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Another MS Witness with Egg on Face
I-man writes "Extra extra! DOJ lawyer completely destroys the credibility of yet another Redmond Exec!"
Wrap it up people. This is just getting to loony. I'm
not sure which "Bill" related trial is more boring right
now. They're both pretty darn funny though.
Update: 02/23 02:24 by CT : cswiii sent us
a nice link to a CNN story about a
Six-week break trial.
After which we'll finally get some closing.
looks like the DOJ has a pretty good lawyer there.
Every day I read about how another MS witness makes himself look like a clown. Is MS really this stupid to put these witnesses up on the stand, or is this all part of some big MS scheme to rule the world?
Living in the Seattle area, it's hard to get any accurate trial coverage, but I heard a funny one on the radio last night.
The leader was "at least one expert think MS may lose their trial". I guess that's the same sense in which "at least one expert thinks the world is round".
The "story" consisted of speculation of why they might have failed. The reason was: The witnesses weren't prepared for the trial. Yeah, it could be that. Or maybe they were lying through their teeth.
Anyway, the reporter claimed that this case is one that the Supreme Court would like to see. No reason given why, but it sounds like we might have to do this all over.
More M$ bullshit. Whenever M$ wants to distance themselves from one of their own, they just call them a low-level employee. This is the same wording they used when the Halloween docs showed up. If this guy was
so low level, then why did they call him? 'cause
he had evidence, or what?
Oh man, that's too funny. It's almost like they're doing it on purpose. Can you declare a mistrial because your witnesses are stupid?
It doesn't appear as if MS is trying very hard.
ha ha ha ha
I hope Microsoft gets eaten alive by sperm whales.
Serves them right, those poo poo heads
Yeah right.
In France there's a trial going on right now of former ministers who deliberately allowed AIDS tainted blood to be used in transfusions to protect a French company while that company got its AIDS blood test together.
I hardly think the French are the people to tell the US how to run a civilized country.
Maybe if you punish politicians for small things, like lying, they won't try to get away with larger things, like deliberately condemning people to death.
The very concept of justice is passe. Who cares WHAT you've done as long as people are happy with the job you were doing... It isn't even "The End Justifies the Means", it's "The Ends are good, so therefore it's all good."
(He's not a Nixon by far, but if I can't trust him to tell the truth under oath about a trivial issue with an intern, how can I trust him on more important matters? How can I believe anything he says? )
Bill Clinton was not on trial for Sex, it was Perjury and obstruction of Justice
You'd think half of the MS execs would be in jail now for perjury. Wtf is Jackson doing in their?!? Or is he going to split up MS first, then throw all of their leaders in jail. That would be nice.
The government is having way too easy of a time.
MS and BG are not that dumb.
People shrewd enough to take over the software world do not put dummies on the stand in such an important trial, unless that is part of the plan.
I still haven't figured what what is to gain by loosing (maybe Bill can retire), but I'm sure that something is up.
I remember reading that during the "faked video"
incident, the DOJ lawyer threatened the MS Witness with the possibility of Perjury.
alot of people think that what Bill Gates and MS does is ok too. After all, our economy is very very good because of microsoft. So if Clinton gets off---of course Bill Gates should be left alone (btw, Gates has an even higher approval rating in the US)
It's a good thing this trial isn't being held in Los Angeles...these gapping holes would be a positive BOON there.
It's all part of a plan to drive down the price of Microsoft stock so they won't get hit too hard when all their employees exercise their stock options.
(Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else Tinylimp, er, Microsoft has done in this case.)
The sad fact that all the simpering Democrats won't admit is that Clinton is a very tiny man in a very large office.
The only reason he was elected in 92 was that Ross Perot had some wierd vendetta thing against Bush. Clinton obtained office with a minority of the vote.
The only reason he was re-elected in 96 was the economy was good. We Americans are so shallow that, if we have a big-screen TV and all the burgers we can eat, then "Hey, what does it matter WHO'S in office?"
Politically, Clinton's done nothing of consequence (unless you count soiling our highest office); Morally, he's dirt; Economically, he's taking credit for a boom that was generated during the (gasp!) Regan-Bush years.
The Republicans main problem is they were too stupid to just sit back and ride this out. They were trying to do what was right for the country, but got tripped up over their own big fat feet.
I mean, seriously, he's the President. Not only is he a _politician_ which should say something to you right there, but he's got a very high security clearance as far as national security goes. He's _expected_ to lie as part of his job in some cases. In many others he's expected to lie simply as a part of what he is. I mean, do you really think that anyone gets to be president in this system without having spent a lifetime making dirty little deals and lying about them?
I've heard conjecture about Clinton being a womanizer ever since he was first elected. I usually doubted the specifics of most things that were said, but is there anyone out there who really thought that the man wasn't having extramarital affairs?
Oh yeah, I forgot, the trial was about 'perjury' and 'obstruction of justice'. Pfyeah right.
P.S. I think Clinton's a scumbag anyway, and it has nothing to do with having affairs and lying about it. It has to do with many of the _other_ things he has done that sometimes flirt with treason. Not that they're things that just about any red-blodded American politician wouldn't have done in his place, of course. On the other hand, the same thing probably goes for the affair and denial thing.
If he isn't a low-level employee now, he probably will be soon :-) (or just simply an ex-employee)
people don't find out or care about such matters. I have reason to believe stuff like that happens a lot more often in Washington DC then they'd let you believe. But for some reason, Ken Star just had to nab Clinton on this one and spent millions of dollars. He just had to get his man!
I don't see why a witness needs to be "prepared" if he's going to tell the truth.
And I can't imagine what interest the Supreme Court would have in a simple antitrust case. Did they bother with IBM or AT&T? Corporations don't have the same constitutional protections (which is usually what Supreme Court cases are about) that individuals do.
The Sherman (Antitrust) Act has criminal penalties as well as the civil. I hope that Judge Jackson excercises those clauses and shoves the perjuring assholes (what is it now, 3, 4?) in jail to rot! I would laugh my ass off if Bill Gates was in a federal prison. But if they can't get him, might as well get as many execs as possible.
Ok, MS is going to lose. It's obvious.
My big question for anyone is: do you think the DOJ will require MS to make the src for Windows to be public?
I know we all _want_ that, but will the DOJ do it?
Soon, when it looks like the DOJ is going to make a decision, Bill will announce his "Declaration of War Against the People of the World." Using his money (and weapons bought from certain countries I won't name, except for the U.S. (remember Iraq in the 80s) ), he will hire militias around the U.S. to be his foot soldiers.
As Nostrodaumus (sp?) predicted, " He will come, in his great dorkness, bearing the mark of the beast (William Gates III = ascii christ), draped in a dark cloak, wearing a bulky black helmet (see Space Balls).
And didn't we (the US) win that war?
The fact the the US never bother to annex Canada (when it's so close) should tell you Canadians something . . .
Hmm, did M$ present any case for a rebuttal. As I see all M$ witnesses were very helpful to DOJ. M$ will be better off if they market third party products than doing software(software+lawyers are hopeless but marketing). Oh forgot, making door hinges also feasible for M$.
Nixon went down for harassing private citizens, trying to use the FBI as his own personal police force, and supervising criminal acts (called breaking and entering & burglary).
I won't even mention ordering the illegal invasion Cambodia & Laos.
Yes, Clinton pissed on the office of the presidency, demonstrated no respect for the much vaulted "american people", but it hasn't been proven that he broke the law in the strict sense.
Nixon, Reagan, and Bush wiped their asses with the Constitution. They clearly broke the law. There's absolutely no correlation between their cases and Clinton's.
It is of considerable pleasure to see just how much help Microsoft is providing to the "other side" by sending in these bone-head witnesses. It is making the prosecutor's job very easy. I keep getting images of shark infested waters and another victim down when I read about the bumbling idiots our favorite multi-billion dollar company keeps throwing in the drink in it's defense. We are seeing now just how undeserving of M$'s billions of dollars they are in that not only do they have idiots programming for them, M$ has idiots defending them as well. Or to re-phrase - is this the best a 38+ billion dollar company can do in it's own defense????
Long live Linux and the OSS movement...
Mike
First of all, you're right that Iran-Contra was incomparably worse than what Clinton was charged with.
Second, the Clinton trial was not strictly "moralist" although it was surely politically motivated and partisan. Do you think the House Republicans would have gone after Clinton so aggressively if he was a fellow Republican?
Third, having sex with a subordinate employee IS a firing offense if there is the slightest evidence of coercion. Remember that Clinton paid $1,000,000 to settle the Paula Jones case in which he was accused of expecting female employees to have sex with him or risk being fired.
Fourth, the definition of "sexual relationship" was "nailed down" in this case with extraordinary specificity, and Clinton absolutely lied about this.
Granted, none of this necessarily amounts to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" mentioned in the Constitution as grounds for removing a president. On the other hand, it is almost inconceivable that anyone in business, academics, or lower public office would keep their job under the circumstances. They might at first, but once it became a public scandal the offender would be ditched in a hurry, certainly once the perjury became so clear.
No one should be above the law. Writing the investigation off as a "moralist crusade by the far right" is like defending Watergate by saying "Other politicians are as dirty as Nixon, but he just happened to get caught".
There's a reason only 6% of French homes have computers: France is a corrupted, backward, bureacratic, crusty tourist shop.
Maybe if the French had:
(1) A sense of ethics in international and domestic affairs
(2) A populace that was more concerned elevating their country from its near 3rd World conditions.
... they could actually reclaim their former greatness.
I think the actual words of Shakespeare's character were: "First thing we'll do - we'll kill all the lawyers." I would be careful about quoting that, because the character who said it was a terrorist talking about overthrowing the government.
MS and BG are not that dumb.
Prove it!
I love all of the people who defend Microsoft by saying that MS hires all of the smartest people. Yea show me one fact that proves that! Microsft innovates like the MAFIA innovates.
In France, as in most of Europe, there would never have been a political witchhunt like what Kenneth Starr was allowed to pull off, and thus no reason for the head of state to lie to protect his privacy.
While there are some differences between corporate and individual rights, corporations are far more likely to be, ahem, judicially active. Their ability to reliably fund legal teams far outweigh any disadvantages.
I don't have statistics handy, but I believe the great increase in court cases come from corporations sueing other corporations.
M$ has reached a plateau in its growth. When M$ stock isn't showing double digit growth (in stock price) annually, people will _finally_ look at the P/E ratio and shit all over themselves before calling their broker to dump the stock. M$ stock is very close to taking a nose dive, even without government intervention.
If M$ is broken up, the principals can blame the nasty Federal government on the stock crash, and not their own actions. This way, they avoid personal liability. Cute, huh?
Gates will own about 25% of each of the baby-M$ companies, and he gets to play the stock game again with one of these companies. So M$ engineers a government mandated breakup, which camoflages the M$ stock crash. Then, starting with one of the baby-M$ companies, they begin playing the same game all over again. Showing huge growth (in stock price), etc., and undoubtedly employing the same business tactics we have all come to expect. The pricnpals siphon off a few billion, and start AGAIN. Not a bad plan, I suppose.
Just a guess.
The DOJ doesn't (or at least shouldn't) care if MS is evil, or stupid, or great, or whether Windows is great or lousy.
The U.S. has well-established antitrust laws to prevent abuses of monopoly power. Not everyone agrees with antitrust legislation, but for now they are on the books and MS is compelled to follow them.
Statements like "I like Windows just fine, leave MS alone" and "Winbloze sux, screw Gate$, break up Microsloth!" are equally irrelevant to the case. The question is whether MS can be proven to have BROKEN THE LAW (I sure hope so). Making mediocre software is not illegal.
I think the DOJ has good reason to believe that Microsoft broke the law. It is NOT a waste of money to investigate this, irrespective of whether consumers ultimately benefit.
It would seem to me that at this point in time what with MS courtcases, 'hyped' mainstream Linux coverage and users _still_ stuck with their MS-Outlock e-mail hells, a casual rereading of R. Pirsig's 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' might be in order.
Everybody seems totally uninterested in 'Quality'. Managers sign orders to buy MS-software, MS-managers put out mediocre software, Joe User doesn't seem to feel the need to understand a little more about the complex beast called computer he/she has on the desk; after all, its just an overgown microwave isn't it ?? A justice system that seems to care more about winners than justice. Clueless journalists making a fast buck on the next hype. The list goes on.
It might be that the fact that I'm at the end of a long day here in amsterdam, is making me see things a bit gloomily. Come to think of it... I hope it _is_ the reason...
bercovic@swi.psy.uva.nl
Hey, don't forget getting rid of their National Motto which, loosely translated, comes out as "We Surrender!"
Gotta wonder if they can't coordinate the stories between a few MS executives, how they can coordinate the efforts of the gazillion code-pigs that have spewed out those 30 million lines of NT bug bedding.
For instance, former French president Francois Mitterand had a mistress, and even had a family with her. Everybody knew. Nobody cared. His mistress and her family even showed up at his funeral,and met his Mitterands wife, and it didn't cause a scandal, or even a scene.
So typical ... Microsoft is killing itself. They were consumed by the Dark Side. Now they are eating their own ... but inevitably things are going to fall apart.
Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. That's one hundred senators with one hundred votes, and one hundred different reasons for voting one way or the other. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that there wasn't a single reputable legal scholar or historian in the country (left or right wing) who thought that the charges warranted impeachment, much less removal from office. That's an interesting thought, isn't it?
On the whole, though, it wasn't all bad. First, the percentage of Americans who actually know what "impeachment" means has been multiplied many times -- and what's good for reading comprehension is good for the country. Second, the right wing has badly discredited itself. They've left us with a lot less room to kid ourselves about their real intentions. (The downside is that they lost Gingrich, who had become such a disastrous liability to the GOP that if he'd run in my district, I'd have voted for him
The most fundamental effect, though, was a further erosion in the level of honesty, civility, and honor in public discourse -- which is now hovering somewhere below a GNOME/KDE flamewar on slashdot. Oh, well.
This is what we get for winning the Civil War.
In my dealings with MS employees online and in person, they were generally intelligent people. (Some were real idiots, but not many.) But, exceptionally or very intelligent?
I'd say they're not remarkable in any way, but not dumb.
The real genuises are in IBM R&D!
> It may take time, but the effects of unpunished > jury will be there.
I agree! We must make sure to punish the juries!
This is what the six week recess is for. :)
Dave Bennett
I think this is closer to Buccaroo Banzai. All the MS execs will try to return to their home planet in some patched together spaceship.
x
Sure, everybody SAYS he does a good job, but when you look at his deeds closely, it turns out to be all lies and equivocations.
Bill Clinton does a good job of pretending to be doing a good job. He's even got a phony balanced budget (it depends on what your definition of "the budget" is). Meanwhile the real budget still isn't balanced, the trade deficit soars, and personal bankruptcies are way up.
A liar is a liar. And you can't trust a liar, period. That's the problem with knowing too much politics. It makes you forget about the truth.
It seem like noone ever gets charged with perjury, even when it is obvious, and the justice system suffers because of it. For example, this exchange from a small claims court suit I was in some years back:
Her: "No, your honor, he never gave me any money for this."
Me: "Your honor, I have the canceled checks right here!"
Her: "Ok, he gave me some money, but not enough..."
Did my opponent face perjury charges for her blantant lie?
No, of course not.
Did she face perjury charges when she sued me again, and removed her neck brace on the way out of court, in front of my lawyer?
No, of course not.
Do I have any faith left in the American legal system?
No, of course not.
:-(
...Microsoft would get off, scot free.
After all, they've done a good job managing the software industry. Or so their PR would have us believe. And we know they're liars, so logically we should doubt the PR. But people don't make that connection in regard to Bill Clinton, so why should they make it concerning Bill Gates?
The reason liars run the world is that the common slob wants to believe the lies. It's easier than admitting they've been had.
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/990223 -000005.html, towards the bottom.
If you want a nice, cynical slant to your MS coverage, check out their trial pages.
The Supreme Court only deals with matters of
the constitutionality of laws. I see no reason
why they would take any interest in the M$ trial.
Sounds like a case of speaking w/o thinking.
Oh well.
God will kill you heathen!
Anyway, a large portion of this country is Christian and I think the republicans are trying to somewhat use that to their advantage. I'm sure a lot of them may be Christian themselves, but I don't doubt they do a lot of this stuff to try to win over as many Christians as they can. From what I got from the Bible, Jesus seemed like he'd be liberal if he voted today (not that democrats = liberal).
Why would they all attack the president on moral issues they have likely violated themselves? My parents who are republican now preach how democrats are immoral and republicans are perfect (morally), and that's what they want.
If you think that Rosen had a bad time yesterday, think again. He was accused of making things up in today's cross examination.
I just can't believe that these latest gaffes are all coming from witnesses called by Microsoft. So far Boies has destroyed their credibility on the witness stand thereby making their written testimony also suspect.
I guess I'm just some self-righteous prig.
Down with standards of personal conduct! They just make the lowlifes look bad!
When we look at France, we see the future of America. This country is heading downhill. France is further down the same hill.
'Illegal invasion' ?
Would that be like the no-fly zones in Iraq that Clinton ordered ? They have no basis in law, UN resolutions, or anything else.
Not just sissies, but _uneducated_ sissies too.
Don't make us angry, or we'll burn the White House - again - and pave over your lame-ass country so we have a place to park our cars.
Start the steamrollers! Pave the US!
why cant you take teh Bible literally? It is the Word of God.
the truths and statements in are all God inspired. If you dont want to believe that, thats your decision. but if you do believe that, your eyes and heart will open up truths far greater than what you read in that Book.
Proof you say? God's revelation in His Word will be *personally* truthful to you...and nothing will be able to shake your faith in it.
Try, for once, to believe with your heart - not your mind.
p
Perjury isn't charged if the witness corrects himself (or, I guess, admits to being corrected), because the jury (or judge, in this case) will hear the corrected evidence, thus it doesn't really affect the outcome of the trial.
Don't know if the law is written that way, but that is the way it is applied. Of course, being corrected does shoot a witnesses credibility to hell.
OK, OK, back on topic.
I sentence Bill Gates to a night in jail with Monica Lewinsky!
your IQ is obviously less than your shoe size.
.. haha! some of you people crack me up.
stop hitting the crack pipe man. believe with your heart?
Mine is just oversexed, don'tcha know,
and she didn't write that silly old book anyway...
Not that I don't agree with you about US policies, especially the way that US politicians believe that they're there to serve big business, I have to say something about some dirty tricks I know France has gotten up to. I'm from New Zealand. Back in the eighties, while France was conducting nuclear testing in the Pacific (they just got finished with another round recently) the Greenpeace ship "Rainbow Warrior" which was about to leave port and protest the testing, was bombed in a New Zealand harbor. French secret service agents had illegally entered the country and planted a bomb on the hull of the boat. A crewman of the Rainbow Warrior, photographer Fernando Pereira was killed in the explosion. A few days after the French Embassy had denied any knowledge of the bombing two french secret service agents were detained when they returned their rental van. There were several high profile resignations in France in order to protect Francois Mitterand. The secret service agents were sentenced to (in my opinion, fairly lenient) ten year terms for willfull destruction of property and manslaughter. Eventually, in exchange for reparations the prisoners were transferred to french custody to serve out the rest of their sentences. Once in French custody, the pair were almost immediatly released.
So, it looks like everybody does it.
After Clinton stood up there and wagged his finger "I did not have sexual relations...", how are we to trust anything else he tells us?
that's what microsoft will say. remember caldera?
Let's consider time period to be a place, and the subject line is basically what you're saying. Never say that! Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, say "it could never happen here"/"it could never happen to me"/"that only happens to those other people." It's one of the most naive mindsets possible; famous last words as it were. It's sentiments like that that get people like Hitler voted into power. Honestly, I don't know what depresses me more, the crazy things some people believe in, or the things that they refuse to believe could be true.
Don't worry about it. French is a dying language.
Good riddance I say. Speaking French makes you sound like a faggot anyway.
This is probably a waste of my time, but I find it amusing that you immediately attack the IQ of a person who places faith in the Bible. I am one of those '70' IQ people, except that on the four IQ tests I've taken over the years, I scored 157,158,159, and 99th percentile. (Two of those tests were Mensa administered, if you want to question the reliability of them.)
If you look through history you will find many highly intelligent people with a faith in God. (You will also find many intelligent athiests, many less intelligent people with a faith in God, and many less intelligent athiests.) I'm sure few people would accuse C.S.Lewis of being stupid. You can read about his journey from atheism to Christianity in his books. "Mere Christianity" is a good start.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that faith in God has very little to do with intelligence. And, BTW, God loves people like you!
No, but it might translate to "We're the National Front", which, IIRC, pulled 15% of the vote in a recent election.
Hey, look! Oliver Stone reads Slashdot!
> Because the Republicans have very little support in most areas.
Indeed, they have barely enough to pull an absolute majority in the House of Representatives in an election in which every seat is up for grabs.
At least Americans were never forced to Sieg Heil!
And what was that whole Maginot Line thing about?
Pure bullshit. Under the law, a corporation is defined as a "person." The only difference is that
a corporation has no "individual" who is held accountable by law. You can sue a corporation, but nobody will ever go to jail. You must convict the officers of the corporation to get any accountability. Even then, the corporation lives on and can do what it wants. It is the only legaly defined individual that cannot be sued and put in jail for its transgressions, regardless of how egregious its transgressions are. This is what allows a corporation to authorize deadly policies, and kill its workers while remaining relatively immune to lawsuits. What are you going to do, put the factory in jail? You sure as hell cant put the officers of the corporation in jail unless you sue them as individuals, and not as the corporation. That is the whole point of defining a corporation as a person. Tax issues have little to do with it, although it does simplify to have the corporation sending a tax return as a single person. But that was not the reason this law was made.
You are right, but I thik that intellectual sharing probably goes in cycles. The cycles are fairly long, with different fields of endeavor slightly out of sync. The cycles are affected by lots of factors -- general prosperity within a field, opportunity for profit, etc. Computer work is fairly prosperous now, Microsoft reduced the profit opportunities in some areas to virtually zero. It is no accident that opensource is strongest where Microsoft has (or was going to) reduce the profit opportunity to virtually nothing. People holding property (in their minds or hands) that has had its value reduced just let it go.
x
Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that canadia was another state near North Dakota. heh
"Just look at the DOJ vs. Microsloth case. If everyone who lied on the stand was charged with perjury, then they'd just escort the Microsloth execs out the side door instead of letting them walk out the back. They're all lying. Most of them are proven liars when they get up to go. None are charged."
Yes, why are they not being charged with perjury? Maybe the judge will charge the M$ witness's with perjury or contempt of court. It seems appropriate to me.
Ok, I will explain it again. In the one case the investigation is about personal sex life that has nothing to do with anything except very personal matters. In the other case it has to do with corporate monopoly practices that cost consumers billions of dollars. Well maybe you are very obsessed with another person's sex life, but the rest of us are more concerned about economics that affects us. Maybe you still dont understand. Get your head out of your rectum, and forget about tickling your dick for a while, and learn about the rest of the world. There's a whole Internet to explore, and much of it does -not- have to do with who has sex with whom. . . . Or just do a search on "sex + teens + sluts" at your favorite search engine to satisfy yourself.
Wait, you mean you don't know that Vince Foster's "Suicide" was really a secret service hit commisioned by Clinton? Damn, your head is in the clouds.
Without a doubt, if MS loses they'll appeal however high up the ladder they can get anyone to listen. They've just got to come up with a reason that make someone want to listen.
You should read Katz's recent article dispelling the myth of BG the oh-so-clever. We have long said that his skill lies in marketing rather than innovation and implementation, but as Katz shows, BG can't seem to market diddly when you take a close look at it.
d ocs/katz21.htm
Simple fact is, IMO, BG & Co. got their monopoly not from innovation, not from quality, not from marketing savvy, not from giving the customers what they want (now aka "ownership"), but rather from the simple fact that IBM's name recognition scooped up most of the desktop market, IBM fumbled their would-be monopoly into Bill's lap, and the pressures of price and standardization crowded out the only other major contender, the Mac.
BG is just another clueless geek who can't distinguish between "genius" and "luck", with the result that when the DOJ yanked back the curtain, there wasn't a Whiz of OS standing ready with a deep deceptive plan for triumph, but rather, just a clueless geek wondering why his mythical "genius" wasn't sweeping all obstacles before it.
No, the defense is just pure, dunderheaded fumbling -- the kind that always goes on at MS away from our prying eyes; the kind that makes businesses fail in the absence of multi-billion dollar cash reserves and a stranglehold on an important market. (And, as many others have noted, probably a large element of success-bred arrogance, both as a cause for the bad behavior in the first place, and now as an element in their inability to mount a defense that doesn't contribute more egg to their own faces.)
Katz's article is at http://www.mercurycenter.com/opinion/perspective/
I mostly agree with your sentiments, but would like to add that it was also "the US government" that struck the CDA down as being unconstitutional.
There's both good apples and bad, in that basket.
> if you're gonna try to hang someone on their testimony you better make damn well sure that you nailed down exactly what you mean by sexual relations
That's exact what the problem was (if it *was* a problem) in this case. The Jones lawyers thought they were playing hardball when they gave BC a sheet with their anal-retentive definition of "sexual relationship". Unfortunately for them, it left a loophole the size of Monica's... er, Paula's original nose.
From what I've seen of the trial, they *couldn't* get him on perjury, because he answered according to the lawyer's definition, as demanded, rather than according to "what everyone knows". Any attempt to prosecute him according to "what everyone knows" is bound to fail, because that's not the question he was asked.
I'm only Chris if you're one who might be known as Craig.
ttyl
> Bill Clinton was not on trial for Sex, it was Perjury and obstruction of Justice
Which 'fact' surely explains why the details of his sexcapades were published all over television and the internet, but when it came to perjury, his prosecutors couldn't ever bring themselves to pin down exactly what he said that was perjurous.
Instead, they talked about "bad behavior" (Lott), "lying to the public", and how his sexcapades "diminished the office". And kept so busy talking about the ills of perjury that they forgot to take the trouble to actually make a case for it.
...kind of like Microsoft forgot to prepare a defense. I now return you to the scheduled programming...
> I sentence Bill Gates to a night in jail with Monica Lewinsky!
You're getting close for my recipe for resolving the impeachment crisis: put Bill and Ken together in one cell, and Monica and Linda together in another across the aisle.
Or if that's too harsh, we could just have them spank each other on the White House lawn.
Well the French have been on-line for longer than most countries, only they used the Minitel instead of the internet (wasn't up to much when they started).
They are also early adopters of credit/debit cards, smart cards etc.
Hell, I'd rather have their stagnant one than many other so called dynamic ones.
At least they have their priorities right - food, sex, love, holidays,..,..,..,work
man, that was the funniest thing i've read in ages.
"forge a "win-win" relationship between the two companies."
MS wins and uhh... MS wins
Cheers
AndyM
"My point is that millions of people have convicted him, thanks to the incessant baying of "he's a perjurer" and
"he obstructed justice""
Because HE DID!
The purjury occurred when he was asked about his sexual history relating to the Paula Jones case.
He most definately DID have "sexual relations" as defined by the legal definition given to him by the court. He caressed Monica's genetalia during most of the oral sex sessions, and there was also direct genital to genital contact, both of which were listed in the definition. Even the cigar incident would be included as sexual relations.
This was not a case of consenting adults. This was a case of Clinton continuing to seek "quid pro quo" relationships with women, where he traded sex (with them) in exchange for job opportunities.
There is no doubt that clinton is guilty of those charges. The problem is that the Republicans with their misguided social conservatism, got associated with this.
"it's just like (as I posted a couple of weeks ago) MS saying over and over that "NT's
a better Unix than Unix" or "we're innovating IE into Windows". If nonsense is repeated often enough by pundits, talking heads, and hired mouthpieces, it tends to get accepted by lots of people - but it remains nonsense."
So refute my analysis and show me how it is wrong. It's NOT nonsense, we were just more afraid of the people bringing the charges against Clinton then the charges themselves. That's why we all KNOW Clinton is guilty, but we don't want him impeached, because we don't want social conservatism crammed down our throat.
Jce2@po.cwru.edu
"And you have NEVER, EVER lied, right? About ANYTHING, EVER?"
Please explain to me what the purpose of a "trial" is if we don't prevent lying?
LYING UNDER OATH IS DIFFERENT THEN LYING!!
jce2@po.cwru.edu
...have to say after the broadcast of Juanita Broaddrick's allegations of rape tonight on Dateline NBC.
So you're already on thin ice with your IQ points, by (at best) not bothering to read what you're replying to. Assuming you are in fact genius level in potential, you're nonetheless just as capable of acting like a moron in practice as anyone else, which means that you aren't really a genius after all. It doesn't count for anything if you're only a genius during the IQ tests, but a moron the rest of the time.
Lastly, if in fact you completely agree with the original retard that I flamed -- if you think that e.g. the bible is the literal word of god -- then that already proves that the IQ test was defective, and that you, too, are a total retard.
That wasn't last, I take it back...one more thing...all of the best technical people that I know have IQ's considerably higher than the IQ of 160 that you seem to think is so impressive. 99th percentile means you're one in a hundred. BFD -- the impressive people are one in a million. So sorry chump, but IQ of 160 still means that you're an idiot by comparison with your betters. Next time you argue religion (or anything else, for that matter), stop and consider that, if their IQ is 60 points above yours, they may have insights that you are incapable of understanding no matter how long they try to educate you. (Again, especially if you don't even use whatever native intelligence you have.)
How do we know he's actually doing a good job running the country? Whose word do we take for that? A known liar's, that's whose.
Is the budget really balanced, or is that just clever accounting?
Are most people really better off, or are 80% worse off?
Is our country secure, with NT 4.0 in the Pentagon?
Is our foreign policy just, or are we just bombers of aspirin factories?
It all dependds on whether you give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
That is to say, I haven't made a lifestyle out of it. Have you?
Some follow-ups to comments on my original post:
Analog said:
>The problem I have with this (and I will say up front you know more about it than I do) is that as you say, it is supposed to be a financial
>distinction. However, it is frequently used outside that context. When a company gets caught outright lying to consumers and defends it as
>exercising their freedom of speech as guaranteed in the Constitution (as seems to happen fairly regularly), I think we've gone beyond anything
>you're talking about in your post. In practice, it also seems to happen that corporations are given individual protections, but are exempt from
>individual responsibilities.
Hmmm...when I said finanical maybe I wasn't being quite clear. That was the original intent because that was the principle cause of legal action against companies. Although torts, regulations and the principles behind them did exist, not near to the extent today (anyone who thinks modern American conservatives are laizzie-faire (forgive the spelling) hasn't seen anything yet). As far as avoiding responsibilities see my further remarks below.
>I think that for most of the things you've outlined, it is not necessary to make a corporation an individual. For instance, instead of saying that
>corporations have all the rights and protections that individuals have, you could create a law than simply states that in the case of liability the
>company is responsible, not it's officers (which I'm sure is probably how it all started). The rest should not automatically follow, but it seems in
>our system that it does.
You could probably create a system out of whole cloth that better served the ends of corporate personhold without the downsides. This system, however, has developed over two plus centuaries with ad hoc additions to meet the times. Even if we rewrote it to fit today's world and its views in fifty years it will out of date and ad hoc again.
>I should point out that I'm not really taking exception to (or even necessarily disagreeing with) anything you've said, but I do think the current
>system is broken. Whether it's in concept or implementation I could not really say.
Probably implementation, we tinker every year and in general it does alright. Corps certainly take egregious actions, but more and more they caught and pay for them. Today we take large settlements for relatively minor flaws. Corps react to them in PR ways that tend to benefit the public. Is it perfect, NO. Is it working, YES.
Another AC said:
>Pure bullshit. Under the law, a corporation is defined as a "person." The only difference is that
>a corporation has no "individual" who is held accountable by law. You can sue a corporation, but nobody will ever go to jail. You must
Corporations also cannot vote, hold officer, choose a religion (except for certain religious corportations) or a lot of other things. Also, no one goes to jail directly because you are I sue them. Lawsuits are civil actions and jail terms come from crimial legal actions. If you break the law during a civil proceeding you may goto jail.
>convict the officers of the corporation to get any accountability. Even then, the corporation lives on and can do what it wants. It is the only
>legaly defined individual that cannot be sued and put in jail for its transgressions, regardless of how egregious its transgressions are. This is
>what allows a corporation to authorize deadly policies, and kill its workers while remaining relatively immune to lawsuits. What are you going
>to do, put the factory in jail? You sure as hell cant put the officers of the corporation in jail unless you sue them as individuals, and not as the
>corporation. That is the whole point of defining a corporation as a person. Tax issues have little to do with it, although it does simplify to have
>the corporation sending a tax return as a single person. But that was not the reason this law was made.
I don't remember mentioning tax laws at all. The financial arangements I was speaking of were general debt and bankruptcy, the historical context for the creation of corporations as a concept.
Although I can't say I care for the quality of your expression, you have hit on a principle problem with current corporate law. Analog hit on a tangential version of it:
How do we handle criminal actions taken on behalf of a corporation by its officers?
There are several issues that need consideration and that keep the issue from being far from simple:
1. The level the employee taking the actions is at.
2. How do we define if the action is corporate as opposed to personal?
3. How do we change corporate policy?
Their have been moves to make officers, not owners, responsible criminally. This will probably continue. As for its effectiveness, I don't know. I think better shareholder accountability of the CEO/BOD would help. Still, given the general benefits of corporations and their ability to pool capital I'd be sad to see them abandoned over this issue.
I wonder how much money the goverment is WASTEING on this trial?
:-)
First of all - Netscape, Sun, Novell, and whoever else is taking part should have to pay for this. Right now all they pay for is lobbyist. Netscape has over 10x more lobbyist in DC than Microsoft has ever had, and Bill won't hire more because he doesn't believe this is politically driven. However it's nothing BUT politically driven.
The only this this case is going to do is possibly make Windows a WORSE product than it already is, and that will just screw US (the users forced to use it) because businesses will still use it because it's still going to be more popular. Like VHS vs BetaMax, or CD's vs MiniDisc, or McDonalds vs any other fastfood chain.
ON THE OTHERHAND - lets say the goverment makes Microsoft give the source to other companies. Well great - then those companies' software for WINDOWS will be better! So Windows becomes an even more attractive enviorment!
IMHO, why not bring hardware manufacutures into this and force them to develop non-Microsoft platform drivers. "If you include Windows 95/NT Drivers then you must include Linux/BeOS drivers." Same thing with support people, OEMs, networking, etc...
Fair ground is what we need. Microsoft is on a mountain. If we can't lower the mountain, the at least raise us up to that height.
This is a perfect example of FUD in action!
:-)
I wonder how much money the goverment is WASTEING on this trial?
No numbers of course...just speculation.... makes you wonder how much, eh?
First of all - Netscape, Sun, Novell, and whoever else is taking part should have to pay for this. Right now all they pay for is lobbyist. Netscape has over 10x more lobbyist in DC than Microsoft has ever had, and Bill won't hire more because he doesn't believe this is politically driven. However it's nothing BUT politically driven.
Ahh... more speculation.... 10x more lobbyists, yet there are not numbers on whether 10 or 100,000 lobbyists exist or whether or not this is just a dumb ass opinion.
The only this this case is going to do is possibly make Windows a WORSE product than it already is, and that will just screw US (the users forced to use it) because businesses will still use it because it's still going to be more popular. Like VHS vs BetaMax, or CD's vs MiniDisc, or McDonalds vs any other fastfood chain.
Complete speculation comparing examples that have no relevance. Few people have been FORCED to eat at McDonalds in order to keep jobs. The same can't be said of Windows. CD's were already an open protocol relative to Sony's minidisc... It seems to me that this shows that Windows would become better instead of your claims.
ON THE OTHERHAND - lets say the goverment makes Microsoft give the source to other companies. Well great - then those companies' software for WINDOWS will be better! So Windows becomes an even more attractive enviorment!
Whatever..
IMHO, why not bring hardware manufacutures into this and force them to develop non-Microsoft platform drivers. "If you include Windows 95/NT Drivers then you must include Linux/BeOS drivers." Same thing with support people, OEMs, networking, etc...
Yeah, its not MS's fault! Lets blame the fscking OEMs! MS was doing good right? The damn OEMs are what caused this, right? All that the DOJ and the OEMs are are evil entities who want to stop innovation.
Fair ground is what we need. Microsoft is on a mountain. If we can't lower the mountain, the at least raise us up to that height.
MS is impregnable, so lets worship it!
Thanks for your FUD, makes me feel better!
If this guy is really a low-level employee at M$, you can bet he'll be looking for work tomorrow morning.
Yes they do. Witness the tobacco industry claims that limiting their advertising infringes their freedom of speech.
I'm not sure who wrote the law that made corporations legally equivalent to individuals, but I'd love to give 'em a swift kick in the ass.
Perhaps this is a good time to point out that contrary to what many people (esp. congress and law professors, it seems) believe, the fact that this right is not spelled out does not mean it does not exist.
The ninth amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I think that for most of the things you've outlined, it is not necessary to make a corporation an individual. For instance, instead of saying that corporations have all the rights and protections that individuals have, you could create a law than simply states that in the case of liability the company is responsible, not it's officers (which I'm sure is probably how it all started). The rest should not automatically follow, but it seems in our system that it does.
I should point out that I'm not really taking exception to (or even necessarily disagreeing with) anything you've said, but I do think the current system is broken. Whether it's in concept or implementation I could not really say.
the appellate courts have been much more friendly to MS's innovations , such as ignoring a consent decree and allowing the making IE part of the OS .
Realistically, it probably has always been a fall back strategy to lose the case and win on appeal.
[ Not original ideas, but I thought a reminder is in order. ]
Gates and Co. are a _lot_ more like Nixon and Co. than Clinton is. Clinton seems to be some kind of fool. Both the Nixon Cabinet, and the Gates Cabinet, were and are incredibly arrogant and dangerous criminals with the morals of scorpions.
...like the truth ;)
Let the stock go down and make money on it's fall, buy the stock at it's depressed value and hope it goes back up?
In that case, he could be liable for insider trading. I'd be looking pretty close at who is trading MS Stock these days.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Posted by stodge:
make that on the whole site and I would agree.
Vote for a third party that more closely aligns with your views. You won't win, but your consience will be clear. Kill the two-party system that tricks people into thinking that just because you agree with someone on one thing that you have to agree with them on everything else too. This us vs them mentality will be the end of us all. Unless more people vote their consience instead of fearing a 'throw away' vote. (The only reason it's 'throw away' is because everyone else is just as scared as you.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Whether or not Clinton had extramarital sex, and whether or not he lied about such has ZERO impact on my life. None.
On the other hand, whether or not Gates can continue to use unfair practices that force me to have to deal with Windows crap *does* affect me.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Uhm - wouldn't perjery charges, if they were to be applied, have to wait until after the original trial is over?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution ends up meaning that you are never required to tell the truth in court if doing so would implicate you. (You can't testify against yourself). Thus Perjury is probably only enforcable when you are a third-party witness who is lying - like a friend of the accused, or an expert witness.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The Nixon Administration engaged in several heinous acts, and even had manpower specifically devoted to them (your tax dollars at work... stealing psychologists' confidential files... finding inventive money-laundering strategies...). There was support from both parties to impeach and remove Nixon from office, both because of the heinousness and the fact that the citizenry had begun to think he was lower than a snake. If more Merkins could compare 1969-1974 to the Clinton years, I think we'd have less of the false bleatings about the current mess.
I'd really, really rather just lurk, but I'm extremely sick and tired of these rote bleatings against the Prez. Starr searched high and low, dug up nearly every rock... and found nothing but some trivial, irrelevant "charges"... for now. Maybe he can find some evidence of Clinton shoplifting a pack of chewing gum in Hot Springs in 1959 - I believe there's a team of investigators questioning the shopkeeper today.
Disclaimer: I voted for Clinton. Twice. In both cases it was a choice between Bad and Worse. I voted Bad.
Can we please go back to flaming MS?
--
--
=8^
-Clinton collected many FBI files on his enemies
-He illegally took foreign campaign contributions from countries like China in exchange for favors (can you say "Most Favored Nation Status"?).
-He has always been pretty anti-military, but calls air strikes whenever he gets in hot water.
-He destroy the lives of innocent citizens for stupid political pay-offs (Travel Office, Billy Dale)
None of this matters, because "He feels our pain", unlike those big, bad, Republican bullys
None of this matters because the Independent Prosecutor(s) failed to prove any of these allegations (allegations, not facts) to be worthy of our attention. BTW, the War Powers Act allows any Prez to call air strikes, with some strings attached; Clinton broke no laws in that regard.
--
--
=8^
Should continue: "...should show you that this is more a witch-hunt or bloodless coup attempt than a quest for the 'truth' or the 'facts'".
--
--
=8^
--
--
=8^
That ain't all. Nixon was the one who took us off the gold standard too.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
An attempt to investigate Reagan failed because the Senate gave ollie North imunity for anything he did. Then Ollie North fell on the sword and said that Reagan did nothing, knew nothing.
The truth? How can I know, I'm not God.
Those who investigated Clinton didn't give immunity until they were sure of what they would get. They didn't count on polititians deciding that the right thing was less important then a vote for their peers in the Senate.
PS, I should remind you at this time that there are also many people today who belive that Nixon did no wrong and should not have been forced to resign. Those who are defending Clinton look just as foolish too me.
>One action...two results... Business as usual for the Prez. Let's Roast Microsoft.
Yes, but Clinton only screwed one person...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
sure has ol' bg's ass in his cross-hairs. Pull the trigger, David! Hehe. Not that I'm biased, or anything. Just an observation.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
When this suit was first filed, I didn't think the DOJ had much of a chance. They were going on and on about the Netscape thing when it was really just a symptom of the real problems. I think the DOJ educated itself pretty quickly on the other aspects of Microsoft's business tactics and learned from it's previous mistakes. Number one, make sure you get some people who understand the technology to review what you're going to present in court so that you don't end up looking stupid and Microsoft can't play games with technical jargon. Number two, don't believe a word that comes out of Redmond. They screwed the DOJ with the consent decree, and I think the DOJ didn't want to let that happen again. Overall, I think they are doing a rather amazing job of tearing through the layers of BS that make up the depositions of the Microsoft execs.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually, someone (former MS employee I believe) has already accused MS of destroying evidence. I wonder if anything will come of it after the trial is over.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I don't think they'll want him to write "Zen and the Art of Monopoly Maintenance" anymore. :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
True. Much of the evidence is still unreleased. Microsoft has managed to keep alot of things under wraps. The evidence against Microsoft could be even greater than what we've seen. Then there's the reeeaaaallllly bad things that they managed to destroy rather than let the DOJ get their hands on it. I love a good conspiracy. :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I wouldn't give them much of a chance at winning on appeal. They've even admitted things that could get the appellate court's decision on the IE integration issue (the one that overturned Judge Jackson's preliminary injunction) overturned. With so much evidence against them and so many damning admissions and lack of credibility of the witnesses, I wouldn't be holding my breath for an appeal win.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Finally, keep in mind that in the end the trial bears some relationship to the law and the legal definitions of things like "monopoly" and "coercion". The judge may be laughing his head off at ...
That is true. It is, however, important to keep in mind, that nobody likes to be treated as an idiot, judges are no exception. There's also the logical conclusion that if a defendant lies, they have something to hide. While I doubt that a judge would find against MS based only on that, it does lend credability to the DOJ case.
As far as the problems MS is having with witnesses and coaching, it's easy to get tripped up when you don't believe what you're saying.
Hmm, lets use the logic of your last sentence.
/mill
Do you know anyone that has never lied? I mean even about the most trivial issue, like if you ate candy before supper or not?
If you can't find anyone that is completely free from guilt then noone can be president. Because how can you trust anyone on "more important matters" when you can't trust them with trivial issues like eating candy before supper?
Btw, according to the definition of Jones' lawyers he didn't have a "sexual relationship" with Lewinsky. IANAL but I trust Johnnie Cochran on this one.
The investigations and trials had zero to do with anything Bill Clinton had done. It was a "legal" way for the Republicans to seize power without having to bother with elections.
Once in power, I'm sure they would have dug up some emergency provision which would allow them the full two years of office without ever having to rely on an the votes of people.
With such a precident, any subsequently-elected Democrat could undoubtably have been unseated with relative ease, giving the Republicans an effective dictatorship.
This wasn't about a crime, supposed or real. This was a carefully-planned power-play. A legal coup. Which is quite possibly why Kenneth Starr is, himself, now being investigated. (I doubt they'd have bothered, if it were for the reasons given. Too expensive for any possibly pay-back.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's certainly true that both the President and Vice President were under investigation.
It's also true that both had been targetted repeatedly by the Republicans from the point in which the Republicans gained control of both houses.
It's also true that the next in line was a Republican.
It's also true that Kenneth Starr is, himself, under investigation for his conduct during the investigation of the President and Vice President.
Sometimes, you have to have a healthy degree of mistrust about the political party in opposition, as well as the party the President belongs to. Politics, in America, is about mistrust.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually, not quite. IANAL--but I believe that if I was in court for a traffic violation and the opposing lawyer asked me whether I had ever gone to Africa and I lied, they could only nail me for perjury if they could prove that going to Africa had something to do with whether I was driving 50 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. (not that I would lie about it but we're being hypothetical here ;) ).
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
"We here at Big Brother need to watch everyone" -e-mail from Bill Gates
"I'm currently managing the Big Brother watching project, Mr. Gates, and I can assure you that we are already watching everyone." -e-mail from Daniel Rosen
"Your Honor, I can confidently say that Big Brother is not nor ever has been watching you." -testimony from Daniel Rosen
--
(sourceCode == freeSpeech)
By your definition of faith (which is pretty straight forward), faith is totally antithetical to rationalist thought. It means classifying certain issues as impervious to investigation and experimentation.
:)
The Bible defines pi as 3.0. The Bible has a lot of stuff in genesis that anathema to modern biology and biochemistry. The Bible contains stuff about the "sun standing still." It's closer to a Ptolemaic than a Keplerian view of the solar system.
Now, if the bible is to taken as "literally true", much of modern science goes out the window, because acceptance of the bible is based on faith, not reason, and faith trumps reason. There goes science.
I suppose that the bible can be accepted as allegory, but then, it's been wrong on so many things...
I know, I'm damned to hell
No, that was before, during the whole Catholic-Protestant thing.
There are freaks and morons in all countries, just larger countries have larger numbers of them. Sheesh.
Lying, commiting perjury, making a mockery of our justice system. Unforunately, these are acts US citizens are getting used to. A lot of people are "bored" with the Bills' acts, but you can't be! Freedom is worth fighting for, and that means not letting powerful people get away with this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying blow up a building, but write letters to congress and senators. Tell them you are sick of people abusing our justice system. Society will get much, much worse if people stop caring.
My $0.02 (+ tax)
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Do you kiss your mother with those liberal lips.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Of course, Microsoft has put a completely different spin on things.
Microsoft says that Daniel Rosen was "left virtually unchallenged his testimony that Microsoft was seeking a positive, strategic relationship with Netscape in 1995 and did not attempt to force Netscape to agree to an illegal division of markets at a meeting on June 21, 1995"
Then they continue to trash Boies. They claim that Boies's tactics were ineffectual, which is not what I got from the Washington Post article.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspa ss/trial/default.htm
I would think anywhere from $500/hr to $1500/hr for a lawyer at that level. $250/hr would be the absolute low end. Almost as much as a good sendmail administrator charges.
sPh
IMHO, part of what is happening in the trial is due to the general level of contempt that high tech people (not to say West Coast high tech people [or Northwest Coast]) feel for government in general and Washington DC in particular. Let's face it: Microsoft hires a lot of _very_ smart people. They never expected that they might encounter people as smart as they are, and possibly sneakier, in DC. My guess would be that Microsoft's lawyers tried to prepare the witnesses for what was going to happen, and were rejected. I just can't imagine that someone in the Microsoft executive suite could ever believe that he could be out-thought on technical issues by a lawyer; an IBM lawyer in particular.
Then there is the issue of internal belief systems. I have come to believe that Microsoft insiders in many cases truely do not know how their products actually work in the real world, or how their company is perceived outside Redmond. I continue to maintain that the botched videotape was just an extreme example of DLL hell, and the Microsoft people couldn't bring themselves to believe that it could happen to them and proceeded to 'patch' things a little. Just what they do every day of the week, and look where it has gotten them...
Finally, keep in mind that in the end the trial bears some relationship to the law and the legal definitions of things like "monopoly" and "coercion". The judge may be laughing his head off at the Microsoft witnesses. He may come to believe that Microsoft set out to fsck Netscape. But that doesn't mean he (or the appeals court) will necessarily rule that there is any violation of the law that the government can/should take notice of. The daily spectacle isn't the whole story.
Now, I doubt that Microsoft is actually pursuing a strategy of releasing damaging evidence and saying , "Look - with all our monopoly power, that is the worst we could do. Just what the rest of the industry does when it has the chance", as some have suggested. Devious, but too dangerous.
Still, I do have to wonder about those bonuses for the Microsoft legal team. Does Bill ever take stock options away?
sPh
I'd choose Dickinson over Philadelphia...or even Elko for that matter.....
I'm still amazed that French folks think that language is static. There is a plethora of Latin in French...but somehow, they became French. God forbid that any English words get borrowed! Dumb! If there is a good idea, use it, not using it is so juvinile. If ideas are not borrowed and used, the language will suffer linguistic atrophy, if it hasn't already.
From My non US point Of view I think the trial on bill gate is much more interresting. I france we never you'd have get on trail for what your president made. I even think many of us you'd have say it was ok.
.... :)
The problem in the US is that people lack some kind of lessons on politics in school. Something
Which is really well provided here in france. For US what matters is what the president does for the
country not who he plays with
none Yet.
Boies got him to out and out admit that they wanted Netscape to not compete with them- this alone is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Rosen's the last nail in the coffin, I think...
Microsoft is so toast it's not even funny- and with the court antics, they're going to not win any appeals either.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...but I thought the Clinton trial was about perjury
and obstruction of justice? Or do the french
condone that behavior from their public officials
too?
socialized healthcare.
At least our currency isn't in free-fall. Those are big words coming from the "Brazil of the North"...
;)
>But in a real trial, prosecutors would have had a >lot of trouble getting a conviction.
So what's your point? They didn't convict him, you know...
I also love the "Nixon" defense... "He didn't rape the Constitution as badly as Nixon!" That's a winner.
I voted for Harry Brown, in case you think I'm some rabid Dittohead.
Well, from my point of view, I don't mind what Clinton did. So I could care less if he gets off (take that anyway you want).
I hate Bill Gates. He's an ass. I want to see him fry. So, I want to see him and his company go down... they've done things that I think really *do* hurt people.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
> -Clinton collected many FBI files on his enemies
Clinton didn't do this, one of the lower level flunkies in the White house did. I doubt whether Clinton ever knew about this. In any case, Ken Starr was not able to find any illegal acts despite years of investigation.
> -He illegally took foreign campaign ontributions from countries like China in exchange for favors (can you say "Most Favored Nation Status"?).
Because of loopholes in the laws that were added by REPUBLICANS when the law was passed in the 70's, these contributions were legal. I think that they were inappropriate, but they were legal.
> -He has always been pretty anti-military, but calls air strikes whenever he gets in hot water.
Being pretty anti-military???? He just proposed the largest peacetime military spending increase since Reagan. And he has continued to keep military spending at 85% of Cold War levels, despite the fact that the Cold War has been over for years. I would love to see a President that is truly anti-military, willing to stand up to the charge of "soft on defense spending" to spend money on things that are truly good for the country. He wants to increase the defense budget 110 billion dollars, but one or two billion cannot be spared to rebuild school buildings.
> -He destroy the lives of innocent citizens for stupid political pay-offs (Travel Office, Billy Dale)
Unlike other politicians? Unlike Ken Starr? Unlike many who were attacked by the Reagan Administration for their opposition to the government's Central America policies? Unlike Republican attacks on people like Anita Hill? This is nothing new in modern American politics. Both sides do it. It is despicable, but not impeachable.
These things do matter, but the upshot of most of this is to discredit the entire system, not just Republicans or Democrats. Clinton is a product of a system that uses power to support the rich, at the expense of others, and uses cheap moralizing and demagoguery to destroy its enemies.
Eric
Laws are important. In the U.S., (...)
You should rephrase this as: Lawyers are important in the U.S.
In France there's a trial going on right now of former ministers who deliberately allowed AIDS tainted
blood to be used in transfusions to protect a French company while that company got its AIDS blood test
together.
The three ministries in question are accused of delaying the introduction of AIDS blood testings. Whether they did it or not, one thing is known for sure: the tests were used in France before many other countries anyway (including Germany and Switzerland, don't know about the U.S.)
There's a reason only 6% of French homes have computers: France is a corrupted, backward, bureacratic, crusty tourist shop.
We'll talk when you'll have the figures in both countries on crime, illitteracy, and say, tuberculosis. And pregnant teenagers, while we're at it. And police abuse.
Mind you, I don't even have a 'pooter nor a teevee at home. But I have a (digital) cellphone.
M$ witneses:
. .WHOOPS!.....trip....stumble....WHOOPS!
Trip...stumble....WHOOPS!.....trip....stumble..
It's nice to see the DOJ lawyers bitch-slapping every single M$ employee taking the stand. If I were this guy Rosen, I would tell M$ to fuck off, hand in my resignation and turn against them. A "low level employee???" OUCH! How's that for back stabbing?
Technically, it isn't perjury if the lie has no
effect on the outcome of the trial. This is why
Clinton had to settle Clinton v. Jones before her
appeal sent it back to court, it was the entire
legal figleaf he needed to avoid the perjury
charge.
However, what you described sure DOES sound like
contempt of court - and removing the neck brace
sure looks like evidence of fraud.
-- Larry Smith
I think it is a mistake to compare Open Source with communism or even socialism. At least in implementation, communism (and socialism to a lesser degree) tends to have a central bureaucracy that decides how all resources will be distributed. This is extremely inefficient and prone to error. You end up with an abundance of things that people don't want and shortages of things that people want. Why, because it takes time to convince a bureaucracy that they "got it wrong." What ever "it" is. Especially because you have some central authority that knows what's best for everyone, even if everyone happens to disagree.
Another problem with communism is that the central authority is forcing its subjects to redistribute their wealth (goods, service, skills, resources, etc.) based on the central authority's desires, not the producer's desires. This is the point you made, it's against human nature to work hard for someone else's benefit.
Open Source is a completely different beast. The argument about human nature doesn't come directly into play. The reason is that contributers are working on something they care about, directly. Open Source is not an abstract goal (scrubbing toilets for the good of humanity). Open Source is created largely for the benefit of the person contributing. Why does Apache exist? Because its authors wanted a good Web Server, period. Why share it? There are probably too many reasons to list, but I'll give the usual short list: Pride, recognition, and as a gift. After all, greed is only one facet of human nature. But, the key point is that the contributer selects work that is beneficial for their own personal reasons.
As far as efficiency, Open Source is efficient in a mind bogglingly chaotic manner. The products are generated in direct response to a need. It really reminds me of evolution. Several products may be generated for the same or similar needs. The products compete for all sorts of resources; contributers, users, distribution channels and good old fashion "mind share." Products that can get adequate resources flourish and evolve, products that can't stagnate.
It's late, hopefully my ramblings make some semblance of sense.
--
This signature left intentionally blank.
The way I look at this, MS hires a LOT of people. They are huge. So chances are they will have a lot of smart people. More than the average for eligible programmers? I don't think so.
As far as their software goes. In their market, mindless advertising, FUD and creeping featureitis go a long way to selling units. A lot further than good programming unfortunately.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I must admit though, even I'm getting tired of this stuff. Pretty sad. Sort of like the Y2K bug - I just wish we could get it over with and get on with our lives.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I can't defend the president's apparent perjury, nor his delaying tactics. I wish that he had just from the start said something like, "yeah, I shagged her. I shagged her rotten, baby!"
It would have saved us all some money and we would have been spared this embarassment. However, I get really angry with the hypocritical bastards who masterminded this whole thing to begin with. The fact that the president answered the questions untruthfully is shameful. What's unforgivable is that the questions were asked to begin with. Especially by people like that multiply-remarried-fat-fuck gingrich. There was no interest in justice. All they wanted was a political lynching, and the dems would have done it to a republican if they'd been in similar situation.
I love my country, but sometimes it's embarassing to live here. Sorta like that love-hate relationship one has with one's fambly.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Regardless of whether or not Clinton did actually perjure himself, what he was accused of wasn't an impeachable offence. Remember, impeachable offences are defined by the Constitution, not Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or Joe Sixpack.
If you don't like the definition, then by all means lobby your representative bureaucrats to get the Constitution changed. Otherwise, play within the same set rules that the rest of us americans do.
This was not a normal trial, folks. It was a PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT TRIAL! The rules are different because the outcome could involve the abrupt removal of our country's president. That is not something to be done lightly.
I'm not defending President Clinton. I am, however defending the part of our Constitution that protects our government from upheaval over trivial (in the grand scheme of things) things.
I'm frustrated by a lot of what goes on in D.C., but in this case, I think they (the Senate) did the right thing.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
It's time for the Chewbacca defense. :)
Look, they have what, 2000 developers, plus at least as many marketing droids? Consider how much innovation they get out of that investment. It's pretty obvious that only Billy is allowed to think, everyone else has to carry out his plans. Imagien M$ without Billy. Balmer and these other flunkies have learnt to parrot his arrogance but not his brains.
So this is just their arrogance acrrying thru. Remember that comment abotu the video, about version 1.0 not so hot, but version 2.0 is better? Well jack, that's not how the legal system works. They are arrogant slimeball coward bullies and this trial just shows how incapable of thinking any of their idiots are.
I especially like how Rosen was characterized as "a low level employee" -- well duh, who picked him as a M$ witless^H^H^H^Hness anyway? But I bet he becomes pretty low level pretty soon...
--
Infuriate left and right
You don't know the Japanese word either... it's "Hara Kiri". Harry Carey was a sports announcer or something ;)
.
"The Feminists drove Senator Bob Packwood out of the Senate for merely kissing women who did not want it, yet the ignore what Clinton did which is far worse by their own standards."
No it's not! You must be one warped individula if you think that consensual sex and kissing someone who does want to be kissed are EVEN the same thing.... what Packwood did is not only wrong but illegal.
Do I need to spell out the difference between a no-fly-zone and an invasion? Let's see, here's a hint, one involves bombing civilians and the other doesn't...
.
Well... except for Netscape... but at least that's "open source" (assuming Free Software == GPL)
.
Not to detract from the considerable cross-examination skills of Mr. Boies, I must say that it is relatively easy to chew these people up due to the fact that they are FLAT OUT LYING. M$'s problem is that they didn't get their stories straight before they went to court. Boies is having a field day with the internal inconsistencies alone.
Heaven:
The Germans are mechanics, the English are bankers, the French are cooks, and the Italians are lovers.
Hell:
The French are mechanics, the Italians are bankers, the English are cooks, and the Germans are lovers.
They're being polite.
Laws are important. In the U.S., if you break the law, you are punished. That's the theory. Now it seams, if you control the law enforcement, Clinton demonstrated that the law doesn't apply to you.
I don't know about France, but the law is important to democracy in the U.S. These lessons are taught extensively in the U.S., but once you graduate and read news reports, those lessons don't seem to apply.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
This is basically a Pro Bono case for Boies. After the trial is over he'll have his pick of kickass high-paying jobs because of the publicity he's generating for himself. You have to admit that he is kicking the shit out of Microsoft. I hope that he's on the Good Guys' side again next time.
"The only this this case is going to do is possibly make Windows a WORSE product than it already is"
How??? I suppose adding hooks to the OS to allow MS (and only MS) applications to outperform 3rd party apps is a *good* thing? Or how about making the internet part of the OS to help squash competators? One could argue that by separating the OS and MS-Apps, the kernel would be cleaner, and the OS would be more robust. Just think about how much cleaner the OS might become if the OS folks actually worked on the core OS and the application folks just used the system APIs that the OS folks published. It would probably result in a much cleaner, more robust OS and a Win32 API that didn't change every 4 months.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
Partisan or not, I think Clinton was on trial because everywhere they looked in his life something was dirty. Everytime they squeezed some piece of his life, mud came out. Therefore, they assumed, there must be something illegal going on here that we can prove.
Of course, proof became a very frustrating thing to find. (It's amazing the number people that were to be questioned that met with fatal accidents or killed themselves.)
However it was motivated, I think the trial was a result of just trying to pin something that would stick onto a man that, based on their appraisal, surely must be guilty of a whole bunch of things. Sort of an Al Capone thing.
Sex was just a convenient/inconvenient label to put on it that was able to further split the issue down party lines. If this had been a jury trial I wonder how it would have gone?
In the end, public opinion was formed more by just being tired of hearing about it than anything else. I have friends, both demicrat and republican, that didn't want him impeached just so we didn't have to see/read about it anymore. It really is sad what the media has done to the public.
As for lying being acceptable under certain circumstances, well, I think that's a poor excuse. There are much better ones. Or maybe we should ammend the oath to be, "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, unless it's something I don't want my wife to know about."
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
"Non-event" seems to be Microshaft's term for "something happened that we don't want you to notice".
... how many words has MS tried to redefine?
Is there a web page or something somewhere of classic MSspeak? "Low-level employee", "non-event", "innovation", "competition"
Microsoft did try to get another 6 month extension in their initial dragged the trial onto infinity stragety. The judge denied that motion, and here we are.
DOJ is getting the legal bargin of the century. David Boies' normal billing rate is $500+ / hour. Of course when you considered that his cases have billions of dollars at stake, $500/hour is a bargin.
I once sat in a trial where Boies was a character witness. It is revealed that the top anti-trust attorney usually billed @ $500+ / hour. From another news source, Boies supposedly is billing only $33.33 / hour.
From his law firm's accountant's POV, I would cringe at his billing rate to DOJ. He does have a law firm to support, and bringing in large billable account is the responsibility of the senior partner. Even at $500 / hour, DOJ is getting a good value. @ $33.33 / hour, DOJ is essentially getting his service free.
Woohoo!! I checked out the site, and did a search for "Microsoft trial" on their main page...guess what got spit back at me?
;p
"Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a03e9'
Out of memory"
Looks like even their programs don't remember M$ doing anything wrong
Well, their take is that Windows is 100% flawless, so, why shouldnt they spout that they are on the top of the trial and the government is floundering.
As for the stock, it amkes folks too much money, and greed is always a major factor in things.
Sig? What's a Sig?
If every man who lied under oath about wether he cheated on his wife or now was charged with perjury there would be 100 times more perjury cases before the courts. Normally people are not charged with obstruction of justice or perjury when they lie about things like that.
Just look at the DOJ vs. Microsloth case. If everyone who lied on the stand was charged with perjury, then they'd just escort the Microsloth execs out the side door instead of letting them walk out the back. They're all lying. Most of them are proven liars when they get up to go. None are charged.
The only reason Clinton was charged with anything is because of the public outcry.
Bunch of American Whiners. I'm Canadian. About a year ago, our Prime Minister decked some guy who got in his face at a public gathering of some kind. We applauded. Good for the Prime Minister and good for the loser.
That's why Canadians rock and Americans are sissies. That's why we kicked your butts in the war of 1812.
Have a good one. And next time your President gets a little on the side - shut the heck up. He's running a country you know.
Then again, maybe I am just too cynical, and it merely proves that, afterall, there is justice in this world.
Nah.
It can't be that easy.
They probably just figure that if they really lose, they can always appeal and drag the case out for ten years.
Or they've already paid the judge say a hundred million dollars and are laughing their butts off. Hey.. Never know. It's America, afterall.
Well, it's clear to me that MS is just approaching the trial the same way they approach writing software.
They just rushed the beta version to court thinking it was a finished product, and that they could just debug it later.
I don't know if this is in this version of the story, but in the Reutur's (however that's spelled) version, it had something like "He said that that when Microsoft says 'owning' the market, they mean finding a way to make it work better." I laughed at that one.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOH MAN. I can't believe this crap. Is it so hard to understand that God is just a trip, the result of WAY too many of the wrong chemicals in your brain? Dammit. I don't want to believe in a floating abstraction.
God doesn't exist, and you should know that damn well by now. Your refuse to think rationally, instead insisting on believing with my heart ( a pretty dumb organ - the equivalent of a car with an onboard computer of thinking with its gas tank) is only to cover up the fact that you deep inside also know that God can't possibly exist. If the Revelation is personally truthful to you, it only means that you're so stupid you can't look at yourself reasonally and understand that the fact that nothing will be able to shake your faith in it is nothing but a poorly disguised form of childish denial. Grow up.
Peace,
--
Reverend Jerry Falwell
"Hey man! Let's grab the car, go pick up some chicks and go back to my place!"
- Don't Ask Don't Teletubby Tinky-Winky
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
getting off the subject of Bill... ( who probably would like to think he is god ) I think the first persons comment was just stating that how are we to believe that we have a firm understanding of what god is? I know that man likes to think he can put god in a glass jar.. and define what he she it is.. but can we really? I dont think we can... I also dont think we can say that one religion is better than another.. or that these people are saved .. while these are not... i could go on and on.. but I will not...
Get rid of the Electoral Vote!!!!
I totally agree. Looking at it from an outsiders point of view (I'm in Australia) I have seen that all Bill really tried to do was not uncover an affair that would ruin his marriage. It doesn't affect the US in the slightest.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not the responsiblity of the user, as I probably stole them anyway
Maybe I can't read properly here but wasn't the article on the Anti-Trust case with Bill GATES and Micro$lop? How the hell did Billy Boy Clinton get into this conversation? Who cares?? Bill did some pornographic stuff with a cigar.... GET OVER IT PEOPLE!!!!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not the responsiblity of the user, as I probably stole them anyway
Actually not to take the attention away from MS needing to be destroyed but the US government seems to be the ones using the most Big Brother tactics on the Internet today (e.g. COPA, CDA, et al).
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Um actually if you lied under oath for a traffic ticket... 99% of the time they would just prove you were lying and then be done with it the truth having been shown. The other 1% accounts for the anal retentive judges who follow the letter of the law and view themselves as some version of Judge Dredd without a gun or kevlar who would simply fine you $100 or something. If we were to process everyone who lied on the stand and got caught for perjury do you realize how many murderers theives and other rapscallions would go free or have to wait years upon years for due process.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Come on every country between Central America and the Middle East can have our old technology why can't China? It's not fair to pick and choose who get's a chance to blow us up.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
As the saying goes "Heaven is a place where the British deal with the politics and the French handle the cooking. Hell is a place where these rolls are reversed." Do I really need to say any more?
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Microsoft is trying to present itself as a company too stupid to create a monopoly. They're hoping Judge Jackson rules in their favor by deciding that they can't possibly be a monopoly because their management is too incompetent to create one.
Without Linux waiting in the wings, this trial wouldn't matter anyways. Say M$ lost, would we all get to buy what Macs?, Sun workstations?, OS/2?. Besides, even in losing, M$ can delay their slap on the wrist until 2002. The main good thing to come out of this trial, in my opinion, is that once again we see powerful people who we allow to rule us for the pitiable creatures that they are.
This gives new meaning to the phrase "hoist on one's petard," doesn't it? And Microsoft spread out a whole minefield of them. Poor Bill.
fool!
If the president had boasted about it over breakfast, then there wouldn't have been any perjury and impeachment trial as he wouldn't have said that he hadn't done it!
Yo, Canuck ud da Noith, (I speak Great Northern Barbarian too...), If the President had said "Yeah, I did, so what?" I would have been on the Starr bashing wagon too... But he LIED!!!! In court, to Congress, and to the American people on TV! If I lie to a judge, I go to jail. The man needs his 6-to 18 months just like anyone else. (and if all Canadiennes are like you, ya wimp, then no wonder the alleged country is trying to fragment and failing even at that!)
Don't try to KNOW everything, just know how to FIND it.