Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (
More info?)
me wrote:
> As for Wesley's comments: "Do you really think that an American
> business gives software away for free to people that in turn sell it
> to the general public? I hope that your major isn't Business." I
> hope your major isn't sarcasm, Wes. Ever heard of drug dealers
> giving it away to get people hooked? Given Microsoft's history of
> anti-competitive behaviour, it's not entirely unreasonable to expect
> something along those lines.
>
> Let me see - there's the $600m EU fine; in Japan, Microsoft were
> accused of making companies such as NEC, Hitachi and Sony, who wanted
> to pre-install its Windows software on their computers, sign away
> their right to sue, even if they found Microsoft has used their
> patent technology;
An agreement not to sue is standard, often replaced with binding
arbitration. Nevertheless, such an agreement can be part of a contract and
NEC, Hitachi, etc., signed willingly after careful study by legions of
lawyers. What you didn't mention is that often these agreements not to sue
don't actually prevent anyone from suing! That's when the next clause of the
contract latches in: huge penalties if you DO sue.
> $1.6bn spent settling class actions in the US in
> 2003; $750m settlement in the AOL case, etc.
Cost of doing business. In New York, the fine for illegal parking is $50/day
in areas where garages charge $100/day. Which would you choose?
> Microsoft clearly
> believes that it has the financial muscle to distort standard market
> practice and to buy its way out of a lawsuit.
It does. Microsoft has over thirty billion dollars in CASH stuffed in a sock
somewhere. After several years of wrangling, Microsoft is now offering XP
without Media Player in Europe (XP N). Guess how many manufacturers plan to
install it?
Zero.
As one hardware manufacturer put it: "Our customers expect a system
delivered with the ability to reproduce music and video pre-installed." By
dragging out resolution of the issue for two years, Microsoft established
these expectations in the user's mind. Real Player is a goner.
> Enron and WorldCom
> also showed us that the US leads the way in honest
> trading...........(end of rant).
I don't know much about WorldCom, but Enron is an exemplar of the business
model: buy low, sell high. It wasn't their trading practices that brought
them down, it was their back-office accounting.
>
> Guess I'll stick to Linux and OpenOffice ;-) Thanks for all replies.
We wish you well on a knock-off of a 40-year old operating system originally
designed by a money-losing division of the local phone company and used
today primarily by those who believe the MS-DOS Command line is not obscure
enough.
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