by DocNasty
12. June 2009 22:59
You know, I feel i should blog this, since my reaction to the story was longer than the story.. But really people, is this where we're heading as a country.. think about this.
Btw, I conveniently aquired this story from the Government ZDNet website. I'll link both here. Richard Koman is restater of this story by Ina Freid.
>> http://bit.ly/jxJJt <<
Microsoft has settled with the state of Mississippi over the price of Office and Windows. Microsoft will pay the state $40 million and provide $60 million in vouchers to consumers and local governments.
Consumers and businesses that bought Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME will get $12 vouchers. You get $5 back if you bought Office (or components such as Word and Excel), MS-DOS, Windows 1.xx-3.xx Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT Workstation, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
“Microsoft is pleased to reach this resolution with the State of Mississippi and with our customers in Mississippi,” said Steve Aeschbacher, Microsoft associate general counsel. “We look forward to working with the state on issues of mutual concern going forward.”
Here's my response:
You know.. All this does is damage the brand of one of last great industries in the free world.
You have the state that is taking all the money, when it's the citizens that they used to back it up.. here's 12 bucks for your pain? Oh.. don't look at the 60 million.. here's a Fin for your trouble. We fixed it for you. And thats only if they claim it. Who keeps the rest?
This is the same kinda class action BS that plagues our nation as a whole. We've seen the effects of the car industries collapsing on our society. Imagine if MS fell.. Think about it. I'm a programmer that writes in MS software, and i rely on their ability to put out software for me to feed my family, pay for my daughters special needs, etc. So do 100,000 other programmers here in the states and around the world. It's totally irresponsible for a state to pull this off.
More so, the citizens of the states that put money into 401k plans that have $$ sunk into microsoft stock for their retirement, i'm sure, plenty of them living in 'ol Miss. The state just robbed them of 60 million too.
This is the same thing that came out of the States vs. PhillipMorris when the states started sueing PM not realizing that half of their pensions were based on PMs solid performance of 15% growth, and then they lost money when PM Stock dipped down.
Instead of Money Grabbing from corporations that have money, start backing the remaining industries in your state/country. If you want to rob The United States of our industries, maybe you should move to Mexico or Canada. I dont' want you as a neighbor. I served for my country. For those of you who think this is the right thing to do, go to hell. You're helping to bankrupt the country.
And don't give me the crap that Bill Gates has billions.. blah blah blah. MS laid off a couple thousand people. He is worth billions based on the stock that he has invested in the company. It's not in his pocket. And last I checked.. he's giving it away.
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