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The MS vs. DOJ case arguments end
BlackICE writes "Ding dong the witch is dead-The trial portion of the case is over, and now both sides will have about a month to prepare closing statements. Expert opinion seems to be that the government will win, but what the final outcome will be in terms of reforms or injunctions is still up in the air. " Reports have also been hinting at settlement talks as well - maybe that will get everything over with sooner. Of course, following this comes the appeals, so my kids should be somewhere in grad school by the time this really finishes.
No matter how the case ends, it's caused huge changes since the day it was filed. As the article points out:
"Microsoft has already changed its behavior," Kovacic said. "They've backed off some of the contested practices. Their competitors have been emboldened to do things they may not have done before the trial. The government has gotten a lot of what they wanted. The company is not swinging away like they used to."
Corel's CEO, for example, has described the anti-trust trial as creating a window of opportunity that allowed Microsoft competitors to push onto the Linux platform without fear of retaliation. And perhaps most importantly, the trial has educated the public to Microsoft's tactics. The public no longer takes it for granted that Microsoft products are best, or that Microsoft controls the future of computing.
Personally, I hope the trial lasts another 20 years. As a lawyer, my recurring fantasy is that Judge Jackson will find Microsoft in violation of the anti-trust laws, then take another year or two of proceedings to decide what to do about it, which is entirely possible.
With a violation ruling in place, the sharks can unload on Microsoft in follow-on cases, where Microsoft's violation will be taken as established as a matter of law (through a little-known provision of the Clayton Act), leaving only the amount of damages to be decided in those cases.
Decades from now, I suspect the legal historians will regard as Microsoft's biggest mistake the decision to butt heads with the government rather than cut a deal early on. The Clayton Act's provision requiring the violation to be taken as established in other cases kicked in the moment the trial itself started. From that point on, not even a settlement could get Microsoft out from under that requirement.
pem@televar.com
Basically, Bill Gates ushers in his reign of terror by condemning hobbyist computer users for copying his software, his intellectual property, and how in God's name will he make money if people don't buy it?
The government can slap Microsoft down because the government gave Microsoft the power to get where it is today. People tend to assume that our free market system is perfect and should not be interfered with because it will correct itself. I don't buy that. I can't think of a single thing our government has set up that is perfect and I don't think that this system is any different. It needs constant attention to keep it running properly.
If it weren't for government laws that allow Microsoft to buy and control intellectual property, and for the advantages that come with incorporation, Microsoft would not exist today. In return for these privileges, Microsoft must obey certain laws. Microsoft allegedly (*cough*yeahright*cough*) hasn't done that and now they are in trouble. It's fine for a company to profit by using the system, but it's not ok to abuse the system. I look forward to many lawsuits against Microsoft. I hope to see them pay for their arrogance and abuse. They will hopefully end up coughing up a lot of the money they've ripped off from consumers over the years. If that happens, I might regain some bit of faith in the legal system... not much mind you, but some.
I don't think anyone can raise a stink about Linux. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on in court. It's hard enough to make charges against Microsoft stick, and they've been about as blatantly abusive as any company I can think of. They wouldn't have a prayer of making any kind of case against Linux.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There is a difference between "predatory pricing", and free software, and I think you are falling into the trap of being confused about this.
/choice/ .
Linux is free as in freedom of speech (and free as in price). Linux is not owned by a monolithic company that has tried it's damndest over the last decade or so to foist it's garbage onto the world as THE one and only True Standard. The Linux community is not bullying the IBM's, Compaq's, Dell's, etc. by threatening them with OEM sales price increases. The Linux community is offering these companies liberation from that Redmond company's stranglehold. We aren't forcing IBM to adopt Linux - the IBM's etc. of this world are doing this - yes, for commercial reasons (they are a company after all) - but also because they have been given this
No one - be they governor, lawyer, or any other official in power could in their wildest imaginations be able to justify a statement to the effect that Linux is introducing "predatory pricing" to cut off all other competition - how could they?
This IS the system. We protect corporations with intellectual property and copyrights. For that protection, we expect companies to play by certain rules. Breaking those rules has consequences.
There is no such thing anymore as a true free market in a successful capitalist country. We have a command/control economy, just like every other successful "free" nation in the world.
Having a monopoly in and on of itself is not illegal. Trying to be more profitable is not illegal. But trying to increase those profits by temporarily taking a loss in order to kill out all of your competetion IS illegal. 'Accidental' monopolies are fine and just, but taking actions to actively secure that monopoly by killing out all of your competitors is not just... and should never be just. I daresay that without GNU/Linux/FreeBSD/BeOS etc the country as a whole would truly be in a great deal of trouble-- for even if the government takes great action against Microsoft, what other platforms are out there to run programs? And who would want to run one of them?
And no, MacOS doesn't count. It can't run on our machines.
I'll believe "'support nightmare' FUD", because thats what exactly what companies did with DOS. In the end Microsoft had 80% of the market, despite cheaper compatible products being out there.
/MBR)
For example, here's an exchange I had with technician in about 1993:
Goon Tech: "You're running IBM DOS on your PS/2. Only MS-DOS is 'supported' here." (Starts to type FDISK
Me: "What do you mean 'supported'? Everyone here runs IBM Microchannel machines, and the MS EMM386 doesn't even work right on Microchannel! It crashes and won't recognize all of the memory!"
Tech: "Orders is orders. Ooog." (SYS)
You think it would be any better with off-brand Windows? IBM-brand Windows?
(And don't start going off about the DR-DOS detection code. It was in the Windows 3.1 BETA only. Not many saw it. Many folks successfully ran the Win3.1 with DR-DOS. There was a nice "Thank you for upgrading from OS/2 to MS-DOS 6.0 message", though.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I'd guess the "Buy MS-DOS, get Windows for $5, the only catch is that your AUTOEXEC.BAT has to end with WIN" deal probably had much more effect than the Windows 3.1 beta.
It's not like Windows 3.1 was a highly anticipated product by techies, who by in large saw it for the crap that it was. Most end users started using it in companies in open revolt against the MIS staff.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Rather than breaking up MS, which doesn't really help us consumers at all, why not simply require MS to publish a price list to OEMs. Allow no discounts (or "co-oped advertising") beyond volume discounts. Require them to sell Windows to all OEMs at these prices. Let OEMs add whatever value they'ed like to their package.
Lastly, I like McNealy's idea of barring them from making an aquisitions for the next 5 years
If you call it a feature they will. Isn't this how it worked for web browsers? Remember, we won't be talking about a totally incompatible new system, just one with new Baby Bill ActiveSomething!
Splitting them up into multiple smaller companies with the exact same products won't work nearly as well as it did for Ma Bell, because there's no way to restrict the baby Bills to separate geographical markets. We would just end up with three smaller clones, but since they can all tie their Windows to their apps, either one of them will eventually become a monopoly again or the government will have to do some intrusive regulation of Microsoft's business, just like they do for the local phone companies now.
Separating the apps, internet, and OS components of Micros~1 would work better because it would break up the quasi-vertical monopoly that MS has in several different software arenas. Also, this would force their products to fully disclose their APIs, and then other companies could compete and be sure that their apps are fully Windows compliant (remember DR-DOS?). Besides, part of the case against MS (the most important part, IMHO) concerned their use of an OS monopoly to try to gain a web browser monopoly. Splitting up MS along product lines would prevent this sort of monopoly-spreading.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm not sure that the rights of MS competitors are exactly the issue here. It's more a question of ensuring a level playing field for competition and encouraging a free market, rather than deciding exactly who has a right to do something. Microsoft's actions don't just attack their specific competitors, they also destroy the free market and reduce consumer choice, which is bad. It doesn't really matter if IE or Netscape wins the browser war, but the winner should prevail because they offer a better browser and the consumer preferred it, not because they are made by the OS manufacturer. So in a certain sense the Sherman Act recognizes a "right" to a free market for all competitors in that market. But this is just as much Microsoft's right as it is Netscape's right. No one has a special right to write a browser for Windows, but everyone should have an equal opportunity in the market to distribute their browser and let the market pick the best one.
Your second argument has a very good point: if Apple is doing the same thing, why aren't they being prosecuted? The answer to that is twofold:
Of course we don't want a law to "punish people who do bad things." That is an over generalization of what I said. Throughout U.S. history the courts have interpreted the laws (as is their function under the Constitution) and they will continue to do so. This history of case law and decisions sets a precedent, and the precedent is taken into account in future cases and as new laws are written. In some cases there are arbitrary laws, but they are refined over time by the precedents set by trials such as this one and as new laws are enacted as a result of those trials. If the law is too arbitrary, it will be thrown out by the courts, but at least so far the courts seem to feel that the anti-trust laws are constitutional and thus that the law is not too arbitrary for a law-abiding corporate citizen to follow correctly.
You have a point as far as intent goes. Although in some trials intent is a significant mitigating factor, you are correct that it isn't necessarily one here. This is because normally intent matters when a crime could have been committed accidentally, or it could have been committed in cold blood with malice aforethought. However, I don't see how Microsoft could have accidentally taken the actions that we've heard about during the trial, or how Microsoft could have taken those actions believing that they would be in the best interests of free trade. Their intent was to use their desktop OS monopoly to become a monopoly in the web browser market, they abused their monopoly power to act in the restraint of trade, and they knew they were doing it. So in a way their intentions are the important factor here, because if they didn't have intentions to act illegally, they wouldn't have just accidentally done so, and we wouldn't be having a trial.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
A "field for competition" would seem to be a right held by MS competitors. And a free market is a market without gov't interference.
Not quite - MS also has a right to an even playing field. In this regard there is no difference between MS and any software company. And a market without any government interference is going to be full of monopoly pretty quickly in most cases. Businesses are not people; they are allowed to exist and do business at the sufferance of the government and ultimately the citizens. Government needs to broker disputes between businesses just like it does between people, and it also needs to make sure that business doesn't take unfair advantage of the citizens who allow business to take place. If you don't agree that some amount of government regulation is necessary, then I don't think that either of us are going to convince the other.
Netscape has a right to write and distribute their browser. They have not been prevented from doing so.
They were prevented when MS made deals with OEMs only if they did not include Netscape on their desktop, for example. Since when should MS be dictating anything like that to OEMs - they are clearly using their dominance in the Windows market (which the OEMs are dependent on, because there is a monopoly) to increase their dominance in the browser market. Sure, anybody can download and install Netscape, but we both know that those actions are beyond many users. Microsoft was smart to try to get onto the startup screen; their only mistake was using their Windows monopoly to do it. If Microsoft had made the case for IE solely on the basis of the features and cost of IE, then there would be one less argument against them.
So a clever lawyer can find actions by pretty much any successful company that can be twisted into a "combination in restraint of trade," just as you can arrest pretty much any individual that "does bad things."
I'll agree that a good lawyer could make it look like that, but that doesn't make it so. It is the court's job to determine whether a combination in restraint of trade really occurred, just as it is with any other trial. Sometimes laws are found to be so vague that they are unenforceable and are thrown out of court - for example, some Internet censorship laws meet this fate. Anti-trust laws can suffer the same fate if the courts think that they are too vague, but this has not happened yet. Therefore, the court system feels that there is enough specific information in the law to divide companies into two classes of illegal monopolists and legal ones.
Courts usually follow precedents, but they also sometimes break precedents and decide that a whole new class of actions is illegal. When that happens, a bunch of businesses will suddenly find themselves criminals, despite the fact that what they did was legal when they did it.
There are two different issues here. You normally cannot be held accountable for actions you took which were legal when you did them. Nobody has changed the wording of the anti-trust laws behind Microsoft's back, and even if that had occurred they would not be legally accountable for their (now illegal) actions that were made before the law was changed.
On the other hand, you make a good point that the interpretation of the law can change, so that at one time someone may be found to have followed the law and later a different person may be found to have broken it for doing the exact same thing. Unfortunately this could happen with any law; for example (and I use this only as an example, I don't want to argue about this here) the laws concerning abortion continue to be reinterpreted and sometimes completely thrown out by the courts (Roe v. Wade, etc). Three things affect reinterpretations such as this:
You argue that the anti-trust laws are too vague, to which I can only reply that they have not been vague enough to be thrown out by the courts yet. I say yet, because there really hasn't been a huge number of past antitrust cases for precedent in the U.S. The law has only been on the books about 100 years and there certainly hasn't been one case a year since then, has there? This isn't much of a precedent compared to murder cases, for example. So it is possible that the interpretation of the law will change. However, the DOJ attorneys have done fairly well at showing that MS actions fit into what the laws and the prior precedents describe as illegal behavior. It is to the disadvantage of the DOJ to try to set a new precedent; it is much easier to bring a case under the current interpretation of the law because the courts really don't want to reinterpret if they can avoid it.
It is the job of Congress to clearly spell out what is and is not illegal, and if they don't they are creating an opportunity for oppression.
It would be wonderful if Congress could do that now, and it would have been astonishing if Congress 100 years ago had made provisions in the antitrust laws for the kind of business deals which companies are making today. However, business isn't static and so the interpretation of the law must also change to keep up. If the laws become too out of date, they will be thrown out by the courts or updated by Congress.
It's not that I'm necessarily in favor of vague laws, but rather laws which don't have to be revised every time there's a new way of doing business. The antitrust laws are more detailed than just "combinations in restraint of trade", but they don't need to describe every possible action that you could take, just like a law about murder doesn't describe every way you could kill someone. All that matters is you did it, you knew you were doing it, and you had every intention of bringing about the outcome that occurred. Here's a hint: if you negotiate with OEMs and the public on a basis of the price, quality, and features of your product, you're usually doing OK. If you negotiate on the basis of fear of your competition, your strength in other markets, and deals that are "too good to be true", then you might have some problems. I can't believe that one of the richest companies in the world doesn't have enough lawyers to tell them that bribing OEMs not to include Netscape might be over the edge.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
OK, I'm in.
Whoa there. There is a different (as many other posters here have kindly pointed out) between the ways that different corporations can maintain and improve their market share. Remember, it's not illegal to be a monopoly, but it is illegal to gain monopoly power by illegal means, or to use monopoly power (even if acquired legally) to act in restraint of trade. With that in mind, let's consider some legal ways for companies to increase market share:
Here are some illegal ways:
I'll admit that the anti-trust laws are not the most clear-cut in terms of what is legal and what is illegal. This made sense when the laws were drafted, because markets can change rapidly and we don't want to rewrite large laws like this every year to take into account market changes and entirely new markets. Like many other laws, the question is ultimately the intent of Microsoft, and I don't think anyone at this point can argue that Microsoft's intent was only to have a good, clean competition and provide the best products for their customers.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Yes, I know how OSS works - I'm trying to illustrate that know-nothing men in suits can damage pretty much ANYTHING if they put their minds to it. What if a "freedom tax" forced Linux users to pay a penalty for using it? What if Gnome got classed as a public utility and was "for its own good" taken into the hands of a government committee? (If anyone's wondering, each of these things has happened to real products in the past.)
My only message was that governments (and other coercive monopolies) generally do a lot more harm than good. If you look to them for help today, don't be surprised when they start taking away your freedoms tomorrow.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
I'm as happy as most Slashdotters at the thought that Microsoft might get slapped on the wrist, but contain your enthusiasm, guys - years down the road, you could be next.
Imagine it's 2008 and everyone uses Linux, which is free (as in beer). Imagine some entrepreneur raising a case that this "predatory pricing" prevents him developing a new OS and narrows consumer choice. Some bureaucrat might just go for it... and once again we'd have know-nothing governmental noses in our world.
I'm no coder, just an end-user who's switching to Linux because I finally got tired of the proprietary brittleness of Microsoft's stuff. (With a lot of pain, of course, but with gain too.) Government action against Microsoft isn't the answer to anything. The answer is to LET the Microsofts make their billions - let them become fat, stodgy and arrogant. Because this sows the seeds of their own destruction. Resulting in their ideal target buyers, guys like me, becoming dissatisfied and escaping when smarter, more creative people build something like Linux. And the Microsofts start to die.
In a webbed world, top-down government is unnecessary, and relying on it to "solve" our problems just perpetuates this outmoded system known as politics. Let's hope it's not many more years before the mass of people realise this, and strip back governments worldwide into the minimal scraps of social plumbing they should be.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
Here's my guess:
Microsoft will be found absolutely guilty on all counts.
However, since their business and product is seen as very important to the world economy, their penalty will be a trivial slap on the wrist (a fine that to Bill Gates would look like a couple of bucks to someone like me), and an admonishment to clean up their act, which, of course, they will ignore.
However, Microsoft's days as an all-encompassing software monopoly are numbered, and this trial is only one small part of the reason why.
I believe that the average computer literacy of the general populous of the world has finally reached a level where Microsoft can't just bullshit people with any lie they care to spread anymore. The trial has laid bare some of the ugliness within Microsoft, so it has contributed to their demise.
However, general enlightenment of the masses is a more important factor. With the instantaneous conveying of information made possible by the internet, Microsoft's heretofore most powerful weapon, FUD, is severely diluted. With the 'net, as fast as they can dish out the FUD, enlightened people can refute it.
In addition, the 'net, for the most part, has clued in a lot of "Joe and Jane Average's" to the fact that Microsoft DID NOT invent the computer operating system. In fact, they've rarely done anything but sloppily copy something invented (and done better) by someone else and then slickly marketed what they copied.
Through the enlightenment of the computer using public, Microsoft's days as an overwhelming monopoly are truly numbered. Oh, they'll be serious contenders for many years, but with maybe 75% of the OS market, not 99.9%.
The trial is only one small part of the crumbling of the dynasty, nothing levels the playing field like enlightened consumers.
...n separate companies, all with access to the Windows source code. There would then be n companies competing in the Windows OS market.
I don't know how/if this would work. I have no clue about businesses, economics etc, I'm just a software engineer. It's an idea I read somewhere, and I thought it sounded interesting.
I heard that games consoles such as the N64 and PSX are sold at less than cost price. By selling cheap hardware, Sony and Nintendo shift oodles of units and get them into lots of homes. They recoup the cost by putting high royalties on the games.
How, if at all, are they affected by this law? Since there's competition in the games console market, I guess it doesn't matter.
Some consumers have expressed annoyance that they were forced into buying an operating system they didn't want along with their computers. Some consumers even did something about it.
I doubt any of these people appeared as witnesses in court :-) But, hopefully, these stories were mentioned by a clueful lawyer as evidence of Microsoft's monopolistic position.
Well, Microworkz, as a result of this trial, has appeared on the low end market selling competitors to Microsoft, and Microsoft can't do much of anything to stop it. The reasons are the same that IBM faced when it lost it's computer monopoly. Soon, it won't just be the wealthy who can put together enough money for a computer, we will be seeing them sold for $300 and $200 dollars.
Bullocks, you say. No bullocks. Since Microsoft can no longer enforce its monopoly through dirty tactics, as that would cause it too much grief at the trial, new competitors, like Linux, BeOS, and the hardware manufacturers who sell them have all benefitted. It's surprising Apple hasn't regained more market share than what it did with the imac.
What makes this possible? Well, the simple answer is the two biggest bullies, the Government and Microsoft, are duelling, and doing it on the Governements terf. I'm not predicting a first round knock-out, in fact, no knock-out at all. But while Microsoft's legal (bully) department is locked up in the trial, that's less time to make mayhem for the competitors. That they bribed Richard Shmaleese with $200,000 and forged tapes, and even continued some "questionable" tactics while the trial was going on, all hurt the case. Microsoft doesn't want to lose the case, but it also can't win it unless they stop bullying people around, thus losing market share. The biggest effect of the trial, in America's messed-up justice system, is the fear of losing everything t o sustain the trial itself.
Also, since Microsoft's pathetic Operating Systems took up WAYYY too much CPU for what it did (which was always Window's biggest disadvantage) better OS systems like Linux and BeOS can easily make affordable boxes for the rest of us. And without having to pay an arm and a leg to get it.
-Ben
The government can't stand competition.
--The basis of all love is respect
That's what I said. The government can't stand competition. What is the government if not a monopoly?
--The basis of all love is respect
Well, monopolies per se are not illegal. Microsoft is not in court because it is a monopoly, it is in court because it abused its market power.
Legal: Crushing your competitors and establishing an unassailable strategic position though better products, service, distribution and aggressive pricing (provided you make a profit).
Illegal: Crushing your products by threatening their distribution channels with retribution, effectively "cutting off their air supply.". Using your monopoly position to scare off potential customers with vaporware. Buying the competitors is also a no no.
Really, it's not asking too much, IMO. The law simply requires that you don't do things expressly for the purpose of cutting off your customers' access to competitors; the customers must be free to decide what is the best product for them.
The "free market" is not some kind of a benevolent god put there for our protection; it is simply a computational mechanism for setting prices and distributing resources. Like any other mechanism, it only works when used within certain parameters. That is to say, the market only operates freely when its users are constrained to work within its operating limits (example: forming a cartel damages market operation). Saying DOJ should back off of Microsoft is like some DOS weenie saying that you are limiting his programming freedom by not allowing him to write into another program's address space. Literally, it is true, but nobody with any sense really wants to live in a world like that. A good operating system shoots down proesses that misbehave, for the good of the other processes on the system, and for the ultimate good of the users and programmers of the misbegotten process.
To say that the "free market has a nice way of settling this stuff out" is naive because the "stuff" in question damages the operatoin of the free market.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If the DOJ wins, it sends the clear message the US citizens have no rights, and exist only at the whim of thugs and their sycophants.
Yes, that's correct. If the government is successful in its case against a predatory company that is in obvious violation of existing anti-trust laws, we can expect to see the tanks rolling down Elm Street any day. Better throw down your guns and start waving white hankies!
Give me a break. If Microsoft broke the law, they must be held accountable. You can't picket the courthouse and scream "But I like that chatty paperclip!" and expect to get them off the hook.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Naw, just strip them of their fortunes and make 'em work in soup kitchens.
Or, since we should probably distinguish between what the corporation has done and what certain people at the top of the hierarchy of that corporation have done, we could always break apart Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and, oh, say Ed Muth (nice try at the trial, Ed) into several parts. Then, as is happening with AT&T and the "Baby Bells," years later we could see some sort of Frankenstein-like combination of Bill, Steve and Ed come back to terrorize the peasants ...
Uhh, on second thought, let's not do that =)
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
--snipped from WSJ---
Part of the reason Microsoft may want to talk settlement again has to do with the way Judge Jackson structured the endgame in the trial: He has said he will issue an initial finding on the facts in the case before a final ruling. If that first ruling finds that Microsoft may lose on key points, as seems increasingly likely, the software giant will have a strong incentive to settle before a final judgement comes.
...
In settlement discussions so far, Microsoft has said it is willing to accept new restrictions on its business practices in order to end the case. But the government has countered that Microsoft must go further and says the evidence of Microsoft's monopoly that has come out in the five month trial demands a sweeping and air tight remedy.
--snip--
Hopefully they'll be much more air tight than the first two attempts.
Econ lesson for the day: Monopolies are bad because prices artificially inflate while product quality and innovation decline. It is in every consumer's best interest that businesses be restrained. The flaw in your "free market has a nice way of settling this stuff out" assertion is that a free market requires free choice of the consumer, which is eroded when monopolies prevent freedom of choice. Thus, monopolization is not a problem that the free market can always work out without intervention by the state.
I'm puzzled by your claim that the gov has a monopoly on public schools. What gov: federal? state? Local/municipal? The truth is that the federal government has very little to do with public schools (although they would like to) -- it's more of a state/local issue.
Back on topic, however, it is also important to realize that *being* a monopoly is not illegal; *intent to monopolize* is. This is because not all monopolies are the same, i.e. public utilities necessitate a certain amount of gov-sanctioned monopolism in order to be practical. Public utilities are much different from Microsoft, which in all likelihood broke (bent?) the law to gain an unfair advantage in the "uber-ware" market (thereby demonstrating 'intent to monopolize'). The government's duty is to stand in the way of such behavior, and although I don't particularly like government to solve everyone's problems, this is one of the few examples where it is the gov's responsibility to step in to ensure the viability of the free market. IANAL, but I play one on tv.
www.poak.net
1) Microsoft did, in fact, produce Windows.
2) The Sun rises in the east. Or is that the west? In either case, it makes Java.
3) Bill Gates is a gigantic prick. But hey, so is everyone else in the biz. Go Woz!
4) If you're a high executive at a major corporation, it's a good idea not to write emails with any meaningful content. Ever.
5) OJ did it.
6) Corporate types in the computer biz are like corporate types everywhere else. Cute and cuddly!
7) You will cooperate with the state with the good of the state and for your own survival. Cooperation will be rewarded. Insubordination will be punished. You will be released into society after confessing your crimes. Do you have any heart conditions I should be aware of?
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