Microsoft Ruling Helps Utah Company nytimes.com
On that very subject, we have today's article. It may be harder without a verdict, but the current ruling may have some bearing anyway.
While it's unclear whether Caldera will be able to use Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's Nov. 5 ruling as evidence, Sparks said it can only help his company's case, which goes to trial Jan. 17 in Salt Lake City before U.S. District Judge Dee Benson.
The Utah company's allegations go to the issue at the heart of all of the other lawsuits against Microsoft, said company spokesman Lyle Ball.
``The other cases all assume Microsoft has a monopoly in the world of operating systems and look at how they used that to affect other industries,' Ball said. ``But we're trying to show how they built and maintained that illegal monopoly in the first place.
On a more amusing note, a historical aside:
That is because Microsoft built a virtual brick wall by using scare tactics to discourage the use of DR DOS, Caldera's attorneys argue.
Take the dreaded ``blue screen of death,' which appears sometimes when a system failure occurs in some versions of Windows.
According to the lawsuit, Microsoft programmed Windows to seek out DR DOS and flash the terrifying blue screen warning that DR DOS would have to be replaced, even though DR DOS ran Windows just fine.
But the dreaded BSOD is a Microsoft innovation, and Microsoft must be free to innovate! Having invented the BSOD, Microsoft must also be free to use it innovatively, in whatever air supply operation is currently underway.
Cheers, Dan. |
