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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.
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.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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.
Read em here
Please note, this is a joke.
Now go back to your daily lives.
That would be trivial to implement and verify. And they would have nothing to complain about since that just enforces the status quo.
Any M$ app/OS on anything BUT an x86 box and Gates and Dancing Monkey Boy kiss their assets good bye and rot in jail for as long as the app/OS is available on anything but the x86.
Steve Jobs will just have to learn to like OpenOffice or StarOffice.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Since the mid 80's, the 'operating system' has been extremely important to Microsoft. Making sure everyone adopted Windows 95 and 98 was extremely important for the success of the company, as it locked them into the current architecture (2000/XP etc). This has meant that operating systems are VERY important to MS.
.NET, the operating system is not as important as it once was.. in the future, a proper .NET program will run on any system that has a .NET compatible VM and the correct class libraries!
.NET allows Microsoft's software to dominate on EVERY PLATFORM, and this is a great thing for them. A very clever move, and it may make all this antitrust case very irrelevant.
This may not be the case for much longer. With the advent of Linux, operating systems have been somewhat commoditized. With
Believe it or not, in 5 years, you could see Mac/Linux people buying, and running natively, stuff like Office and Visual Basic.NET, thanks to Microsoft embracing the concept of the virtual machine.
I think Microsoft is going to bank on the success of its virtual machine (.NET) and this whole new platform-independant architecture. Even if Microsoft was forced out of the OS game.. it's not a disaster for them. They still have the critical mass of users to sell software to (Office, etc), and a critical mass of developers used to developing for their platforms.
In essence,
mogorific carpentry experiments
who had been given this case came to hate MS, in much the same way as the previous judge had. She hated them because they lied, they cheated and they were trying all kinds of tricks to sway her viewpoint.
Now imagine you were really set to hit them upside the head with a nasty verdict. What would be the smartest thing in the world to do. Right... keep quiet about it. Never give a hint or whiff that you felt that way, or you'd never get your chance to apply a verdict at all. You'd know the previous judge really f*cked up when he talked about the case, so you wont make the same mistake. In fact, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to guess what you were planning on doing.
This is clearly conjecture on my part, but god it would be nice if it was true.
IBM has it's points good and bad, however the DOJ case (brought by the Johnson administration) was severely flawed (in ways that the MS case is not at least imho).
Among other things the prosecutors made their case on the basis of the market for mainframes. In presenting their case they eliminated the sales of Digital (then the #2 manufacturerer of computing equipment). Then they *included* the sales of IBM's competition in plug-compatible into IBM's 'market share'.
This is how they came up with the '80%' supposed market share figure that was widely published and believed. There were numerous other stupidities in this case.
MS has not, and while they managed to effectively sidestep a weakly worded consent decree after the '95 case, that very disrespect for the law is a big part of why the opposition is playing hardball this time around.
First time the rumor was that Gates threatened the Clinton administration that he'd take MS offshore. As has been said in posts above this one, you can only thumb your nose at the judge for so long before she decides to flex her muscles.
MS has begun to clean up it's act and behave in ways that are required of a monopoly. If they are found guilty and then go back and try to do the same cr*p yet again I daresay they will be facing a truly PO'd judicial system.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
".NET's virtual machine and class libraries can do WAY more than what Java can."
.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 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.
;)
.NET is to migrate current MS developers to a new architecture with many of the benefits of the Java platform.
.NET!"
.NET was anything but vapor.
.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 ;)
Like? From what I can tell,
".NET is just a VM/platform, whereas 'Java' was both the JVM *and* a language."
Well,
"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
"People have already created FORTH and COBOL compilers for
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
"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
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
He came to hate them too. And went too far as a result. MS turned that to their advantage, just as they did Jackson's missteps. Neither Jackson's or Sporkin's humiliations will be lost on this judge. She will be as careful as she can possibly be.
I think the first two came to hate MS because they could see clearly the utter contempt MS has for the justice system, or anyone else that might get in their way. MS is still at it in this new courtroom. Lies, half truths, FUD, remorselessness, arrogance, self-serving "compliance" and disrespect for the intellegence of the bench are usually not part of a winning formula in court. Eventually, MS will find a judge that does not get provoked, but simply hammers them with the law. Hopefully, this judge will be the one.