Slashdot Mirror
Gates Book and DOJ Trial Contradictions
Veralden writes
"Here is a story about Gates and another MS witness
contradicting on how their sales data is recorded.
According to Gates, they have sales results in digital
form and a witness testified that they have paper sales
records. MS denies this, but the article seems to take a
more objective view. "
Here is
the story.
Nothing ever changes.
Bill's business plan should include destroying old E-mails and shredding backup tapes so that the DOJ can't use them against you at some future date.
Isn't it conceivable that the book is going to be put in the fiction department? As the article says, what's in the book isn't under oath.
No, the book is going to be put on one of those clearance tables at the front of the store where they sell crappy books at half price because no one wants to buy them in the first place.
What a fscking waste of trees. If MS is so innovative, why don't they start distributing their books digitally, and let the consumer decide if they want to waste an entire forest on crap like this?
Yeah, that's the ticket.
A month or two ago I saw an article, quoting an ex Microsoft employee from their accounting department, who claimed that Microsoft had cooked their books. The claim was that Microsoft had used aggressive accounting in using a "reserve fund" to hide revenue in good quarters and later recover it in bad quarters. This would allow them to present to the investing world a constantly upward progression of earnings per share, thus gaining almost reverential reports from the stock analysts of most brokerage houses. Unfortunately, I didn't save the article and I forget who the author was. If anyone remembers the article, please post the URL.
So would it be a plausible hypothesis that they keep both a paper set of books and also an electronic one?
Figures written down on paper ARE digital, just not electronically stored.
MS used pieces of an unpublished book in their defense in this case. I have to go to the case evidence web page to get the names. So likewise the DoJ can use this book in their case.
Of course the DoJ already made MS look bad. The question is the punishment.
When I first heard that MS used paper, pens, pencils and crayons to do some of their costing and accounting I thought, "How pathetic, they can't even get Excel running on a lousy laptop to record the billions they are raking in." Then I just figured that they must be fibbing. No company that wanted to be the "Digital_Nervous_System" would be so dumb as not use the products they were trying to shove down the rest of the world's throat.
But then didn't www.microsoft.com used to run on something besides NT? Like maybe Solaris or soemthing? Can't remember.
Surely you must mean "every little book, press release or interview from Mr. Bill"?
and abuser of women like Clinton to even inhabit the White House.
Our nation has soaked itself so throughly in crap television, Jerry Springer, and garbage that they don't have the sense to see a corrupt asshole as he is.
That was from seattle weekly and the article isn't up any more, but you can read the slashdot comments at: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/01/11/1640239.shtm l
I knew you could :-).
As noted in the article, this probably won't
have much, if any, impact on the trial. But
one has to wonder at Gates' and Microsoft's
arrogance.
Here they are, in an "IT Trial of the Century",
the odds-makers are probably quoting odds heavily
against Microsoft, and Gates authors a book
with statements that *directly* contradict, or
at least call into question--the testimony of
one of their primary defense witnesses?
Hello?
And that oh-so-believable statement from MS
spokesperson Mark Murray, "explaining" the
apparent disparities between the trial
statements and Gates' prose. Come on. They
must think us all complete idiots.
They wonder why even the IT trade press itself
(once blindly in love with MS) is becoming just
a mite cynical? Must be that "pro-Linux" bias
at work again.
I don't see the comparison...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What do you want to bet that Microsoft's email policies get a major overhaul after this whole thing is done? That is if it hasn't already happened. Probably purge every couple of weeks and never keep backups. If they even get a whif of an investigation, employee harddrives will probably start to spontaneously combust.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As the subject says, I heard that it was already being discounted heavily because they think it won't sell.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Slashdot is to MS vs DOJ thing as the mainstream press was to the Bill/Monica thing. The normal press isn't covering this trial NEARLY as much as Slashdot is.
Just enter your preferences and turn off the "Microsoft" subject. I think that's what I'm about to do. I want to read news about new and interesting things, not more about "Evil Microsoft".
Testing.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
1-2, 1-2 (It's the Wu)
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Third time.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Some revisions
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Being a little more polite
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
He means that the media goes nuts on every little "update" which has nothing to do with the trial itself. Very silly.
"basicly he said that they can track sales but not how much they make from the sales on their computers...... YEAH RIGHT"
I hate to sound as if I am defending M$, but for a large corporation, tracking profitability by product line, by customer, etc. doesn't sound easy and in fact is not easy at all. Try working on a large ERP project sometime - there are cases out there where the ERP implementation took a few years, but the promised profitability analysis system wasn't finished for a decade, if ever.
For just one quick example, where would you charge the costs for the trial? To the Windows 95 group? The Windows 98 group? The IE group? The company as a whole? Some allocation? Why? And that's only one of the millions of classification and allocation decisions that have to me made to determine profitability.
On this one, I would be inclined to believe what was said at the trial.
sPh
"What [Gates] says [in the media] is not under oath," said Ronald Katz a partner at law firm Coudert Brothers.
What this says to me is that it's ok for BG to lie in the media to the general public, since he's not under oath.. or maybe I'm just a cynic?
--
- Bill says that they know sales figures by product by sales channel.
- MS traditionally has claimed a "Chinese wall" between OS development and application development.
- MS now claims that they can't calculate profit and cost by product, which is different than sales.
A cynic would say "just subtract the departmental costs for OS development from the OS sales, and do the same for applications.In slight defense of MS, I have to point out that MS is largely a sales and marketing company, and they might not do a very good job of splitting indirect costs (such as sales trips, marketing studies, and some advertising) into separate OS / Application components.
What they need is an "Activity Based Costing" (ABC) study.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
You have to wonder if is is really dumb or really tricky. Probably Tricky.
The only problem is that Billy is taking about sales in general. The witness was talking about profitability on the windows os in general. There was an article in ZD that had a MS exec. saying the above statement, basicly he said that they can track sales but not how much they make from the sales on their computers...... YEAH RIGHT
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
although i despise bill gates and alot of his business practices, i'm beginning to get annoyed with the whole MS vs DOJ trial in general. they're almost as bad as the whole Bill and Monica tribulations.