A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.


Hey, California, you’re overcharging people on taxes — where is their settlement?
Microsoft comments:

“Microsoft has offered great products at competitive prices and we believe we would have prevailed in this case,” a Microsoft spokesman said in an e-mail message to reporters. “However, we were committed to resolving this matter. This settlement further demonstrates Microsoft’s continued efforts to put these conflicts behind us and to focus on the future.”

So, theft is wrong in theory, but if we capitulate to crooks this time, they’ll leave us alone, right? Right?

Walter Williams on "Click It or Ticket"

“Click It or Ticket” represents another bold step along the road to serfdom. History knows of no totalitarianism agenda where noble goals weren’t used as justification. Nazis used “for the good of the German Volk” and the Soviets used “for the good of the proletariat” as their justification. Health and safety have become the American justification for attacks on liberty.

Skype

Tim sent me a link to Skype, a new P2P telephony application from the makers of Kazaa. I was skeptical at first, but a test call changed that. It’s encrypted, reaches callers behind firewalls and NAT’s, has very high quality, and is extremely simple to use. The only downside is that it uses third parties to route calls when direct connections aren’t possible. If you want to try it out, you can add me by searching for [email protected]