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Microsoft Antitrust Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson Dead at 76
McGruber writes "The NY Times has the news that federal judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who ruled in 2000 that Microsoft was a predatory monopoly and must be split in half, has died. He was 76 years old. 'A technological novice who wrote his opinions in longhand and used his computer mainly to e-mail jokes, Judge Jackson refuted Microsoft's assertion that it was impossible to remove the company's Internet Explorer Web browser from its operating system by doing it himself. When a Microsoft lawyer complained that too many excerpts from Bill Gates's videotaped deposition — liberally punctuated with the phrase "I don't remember" — were shown in the courtroom, Judge Jackson said, "I think the problem is with your witness, not the way his testimony is being presented."'"
He showed bias before the final judgement, and the ruling was nullified. It was the last best chance to break the back of the beast. Instead, we have had to put up with them for these last 13 years. They lied, cheated and stole their way to market domination. There are *hundreds* of companies and *thousands* of people they cheated and stole from. Not just Borland and Stac Electronics and IBM and DrDos and Broderbund. Not just FoxSoft and Adobe, hundreds of others.
Microsoft isn't in decline, however much people like you and I would like to imagine them to be. Microsoft is in its prime as the premier desktop operating system and Windows 7 established this in granite. Windows 8 has hairballs, but they are in a position where they can make a mistake or 2 and be trusted to correct it and the market will forgive them for this faux pas. The alternatives to Windows offer no stability advantages --- Linux is far from "write once, works 3 years from now" and neither is OS X. You'll find greater stability in running a Windows app via WINE that you will a native OS X or Linux app several years down the road.
.... reality bites, but reality counts too ...
Don't shoot me --- I'm not even a messenger --- sure Windows isn't going to penetrate the mobile or even tablet market simply because they are clueless and in identity crissi, but they will own the desktop market for at least a decade or 2 and it could be more than that.
No, Google Apps is not going to defeat Office let alone automate corporate documents
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
There was very little alternative on the desktop when Microsoft was convicted. However Apple has a very strong competitor in both Android and Samsung. That's the difference.
Try reading the findings of fact and focus specifically on applications barrier to entry. Moving from iOS to Android is not nearly as difficult as moving from Windows to Linux or OS9 was in 2000.
Microsoft also deliberately, not once but three times, disrupted the development of middleware that would have made the migration easier. Now whether you think that any of the middleware (Netscape, Java and Intel's cross-platform device driver framework) was crap or not is irrelevant. Microsoft did this to prevent competitive threats from arising and to maintain their illegally gained market share.
Apple have tried to disrupt Android but have failed, and they have also not prevented software that allows cross-platform development. It's all in the findings of fact which you clearly haven't read.