Microsoft accused of legal misconduct by judge who adds $25 million to jury award

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Microsoft loses another case in which they are accused of Intellectual Property theft.

You can read the rest of this article from the Seattle Times here. This seems to be a pretty sound spanking for Microsoft. Wonder when, or if, they will ever stop stealing from the IT community at large while whining about individuals pirating their own products. Looks like the pot calling the kettle black to me....

 

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And your point freddy is...?

 

hey hey guys come on... freddy can post those if he likes we an open forum and people can discuss and show what they dont like.. freddy doesnt like Ms and i dont like Ms press!

 

To watch MS fanboys squirm....

I have to sort of laugh that people get upset that I posted a news article that the Seattle Times, from MS's own home town, thought was worthy of being published.

MS engaged in, what the judge couched in legal terms, legal fraud in open court in their attempt to run over a little guy and pirate his software. And you basically say, So?

I also have to say it's pretty inconsistent to condemn braindumpers and individuals who pirate software while turning a blind eye, deaf ear, dumb tongue, and silent keyboard to MS's pirating.... And before you say you aren't doing that, just what was the point of your post to me? That I should just not point out the illegal and unethical things that MS does. That I should just let sleeping dogs lie. Right?

I certainly haven't seen you telling people to stop condemning braindumping or individuals who pirate software for their unethical actions. I find you being upset with me for pointing out and commenting on MS's unethical actions pretty strange in that light....

I don't like thieves no matter how big or small. It doesn't matter to me if it's a corporation or an individual, they are just flat out wrong. And before you comment that I only seem to point out MS's warts, well, since I'm in IT and MS is the the one that just keeps on consistently getting their name in the IT news for unethical and illegal behavior I see it more. I run across their name more.

I thought just the same of Enron and Worldcom as I think of MS. And I don't think that the corporate officers in those companies were punished anwhere severely enough. They should have lost everything they owned for what they did because they took a lot of money that a lot of people couldn't afford to lose. Thousands of people lost all their savings, and now they will be facing some very rough times. And don't tell me it's the fault of the people who lost their savings either. That's like blaming the victim of an armed robbery for being robbed.

I in no way believe that any corporate officer ought to be able to hide behind a corporation and engage in unethical and illegal behavior without the full weight of the law coming down on them. That's just flat out wrong. Corporations can only be unethical if the people who run them are unethical so any legal separation between the corporation and the individuals making the decisions is wrong.... It's nothing but a license to steal and rob from the little guy and I find that kind of behavior despicable.

 

I think and i agree its good some *little* company beating MS... its usually the other way round..

 

I agree with you Freddy. I'm no MS hater but it always seems to be the big boys with the money who somehow think they're above the law. It's good to see that smaller companies can fight back and win.

However, the total $140 million dollars will probably be loose change to MS and I doubt it'll stop them doing it again. Similar case that Apple lost recently and it was reported that the payout would have no effect on their business what so ever.

It seems more like a slap on the wrist as opposed to a punishment. I would like to see the big boys suffer as much as the business' they've ripped off have.

 

I'm fully agreed with you. The real way for the individual to vote for change is to just stop buying their products. If enough people would just take a stand and say, "Enough, no more corporate fraud. We're not going to buy your products." things would change. The companies would change their behavior or go out of business.

Margaret Meade once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The way things are done can change, one person at a time. All that has to happen is a one small paradigm change. That paradigm change is the change from the individual thinking he has no power, to knowing that collectively we individuals are the ones that really do have the power. If we all say, "No more" to corporate fraud and vote with our pocket books we can change the way things are done. We just have to want to....

 

In the enterprise environment Linux is/can be actually more locked down than Windows can be. A regular user account can't do much more than send email, create documents, etc, in just a regular Linux desktop configuration.... They only have read, write and/or execute permissions in file system areas where they cannot damage the system. They cannot excute any commands that could possibly damage the system for two reasons. They don't have write or execute permissions in the directories where the system files, or tools that can be used to modify the system, are found. Neither can an executable be run on a system without first being given execute permissions. So, you just can't download an executable and run it.

Those are major advantages of the *nix file system. Windows dumps all the executables in with everything else in C:\Program Files or C:\Windows. Linux separates out all the exectuables and shared libraries to directories where users can do no harm.

Basically, you can set Linux permissions so that a regular user cannot even read a directory outside their own /home directory and they can still function, still get work done. That's because Linux is a true multi-user system....

 

I see no reason why not... the only thing im personally not sure of doing is shared calendars but i think http://www.squirrelmail.org/wiki/SharedCalendarsPlugin allows you too

DC would be done using Samba..
Mail Server... Postfix, IMAP,squirrelmail, spamassasin
Webserver.. apache

what you need to do is choose a distro and start playing aorund with it... then invest a couple of books... file servers can be created... DHCP and DNS Servers too!

 

squirrelmail is the webmail... im looking at getting this as it looks good and i have read a few pages from the publishers website and i like!

 

Sparky,

Using NFS you can mount all or parts of the Linux file system remotely from desktops. That means your file server can share out all the /home directories, all the directories which store the applications, etc.... You can even boot diskless Linux clients off the network.

All of that means you can jpdate software very easily. you just update what is on the file server and the clients all have the updated software. The same for backups. Serve all the /home directories from your file server and all you have to backup is one partition on your file server.

Debian, and a few other distros also have automated rollouts of desktops and servers. Debian calls theirs FAI (fully automated installation).

I'm not too familiar with the messagingand email part of things, but there are some very integrated packages out there that do quite a bit along the lines of what you're talking about.

Take a look at Evolution as an example of what is possible using Linux.