New Microsoft Dirty Tricks Revealed 207
Conrad Mazian writes "Robert X. Cringely has an article on the Technology Evangelist web site where he claims that Microsoft destroyed evidence in the Burst vs Microsoft case. Specifically Burst's lawyers had asked for certain emails, Microsoft claimed that they couldn't find the backup tapes the emails would be on, and while this was happening the tapes were in a vault at Microsoft — until they mysteriously disappeared. It's a fascinating story, and even names one person at Microsoft."
Oh, NO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, No! A corporation wrangles, delays, misplaces, obfuscates in the face of a lawsuit. Heaven's, what is the world coming to?
Microsoft must be the very first to EVER do this.
Jesus Christ! (Score:5, Insightful)
- Nth hand unverified, information (My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious. )
- this is about stuff along time ago.
- There is a lot suspect in what's being claimed in the article as well.
Well, as the tagline says:
Re:Oh, NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jesus Christ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And your point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And your point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Enron is not gone because they broke the law and got obliterated for it, Enron is gone because the reality that they actually had no money overtook their fiction and they collapsed into overnight bankruptcy. Legal recourse against Enron only really began after it was long gone, and was against the company's directors.
Re:Nothing to see here...move along (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense, if Micro$oft never bought the CPM rip-off 86-DOS and renamed it "PC-DOS 1.0" Gary Kildall at Digital Research would have just marked CPM directly to IBM and today we'd all be running GEM XP [wikipedia.org].
Huge cost effective backup (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft's M.O. (Score:5, Insightful)
They do? And assuming they do, is that a get out of jail free card?
If so, why?
"they make the software that has made computers cheap and ubiquitous for everybody on the planet,"
There were many others in that game too, till they were crushed.
And they have made a very pretty penny from it.
And it is not like it would not have happened anyway ( there is nothing all that special about Microsoft
in that regard )
"and Bill Gates personally funds one of the largest charities in the world."
Again, is this a get out of jail free card? Why do you bring it up?
Is it OK to destroy evidence because you donate money to a charity?
"Now, if I can only get one of their salespeople to call me back about a large new installation I'm getting ready to do..."
Good luck on that.
Re:One small problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm kind of confused why this story is being treated as it is in the comments. MS is supposed to be helping other businesses avoid the possibility of losing data... hmmmmm MS wants to be the preferred supplier of software to government agencies and this is a bad mark on them if you ask me. Sure, they might have lost tapes which is not part of their software per se' but they are supposed to be designing software / systems that provide REALLY good backup processes in mind. If you can't demonstrate that you know how backup processes should work, perhaps your software shouldn't be used by anyone with legal requirements to backup data?
Re:Oh, NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly is this pandering to the Anti-Microsoft element on slashdot?
It is a story about a company that when faced with legal action regarding their behavior deliberately destroyed/hid evidence that showed they as corporate entity were perfectly aware that their behavior was wrong in the legal sense.
The fact that corporations routinely do this is completely irrelevant. All this story is exposing is a pattern of behavior on the part of Microsoft with regards to compliance with the law, or in this case a complete disregard for the law. While it may be redundant as the case against Microsoft has been made time and time again it isn't pandering to the anti-Microsoft zealots. It may be embarrassing to the pro-Microsoft evangelists, but we all know they are nuts ;-).
If Apple, Red Hat or Novell had done something similar they would be called on it. However, none of those corporate entities have done anything like that to my knowledge. But Microsoft has. And considering that Microsoft products are on ~85% of the PCs out there makes it relevant to the slashdot community.
Re:Oh, NO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, no! Your SO is cheating on you. How terrible! Must be the first time...
Oh, no! A country gets attacked, some thousand lives are lost, rage prevails and two countries are invaded, hundreds of thousands killed, civil wars started to further break the lives of millions. Must be the first in history!
Oh, no... People drink and drive under influence and kill innocent ones. Heck, I bet this never happened before!
---
What amazes me is not the repetition of the eroding tactic (i.e., downplaying a fact as not that serious). When you have no defense even crying Wolf! will do...
But:
a) how they get this promoted to insightful? Do they have "infiltrated" people here? With karma to burn?
b) or are there morons here who vote for this willingly as insightful?
Re:So that makes it OK? (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, how do we know for sure that the military pulled the right guy off the street? It makes sense to have a trial to be sure about it. Once the trial is through, give him the electric chair. But don't go torturing people who you haven't proved are guilty and have nothing to gain from spilling the beans and everything to gain from making up some crap and waiting for the clock to hit zero hour.
Re:So that makes it OK? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, NO! (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly your defense of MS consists of "everybody else does it". Isn't it amazing what the defenders of MS have been reduced to.
Not every business breaks the law. Some do, but many don't. Please don't defame the entire business community and capitalism itself by saying that every business breaks the law.
Re:So that makes it OK? (Score:4, Insightful)
Courts of law are not about punishing the guilty they are about protecting the public from the government and from thugs in uniform. A terrorist suspect is only a suspect because some one 'thinks' or 'decides' they should be one, there is no proof, if there was, that person would be arrested and sent to the courts where the validity of the evidence could be tested and to ensure some incompetent ass wipe didn't falsify the evidence or just outright lied to get promotion or even to hide their own incompetence (if you can't catch the guilty then convicting an innocent can still get you re-elected).
Consider the long term ramifications. Through out history, torturers where isolated from the rest of the community because any individual they can achieve job satisfaction and a personal sense of accomplishment from the infliction of pain, suffering and degradation upon others, is a dangerously deranged psychopathic individual and a threat to the community. Honestly, would you want a US military approved torturer living next door to you and having access to your family (a thug that listened to the agonised screams of human beings 8 hours a day with out a qualm whilst eating undisturbed meals, sleeping peacefully and collecting what they considered to be their well deserved pay check).
How many thousands of CIA trained torturers will the US government be releasing upon an unsuspecting public, torturers who no longer have the legal means by which to fulfil those urges they have became accustomed too. Check with any real law enforcement authority and they will tell you exactly what kind of long term threat those individuals who voluntarily participated in that kind of abhorrent behaviour really are.