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First Class Action Suit for Microsoft
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Re:is this copyright violation? (Score:1)
(Halt the flame throwers. I don't really think that.)
The same thing that makes the posted NY Times article illegal makes the above illegal. You can hardly demand legal protection for your rights while trampling over the rights of others.
Re:Idiot. (Score:1)
Re:Couple good reasons (Score:1)
But that gives you performance. Let's look at linux and all these frame buffers drivers sitting in the kernel now - a bad one of those and your system crashes - just you wait until hardware vendors start shipping linux frame buffer drivers for there video cards!
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Re:Hey I want in! (Score:1)
Regards, Ralph.
Re:Look! (Score:1)
I do agree the lawyers are just money sucking leaches on humanity in this case. But there are some very valid points to thier lawsuit, and if they dont do it, someone else will I guess.
Didnt AOL have a lawsuit like this? About rounding up 5 second time estimates on usage, back when then charged hourly? I believe they lost that one for a multi million settlement.
Later
Re:This comment is "Insightful", moderators? (Score:1)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I like your sig! (Score:1)
Re:is this copyright violation? (Score:2)
Zontar The Mindless,
Where ? (Re:Look! linux!) (Score:1)
mcd coffee spandex (Score:2)
whether 70+ year old ladies should go around wearing tight spandex.
Lawyers (Score:1)
Copyright (Score:2)
/. isn't liable because of common carrier status. But they were take down this post, then they would be liable for all simular future posts.
How about a new moderation category "copyright violation"?
This is why... (Score:1)
Does Microsoft have the cash? (Score:1)
I'm trying to feel pity....trying....failing...
Re:Make moderators accountable (Score:2)
That's what Meta Moderation is all about. The system knows who moderated who to what. Meta Moderation, if in disagreement, costs the moderator a little karma, if I'm not mistaken.
As far as filtering based on score, that's exactly what moderation is about. And for those who don't have the time nor the inclination to read 180 messages, setting their filter to 2 or 3 is great. Yes you will miss some good comments, but you will also miss most of the useless ones. Let's be honest -- in 180 comments, how many are truly "big" enough to warrant being read? Maybe a dozen. The information scourers like myself will stay at zero to see (almost) everything, but most busy people will sit at the higher levels to just skim.
Look! (Score:1)
Dan
BeOS (Score:1)
let b= cost of Be OS; w= cost of windows OEM; s= $ amout customers got screwed because of M' monopoly
b = 0
s = w - b
therefore, w = s
q.e.d.
Of course, you need to take into account the cost difference of all of windows' nice little features.
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Re:Commentary? (Score:2)
On the other hand, the consumer cost of the OS upgrade is too high, but since newer programs require the upgrade (that is, as Joe Public sees it), they can charge higher for it.
MS is playing both sides of maintaining their monopoly while still raking in hugh profits.
Commentary? (Score:2)
Re:MS-DOS 6.22 (Score:1)
Only those who paid for mswindows? (Score:1)
Re:Does Microsoft have the cash? (Score:1)
Last I check, Solaris for Intel was free (or damn close to it) for development use, and $100 for non-commercial use. If you own a Sun workstation, Solaris is automatically licensed to you.
I >may be wrong, but I also believe that an unlimited user Solaris license is less then $1k, but windows9x sure as hell isn't a server. FreeBSD is what $40 for the CDs and book? There are umpteen bazillion linux distros ranging from a $1 for a CD to $100 for cd, manuals, and "support".
I ask however, when exactly did microsoft ever support anyone... the only experience I had with microsoft technical support resulted in. "I'm sorry, we do not support your video card" Well, no $hit, thats why I'm calling. Microsofts support consists of holding you on the phone long enough that your free support is used up and then they can charge you.
Unfortunatly the real problem here is... simply, what do you compare windows9x to? It is not a server, its a workstation, and most other OSes, although they can and do function as workstations, are designed to be servers. I can't think of many TRUE workstation ONLY OSes like win95 out there (Maybe MacOS). OS/2 was more akin to NT then 95, so thats not fair.
My personal opinion is that selling Win9x at $100 for a COMPLETE (non-upgrade) copy is far to much. I don't care WHAT you say about R&D, testing, implementation, there is absolutely NO WAY you will EVER make me believe that microsoft had to sell Win9x for more then $20 a copy and STILL make a killing. After the product is released, its nothing but profit from there on out. How many millions of copies were sold? At a dollar a peice, they should have paid microsofts bills for R&D, and salaries of these people for a while, let alone all the other products that came from with the Win9x series (Office9x, Development software, server licenses) The question I have is, wouldn't it be nice to see them get hit with... a fine of about %50 of thier net worth? The only down side to it, it wouldn't do anything more then just really piss them off I think.
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:1)
You're right... but at least with a Linux-based system I can find out what libraries are used by what software or take a look at the last accessed/modified dates and trim to my heart's desire. I used to do that in Windows... I had a "/junk" directory and I'd move the full path of files I thought were useless into it and run for a while... if I didn't use it in a couple weeks, it vanished.
In the end it became a choice between updating all the packages by hand, or installing from a later distribution and porting across all the config changes. I chose the latter because it is a fact that entropy increases in any system over time.
Again correct.
Micro$oft suits (Score:1)
Re:Look! (Score:2)
I was a longterm Amiga user who loved those machines. Criticise me if you will, but I like Amigas. Now, I'm not trying to blame Microsoft for the death of the Amiga - contributory factor, perhaps, but it went thanks to massive incompetence at Commodore in the main. So, I looked at the market, wanting a new platform. I couldn't get another Amiga seriously. I couldn't get a BeOS machine. I could get a Mac (which I actually quite like...) but I'd then be in a very similar position to that which had made me dump Amigas - little or no software. So, much to my displeasure, I get a Windows 98 PC. The OS is horrible in most respects, the hardware is a triumph of engineering effort over basic design and it shows in some big ways. Do I like the machine? No, not really. Did I have a practical choice? No, not really. Do I think Microsoft have harmed the market? Of course.
Greg
Re:Fsck Armageddon, This is Hell (Score:1)
No matter how evil you think Microsoft are, they pale in comparison to lawyers. Remember, they were hated even when Shakespeare wrote "Henry IV"... :-)
For those without passwords... (Score:5)
Microsoft Faces a Class Action on 'Monopoly'
By STEVE LOHR
Lawyers say they will file a class-action suit against Microsoft on Monday on behalf of millions of Californians, in the first of what legal experts say could become a flood of private litigation springing from the Justice Department's antitrust action against the company.
The suit, to be filed by three longtime class-action lawyers, will accuse Microsoft of using its monopoly in operating systems software to overcharge buyers of Windows 95 and Windows 98. The complaint does not estimate the financial impact to Windows users, but the lawyers are seeking triple damages if the suit leads to an eventual finding of financial harm.
The big software maker's vulnerability to private suits increased sharply earlier this month when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft. Jackson concluded that Microsoft is a monopoly whose anticompetitive acts have stifled innovation and harmed consumers.
Unlike conclusions of law, a judge's findings of fact in a federal antitrust case are not generally considered admissible as evidence in private suits. But Jackson's findings agreed so strongly with the case presented by the Justice Department and 19 states that antitrust experts say his final verdict, expected early next year, will almost surely find that Microsoft is a monopoly that violated the law.
The biggest financial threat to Microsoft may come not from corporate suits, but from class actions on behalf of the millions of users of the company's industry-standard Windows operating system. Such consumer suits, legal experts say, have the potential to cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, in damage claims. "This is the start of the race to get to the courthouse," observed Stephen Axinn, a partner in Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider who is an antitrust litigator. "It could be like the tobacco litigation, in the sense that you have lots of plaintiffs lawyers in different states sharing information."
Reducing the financial risk from such litigation, according to legal experts, should be a powerful incentive for Microsoft to seek an out-of-court settlement in the government case. The chances of a settlement appeared to increase last Friday when Jackson appointed Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge and leading antitrust scholar, as mediator in settlement talks between Microsoft and the Justice Department and the states.
"The prospect of a flood of private follow-on cases -- with their triple damages in private antitrust cases -- are lawsuits with potentials that Microsoft simply cannot ignore," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa law school.
Yet, publicly at least, Microsoft insists that its risk from private antitrust suits is exaggerated. "That litigation is something we're prepared to defend and defend aggressively, if necessary," said Tom Burt, a Microsoft lawyer.
In consumer class actions, legal experts say, Microsoft has defenses that will lessen its potential liability and present formidable obstacles for plaintiffs. For example, most computer users do not purchase Windows directly from retail software stores in shrink-wrapped boxes. Generally, the operating system is already loaded on personal computers when they are purchased. An estimated 90 percent of Windows 98 users got it preloaded on new machines.
The legal significance is that a 1977 Supreme Court ruling -- the Illinois Brick Company vs. the State of Illinois -- declared that indirect purchasers of goods could not recover damages in class-action antitrust cases.
Since 1977, however, 18 states including California and New York have passed laws allowing indirect purchasers to qualify for triple damages in antitrust class actions.
And while Jackson's findings do provide a road map for plaintiffs' lawyers, there remains a lot to prove in court. Jackson, for example, found that Microsoft has a monopoly, but he did not say precisely when it achieved monopoly status. He found consumers were harmed by Microsoft, but the class-action lawyers must put a figure on how much users were overcharged.
"The econometrics on damages will be very complex," Axinn said. "There's no question that Microsoft has some good cards to play on defense."
Still, Jackson provided class-action lawyers with some tantalizing details. In asserting that consumers may have paid more for Windows than they would have in a competitive market, he cited a Microsoft study suggesting possible prices of $49 and $89 for the retail upgrade to Windows 98. Microsoft chose to charge $89, which the study identified as the "revenue maximizing" price.
"That portion of the judge's findings was an invitation to a class-action lawsuit," said Robert Litan, a former senior official in the Justice Department's antitrust division who is now at the Brookings Institution.
Microsoft replies that the November 1997 study was garden-variety pricing analysis. Trying to estimate an optimal, or revenue maximizing, price is something that every consumer product company routinely does for each of its offerings.
The judge's discussion of the Microsoft pricing study, according to Terry Gross of Gross & Belsky in San Francisco, is "a clear marker." But, he said, it is mainly the overall drift of Jackson findings that provides a solid starting point for the class-action suit that he and his colleagues are filing.
"Throughout the judge's findings," Gross said, "he makes it clear that all Windows users were harmed by paying too high a price for Windows."
The class action, which the lawyers plan to file in California Superior Court in San Francisco, does not specify the number of members in the class of both individual and corporate users of Windows. But Gross estimated that the number in California was "at least 10 million," and he said the suit covers Windows users since the introduction of Windows 95. The complaint does not estimate the financial damage to Windows users in California.
Earlier this month, a small New York advertising company that purchased Windows, Seastrom Associates Ltd., sued Microsoft and sought class-action status to represent thousands of similar corporate customers in New York state.
But to take on Microsoft in a class action, legal experts say, will require experience, skill and resources. They note that the three lawyers behind the California suit -- Gross, Daniel J. Mogin of San Diego, and Francis O. Scarpulla of San Francisco -- are experienced state class-action lawyers who have worked for two decades on antitrust cases involving products ranging from snack foods to tires.
The lawyers say they will continue their litigation even if the federal case is settled out of court. Jackson's findings of fact alone, they insist, ease the way for suits like theirs.
"A settlement in the government's case wouldn't make our case go away," Gross said. "We still have these findings that Microsoft is a monopoly that abused its power by overcharging consumers."
Typically, only a final ruling -- not the findings of fact -- can be used as evidence in other cases. But a judge's fact findings and final ruling are ordinarily issued at the same time. Jackson took the unusual step of separating his findings of fact from his findings of law, which gave his fact findings greater importance.
Still, legal experts say Microsoft will surely challenge any attempt by class-action lawyers to build a case on the findings of fact alone.
Reposted without permission. Feel free to moderate down or delete if you need to CYOA, slashdot owner types.
class action? (Score:1)
Re:Look! (Score:1)
To be perfectly honest I somehow feel that they are trying to limit my choices...
Last Post! (Score:1)
Re:mcd coffee spandex (Score:1)
I still believe that the pants contributed as much
to the woman's injuries as the coffee. Some people like their BATH WATER hotter than what comes out of your mr. coffee. I'll need to get
a thermometer to test the temperature of the coffee made by my (vintage) percolator, but I do
know that the water comes within a degree or two of boiling. Many a morning I have splashed a bit from the cup onto my hand without 3rd degree burns, but then I've touched an alloy exhaust manifold on a vw bus that's been going uphill for a few hours without third degree burns either. I don't expect everybody's skin is the same, and I'm sure that a 79-80 year old woman would have far more sensitive skin. I also know that even in the "old days", the coffee served by mcdonalds could be drunk from the cup.
Regardless of any of this stuff, the main point of the coffee lawsuit is that McDonalds rudely refused to pay the woman's medical expenses, and dismissed her complaint out-of-hand. That's what the suit was about, and why the arbitrary "amount of money mcdonalds makes on one day's coffee sales" in damages were considered reasonable.
Anyway, in response to your comment, I'll mouth off whenever I feel like it. If you can flame me hotter than a vw exhaust manifold, maybe I'll chill
Regards, James "never had that problem with a slurpee" McGill
Re:Greed is the root of evil (Score:1)
Just go away. Your argument has been voiced and disproved so many times its not even worth arguing anymore. You are simply wrong. If someone should take responsibility for their actions it is Microsoft, and if you want a fine example of how not to do that just read their licenses. Just imagine if they 'took responsibility for their actions' and paid back what their substandard dung has cost in lost work and buisness to those suffering from the bugs. The total value of Microsoft wouldnt even begin to cover that.
Re:Look! (Score:2)
The problem here is the barrier to entry. It's huge, which isn't the case with the car parts analogy.
Greg
Re:Hey I want in! (Score:1)
The plaintiff benefits from punitive damages in order to encourage the pursuit of punitive damages.
These punishments are determined by a court and are, in theory, justly applied against a defenendent. What does it matter who receives the benefit from the award?
There is a conflict of interest in giving these awards to the community in that it is the people, through their courts and juries, who would determine the damage AND benefit.
If you feel that the punitive damages are excessive, then consider support for tort reform. Fix the right problem.
IANALB Comments (Score:2)
First, Hawk and many others had already warned that many such lawsuits were to be expected given the damning evidence in the FoF.
Second, the FoF have little standing outside of their own case until/unless they become part of a final court decision. But they provide an excellent roadmap for anyone else to follow, including what conclusions to pursue, what witnesses to call, and how Microsoft will attempt to respond. The $49 vs. $89 snippet alone could be fantastically helpful if it can be backed up.
The class action suit(s) and the Caldera private suit could constrain some of the proposed remedies, because it may be quite complicated to apportion major monetary damages across multiple new companies if Microsoft is split up. If Microsoft's cash hoard and its Win9x monopoly business go together, that would be the one to take the money from, but that risks all the real Microsoft talent fleeing to a new company that has all the real forward-looking assets. At any rate the private liability accumulated by Microsoft will have to be consciously planned for during the remedies phase and also in any possible settlement.
Re:Another little econ lesson... (Score:1)
#savage snipping#
Well, it's a monopoly, so they'll make as many copies as they need to to get the lowest possible price. And they set the selling price based on that. So the consumer ends up paying more for the good than the market indicates the good is worth. Which, pardon the pun, isn't good.
So - if I understand right - the fact that they're able to make more profit than they would in a competitive environment is evidence that they're abusing their monopoly. In other words, companies with monopolies who want to stay legal should keep to the competitive position on the curve, reducing their profits.
_But_. As I understand it, companies (specifically, their directors) have a legal obligation to maximise profits for the shareholders. Does this mean that they're stuck in a legal tragedy situation, where whatever they do they break the law? I seem to recall that you can't be punished for that.
Obdisclaimer: I know nuffin' about Law, so I may well have caught the wrong end of the stick and misunderstood. And I'd imagine someone's already sorted this one ought before. But I'd be interested to know what the solution is.
Mat.
Re:Does Microsoft have the cash? (Score:1)
Where it would run into problems is the fact that most investers might pull out....and then their stock would crumble taking most of the market with them.
Jason
Sorry, you're rather unobservant (Score:2)
I can quite legitimately blame Bill Gates for screwing up the market for Mac software, or indeed for Linux software or Be software: it's all the same argument, by abusing their monopoly they screwed up the normal operation of the free market. The FoF covers this, and the drying up of alternatives is considered one of the most subtly harmful results of the abuse of monopoly.
Re:Not surprising (Score:1)
Where are the lawsuits? (Score:1)
I find it interesting that there have as yet been no suits based upon the quality of the product. This one seems focused around the $89 price.
For years now, I have been reading about unreliable servers, frequent rebooting, and people coming to all sorts of accomodations with their M$ products in order to keep them running - scheduled reboots, for example.
Over the years, this has got to have cost a lot of companies a lot of money. If Toshiba can bend over to the tune of 2 billion because of a bug in a floppy controller that has never caused a documented loss of data to anybody, where are all the lawsuits against M$ over service outages and lost time which occur daily and are widely acknowledged throughout the IT world?
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Re:This comment is "Insightful", moderators? (Score:1)
Yes, It Sure Is (Score:2)
Sorry I can't be more specific but I seem to have lost the link at the moment. Linking to a story should be OK (Though some web sites don't like "deep links" either) but copying one verbatim crosses the line.
While /. should be relatively safe from a lawsuit for a user posting a message like this, someone might be able to supoena Rob's web logs and go after the real perpitrator (And maybe even the moderators who moderated it up.)
Re:Look! (Score:1)
but larger shops that would use OS/2 (or WinNT) probably do their own custom disk images anyway, so the market for preinstalled OS/2 was probably small enough that even IBM could afford to neglect it for a cheaper Windows licence
Whether they could afford it or not is irrelevant. The point is that they should never have had to do it in the first place. It just proves that Microsoft has some serious monopoly power when they can make even IBM bow to their demands and forsake its own OS in favor of Windows. That's what is meant by squelching consumer choice and competition. Consumers didn't get a choice. I'm not just talking about larger shops. I'm talking about anyone who wanted to use OS/2 instead of Windows. Their choice was taken away because they were going to have to pay for Windows even if they didn't want it.
Re:OVERCHARGED? UNDERCHARGED??? (Score:2)
That is only until they have effectively eliminated the competitors. MS-DOS 6.x+Windows 3.x was sold much cheaper than Windows 95. By the time Windows 95 came out, the Amiga and Atari were dead, OS/2 and the Mac were already in severe decline and Linux hadn't started to take off much yet. Microsoft raised the price of Windows 98 compared to 95, despite the fact that it was mainly bug fixes and window dressing on top of 95. The prices of MS-Office have also gone way up as competition has gone down.
The traditional monopolistic pricing pattern is certainly there with Microsoft, make no mistake about it.
Re:Look! (Score:1)
So then Microsoft should be punished for the idiocy of the American public? Please. I would say that any Joe Moron could have gone to their locally run computer store, those that did not have a contract with MS, and had them build a computer for them. Problem solved.
The idiocy of the American computer-buying public is M$ most valuable asset. It is what has allowed them to foist a crippled bug-ridden product on millions while convincing those millions that any problems are the result of their own failure to grok the tech.
Those idiots "know" that a Dell box is superior to a no-name white box, because (the "logic" goes) if the white-boxen were so good, M$ would have contracts with the builders of them as well.
So, for example, Mr. Idiot #458,975,221 is faced with the "decision" to purchase "inferior" hardware without M$ OS, or "brand name" hardware with the M$ OS.
So, yes indeed, punish M$ for the carefully cultivated idiocy of the public. M$ feeds, fertilizes, maintains and relies upon that idiocy.
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Um, Hello... (Score:2)
Re:Look! (Score:1)
Re:Another little econ lesson... (Score:1)
Note, I do not claim this will continue to apply if Bush wins the presidency. Flame away.
Jherico
Re:Tell this to Toshiba... (Score:1)
1) lawyers smell blood, find glitch that could have caused up to (!) $1,000 per user x 1,000,000 users = $1e9 in damages
2) lawyers get some stooge to file the class action on behalf of all potential "victims"
3) big company settles for fear of bankruptcy
4) stooge gets $20k, 1e6 users get certificate new floppy disks, lawyers get 10% x 1e9 = $1e8
Amen! And now here we have M$, with a bug-filled unreliable product, with lots of documented harm caused in the form of outages and IT support costs, no need to find stooges, as a few days testimony by a few thousand IT admins and users will establish damages to anybody's satisfaction, and certainly no dearth of hungry lawyers.
So where are all the lawsuits????? [slashdot.org]
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
At last, some common sense (Score:1)
Wake up and realise that just because MS have used some pretty bad corporate tactics, their products are not necessarily bad. An analogy might be Nestle. Just because their agressive marketing of baby formula in the 3rd world has caused lots of harm, doesn't mean that a Kit-Kat bar is a bad product. (I don't know if they have them in the states, so a Kit-Kat is a chocolate wafer bar thing)
I think that win32 is a reasonably good OS for the task it sets itself. It was designed to be easy to use rather than incredibly stable and secure. If you want five nines reliability, you buy an S/390. If you want to word process and browse the internet easily, you buy MacOS or windows. If you want better stability, and lower-level acces to your machine on Intel, you use Linux. The point is that not everyone knows how to install linux, and even more people would be terrified by an x-term. Windows is aimed at people who just want to use a given set of apps without worrying about how it works, and it does a reasonably good job at it.
NT is a good system, as was proven by the recent Mindcraft benchmarks (and before you complain about the validity, I mean the SECOND set, that were carried out with Linux techs on hand to tune the Linux system). Stop just mindlessly hammering MS products because MS isn't the most friendly corporation in the world.
Oh yeah, according to another poster, because I don't slag off MS at every opportunity I must be "stupid". So feel free to disregard everything I say because I am "stupid".
Take this as advice from an active user.. no flame (Score:1)
I *beg* of this website to totally quit being a media player, and become the news site it once was. I can go to news.com and get all this info, and the comments just aren't anything constructive for such a moot overly plaid topic already.
Microsoft is in its own boat, so is linux, so is solaris, so is netscape. But lets move on. Get back to "news for nerds, stuff that matters" as this microsoft trial is old news, it doesn't matter, as the outcome will only effect people who use windows avidly. And frankly, if there is a disucussion, it should be how a windows user should prepare for any changes, and not talk about "the beast" itself, because they're is no right or wrong with that.
Just my 2 cents
Re:I'm gonna sue Microsoft (Score:2)
Of course, I may be arrested and/or sued for shooting to stop, but I have a much better legal (and ethical) position when my goal is clearly to stop the threat to my safety.
Re:Make moderators accountable (Score:1)
Slashdot should just allow all users the ability to check who moderated any post. Essentially moderators get to act as anonymous cowards in regards to their moderation. There's no accountability, so anyone who wishes to try and surpress a viewpoint through moderation, does so with no worries.
I think this is a great idea. Also, unlike other suggestions I've read re: moderation, this would be simple to implement.
Slash already keeps track of the moderation totals for a given message and displays this data when the CID format [slashdot.org] of the URL is used. Looks like it would be simple to include the moderators id in the form of a link to the moderators user page.
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Re:Commentary? (Score:2)
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:1)
It may surprise you, but 95% of the millions of computer users out there use computers as a tool to get their job done. This may be by using the web to research things, or by using email or a word processor. These people do not care or want to care about how the system works. They will buy whatever system puts the technicalities as far away from them as possible, because it does not benefit them to know how to configure their machine.
There is absolutely no reason for them to learn how their machine operates. Many people drive a car, but it is not mandatory for all drivers to be experts on how their car works. They just use it to get from A to B.
Just take some time to put yourself in the shoes of the average user, and realise that they have different expectations from a computer to you.
Re:actually.. (Score:1)
Re:What would you do with Microsoft? (Score:1)
The original poster was anonymous... (Score:2)
As for "freedom of choice" when it comes to operating systems, it has been pointed out time and time again that it is impossible to purchase a laptop computer without paying for Microsoft Windows. That blows your pie-in-the-sky freedom theory out of the water.
Now, as to the previous poster's comment about Microsoft and your subsequent condemnation of it: I really don't know why so many people think that corporations are physical entities and, as such, should be given the same treatment as one would to, for instance, their grandmother. Why should I kowtow to Microsoft? If I think they suck, I sure as hell have every right to say so. It's not like Microsoft's feelings will be hurt -- they're not human beings! I can't piss them off; I can't punch them in the stomach, much as I'd like to sometimes. It's bad enough that corporations have been endowed with the same property rights as human beings have in this country; do we really have to start ascribing emotional attributes to them too? Some would have it that way, though, it seems... it's a shame.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Re:Something's wrong here... (Score:1)
Let's use AT&T. Comsumers purchase the services.. uhh..oh, they purchased the services directly from AT&T.
How do you defined purchased. SOMEONE has to purchase directly. They are consumers also. The potential monopoly affects all levels of the chain.
Give them a way out? Perhaps this a offshoot of the "sue 'em" way of thinking today, but anti-trust laws are not a way of providing conduits for class-action lawsuits. They may be protected from the money-hungry lawyers (yeah, those lawyers are ONLY concerned with the purchaing public, not lining thier own pockets),but they still aren't protected from any punishment that the courts themselves decided to lay upon them.
I think lawyers like this should be sued!!!
Re:Look! (Score:1)
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:1)
I have been very careful to only install RPM packages from SuSE and RPM seems to do a very good job of updating the existing packages. It updates older packages when I do an upgrade and as best as I can tell it removes all of the files that make up the older package first before installing the newer files from the update.
Re:For those without passwords... (Score:1)
Class Actions and Social Policy (Score:3)
But several of these messages suggested that the truth of this proposition also implies that class actions so brought do not serve the purposes of justice. Here (though I primarily practice law on behalf of commercial defendants in such actions), I will part company with my
It is not uncommon for businesses to engage in commercial activities in violation of the law and the policy set by legislatures, rulemakers and the courts. In many cases, there is no "real harm" to any one member of the public, but hundreds of thousands of dollars can be made, scattering the costs over millions and tens of millions of customers, each suffing only at most a few pennies or dollars of damage at most. A primary example occurs in the mis-collection of sales taxes from consumers.
Indeed, few people would even monitor this conduct, least of all the government, whose enforcement resources are limited at the end of the day. Were there no enforcement by the government, why would businesses tow the line?
The answer: because there exists a small cabal of class action plaintiff law firms who specialize in this kind of practice. They investigate these micro-violations, and bring civil actions on behalf of the consumers who were overcharged, each only pennies at a time.
True, consumers will get a pittance back at the end of the day compared to what was taken, but they will get something they would not have gotten otherwise, and at little cost and with minimum disruption to their lives. More important, the bringing of such actions STOPS the bad practices, and deters companies from "overreaching by neglect." It is easy to look the other way when your "mistakes" are making you money.
If such actions could not be brought, there would be no check on this kind of microviolation. Class action disputes of this kind (see also qui tam actions) are the only meaningful engine to assure enforcement of certain kinds of social policies.
Why let lawyers get rich at the expense of a Microsoft or other company, with little revenue actually flowing to the victims? The answer is simple: so that the company will be deterred from microviolation conduct in the future. Here is where you will find the justice.
Think ahead: a statutory class action remedy for excessive spamming by or on behalf of commercial entities!
Re:Hey I want in! (Score:1)
Oh come on
Cars kill a lot more people than spilt coffee. A lot more. Even intelligent people sometimes kill themselves and other people in car accidents.
So should we impose a ban on the sale of all cars?
What about the customer's responsibility to prevent such accidents? Like, don't put a cup of scalding hot coffe between your legs? It's kinda stupid, you gotta admit.
Re:Take this as advice from an active user.. no fl (Score:1)
Does this require comments? It is so hard no to qualify that as a typical Linux user answer...
But I agree, Slashdot used to be MUCH more interesting months ago. Now I read it just for the occasional funny comment. Not a good sign for a "News" site...
Free-market price of Windows (Score:1)
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:1)
Do Microsoft have to refund? (Score:1)
RE: shooting to stop (Score:1)
If some greedy idiot breaks into my house and tries to hurt me or my wife or my kid I want to hurt him first, so bad that he wants to stop. He is the aggressor, where does he get the right to sue me, the victim? And if he does have that right, then why can't I go try to rob some really rich people/companies, get shot by their security forces, sue, and make lots of money? Sounds like a plan...
The reason I don't like the system is because it only works for the bad guys. Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Re:Hey I want in! (Score:2)
McDonalds serves (served?) their coffee at a higher temperature (180 vs 150-160 degrees fahrenheit) than other drivethroughs. If you're going to serve coffee in that way, you (as a business) should take reasonable precautions to prevent these sorts of accidents, especially after HUNDREDS of other incidents. Serve it at a lower temperature, make the cups as strong and secure as possible, possibly put the cup in an additional safe container, etc. If you as a company can't prevent grevious injuries from mishaps which even intelligent people will have, then you shouldn't serve coffee through the drivethrough.
Re:Look! (Score:2)
In the meantime, there's a ton of good linux hardware shops ( such as http://www.tcu-inc.com )
Re:Another little econ lesson... (Score:2)
Re:This is why... (Score:3)
I'm thinking of trying to organize an anti-outrageous class-action lawyer fee system.
Basically, the idea would be something like "The undersigned refuse to be considered the member of any class in a class action lawsuit unless the lawyers agree to the following fee schedule, based on total cash payments to class members: 30% of damages up to $200,000, %20 of damages from $200,000 to $1,000,000, %10 of damages from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, 5% of damages from $2,000,000 to $50,000,000, and 1% of damages above that $50 M. (All this working like tax schedules, so for $500,000 in damages, it would be 30% of $200,000 + 20% of $300,000.) For coupons or vouchers, fees would be based on half of the amount of coupons actually redeemed within one year of issuance."
If very large numbers of people signed such a statement and it was given legal weight, the bottom-feeders wouldn't get so rich and would have to work towards getting actual money for their clients, not just useless coupons that no one redeems.
Re:nope, common carrier (Score:2)
I'd be careful about giving legal opinions if you're not a lawyer (I'd be even more careful if you are a lawyer). The facts as I understand them is that common carrier status for websites is a somewhat murky subject. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act [loc.gov] makes the limits to liability much more explicit, but also requires that a service like Slashdot remove materials that they know about and which are objectionable.
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Hey I want in! (Score:3)
Re:Hey I want in! (Score:2)
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Re:Hey I want in! (Score:2)
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Re:mcd coffee spandex (Score:2)
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Re:Look! (Score:2)
This is ridiculous (Score:2)
What this lawsuit clearly shows me is that class action lawsuits are there to make lawyers rich. You just have to be there first. It's lotto for lawyers.
If you saw Regarding Henry, you'll see that shooting a lawyer in the head makes them good and nice... I'm not advocating shooting them, but perhaps requiring a partial lobotomy upon passing the bar could restore sanity to these idiots.
Re:Commentary? (Score:2)
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OEMs (Score:2)
Would OEMs, especially the ones not in bed with M$, be able to bring lawsuit against M$ to recover damages? Or purchasers of those OEMs products?
When I worked for a local computer store (actually worked in 2 different ones), we got maybe $10 or so less than retail, but charged the retail price to the customer, even if it came preinstalled. That IS a consumer cost. I'm not sure how big OEMs get charged, but if the cost is relegated to the consumer in ANY WAY, one would think that the consumer would be able to recover those costs.
Of course, not many would bother if it comes down to a couple bucks/computer, triple damages, minus a third for the lawyers cut: you'd get many $10 out of it.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Re:Hey I want in! (Score:2)
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Re:OEMs (Score:2)
I think Win98 OEM's at around $30-40 in bulk, and around $75-85 for mom 'n' pop shops - many "build you own" places in the UK will resell Win98 OEM kits at this latter kind of rate, if bought with certain components (ISTR it's actually the HD, not the motherboard, that counts).
If you check into successful MS-Tax refund stories you might get more data; when Toshiba did it I think they used to sink the full "list" price of an OEM, rather than disclose their pricing deal with Micro$oft.
Realize.. (Score:2)
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Re:Hey I want in! (Score:3)
Submitted for your approval, the facts [caoc.com] about the McDonald's coffee suit.
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:2)
Re:Look! (Score:2)
That and laptops.
This is *not* flamebait (Score:2)
For the record: I think MS is a band of gangsters and that both the anti-trust suit and the coming class action suits are richly deserved justice.
Nevertheless, this guy is entitled to his opinion, and stated it with arguments and no more flamage than most of the anti-MS posters. Moderation is not meant to be censorhip for unpopular viewpoints.
Will someone please moderate it back up? Meanwhile, I'm going meta-moderating until I can find this one.
Re:Another little econ lesson... (Score:2)
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:2)
Dude, that's not cool. Bigotry sucks. Open your mind, life goes easier that way.
Re:Hey I want in! (Score:2)
Linux users class-action suit for refunds (Score:2)
I think that Linux users ought to bring a class action suit to force MS to pay their refunds.
Judging from the posts made so far, I suppose a lot you will say, "No way, I'll never do that, class action suits and anything involving lawyers are Inherently EVIL, and I'll have nothing to do with it." I think this is ideological and naive. MS has collected about a hundred bucks from you for absolutely nothing. If you're willing to tolerate something like that, then would you please send some of your money to me, too? After all, I haven't done anything for you either.
Seems to me that this is a no-brainer. The EULA specifically states that those who choose not to use Windows are entitled to a refund, and yet experience has shown that people trying to exercise that right are systematically hindered. MS has no right to money for nothing. If contracts are to mean anything at all in this world, then MS should be forced to pay.
Re:Don't be a fool (Score:2)
(because it automatically assumes EVERYONE is a moron).
Sort of like a lot of the new installation programs for the comercially popular linux distributions. Yeah, yeah, they still allow you a higher degree of control... but if you notice, the direction they are going in is to automate as much as possible. Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because thats what normal consumers want? Besides, neither you nor I might be the normal consumer, but I'm sure we could both still benefit from better (well... anythings better than the almost non-existant) hardware detection.
NOTHING should ever descend to the dumbass level. EVER. When it does you begin sacrificing quality to serve the idiots, who then continue to complain "It's too hard! Make it easier!" simply because they don't want to learn. MAKE THEM LEARN.
This doesn't make any sense, of course things should be made as easy as possible. First of all, this is what consumers want. You aren't going to be competative if you don't listen to your customers. And if you haven't noticed this is exactly the direction many linux distributions are going. And your statement that you should "MAKE THEM LEARN" also doesn't make any sense. Computers are supposed to make life easier for people, they don't need or want to sit down and learn a large set of arcane commands and formats for 50 different configuration files (well.. I like to do that, but thats just me), they just want to sit down and get something useful done.
It might not have dawned on you, but ONE (I'm not saying its the only) major reasons why windows is dominant today, is that its relatively easy to use, even for someone who has never touched a computer before (well... macs are even more like that, but they lost for other reasons).
What I will agree with you on, is that it is nice to have the abillity to get down and dirty with the operating system and bypass all of the dumbed down controls... maybe with a little (well... a lot) more work kde or gnome will give us just that.
Also, Microsoft, since they have "monopoly" power, should be forced to stand behind their product. They probably the only company who's product does critical jobs, yet they don't stand behind it (they have a clause stating essentially NO WARRANTY, and you have to pay extra for tech support). The ENTIRE Linux community stands behind it.
Okay, this is just wrong. If you take a look at Part 11 of the GPL its pretty clear that there is, I quote, "NO WARRANTY".
The linux community might be a little more helpful when it comes to fixing bugs than microsoft, but when it comes to the court room they are not any more accountable than microsoft.
This comment is "Insightful", moderators? (Score:2)
Why is it that only stupid people seem to be Microsoft apologists?
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Another little econ lesson... (Score:3)
In a normal market, you have supply and demand. Pretty basic. Price on the vertical axis, supply on the horizontal. S & D look like an x. As price rises, producers are willing to make more. As price falls, consumers want more. For instance, say 5 people would want a pc if it costs 1 million USD. 10 people want one if it costs 750,000 USD. etc on down to a whole lot of people if it costs roughly 2,000 USD. Same deal for supply - producers will make x pc's at price n. 2x pcs at price 2n. These two curves intersect at some point. Assuming that nobody interferes with the market, the intersection of the supply and demand curves will show you the price per unit of the good and the total production of the good. Now, if you can't differentiate between the various versions of the good (butter is butter is butter, no brand names), then the only difference is price. So one company charges more, and their version doesn't sell because it's more expensive. When brand names and quality get added in, it gets more complicated, but the same basic notions are there. It's an issue of paying for the consumer preferences. Take beer. Nobody could mistake Guiness for Bud, no matter what. Now, Guiness has a higher price per volume, but since consumer preferences for beer vs. pisswater come into play, Guiness can be sold at a higher price because some consumers are willing to pay more for actual beer rather than buying cheaper pisswater. However, bud and miller are priced pretty similarly, because the two goods are very very similar, and price can very easily be a differentiating factor.
I'll assume everyone is following so far. So now we have our consumer market for operatin systems. Way back when, in those long ago days of the Carter years and early Reagan years, you could buy several commercial operating systems for your computer. And they were priced in a way not too different from the beer pricing I described above. Sure, server OSes might cost more, but the consumer of server OSes feels okay because they are getting a serious OS, as opposed to something like ms-dos, which fits consumer needs but certainly wont be driving your big, bad, company mainframe. Then, time goes by. For whatever reasons, the number of OSes starts to fall. Soon, we only have the MS OS family.
Before, we had two products that were competing, and the differences between the two, as far as the market cared, were price and consumer preferences. The existance of competition kept the prices close. If consumers were indifferent to which OS they used, price was the only differentiation. Now, with just Windows left on the market, there's nothing holding prices down. So prices go up. Which means that, for any physical good, quantity produced drops. After all, putting that extra money into production just raises our costs. And, as a monopoly producer, we want to minimize costs while maximizing price. This is profit maximization. If we make software, this means skimping on the product testing while notching the price up as much as the consumers will stand. Now, our monoploy is going to set it's price based on the lowest possible production costs. Now, the lowest possible production level is going to be expensive - you build a single prototype car, you have to pretty much handbuild it from scratch. Build a limited run - you have dicounts for buying/building a part in bulk, etc. But costs scale back up as you start to use up limited resources - if you try to buy every sparkplug ever made, it's starts to get pricey. Software mucks with this, since once it's compiled, duplicating it is nearly free, so it's not entirely clear to me what the monopoly effect would have on a software company. However, there are some costs. The CD/floppy that it ships on, the manual, the box, the plastic wrap and paper with the EULA on it. So each shipped copy costs somewhere between a dollar and 10, depending on the quantities shipped. Well, it's a monopoly, so they'll make as many copies as they need to to get the lowest possible price. And they set the selling price based on that. So the consumer ends up paying more for the good than the market indicates the good is worth. Which, pardon the pun, isn't good.
If the above doesn't make sense, I probably left something out. I don't think I did, but it's been a while...
So, the conclusion, the whole point.
MS is a monoploy, for whatever reasons, and abused it. Given the fact that a monopolies goods are priced higher than they otherwise would be, MS has hurt anyone who has bought a computer since MS became a monopoly. Higher prices hurt consumers - less money left to spend on other goods. And not just computer consumers, either. Because artificially high price of windows kept consumers from having that money to spend on alternate goods. Whatever the difference between the market price for an OS and the price that was charged for monoploy Windows is money that should have gone into other markets - computer games, waterskis, water buffalo, whatever. So any market that you didn't spend money in because of the inflated price of Windows was hurt by MS. Now, IANAL, nor am I an expert witness in the area of economics, but I do know economics, and I have studied economics as applied to law, and I feel relatively confident that this conclusion isn't too far out in left feild. I wouldn't try to file a class action suit on behalf of the waterski industry, but I will say without a doubt that MS has done a serious injury to free market consumers and should not be allowed to just walk away.
is this copyright violation? (Score:3)
Legally, can slashdot copy someone else's news word for word? These companies make money from banners, and slashdot is bypassing that. You guys need to watch yourselves.
Jeremy
Re:Greed is the root of evil (Score:2)
Re:Not surprising (Score:2)
Re:Look! (Score:2)
Why on earth did you buy it with "Bill's junkware" installed if you wanted to run linux on it ?