Justice Delayed around.com
An even older column from that old friend, with a little update at the end.
An operating system used to be a well-defined thing: the code that handled communication between applications, like calculators and word processors, and the computer's devices--screen, keyboard, printers, memory, storage. Microsoft even agreed to define it this way in the 1994 agreement. But out here in the real world, it has turned the operating system into a giant Rube Goldberg contraption, with many interlocking parts, including more and more functions that used to be high-level applications sold by competitors.
It's all beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, though. At least it's beyond the comprehension of certain federal judges of the Chicago School. The Chicago School actually shut down its "Committee for Information Science", what passed for a Comp Sci department, while I was in attendance. I hear they've revived it since.
An up to day P.S. from Gleick:
Well, I've argued here that part of the battle is already lost. That doesn't mean it's not going to create a lot of heat and light while the parties continue to fight. As of June 1998, a Court of Appeals decision creates its own interpretation of the word "integrated," apparently giving Microsoft
leeway (as one dissenting judge suggests) to integrate anything at all into the operating system--even a mouse.
Oh dear. I hope the mouse doesn't get integrated into the ham sandwich. Coke got in trouble for that, or maybe that's just an urban legend. Anyway, if a mouse does go into the ham sandwich, I'm sure Microsoft will cover itself legally with a good shrink-wrap license, to be litigated in King's county, Washington in the event of a dispute.
Cheers, Dan.
P.P.S. Gleick, being a good net citizen, gives a url for the appeals decision, cadc.uscourts.gov
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