RAM Manufacturers Fined for Price Fixing 216
TufelKinder writes "From Law.com: 'In the largest fine ever obtained by San Francisco antitrust prosecutors, a Korean company has agreed to plead guilty and pay $185 million for its role in a conspiracy to drive up the price of computer chips.' Micron and Infineon have also been fined for their role in the scheme." From the article: "It's the third-largest fine of its kind in the United States, and it could be just a preview of even bigger penalties. The far-reaching computer chip investigation, which alleges wrongdoing from 1999 through 2002, affects thousands of consumers."
Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
I have plenty of ram as it is. What the hell am I gonna do with 2gigs?
Anyway, what I'm wondering is if this company made more from the price fixing than it lost from the fine. Somehow I suspect it did.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
$185M sounds like a lot, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm often dissappointed in fines like this when I find out that the execs did a little jail time, paid a fine, but still have 6 Lamborghinis in the garage. It's important to implement fines that are severely punishing...like the people involved would have been WAY better off not pulling this kind of crap. The should be destitute. I can't stomach the wealth accumulated on the backs of the bruised.
I'm not saying that's what is going on here, I don't know. It just makes me sick when most people involved still come out ahead, and there is maybe one or two sacrificial lambs.
Clever move by Micron (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hey (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Price Fixing... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yet for some reason they are on most occasions the same price or even slightly higher.
Re:I remember this (Score:3, Interesting)
By itself, it isn't very useful, but when combined with other systems (desktops, laptops, PDA's, mobile phones, handheld consoles), it becomes a very useful item.
As with all commodities, the price will always go up whenever demand exceeds supply. And the suppliers will always try to achieve this; either by sophisticated marketing to boost demand (eg. the diamond market, the power generators warning of a shortage of electricity) or by matching reducing supply to match demand (OPEC, the RAM market).
Wrong logic (Score:1, Interesting)
Your logic implies every one of your examples should have been selling their products at a higher rate, because all you need to do is raise prices to make more money.
On the other hand, if all memory manufactures agree that they need to raise prices to make up for the fines....
Re:$185M sounds like a lot, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I think the solution is to reconsider the conception of the corporation as a person, and its role as legal scapegoat. Let's see some accountability for the real people behind the corporate misdeeds.
There are also applications that can use it (Score:3, Interesting)
Now the sampler technology is advanced enough that it can load just the start of the samples in RAM and then stream off the disk as needed, but there's limits to that (only so fast the disk can go) and you still need part in RAM. Eating up the 2GB I have is cake, and I don't even have the really big sample sets.
Now pro apps like those aside, normal apps will grow to use the memory, if it's available. Games can almost always use more memory, if for no other reason than to eliminate any kind of load times (by loading more data further ahead). I'm sure most game makers would like to use more RAM than they do. However, you won't sell many games if you require something most people don't have. If RAM prices go down and amounts go up, they'll start using more.
Some games already do. World of Warcraft just isn't happy unless you have a GB of RAM. It'll run on less, but you'll find it lagging and stuttering as it scrambles to get the graphics off the disk. You give it a GB, it gets pretty happy and smooth.