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World War 3.0: Microsoft And Its Enemies
Just in time for a possible settlement in the famous case, this book by Ken Auletta, writer for The New Yorker, takes a look at the case from before it's beginning to almost the end. Written in terms suitable for both the non-techhie and non-lawyer, he doesn't do a good job of maintaining reader interest. Chock full of details that deviate and distract from the main theme of book, it was enough such that this reader hasn't touched the book since school started back in mid-August. (The pending settlement gave me the motivation to do this review)
The book details each person involved in the case, everyone from Justice Dept Prosecutor David Boise to Judge Jackson to good 'ol Billy Gates. Every time a new individual is introduced in the story, the book goes off and tells that person's life story, causing some loss of interest and me asking "Get to the point already!"
However, this biographying of each person does have it's plusses. We see a side of Bill Gates the public is not used to seeing. Auletta describes him as a kid who must have everything go his way or else, and how that attitude worked against him in the infamous videotape. We see the pure intellect of Boise in how he had to be kicked out of Boston College's Law School because he was too smart, and how his performance in the 1970s IBM anti-trust suit applies to his superior execution of the MS case.
The book tells how Microsoft handled the initial problem of Netscape, how Gates orchestrated his company into their predicament of investigation by the Justice Dept. Auletta tells why Netscape Navigator was a "middleware" threat to the Windows platform and why Gates and Microsoft acted the way they did in order to keep Windows as a key piece of the Internet. Key point made was that publicly, Gates appeared to have no interest in the threat Netscape was having against his company while internal memos at the same were telling how MS was going to maintain control.
The case itself is fairly well told. Auletta does a decent job of explaining the Sherman Act and how previous anti-trust cases and decisions would weigh in on this case. Key points for the Justice Dept were the famous videotape of Gates repeatedly denying or not knowing knowledge of something being immediately followed by Boise showing an email sent by Gates; the program by Dr. Ed Felton of Princeton that was able to remove IE from Windows without performance loss vs. the poorly performing Windows presented by MS's developers; the infamous line by an MS Exec to a Netscape Exec "we will cut off your air supply;" and the MS Marketing Exec testimony on how MS restricted partners (like AOL) from advertising Netscape on the same webpage as IE.
Auletta does go off at some point telling about the history of anti-trust cases and how many monopoly cases have not lasted much longer than 13-15 years. He tells that by the end of IBM's anti-trust case, IBM was no longer a monopoly, and other examples. Although I havent reached it yet, the last chapter of the book is titled "Microsoft Loses Even If It Wins."
The chapter that really made me lose interest was the one entitled "Nerds In the Bunker." I was expecting a short tale of how geeks (like us slashdotters) were taking on MS with Linux and other open source and free (as in beer) software. Instead, I got a tale of the "nerds" of the press. A chapter on how the press was factoring into the case. MS was distracting themselves by trying to maintain a good public image while at the same time damaging evidence was repeatedly being presented to Judge Jackson, and the few members of the press lucky enough to get passes for that day.
Overall, if you time available to you and have an interest in this story, it may be worth your time to read the book. Sooner or later I know I'll finish it - Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks are comming :)
Final Note: The book covers the story up to last January, yet mentions the February Court of Appeals hearings that were scheduled at time of publication.
You can purchase World 3.0 at fatbrain. The TOC
Chronology
Prologue: Gilded Voctim
Ch 1: The Prosecutors
Ch 2: Hard Core
Ch 3: The First Pitch
Ch 4: Opening Salvos
Ch 5: The Government's Story
Ch 6: Microsoft's Hole Gets Deeper
Ch 7: Spin
Ch 8: The Real Bill Gates
Ch 9: Children At Play
Ch 10: Elephants and Mice
Ch 11: Micorosft's Witnesses Speak
Ch 12: Nerds In The Bunker
Ch 13: Spring Break
Ch 14: Exile
Ch 15: The Trial's Final Innings
Ch 16: The Trial Pauses, The Planet Doesn't
Ch 17: Judge Jackson's "Facts"
Ch 18: The Mediator
Ch 19: Disconnect: Washington, DC, vs. Redmond, Washington
Ch 20: Davos, Again
Ch 21: So Much Effort, So Little Result
Ch 22: Remedy, And Appeal
Ch 23: Microsoft Loses Even If It Wins
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
Indeed, Microsoft is not THE enemy but one of them... And one of the most dangerous...
I don't agree with closed source being an enemy... After all, if you don't want everyone peeking in your code, it's your right.
Buggy software is usually damaging the people who wrote it.
What must be fought are the bad commercial practices that are aimed at denying other programs to be used (like Microsoft's monopolistic practices), that try to remove some of our rights (like the Region Coding of DVD and the CSS system that removes the right to program our own DVD player) or that try to deny small companies/individual the right to create program by over-patenting.
I do like opensource (and GPL) and contributed to several GPL programs (bugfixes or code contribution) but I want to have the right to do my own closed source program. There may be several legitimate reason behind closed source.
For example, generated code... Take the output of yacc+lex... No-one sane will try to reverse engineer it... If the source generator behaved in a more visual way than yacc/lex, it may be very unpractical to give the source code away.
Mentality is private. It is problematic to judge people upon their prive mentality - penalties should be based on behaviour.
BTW: Half closed software with the tendancy to unfairly gain control is a bigger enemy than closed software from people who have to earn their living.
The title of the book came from two major things: the concept that Microsoft (in the author's opinion) bullyed other corporations around into contracts and other agreements that were restrictive and anti-competitive and denied the contracting company their abilities to do as they pleased. The other aspect to the tilte is how MS simply went off and attempted to consume markets all over the place, making enemies along the way. For example, Yahoo became an enemy when MSN was created.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
a) David Boies
b) I believe reviewers should finish the book or not review it. If the book is so abominably bad that it just cannot be finished, that should get a 0 score.
c) It is Ken Auletta's style to include biography as the linchpin of his chapters. That doesn't mean you're wrong in not liking it. I would suggest that businesses always conflict. Technology happens. Only the people provide whatever uniqueness there is to human events.
d) Auletta has an interesting thesis, that if Microsoft had proudly admitted its philosophy and practices are all or nothing, and explained the basis in the context of their experience, it would not have angered the Judge (I simplify a bit). Whether one agrees with that or not -- its veracity as a business philosophy or its effectiveness as an alternative judicial strategy -- it was Auletta's reporting of the Judge's thinking during the trial that provided the basis for the Appeals Court to remove Judge Jackson. As a primary document in the narrative that extended past the book's publication, I would rate this book more highly.
Wouldn't that be akin to saying, "Bin Laden is not our enemy. Hitler was not our enemy. Hatred and violence are our enemies."
Bush Lies Watch
Since when are we fighting a war? Why must we war with everthing. I personally don't like Microsoft's software. I therfore use an alternative. This did not take an act of Congress. I simply changed the software I use. As long as there are still options, how can there be a MONOpoly???? Stop fighting and start using your time to do something meaningful...like frag. Okay, thats still fighting. At least its fun.
...we have a review and we're not sure the reviewer read the whole thing. And we have a comment on that review by a guy who read the chapter titles and deduced the author's bias from that.
I didn't know this was a contest to see who could post the wildest speculation.
Actually Auletta started out from the viewpoint of a guy who was frankly awed by Gates' accomplishments but willing to consider the possibility the government might have a case. He listened to both sides and concluded that Microsoft arrogance did more to convince the judge than the Justice Department.
Such a viewpoint and methodology is recommended to those who complain about bias based on chapter titles.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Windows is not a BAD operating system, it's simply an inferior one put out by a company obsessed with the prospect of being the only operating system on the market.
If that doesn't qualify as "bad" to you, may I ask what DOES?
As for closed source being the enemy, it sure ain't mine. If it weren't for closed source, I might have to do Real Work for a living. ;-) Also, I
wouldn't have Loki's enjoyable games. Nah, I don't have a problem with
closed source; I just, as a user and when all other things are
equal, consider closed source software to be worth less than Free Software. Think of it as a very big bullet point in a feature list.
Microsoft is an enemy, but not because their products suck and are are worth less than their competitor's products. They are the enemy because they break laws to avoid accountability in the marketplace for that suckiness and inferiority to their competitors. MSDOS/Windows per-processor licenses and prices that depends on whether or not a reseller sells competing products, are examples of this. Nobody acting in good faith would ever do those things. Doing such things also happens to be against the law too. And IMHO and most (but not all) peoples' opinions, laws to keep the market free, are justified and right. Microsoft deserves to be severely bitchslapped for these actions, in the amount of billions of dollars in fines (whatever their total gross sales since the late 1980s happens to work out to) and the individuals in power at Microsoft who were responsible for these crimes, should be charged. Anyway, that's what makes MS the enemy. May the criminals face judgement and appropriate sentences.
DoJ, by not enforcing these laws which most US citizens support, are shirking their responsibility to society while simultaneously keeping their power. That is a violation of the social contract, so DoJ are the enemy too. May the traitors' heads rest on pikes.
The only other "enemies" are Microsoft's users, since they give Microsoft their power, in spite of suffering for it. Generally, those entities are really only just their own enemies, not my enemies, since I don't have the right to tell others not to hurt themselves. The exception are companies that I own stock in (since I resent my money being wasted, my company's computers' security being compromised, etc) and the government itself (since I resent my taxes being wasted and my government's computers' security being compromised). Fuck the decision makers in those private institutions, and in the case of the government people, may the traitors' heads rest on pikes.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
For example, generated code... Take the output of yacc+lex... No-one sane will try to reverse engineer it...
Hackers reverse engineer executables for fun. And hackers are sane*.
* for arbitrarily broad values of sane
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.