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Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 00:00:07 EST-10EDT,10,-1,0,7200,3,-1,0,7200,3600
Subject: [os2genau_digest] No. 330
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Wednesday 24 April 2002
 Number  330
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Subjects for today
 
1  [os2genau] Fwd: Gates put out enough bs to fertilize 80 acres. : John Angelico" <talldadatkepl dot com dot au>

**= Email   1 ==========================**

Date:  Wed, 24 Apr 2002 15:32:58 +1000 (EST)
From:  "John Angelico" <talldadatkepl dot com dot au>
Subject:  [os2genau] Fwd: Gates put out enough bs to fertilize 80 acres.

Forwarded from POSSI discussion group to <genau> with [my editorial
comments]

Best regards
John Angelico
OS/2 SIG
talldadatmelbpc dot org dot au or talldadatkepl dot com dot au
____________________________________________

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>

April 23, 2002

On Witness Stand, Gates Condemns Microsoft Penalties

http://www.nytimes dot com/2002/04/23/technology/23SOFT.html

By AMY HARMON

WASHINGTON, April 22 — Bill Gates, the chairman and co-founder of 
Microsoft, took the witness stand today for the first time in the
antitrust case against the company, declaring that the penalties sought by
a coalition of state prosecutors would cripple Microsoft, harm consumers
and drag the entire computer industry into stagnation.

 Opening his appearance with a multimedia presentation, Mr. Gates could
almost have been at an industry trade show. He demonstrated why he
believes that the states' proposals would fracture the Windows operating
system used by millions of Americans, sowing confusion and driving up
prices.

 "Instead of being able to buy a machine with Windows and knowing that all
your applications would run, you wouldn't have that assurance," Mr. Gates
said today.

[Just like today - Windows XP requires users to upgrade their programs, and
yesterday/last year/the year before. Which Windows release has not had this
effect??]

 In written testimony submitted before his court appearance, Mr. Gates
said Microsoft would be forced to withdraw Windows from the market if
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Federal District Court adopted the states'
demand for a version of the operating system that can be customized by
computer makers and software designers.

[What's so terrible about the idea of customising Windows? Doesn't MS
encourage users to do it?]

 Mr. Gates's performance was a stark contrast to the combative, evasive
persona Mr. Gates projected during a videotaped deposition played for
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the Federal District Court during the
liability phase of the trial.

 Wearing a dark blue suit, Mr. Gates was quick to answer questions and
strove to appear helpful, frequently responding "yes, sir," to questions
from Steven Kuney, a lawyer for the states who conducted his
cross-examination.

 During the six-week hearing, the states have referred to Microsoft's
position as the "Doomsday defense," and Mr. Kuney sought today to portray
Mr. Gates's interpretation of the states' proposals as so extreme as to be
nonsensical on several fronts.

 Mr. Kuney asked "did you mean us to take quite literally," the notion
that several of the states' proposals "would lead to the end of innovation
and eliminate most of the current employees of Microsoft?"

 "That's correct," Mr. Gates answered.

[It can't be the end of innovation at MS since this implies there was a
beginning somewhere]

 For all the high-profile debate and taxpayer dollars spent on the
four-year-old case, the penalty phase of the trial has until now proceeded
in relative obscurity. Once the possibility of a Microsoft breakup was all
but ruled out by a federal appeals court, the question of how to restrict
Microsoft's future conduct has been mired in technical debates and dueling
economic projections.

 But Mr. Gates's presence underscored the degree to which the company
views the outcome of the hearing as vital to the future of the company.
His 155-page written testimony, in which he dissects each of the
provisions sought by the states, seeks to make Mr. Gates's point that the
penalties leave no motivation for the company to continue to be
innovative.

[Since the company is not innovative now, this point about motivation is
somewhat moot!]

 The penalties recommended by the states include requiring Microsoft to
share with competitors technical information and blueprints about how some
of its most popular software works. In his written testimony, Mr. Gates
argued such penalties would cause "a massive transfer of Microsoft's
intellectual property rights" to competitors in addition to being
impossible to carry out.

[But what about the past massive transfer of property ie money into MS by
means of practices declared to be illegal? Is there no concept of justice
in the sense that MS will be deprived of the spoils of its past conduct?] 

 In many ways, Mr. Gates's objections to the states' proposals echo the
same philosophical and technical disputes that have been at the core of
the case since it began. Microsoft has long maintained that there is no
clear line between what is in the operating system and what is a separate
product because it is all a collection of the electronic 1's and 0's of
computer code.

[Yes, just as there is no boundary between a car's tyres and the road -
after all they're all merely carbon and hydrogen atoms]

 Microsoft hopes that Mr. Gates will persuade a judge who is relatively
new to the case not to risk meddling with a company that has long been an
economic engine for the technology industry and the American economy.

 "The same `positive feedback loop' that propelled the PC industry to
years of steady growth would work in reverse," Mr. Gates warned of states'
proposals, "causing the industry to stagnate as products became more
expensive to develop even as they provided fewer benefits and less
interoperability."

 But Mr. Kuney challenged Mr. Gates's assertion that what is good for
Microsoft is good for the computer industry: "Most people think when we
have a monopoly that the interests of that firm are not always aligned
with the interests of the industry, isn't that the case?" Mr. Kuney asked.

[That proposition was barely sustainable when GM used it. See Orwell's
'1984' for a refutation by parody] 

 Mr. Kuney also questioned Mr. Gates's testimony that Microsoft already
goes to great lengths to disclose technical information so software
developers can write programs that work well with Microsoft products. He
produced an internal memorandum from Mr. Gates instructing employees to
stop trying to make Microsoft Office documents work with rival Web
browsers.

 "We have to stop putting any effort into this," Mr. Gates wrote in the
December 1998 e-mail message. "Anything else is suicide for our platform.."

 "You read it correctly," Mr. Gates said, bristling just slightly.

[Of course!]

 Throughout most of the afternoon's testimony, however, Mr. Gates remained
calm and conversational, refusing to back down from his positions even as
Mr. Kuney sought to paint them as absurd.

 The proceeding before Judge Kollar-Kotelly is the culmination of a case
that began when the Justice Department and 20 states filed antitrust
charges against Microsoft on May 18, 1998, in what was seen as a historic
case that would set the ground rules of competition in the digital age.

 After a 78-day trial, Judge Jackson ruled that Microsoft had repeatedly
violated antitrust laws by using its monopoly power in the market for
personal computer operating systems to challenge the Netscape Navigator
browser and the Java programming language of  Sun Microsystems, rivals to
Windows. He ordered the company to be broken in two.

 Last year, a federal appeals court upheld several of Judge Jackson's
findings but overturned others, including the breakup order. The appeals
court directed the district court to impose a penalty based on the revised
ruling that would restore competition, deny Microsoft the rewards of its
illegal activity and prevent its repetition.

 In January, the Bush administration and nine of the states remaining in
the litigation settled with Microsoft out of court. But nine other states,
along with the District of Columbia, have refused to go along with the
terms of the settlement, which has been widely criticized as a sweetheart
deal. They argue that unless carefully restrained, Microsoft will repeat
the same pattern by illegally seeking to eliminate new challengers to its
Windows monopoly.


Don Hawkinson   
dwhawkatintcon dot net

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.... OXYMORON #599: Windows productivity

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