When replying to an AC, try including enough text so that people can geet the context of your remark, rather than thinking that you're replying to the grandparent message.
I think that what people are gloating at is the fact that, for many (most?) schools, Linux probably is the best solution. The fact that it's also free is a mondo bonus. The problem, in many cases, is that the reality and/or perception of the Microsoft Monopoly has left many schools thinking that Wintendos is the only choice they have to install on their computers.
What the Microsoft Bully moves have done is given schools (and businesses) the incentive to actually LOOK at using other tools -- Including free tools like Linux, to see if they can do the job. When people take a serious look at Linux, they often find that it really is as good as -- or better than Wintendos for many tasks.
Linux's advantages are in many areas -- both financial and technical. What these 'single instances' do is provide proving grounds and examples where people can go and see 'live' examples of Linux working -- and working well -- for people in their industry.
This is much like what happened in the server universe, where Linux was first used by the forward thinking mavericks who were then able to prove that it had the power, stability and tools to do the job that people needed to get done -- Often (usually) doing it better than the mondo-dollar proprietary '$olutions' sold by companies like Microsoft.
But i have a question, what would this do about taking homework home?
Yep: I can just see it now.. Kids going home, and telling their parents that they need a linux partition to do their homework. Learning how to do a linux install, and/or doing a Linux on FAT installation --- parents learning that Linux is so much more sane and capable than Wintendos, then mentioning it at work, where they try it out....
Some of the executive will be spending a lot of time satisfying the courts and creditors. Most of the programmers and and game designers (those who don't have executive duties) will remained focused on doing game work.
...no one, not malicious script kiddies, not dedicated hackers will get anywhere near the
software, so provided the people in charge of it are trustworthy, there will never (almost, anyways) be a problem with
security, as all people see is the buttons you push, not the underlying code.
You can't be sure that 'the people in charge' are Trustworthy -- especially if they are the one well-known soft link in the security chain.
Social engineering is one of the most successful methods of getting into a system. It's one of the favorite methods of organizations like The CIA, The (former) KGB, The Mafia, and most con artists. Even if you're going for a hardeware solution, it's still gonna be easier if you can blackmail design info out of the people working on the system.
The Computer is your friend. The Computer is your only friend. Trust the Computer. Trust only The Computer. And remember:
In all likelyhood, the computer wants you dead.
-- My summary of Paranoia (the game)
Re:what a predicament ...
on
Linux Turns 10
·
· Score: 2
I wish to God that Sun had taken half the money they spent on testing Gnome and KDE. I would have written them a long letter telling
them everything they learned with a lot less wasted time on everybodies part.
These 'problems' were well known for a long time. What the study did was quantify them and test them to determine if they were the random gripe of someone with sour grapes or something that really did confuse the average user.
One thing here, however, is that most users are
now used to Windows, so anything different from
Wintendos is likely to confuse people who first
face a new system.
I would, however, be the first to complain about
the gdm login window, and I've been using Unix
since 1983.
If the IP cabal is going to teach kids to 'respect IP rights', just tag onto their coattails by making it clear that keeping Free software Free is alse about respecting IP rights as well. The author of Free Software gets paid back by having the work that others do folded back into his work. The expectation is that, in many cases, the improvement will get back to him. If not, the net benefit to society will get to him/her indirectly.
People who think that Free Software doesn't have a cost/payment associated with it, don't understand Free Software.
Since Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had his hand slapped and judicial relief (by breaking MS in 2) set aside, could this judge also be
excused by announcing verdict (illegal Internet activity) before trial?
Well, this is an appeal decision, not a trial level decision, so they can't quite be pulled off of the case, since they're technically not on it.
That having been said, I'm bothered by the fact that they seem to have declared him guilty, rather than just sayint that they're presuming that this would be the case IF he were guilty.
I guess it comes from being programmer types.... Misspell one variable, and you could end up crashing your martian probe (but we all know that it died for other reasons -- Except for mark who seems to have changed a strange color).
Practically, it'd be pretty hard for them to tell the difference between this one trade on hot info, and lucky timing. It'd be even harder for them to prove it, unless they got sircamed your document that detailed plans for exploiting the insider info.
At that point they'd find themselves dealing with the same ethical question... --
That's a bit bigger than the cities I'm talking about (sorry, that wasn't so apparent). I'm talking about cities in the 50k-500k range.
. . . .
Exactly. Night service isn't around much. Take a bike, get mugged.
Uhm, getting mugged in a small city? Where the hell do you live? Cycling in Edmonton and Vancouver, I've never been worried about being mugged on my bike... I've had a propositions from a pair of hot babes -- I mistook them for prostitutes -- god were they insulted. That that may be the closest I've come to being mugged on my bike.
And when that bus goes over a bridge and turns over, guess who dies? Or what about when it hits the ice, skids, and snaps in half on some
telephone poles?
If a bus skids into a telephone pole, chances are the pole will snap before the bus does. Modern poles are designed to crumple to lessen the impact of a small car. A bus would just slow down. For the newsworthy bus accidents I've seen, most had zero fatalities. I'd have to cross the nation to find a recent multiple-fatality bus accident
(brakes failed, flew over a cliff). Even there, the death rate was well under 50%. Far better than if a Mazda had done the same thing (which they do far more often). Fatal car accidents are a dime a dozen. --
>I don't understand how 30/200 and 4/200 translate to near certainty of death.
As a pessimist, that's still too high for me...
That's 1/6 and 1/50 chance of death, respectively, for a catastrophic/fatal accident. Death rates in automobile fatal accidents tend to be in the 1/1 and 2/3 range. If you're in a fatal car accident, the liklihood of you dieing is far more than if you're in a fatal bus accident.
That having been said, the liklihood of your death being on TV is far higher if you die in a bus/train/air crash. That's because they're so rare. Car deaths don't usually make it onto the news unless they're notably spectacular. Usually you just get the stats on how many people died in their cars this month.
With transit, it might
be considered big news having 3 deaths in 2 years. BC transit would be doing a complete safety review after a pair of years that bad. I can't remember how many thousand busses they have.
I know people with more accidents per year than some entire transit bus garages have (hundreds of drivers). These are, of course, people that I do not tend to accept rides from. --
...I quickly realised that mass transit ONLY
works in huge cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta, Detriot, New York, for example.
Er, NO. Edmonton (like Calgary) had a population in the 500K~750K range (depending on how you counted) when they put in an LRT (Light Rapid Transit) system. They already had a bus system that worked pretty well. I lived there between the ages of 10 and 30. I only owned a car for about 2 years of that time -- and the car was bought by accident (but that's a different story).
I did almost all of my transport via either bus or bike in Edmonton (being a mostly flat space helps for cycling). Obviously, much less biking in the winter. My biggest complaint was what I called the 'cinderella syndrome': The bus system essentially shuts down at about midnight. After that, it's either bike or taxis.
The system works well and, in many cases, it turns out that commuting via mass transit is faster than by car (mostly if you end up using the LRT).
...
As for cars killing fewer people per fatal accident, it's probably true since 75% of all car rides are SOV (Single Occupant Vehicles). But like all misleading statistics, it hides the fact that mass transit vehicle accidents are generally rarer, and less fatal than car accidents.
First of all, the drivers are professionals, and take pride in NOT being in accidents. Second of all, if a transit bus runs over your mazda Miata, guess who's gonna get CRUSHED? Inertia favors the larger vehicle, so unless the bus does a head-on with a dump truck or a brick wall, chances are that the vehicle is gonna come to a stop more gently than most cars do when they get into a similar accident.
It generally takes something pretty impressive (and newsworthy) to cause a passenger deaths in a bus/train accident. --
Yep. After driving from Vancouver to Edmonton, once, I stopped to visit a friend who was working in a nightclub. Fell asleep in the booth there.
To give you an idea as to the sound levels... The next week their DJ smoked the speaker system (as in, the speakers started smoking from being over-driven. --
You don't actually force them to do much of anything, you just open them up to lawsuits if they make a seriously insecure system the default.
At the very least, what you need to do is make it so that the highest security level is clearly available for the default install. Much like the RedHat Firewall stuff in 7.1, that brings a pop-up that gives high-security as an option...
(though a not terribly workable option if you actually want your machine to talk to the world much).
There's the old adage that the only fully secure system is encased in cement (unplugged) and sitting at the bottom of a lake -- and that presumes you can control physical access to the lake.
One of the fights for secure systems is to balance usability with risk. The most usable systems have little or no security. The most secure systems tend to have their usability curtailed.
Then there's Windows, which is neither very secure nor very usable -- and the two may be related.
--
When they came out with IE4, the uninstall was broken... Microsoft's explanation was that, at this time, the browser was getting more and more 'integrated' with the OS, and it was getting hard to separate the two.
My rommmate at the time figured out that if you used the IE3 uninstaller, you weren't left with the fatal aftereffects that the IE4 uninstaller had.
In other words, it looks like Microsofft wilfully broke many peoples systems just so that they could make this argument. --
If you look at the larger legal battle over whether or not the DMCA is constitutional, or not, the REAL fight of that question is going to take place in the higher courts (Courts of appeal and Supreme Court). The fight in the lower courts is simply setting the baseline for the larger fight. Yes, he's likely to loose at this level, because the lower courts rarely look at the question of whether the law itself is valid. That tends to happen in the higher courts.
You still have to fight the lower court fight like your life depends on it -- because it does. If you surrender a technicality that turns out to be pivotal issue at the higher level, you lose the greater battle. It can be hard to figure out, at this level, what the pivotal issues are going to be.
This is one of those instances of "somebody's got to do it". Given that the fortune he made was made through the sharing of music, I can see him being willing to tithe a portion of it to the fight over the peoples' rights to share their beloved art. -- and if he wins, he may still make money out of it.
I know that it may not make sense from a pure greed point of view -- but not everybody operates
from a pure greed perspective. Some people take on battles for a larger section of society than just themselves. I think that it's something that we should honor -- even if we wouldn't do it ourselves. --
Vax cabinets are also a good source of rack space.. Nice sturdy, interesting power supplies built-in.. and possibly a nice, 8" 300Meg SMD hard disk drive thrown in for good measure.
--
In North America, Most people who have cell phones also have email. As a result, it's generally been easier to get messages off of the web. That's been "good enough" for most customers, so there hasn't been much of a push to get SMS running in competition to the already(baarely) working setup.
In Europe and (more so) developing countries, fewer people had email and SMS was built into the phones -- Guess which came first.
It should also be noted that the popularity of SMS came as a big surprise to the cell companies. They originally marketed it as a cheap add-on to cell service, but then found that income from SMS started to rival voice. This is probably why it is so well developed out there. This leads to the marketing barrier -- Convincing the marketing types at the various companies to support something that's supposed to save the customers money (i.e. cut their profits) is not an easy sell. When GSM came out, there wasn't much of a voice market out there, so there wasn't a voice market to 'lose'. This made sms a no-loss propsition... an added feature to get people 'in' to the market. In North America, on the other hand, (analog) voice was already entrenched. In this domain, text messaging feels more like competition to the already entrenched voice market.
So here in North America, the pricing scheme never really favored text messaging, and it's been much more of a hack, so it hasn't caught on.Having half a dozen incompatible protocols/providers as opposed to one or two doesn't help much, either. --
But it's a 3" cube. That means you could easilly stuff five of them in the space of two 1.5" full-width racks.
Er, make that 10 -- five in the front and five in the back. at that rate, you could end up with almost a quarter of your space taken up with hubs and switches for connectivity. --
Reading through the decision, I came across this...
Microsoft argues that, because middleware could usurp the operating system's platfor mfunciton and might eventually take over ther operating system functions (for instance, by controlling peripherals), the Distrect Court erred in excluding Navigator and Java from the relevant market. [[in determining the existence of a monopoly]].
Now correct me, if I'm wrong, but isn't this case about the fact that Micro$oft saw these programs as posible competition and trashed them both before they could become viable alternatives to Windows as an API to write real applications for? --
Guh. That people should be bragging that they'd managed to keep their computer stable for 3 months is part of my complaint against Microsoft. Back in the late '80s a friend of mine had a Sun 1 that had been up for 3 YEARS. Unfortunately, an upgrade required that he flip a DIP switch that he couldn't reach without powering down and pulling a card out of the machine to get to it. He was pissed.
For me, about the usual reason that I have to reboot my Linux desktop boxes is to try something new (second ethernet to play with firewalling), or run Windows (one has an ancient scanner attached to it that I can only find Win 3.1 drivers for (nope... SANE doesn't support it -- though they mention it as to wierd to be worth it. It's that old and rare, but it works too nice to replace for how little I use it. I use the other to run Tribes.)
For me, the usual reason for rebooting a UNIX/Linux box has been things like installing new hardware/software (upgrading from RH5.2 -> 7.0), or moving the box to a different room/rack/cage. Remote Windows boxes, on the other hand have to be attached to contraptions that allow you to power cycle them remotely when -- not if -- they go down. --
PS: It didn't hurt MS's case that Netscape/AOL merged with Time Warner, kind of rendered a lot of the future predicitions made by prosecution
pointless.
This seems to have been a majour sticking point for the court of appeal. They pointed to the rapid movement in the computer industry as a reason why Jackson should have allowed an evidentiary hearing before giving a remedy. The facts of the case were, in some cases for years before the case went to trial. An evidentiary hearing would have allowed him to figure out what was going on now and adjust his remedy to that.
It's actually quite possible that an evidentiary hearing could hear about what microsoft is doing now, and result in a far more draconian response than what Jackson decreed. On the other hand, they might look at the netscape/ AOL/ Time-Warner merger and decide that everything is fine now (unlikely).
This recent decision does seem to open up for the DOJ (and even intervenors) to make submissions as to what the current state of the market is in hopes that we'll get a rullling that really does stop Microsoft's monopolistic practices as of now, not as of 1995 when they didn't control the 'net like they do now. We might even see an opening up of questions such as Microsoft's creeping domination of the network multi-media market, and other areas. --
My understanding is that there are two different burdens of proof on appeal. This seems to be echoed in the decision (if you read it).
Findings of fact are generally deferred to by a higher court. The reasoning is that the original judge -- who had direct access to witness testimony, etc. (Or the jury) had the best chance to decide what is so, and read the faces of witnesses during testimony, etc. The further you crawl up the appeal ladder, the farther you are from the real evidence/facts of the case. Findings of fact are generally only overturned if there is a finding of 'obvious' error.
Findings of law, on the other hand are decided 'De Novo' -- anew. The thought here appears to be that the law doesn't change when you crawl up the appeals ladder, but knowledge of the law increases (in theory) as you climb.
As such, it's not uncommon to find comments in high level cases that read like:
Although we would tend to disagree with the trial judges finding that the defendant is a scum sucking monopololist, that is a finding of fact, and there is no obvious error. Although we would be inclined to find that the defendant was simply a bottom feeder, we defer to the lower court finding on this question of fact.
On the other hand: Having found that they suck scum, the trial judge responded improperly to the scum-sucking nature of the defendant. Where offenders suck scum as opposed to simply bottom-feeding, the correct remedy is triple damages, not the double damages awarded by the trial judge. For this reason, we increase the award by 50%.
In this case, it was no surprise that they essentially left his findings of fact alone. Where they did touch his findings of fact, it tended to be on the law underlying those findings not the facts themselves. The legal decisions (i.e. what to do with the found facts) is where they did most of their damage. This seems pretty normal activity for an appeals level court.
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When replying to an AC, try including enough text so that people can geet the context of your remark, rather than thinking that you're replying to the grandparent message.
What the Microsoft Bully moves have done is given schools (and businesses) the incentive to actually LOOK at using other tools -- Including free tools like Linux, to see if they can do the job. When people take a serious look at Linux, they often find that it really is as good as -- or better than Wintendos for many tasks.
Linux's advantages are in many areas -- both financial and technical. What these 'single instances' do is provide proving grounds and examples where people can go and see 'live' examples of Linux working -- and working well -- for people in their industry.
This is much like what happened in the server universe, where Linux was first used by the forward thinking mavericks who were then able to prove that it had the power, stability and tools to do the job that people needed to get done -- Often (usually) doing it better than the mondo-dollar proprietary '$olutions' sold by companies like Microsoft.
Yep: I can just see it now.. Kids going home, and telling their parents that they need a linux partition to do their homework. Learning how to do a linux install, and/or doing a Linux on FAT installation --- parents learning that Linux is so much more sane and capable than Wintendos, then mentioning it at work, where they try it out....
We can't have that, now, can we?
Some of the executive will be spending a lot of time satisfying the courts and creditors. Most of the programmers and and game designers (those who don't have executive duties) will remained focused on doing game work.
You can't be sure that 'the people in charge' are Trustworthy -- especially if they are the one well-known soft link in the security chain.
Social engineering is one of the most successful methods of getting into a system. It's one of the favorite methods of organizations like The CIA, The (former) KGB, The Mafia, and most con artists. Even if you're going for a hardeware solution, it's still gonna be easier if you can blackmail design info out of the people working on the system.
These 'problems' were well known for a long time. What the study did was quantify them and test them to determine if they were the random gripe of someone with sour grapes or something that really did confuse the average user.
One thing here, however, is that most users are now used to Windows, so anything different from Wintendos is likely to confuse people who first face a new system.
I would, however, be the first to complain about the gdm login window, and I've been using Unix since 1983.
People who think that Free Software doesn't have a cost/payment associated with it, don't understand Free Software.
That having been said, I'm bothered by the fact that they seem to have declared him guilty, rather than just sayint that they're presuming that this would be the case IF he were guilty.
I guess it comes from being programmer types.... Misspell one variable, and you could end up crashing your martian probe (but we all know that it died for other reasons -- Except for mark who seems to have changed a strange color).
Practically, it'd be pretty hard for them to tell the difference between this one trade on hot info, and lucky timing. It'd be even harder for them to prove it, unless they got sircamed your document that detailed plans for exploiting the insider info.
At that point they'd find themselves dealing with the same ethical question...
--
. . . .
Exactly. Night service isn't around much. Take a bike, get mugged.
Uhm, getting mugged in a small city? Where the hell do you live? Cycling in Edmonton and Vancouver, I've never been worried about being mugged on my bike... I've had a propositions from a pair of hot babes -- I mistook them for prostitutes -- god were they insulted. That that may be the closest I've come to being mugged on my bike.
And when that bus goes over a bridge and turns over, guess who dies? Or what about when it hits the ice, skids, and snaps in half on some telephone poles?
If a bus skids into a telephone pole, chances are the pole will snap before the bus does. Modern poles are designed to crumple to lessen the impact of a small car. A bus would just slow down. For the newsworthy bus accidents I've seen, most had zero fatalities. I'd have to cross the nation to find a recent multiple-fatality bus accident (brakes failed, flew over a cliff). Even there, the death rate was well under 50%. Far better than if a Mazda had done the same thing (which they do far more often). Fatal car accidents are a dime a dozen.
--
As a pessimist, that's still too high for me...
That's 1/6 and 1/50 chance of death, respectively, for a catastrophic/fatal accident. Death rates in automobile fatal accidents tend to be in the 1/1 and 2/3 range. If you're in a fatal car accident, the liklihood of you dieing is far more than if you're in a fatal bus accident.
That having been said, the liklihood of your death being on TV is far higher if you die in a bus/train/air crash. That's because they're so rare. Car deaths don't usually make it onto the news unless they're notably spectacular. Usually you just get the stats on how many people died in their cars this month.
With transit, it might be considered big news having 3 deaths in 2 years. BC transit would be doing a complete safety review after a pair of years that bad. I can't remember how many thousand busses they have.
I know people with more accidents per year than some entire transit bus garages have (hundreds of drivers). These are, of course, people that I do not tend to accept rides from.
--
Er, NO. Edmonton (like Calgary) had a population in the 500K~750K range (depending on how you counted) when they put in an LRT (Light Rapid Transit) system. They already had a bus system that worked pretty well. I lived there between the ages of 10 and 30. I only owned a car for about 2 years of that time -- and the car was bought by accident (but that's a different story).
I did almost all of my transport via either bus or bike in Edmonton (being a mostly flat space helps for cycling). Obviously, much less biking in the winter. My biggest complaint was what I called the 'cinderella syndrome': The bus system essentially shuts down at about midnight. After that, it's either bike or taxis.
The system works well and, in many cases, it turns out that commuting via mass transit is faster than by car (mostly if you end up using the LRT).
...
As for cars killing fewer people per fatal accident, it's probably true since 75% of all car rides are SOV (Single Occupant Vehicles). But like all misleading statistics, it hides the fact that mass transit vehicle accidents are generally rarer, and less fatal than car accidents.
First of all, the drivers are professionals, and take pride in NOT being in accidents. Second of all, if a transit bus runs over your mazda Miata, guess who's gonna get CRUSHED? Inertia favors the larger vehicle, so unless the bus does a head-on with a dump truck or a brick wall, chances are that the vehicle is gonna come to a stop more gently than most cars do when they get into a similar accident. It generally takes something pretty impressive (and newsworthy) to cause a passenger deaths in a bus/train accident.
--
To give you an idea as to the sound levels... The next week their DJ smoked the speaker system (as in, the speakers started smoking from being over-driven.
--
At the very least, what you need to do is make it so that the highest security level is clearly available for the default install. Much like the RedHat Firewall stuff in 7.1, that brings a pop-up that gives high-security as an option... (though a not terribly workable option if you actually want your machine to talk to the world much).
There's the old adage that the only fully secure system is encased in cement (unplugged) and sitting at the bottom of a lake -- and that presumes you can control physical access to the lake.
One of the fights for secure systems is to balance usability with risk. The most usable systems have little or no security. The most secure systems tend to have their usability curtailed.
Then there's Windows, which is neither very secure nor very usable -- and the two may be related.
--
My rommmate at the time figured out that if you used the IE3 uninstaller, you weren't left with the fatal aftereffects that the IE4 uninstaller had.
In other words, it looks like Microsofft wilfully broke many peoples systems just so that they could make this argument.
--
You still have to fight the lower court fight like your life depends on it -- because it does. If you surrender a technicality that turns out to be pivotal issue at the higher level, you lose the greater battle. It can be hard to figure out, at this level, what the pivotal issues are going to be.
This is one of those instances of "somebody's got to do it". Given that the fortune he made was made through the sharing of music, I can see him being willing to tithe a portion of it to the fight over the peoples' rights to share their beloved art. -- and if he wins, he may still make money out of it.
I know that it may not make sense from a pure greed point of view -- but not everybody operates from a pure greed perspective. Some people take on battles for a larger section of society than just themselves. I think that it's something that we should honor -- even if we wouldn't do it ourselves.
--
(OK: so, it's functionally equivalent to a chimney in terms of heat output, but that's not what it is.
--
Vax cabinets are also a good source of rack space.. Nice sturdy, interesting power supplies built-in .. and possibly a nice, 8" 300Meg SMD hard disk drive thrown in for good measure.
--
In North America, Most people who have cell phones also have email. As a result, it's generally been easier to get messages off of the web. That's been "good enough" for most customers, so there hasn't been much of a push to get SMS running in competition to the already(baarely) working setup.
In Europe and (more so) developing countries, fewer people had email and SMS was built into the phones -- Guess which came first.
It should also be noted that the popularity of SMS came as a big surprise to the cell companies. They originally marketed it as a cheap add-on to cell service, but then found that income from SMS started to rival voice. This is probably why it is so well developed out there. This leads to the marketing barrier -- Convincing the marketing types at the various companies to support something that's supposed to save the customers money (i.e. cut their profits) is not an easy sell. When GSM came out, there wasn't much of a voice market out there, so there wasn't a voice market to 'lose'. This made sms a no-loss propsition... an added feature to get people 'in' to the market. In North America, on the other hand, (analog) voice was already entrenched. In this domain, text messaging feels more like competition to the already entrenched voice market.
So here in North America, the pricing scheme never really favored text messaging, and it's been much more of a hack, so it hasn't caught on.Having half a dozen incompatible protocols/providers as opposed to one or two doesn't help much, either.
--
Er, make that 10 -- five in the front and five in the back. at that rate, you could end up with almost a quarter of your space taken up with hubs and switches for connectivity.
--
--
For me, about the usual reason that I have to reboot my Linux desktop boxes is to try something new (second ethernet to play with firewalling), or run Windows (one has an ancient scanner attached to it that I can only find Win 3.1 drivers for (nope... SANE doesn't support it -- though they mention it as to wierd to be worth it. It's that old and rare, but it works too nice to replace for how little I use it. I use the other to run Tribes.)
For me, the usual reason for rebooting a UNIX/Linux box has been things like installing new hardware/software (upgrading from RH5.2 -> 7.0), or moving the box to a different room/rack/cage. Remote Windows boxes, on the other hand have to be attached to contraptions that allow you to power cycle them remotely when -- not if -- they go down.
--
This seems to have been a majour sticking point for the court of appeal. They pointed to the rapid movement in the computer industry as a reason why Jackson should have allowed an evidentiary hearing before giving a remedy. The facts of the case were, in some cases for years before the case went to trial. An evidentiary hearing would have allowed him to figure out what was going on now and adjust his remedy to that.
It's actually quite possible that an evidentiary hearing could hear about what microsoft is doing now, and result in a far more draconian response than what Jackson decreed. On the other hand, they might look at the netscape/ AOL/ Time-Warner merger and decide that everything is fine now (unlikely).
This recent decision does seem to open up for the DOJ (and even intervenors) to make submissions as to what the current state of the market is in hopes that we'll get a rullling that really does stop Microsoft's monopolistic practices as of now, not as of 1995 when they didn't control the 'net like they do now. We might even see an opening up of questions such as Microsoft's creeping domination of the network multi-media market, and other areas.
--
My understanding is that there are two different burdens of proof on appeal. This seems to be echoed in the decision (if you read it).
Findings of fact are generally deferred to by a higher court. The reasoning is that the original judge -- who had direct access to witness testimony, etc. (Or the jury) had the best chance to decide what is so, and read the faces of witnesses during testimony, etc. The further you crawl up the appeal ladder, the farther you are from the real evidence/facts of the case. Findings of fact are generally only overturned if there is a finding of 'obvious' error.
Findings of law, on the other hand are decided 'De Novo' -- anew. The thought here appears to be that the law doesn't change when you crawl up the appeals ladder, but knowledge of the law increases (in theory) as you climb.
As such, it's not uncommon to find comments in high level cases that read like:
In this case, it was no surprise that they essentially left his findings of fact alone. Where they did touch his findings of fact, it tended to be on the law underlying those findings not the facts themselves. The legal decisions (i.e. what to do with the found facts) is where they did most of their damage. This seems pretty normal activity for an appeals level court.(I'm still reading the decision).
--