the protocols are the remedy the damage done to the competitive landscape caused by their past wrongdoing that they have been convicted of.
The communication protocols are not to be a trade secret. That is the whole point of disclosing them. Because Microsoft has unfairly leveraged a monopoly to create new monopolies they now have to open the landscape to competition.
I would love to get a copy of MS's protocols so I could write a proper exchange connector for unix. But I don't have a hundred grand to pony up, so it ain't gonna happen.
That is exactly why it is unfair. Don't you get it? Competitors are entitled to the protocols. Microsoft is free to compete on the merits of their product, not on the secrecy of their protocols.
Re:Yes, he will. (Score:4, Informative)
Once upon a time, President Clinton had to deal with a problem. That problem was that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC, which is pronounced "the ferk") had someone up and quit. Aw shucks. Who to get? Well, our fair President, against his better judgment, got a right wing fanatic from down south to sit in the FERC. Bummer. The poor guy was right in the middle of a good job with a kewl company--trying to get rid of all that public sector crap that carries high voltage power from place to place in Dixieland. Oh well. Duty calls.
Fast forward to May 1999. The California agency for dealing with the physical consequences of the absurd right wing fantasy of "AB 1280", circa 1998 had to route the willy-nilly purchased and sold electric power in California. However, just as forecast an uncharacteristic heat wave swept northern California. It was beyond miserable. Oh my. Why were so many power plants down for maintenance? Why all at once? Why was the schedule for downtime changed? (Psssst. Hindsight informs us that the weather forecast was "beamed in" to the decision making headquarters at Enron down there where the heavenly Governor Bush promised always to look the other way.) The price of a megawatt-hour suddenly went to $400 with no ceiling in sight, and I suppose Ken Lay came in his $700 pants that day. Immediately, the California government commissioned a study. Strangely, a thorough report came through raht quick. There was a murmer about someone gaming the system. With a few more highest level power crises short term, everyone survived in California in 1999. In 2000, the evil science was refined. By 2001, the racket was licensed extortion as is common knowledge. The President of the California Public Utilities Commission (Loretta Lynch) told her top lawyer to dig in and sue the lazy bastards at the FERC, whose notions of laissez-faire included sleeping at the switch while your best friends down south print money through electric wires, choke natural gas lines, game the market, gouge customers, and bankrupt decently managed retail power companies without recourse. Why? Because Bill Clinton wanted to be "nice" to those on his right. The FERC was perverted. Yes. It happened while Clinton held ultimate responsibility. Yes. You can hang this on Clinton. However, when Bush's friends on the FERC kept assisting the milking of the California electric rate payers, after a while the conscience got a little stronger (along with the public outcry that leaked beyond the "lost-to-the-Republicans-anyway" i.e., negligible-to-W.-anyway state of California). When that racket stopped screwing California on schedule, the bets placed at the Enron power/futures/weather casinos in Houston started to lose money for their customers--typically the house itself. Just then there was a Frontline piece on public TV. I watched it. Why was it that all Ken Lay would do was laugh?
Then came August of 2001, when Ken Lay was kind enough to free up the CEO chair for Jeffry Skilling. What a guy!
You know the rest of the story, but now you know the part that we should blame on Clinton. Let the egg drip slowly down your right wing face now. You asked for it.
Re:Frivolous Lawsuit - McDonalds (Score:2, Informative)
one is in favor of frivolous cases of outlandish results; however, it is
important to understand some points that were not reported in most of
the stories about the case. McDonalds coffee was not only hot, it was
scalding -- capable of almost instantaneous destruction of skin, flesh
and muscle. Here's the whole story.
Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the passenger seat of
her grandson's car when she was severely burned by McDonalds' coffee in
February 1992. Liebeck, 79 at the time, ordered coffee that was served
in a styrofoam cup at the drivethrough window of a local McDonalds.
After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and
stopped momentarily so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her
coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often
charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in
motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed
the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from
the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled
into her lap.
The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next
to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full
thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body,
including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin
areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she
underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement
treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonalds
refused.
During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700
claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims
involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This
history documented McDonalds' knowledge about the extent and nature of
this hazard.
McDonalds also said during discovery that, based on a consultants
advice, it held its coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees fahrenheit to
maintain optimum taste. He admitted that he had not evaluated the
safety ramifications at this temperature. Other establishments sell
coffee at substantially lower temperatures, and coffee served at home is
generally 135 to 140 degrees.
Further, McDonalds' quality assurance manager testified that the company
actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185
degrees, plus or minus five degrees. He also testified that a burn
hazard exists with any food substance served at 140 degrees or above,
and that McDonalds coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured
into styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn
the mouth and throat. The quality assurance manager admitted that burns
would occur, but testified that McDonalds had no intention of reducing
the "holding temperature" of its coffee.
Plaintiffs' expert, a scholar in thermodynamics applied to human skin
burns, testified that liquids, at 180 degrees, will cause a full
thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds. Other testimony
showed that as the temperature decreases toward 155 degrees, the extent
of the burn relative to that temperature decreases exponentially. Thus,
if Liebeck's spill had involved coffee at 155 degrees, the liquid would
have cooled and given her time to avoid a serious burn.
McDonalds asserted that customers buy coffee on their way to work or
home, intending to consume it there. However, the companys own research
showed that customers intend to consume the coffee immediately while
driving.
McDonalds also argued that consumers know coffee is hot and that its
customers want it that way. The company admitted its customers were
unaware that they could suffer thirddegree burns from the coffee and
that a statement on the
MS Protocol standards are a PITA (Score:2, Informative)
We have to take firewalls into consideration of our customers' demands. Currently, we use the internal Java support for firewalls, which is http proxy, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5.
Some of our customers have been requesting support for Microsoft's proxy server, and feel that it's unreasonable of us to not support their environment. This results in lost sales, plain and simple. The fact that Microsoft wants to charge us $100k for this information is not relevant to these people. They just want it to work with their network.
Telling IT managers that they have to change to accomodate a piece of software is unreasonable, no matter what the underlying reasons are. THEY are the CUSTOMER. It's their money and they get to choose how to spend it.
The $100k plus r&d time to implement a new java class would have a crippling effect on our price point, and would cause a number of our customers to turn from us.
This decision has a serious trickle down effect that can't be ignored. It is not only stifling competition, but stifling development of new software and the marketplace.
Re:supose... (Score:2, Informative)
Aargh (Score:3, Informative)