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Microsoft Anti-Trust Rulings Due Tomorrow
ewhac writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly will deliver her opinions on the Microsoft anti-trust suit tomorrow, after close of markets. Much speculation revolves around whether she will approve or reject the settlement negotiated by the Justice Department. Should she reject it, she can only offer suggestions for improvement; she cannot impose amendments. Watch this site for further developments :-)." Reader acacia points out that the opinions should be posted at this site, if you want a quick bookmark.
Considering that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was appointed by the very conservative Ronald Reagan, and the Justice Department is under control of the reactionary John Ashcroft, you can expect her to rule in Microsoft's favor and reject the deal to let the lawyers for the DoJ and Microsoft water it down even further.
Microsoft will quickly get back to their old dirty tricks of forcing their products upon consumers, without fear of government penalties. At best, they'll get a slap on the wrist, and we'll see Palladium-enforced computers at every electronics store we visit within 5 years.
I wonder if this could finally be it. The importance of tommorow's decision will affect all software developers for years.
While I am hopeful, I am also fearful because Microsoft's shares rose in price today, meaning Wall street doesn't have to much faith in Judge Kollar-Kotelly.
How does her ruling affect the 9 dissenting states? They didn't agree to the RPFJ, so how can it be binding on them?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
They can't do that and keep the Microsoft contract.
And there isn't enough demand for Linux to keep afloat a desktop OEM like Dell or Gateway.
Which makes me wonder. If Microsoft had really been trying to win the case on the merits, then their legal team was so incompetent they should all have been fired. I haven't heard they had, though, which makes me wonder if this all went more or less according to plan. Maybe they wanted to infuriate Judge Jackson so much that he would make just the kind of mistake he wound up making. Doesn't it seem to anyone else that from that point on, the MS lawyers suddenly started performing like the legal Dream Team they were supposed to be instead of the fuckups they'd been up to that point? If that's true, they must have been deeply disappointed that only Jackson's penalty was vacated and his finding of fact was left to stand.
This may surprise those of you who believe that conservative judges always rule politically, like liberal activist judges, but many conservative judges prefer to rule based on fairly strict constructions of the actual law rather than legislate from the bench. No less a towering conservative figure than Robert Bork, Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, believes that MS should be broken up, and he literally wrote the book on the conservative approach to antitrust law. Based on the stories I've read about the trial so far, I expect Judge Kollar-Kotelly to come down rather harsher on MS than some of you seem to fear.
And the brethren went away edified.
A lot of widows and orphans have their retirement accounts with investment houses that hold large amounts of Microsoft stock.
:) Shareholders should take responsibility for the actions of their company. If they don't represent the crimes microsoft is guilty of, then they should sell their stock. And if you're talking about mutual funds, same difference. If the death of microsoft toples a mutual fund, then they were very very very very bad investors. This is extremely unlikely. AT&T is still around, and breaking up microsoft would be much easier than it was to break them up. In the long run, (to use your emotionally loaded argument) it's neccesary so that we don't have even more starving orphans and widows. Microsoft hurts the overall economy by cornering the market.
If Microsoft gets torn apart, their stock is going to drop like a rock. The people whose 401Ks and 403Bs hold MSFT will take the brunt of it.
Since when were people assured that their money was safe in stocks?!?!?! No one is forcing you to be involved with microsoft's stocks, only their software
There are a lot of people rooting for Microsoft. The people who root against them are the same as people who rooted for the beating of Reginald Denny.
Oh lord, I can't get over this quote. Reginald Denny was a fucking INNOCENT!!! Microsoft is the AGGRESSOR!!! This would be a lot more like the grand dragon of the kkk getting pulled out of his truck and beaten, and yes, I would be loudly applauding that. I didn't applaud the beating of Reginald Denny, and unlike you who seems to hold some reservations on the subject, I thought it was an utter disgrace. To me, racism is racism. You don't attack innocent people because of their race, period. Anyway, now I'm as off-topic. It seems like everyone thinks the economy will tank even further if microsoft is broken up. What we're all failing to notice is that microsoft is stifiling competition in the market. They're also sweeping into new markets. If anything, breaking them up will HELP the economy. There'll be more market to pass arround, and trust me, there are a lot of companies out there that can do a lot better than microsoft has in the OS market.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
The problem isn't even really with the OS. Remember at one time it cost money for Netscape (because it was [imho:is] the premier product). If someone wanted to strike a deal with Netscape and put it right on the installed OS's desktop... they can't! AOL? Out of the question! Now you must pay more because you haven't given Microsoft the mindshare they wanted.
This is a common misconception, and I have no idea where it comes from.
For example, the Packard Bell computer I had at work in 1998 came with Netscape Navigator pre-installed.
The issues wasn't putting Netscape on there - it was that you couldn't put Netscape on there and remove the shortcut to Internet Explorer.
Similarly, most copies of Windows come with an AOL installer built in. The issue isn't putting it in there - it's that Microsoft want MSN to get the same exposure.
So it's not quite as cut and dried as you seem to want to make it out to be. The OEMs *can* do all of these things -- they just have to leave Microsoft's stuff in there as well, as prominently advertized as the alternatives.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't decide what's better. Accepting it or rejecting. I live in KS, one of the states that told the DOJ and MS to stick it. I *think* it would be better to see it rejected which might make our case stronger. Thoughts?
This product was intended to be installed on a system that has an existing Windows installation. What it did was add a few files to an existing Win31 setup, so that it could run under OS/2. This means that you did not have to migrate your Win16 apps to the os/2 install as well as the windows install.
Netscape
Anyone who was familiar with pre-netscape internet would probably know that browsers supported http:, and for other sessions like ftp: or gopher:, you needed other applications. Netscape integrated this into a user-friendly browser, and charged money for their bit.
Microsoft fielded IE, and charged money for it, too. But when MS did not get the market share they wanted, they first dropped the price, and then bounded it to the OS.
It's not difficult to make a Windows 95b install that has no internet browser on install. It took me an afternoon to patch the install to do it. It works quite well. It just shows that the ties are artefacial, not technical.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Not to disagree with you, because i'm not sure myself about this. But my logic goes like this, for example:
If someone said my company enjoyed "Monopoly Power" and it was true, based on findings of fact, wouldn't I have to be a *MONOPOLY* to be able to enjoy "Monopoly Power"?
Based on your reasoning, it's like saying that I have presidental power, for example. Wouldn't I have to be a president to enjoy those powers?
Unless someone clarifies this for me, it's only fair to assume that in the findings of fact of Microsoft, the court did pretty much say Microsoft is a monopoly.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
Actually, as it has been mentioned above, U.S. courts do not usually reveal verdicts concerning publicly traded companies until after the markets close. This is done to prevent the market from severely fluctuating at the news (whether good or bad). It is also interesting to point out that the ruling will be available on a Friday after the markets close. Methinks that this ruling is going to have some serious impact....
IF the US Govt. doesn't stop this nonsense, in MS's position, I'd simply stop selling Windows. MS doesn't owe the public anything. They should be a ble to negotiate any contract they want as long as it doesn't involve force (i.e. point a gun at someone). The US govt. thinks they can point a gun at MS, however, and say do business the way we want you to do business, completely ignoring the rights of the people who run MS. MS's best protest at this outrage is to simply stop doing business. Then maybe the govt. would think twice about what they consider "the public interest" and consider the rights of the people who run MS.
Vote for Pedro
I don't have my computer history down ... where was the competition in the beginning? It was an Apple/Windows thing, wasn't it? ... it has more to do with what's going on today, I think.
Why didn't anyone take the platform Windows was using and do their own thing then?
The history of computers/OS' as I know it is first the Apple, then Microsoft, with little to no others until Linux. I'd rather focus on customer-type computer info, rather than the server-type
Judge Jackson's decision was important because back then it looked like the government and the judicial system were ready able and willing to enforce the law.
But this DOJ has shown no interest to enforce the antitrust law. This makes the case a farce - a conflict between two parties that basicly agree on the issues, but only want to pretend to disagree.
The judge can refuse to approve the agreement but what if she does - if the government doesnt seek sanctions she wont impose them. The best she may do is elicit another agreement, which is guaranteed to be just as inefective.
On top of everything the judicial system has responded in a very unprofessional manner. The appelate court chose not to try and overturn judge jackson on the facts ( they will need to write a good logical justification, based on the evidence, to do that) but to pummel him with ethics accusations.
The current judge knows very well that Jackson got punished for rendering a certain decision and she is unlikely to do anything similar if she cares about her career at all.
IMO at this point in time microsoft costs the nations economy "more" than what is represented by their cash holdings and daily vig they squeeze. They are a net drag on the economy now from lost productivity and the effects of at least a decade of squashed innovation from their monopolistic tactics. They created an empire of wasteful and inefficient BUSYWORK not real work. In IT, they have single handedly slowed down software innovation by obscuring anything but their profits. They are in a grab/control/control/grab cycle, their so-called "innovations" aren't offset by any increaed over-all productivity by the businesses and consumers they "serve". At one point, yes, they were a useful company, now they exist almost totaly on inertia and locked in propietary "solutions" that are putting other companies in a WTF? scenario on whether or not it's even worht it to keep their stuff or lose a million now to save millions and millions later. entire industries existing on fixing stuff that comes pre-shipped broken is NOT productive for the over-all economy. If that model was useful we could all get rich by bulldozing down new buildings and constantly rebuilding them. In meatworld that's ridiculous but that'swhat companies suckered into using microsoft are faced with now. throwing good money after bad because now even the dullest of the dull are "getting it" on their companies need to make widgets, not exist to support microsoft. They also have contributed WAY more to weakening the over-all national security/defense by continually releasing INsecure products. This COSTS us way more than they are worth, unfortunately we won't know thefiull and total cost until some mega microsoft based attack/worm thing hits.
Think on this, they have 40 billion cash in the bank-how much better might their software be if they had spent 20 billion-only 1/2-on actual p[re-release engineering and making their products secure and less buggy? They'd still at a MINIMUM have 20 billion in the bank, a most respectable sum, but still....they'd have much better products, no one mad at them, and would have probably made even more money. See? Greed clouds judgement, business or personal, mega scale to personal scale, greed is NEVER good.
They got greedy, that's the bottom line-there's normal ETHICAL and responsible capitalism, then there's blood sucking mega-jerk greed, they crossed the line into being "bad guys" some time ago.
Gates and the next 99 guys below him need JAIL TIME. Not just ripping off stockholders and consumers to pay some joke fine, they need to get a dose of hard reality that no one is above the law, and that buckets of cash don't mean you are able to skate on being a criminal, nor should ANY of them be able to hide behind the creation of a fictitious person called a "corporation". That's nonsense on the face of it, that entire "corporation" concept needs to be on trial as well, every rank greedy decision they made was done by HUMAN BEINGS, identifiable people with names, it's those human beings who broke the law, ergo, human beings need the sentencing. Corporations-the concept-are a joke, again, IMO. I hope they get nailed, and hard. This nation locks people up for MUCH less than what they have done, daily.
Along with the lay's of enron types, these guys need to see steel bars, not vistas from mansions. they need blank walls to stare at, not the iew from a corporate jet or luxury office. I hope the next several years sees thousands of corporate fatcats and their tame poodle politicans imprisoned. Enough's enough on the "greed is good, screw everyone else" philosophy. I don't want microsoft to be fined one thin dime, nope, I never even wanted "microsoft" itself to be on trial, I wanted to see those bozos in charge on trial and charged and prosecuted and convicted and hauled off in cuffs, stripped of their armani's and chucked in the pokey, and the underlings who move up to replace them get 'scared straight' by this experience and to see the light on RESPONSIBLE corporate practices, and to serve as an example to every other fictitious-person "corporation" owners out there that their days of hiding behind that legal fiction and being blameless are OVER.
since it was the Democratic Government, under Speedy Willie Clinton, that started the antitrust hearings
The anti-trust hearings were started under Bush Sr.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So here is a quick geography lesson. Start in Redmond and drive north for about 20-30 minutes depending on traffic. Once you cross the Canadian/US border White Rock is the first town you will see.
The only reason I mention this is because I wanted to assure you that what the above poster mentioned is based on some fact. There is a huge amount of farm land around here that is right smack in the middle of two major cities (Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA) and a few years ago when things were getting hot for MS our local governments were falling over themselves trying to put together a deal to attract MS here. Essentially they were willing to rezone, and almost give land away because they recognized the benefit that MS already has on our local economy and having them on this side of the 49th parallel would be even better.
Simply not true. Money in the bank can be unused. If your economy is growing to fast, you'd see few "idle" bucks at the banks. If your economy is "cold", you'd see a _lot_ of idle money in the bank. Reinforcing these, when investors see that companies earnings at expected to go down, they sell but NOT to buy another hopefully underpriced stock, but to put it in the bank. (Just look at the interest rates falling. And that's also why the fed lowers rates, but they try to lower them beforehand, before people decide to cancel proyect as a countermesure of getting colder than needed. If they cannot prevent the ice formation, at least there is less incentive to sit the money on bacnks, and olso the projects VAN is measured against this rate).
Buy money owners couldn't care less earning less from having the money sitting in the bank, they are now "safe". Also, many projects are canceled in real life, because demand falls and thus you have extra capacity (you only need capital reposition, if anything). So new projects get postponed because of lack of oportunities.
So what would be desirable? To let companies AND people that will NOT sit their own revenues or even wealth. Of course, we all know that these are companies that either do reinvest all their extra earnings and people that consume all their income.
When this start getting cold, you need the "rich" individuals to start spending money (thepoor have already DONE that! They have no choice) and the rich (=very profitable) companies as well (the others are already speding all their income!)
So your argument COULD be not wrong. But it is in fact wrong. People cannot really find very good project to start right now. And the only ones that can decide to use that money ANYWAY are the ones that own that money. That is Microsoft et al (money bank sitters).
If they don't do it, then the goverment must do it. So you can expect a lot of deficit. And many taxes raised (so they can take away profiting power from the profiters that are not spending it, and then Spend It Right Away. Of course, this hurts companies that where not very profitable). Well, all this means inefficiency and can be a very dangerous game.
I don't really know how can people speak SO HIGH when there a lots of capable human beigns unemployed all over the countries, and a lot of factories underutilized. Is this an efficient use of resources?
And no, money is a limited resource only when it is beign used! Not when sitting in banks. (and if you want to force loans at near 0 interest rates and such, you'll see banks collapsing after a while, because loaned money will be used in stupid projects that can't pay the loans back, and the low margin of intermediation will not compensate the loses.).
So no... the right thing to do is not to profit from monopoly and make it sit on the bank for the "goodwill of the US citizen". The thing is to actually have them to use the money. And they don't want that (after all, shareholders can simple just SELL the stock if they want cash).
unfinished: (adj.)
Expect the following:
...)
.Net code I have been tinkering with. :-)
1) No real motion to do anything about Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop. They (MS) already bought most of the legal system to insure the ruling stands, regardless if it is legal or not.
So don't expect any of that to change, now or in the future. Yes, the legal system in the US is that bad, even after Enron.
2) Expect however, for Microsoft to set a number of legal precendents (such as the keeping of its monopoly power by this judge and others sure to come) that insure other very large companies to consider the same tactics to consolidate thier power in other markets in the US outside the tech industry. (i.e. clothing, energy, automotive
I expect as this unfolds, the US economy to become even MORE monolithic, and even MORE depressed as more innovation moves offshore to escape the corporate monoliths of invincibility in this country.
3) Expect other companies to use the same illegal tactics Microsoft has, and then use court rulings to either make "the law" (i.e. specifically anti trust law, cohesion, cartle laws..etc) irrelevant or insure the the legal costs are so high, defending companies will not intrude on companies with 51% market share anywhere.
Don't expect good news people. It is sad because I want my country to return to the good times. But that won't happen, when companies like Microsoft can sit on 30 Billion in capital and lock it away for the specific use to buy court rulings, and congreessional leaders. SInce this money isn't returned into the economy startups can't use it, ideas don't get funded, and little Johnny will continue to see the cost of the OS increase to the point it is 70% the cost os a home computer! (Which is comming by the way, as hardware prices continue to decline, Microsoft licenses continue to increase at never before seen rates...)
Monolithic economies, like the US, do not spur innovation, because large corporate entities who already own most of the market don't have to innovate anymore. They just sit on huge amounts of capital, and do nothing with it except harrass competition, startups, and illegally appropriate technology from other companies and figure out how to price fix thier products in the market place.
The harm that does to the technology investment sector in the US is incalculable, and the job losses are staggering.
Think about this while all you slashdot IT people sit at home unemployed.
Don't buy Microsoft products. Force Microsoft to return that ridiculously large pile of cash back into the tech sector.
Who knows, if the are forced to use all of it, maybe they will make a decent product with it, or improve the alpha quality of the
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The thing is Microsoft can just kill ANY software product that needs a profit to survive. Netscape this or that, could put could not put blah blah. Microsoft doesn't need to argue. They can decide they want Netscape to die and just invest X money on a bundled broswer. That's it, Netscape HAS to close.
So as long as you don't control the entire software bussiness, you are in risk of getting your revenue stream killed by Microsoft. If they REALLY want to, they could kill you. If you depend on a revenue stream, better not get in the way of Microsoft. It doesn't matter how innovative or well done your product is (ICQ, webmail, whatever), they will just put it free.
No wonder why AOL can't make revenues and Microsoft can. Because Micrsoft just needs 2 or 3 products to be sold to compensate ALL the loses in ALL the other fields (read: Office + Windows + some other products pay for everything).
And then they keep on "embracing and extending". That's why they must be stopped. They MUST be split, so they cannot leverage their positions. I lve Windows, I love Office, I love Explorer, I love . But I don't love them leveraging that so wipe competition. I can only lose in the long/mid term.
unfinished: (adj.)
Here's what you do:
Force all the head honchos from Microsoft (Bill Gates, etc..) to leave the company and to have no financial stake in Microsoft.
Of course, being as greedy as they are, they will create a rival company to Microsoft and have billions to put behind it. Now that would be interesting. I wonder if any of Bill's hired henchmen could possibly be more evil than he is?
Then how does Opera Software stay afloat?
I used to be a huge fan of Netscape. In many ways, NS3/X11 was (and still is) one of the best browsers ever made. Back when the phrase "browser wars" had any relevance, I consistently rooted for Netscape, and I have always and likely will always despise MSIE.
But the sad fact is that Netscape lost because they got overconfident and started sucking. Badly. NS4 was an unadulterated pile of tripe on every platform I've ever had the misfortune to see it running on. (I'm of the firm opinion that Netscape's sending JWZ to play on other projects was a large reason for this.)
From extremely unstable Java, JavaScript, and plugin handling, to a broken DOM, to broken font handling, to simple unmitigated flouting of Web standards, NS4 was a nightmare for developers, system administrators, and end users. And let's not forget that NS4's claim of implementing CSS, while deploying the most insane and broken implementation known to humanity, singlehandedly held back the Web by 2 or 3 years.
My experience with Netscape, the company, seems to bear this out. When I worked for a large company supposedly in a "strategic alliance" with them, they refused to even answer the phone when their phones showed it was us calling. I personally knew several people tasked with deploying Netscape products at the enterprise level, and the painful and unsupported hacks we had to put in place leave me cringing even now. We were supposed to be using the iPlanet server everywhere, but my manager had us use Apache and a third-party servlet engine after Netscape refused to implement basic Java servlet APIs and their configuration manager trashed our configs. When I later worked at a startup, we had one of the Netscape execs at our company, and he was still convinced that his old company's server products would win the day. Netcraft statistics meant nothing to him -- it was as if they didn't even exist -- and he seemed puzzled why everyone refused to mouth platitudes about it.
I use (unbranded) Mozilla now, and I'm very happy with it, but keep in mind that this is basically a complete redesign and rewrite of Netscape, years too late. Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, and other browsers may win back market share, but it is far too late for Netscape, the company, and for good reason.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.