Microsoft Case Proceeds

YeOldeCurmudgeon writes "This story just posted on Yahoo: Federal Judge Denies Microsoft Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Case. Microsoft's motion to dismiss the suit filed by the 9 dissenting states was denied. The judge agrees the states can sue." An article in the San Francisco Chronicle summarizes the case's current state and what's coming up next.

Comments

Is there a simple solution?

[lingqi]

Somebody explain to me why it takes 1187 pages to say "this case can go on" and why it takes this long to figure out a punishment.

This should be all very, very simple. provisional punishments like "you will now allow people to take off IE" does not stop MS from behaving anti-competetively.

I mean, just fine them! in fact, fine the crap out of them. You are found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, you choke up 80% of your profits for the next two years (as from SEC filings) or 10% of the company net worth -- which ever is higher. if you do it again, 90%/15%; third time -- dissolution of charter. (third might be a little harsh, but again, we are following the "simple" route of spirit)

-- when the share holders suddenly realize that, wow, my $$ are going away because the corporate lawyer / managers are screwing up by doing illegal stuff, i don't think they will be happy about the anti-competitive behavior anymore -- i mean, $$ drives the company, so hit it where it hurts; not some bs settlement that they can just circumvent later.

The interesting part...

[dinotrac]

What I found interesting was the Judge's characterization of Microsoft's motion as misrepresenting the holdings of the cases it cited in support of the motion to dismiss.

That's a powerful statement from a judge and should be taken by Microsoft as a warning. It seems that the last thing they should be doing is demonstrating to the Court a complete and utter disregard for truth and for the law.

That's the kind of thing that makes a judge mad and judges are bad people to have mad at you.

Re:The interesting part...

[tempest303]

I'd say she's doing better than that. Judge KK seems to be bending over backwards for MS in some situations, but standing strong when they pull some screwy crap like this motion to dismiss. Much as I thought Judge Jackson never actually said anything untrue or particularly biased (but I guess I'm biased, so who knows ;) I'm glad that when Microsoft FINALLY gets their Official Spanking from the court, we won't have to put up with as much whining from MS and the "pro-business" crowd (note the quotes) about how the judge was biased, the trial was unfair, etc.

Re:Java != .NET

[Hard_Code]

".NET's virtual machine and class libraries can do WAY more than what Java can."

Like? From what I can tell, .NET (or rather CLR) adds some small syntactic features (simpler inlining of native code, automatic boxing), and some "web services integration". If you look at the .NET class library, it is almost literally a 1-to-1 mapping to the Java class libraries. And automatic boxing and parameterized types are coming to Java in 1.5. As far as web services and middleware, Java is FAR ahead of the pack with J2EE which is absolutely dominating enterprise middleware and what is now being hyped as "web services". Servlet engines and JSP were in production for quite a while before .NET thank-you-very-much. Unfortunately MS did everything it could to kill the prospects of Java on the client, so we never really saw that come to fruition, while of course .NET will be getting automatic first class treatment on the client side which it will undoubtedly be able to leverage to accelerate acceptence in areas which J2EE is currently dominating.

".NET is just a VM/platform, whereas 'Java' was both the JVM *and* a language."

Well, .NET is a VM/platform geared towards a particular type of language (e.g., C#). From what I've read everything else is pretty much C# with different keyword/token names. That's not to say it is a *bad* thing, since MS's goal is mostly migrating its *current* base of developers. But it's far from magically-better-than-Java.

"You couldn't load up your old C software, and get it working in Java."

Woah! Could that have been a feature! ;)

"with VB.NET, VC.NET etc.. this is a possibility."

Yes, because the goal of .NET is to migrate current MS developers to a new architecture with many of the benefits of the Java platform.

"People have already created FORTH and COBOL compilers for .NET!"

Will wonders never cease! Perhaps you want to take a look at a list of the many languages that run on the Java VM (the page says "160 systems"...I'm not sure what that means, but there are a whole bunch). All this, long before .NET was anything but vapor.

"but it has several very important things going for it, and Java had none of them."

Come on, be fair, you are really pulling this out of your ass.

Actually I'd have to say I like, and am impressed by the .NET architecture, and regularly step in to defend the architecture (if not MS) in front of FUDders and bashers. It is a great step up from the mess of native languages Microsoft was supporting. It has many of the nice features of the Java platform, and some new ones. But it would be really naive and unfair to not recognize the tremendous success Java has had and is having today in the same realms .NET is just now attempting to address. Maybe being one of those who are just now boarding the ship makes things look so much more rosier, than to myself, who has been on the ship already for 3 years ;)