Microsoft: We'll be less strident www5.zdnet.com
And from the home town rag:
Microsoft taking softer public tact seattletimes.com
Executive summary: that middle finger is lowered a bit, but not all that much by my measure.
First, the quick take from zdnn:
Microsoft officials acknowledged they have done a "poor job of communicating the overall issues," said David Fester, the company's group product manager for Internet Explorer.
Oh, I don't know, I think calling everybody else idiots is pretty indicative of the issues as Microsoft sees them, but that's just me.
In defending itself vigorously in court, Microsoft came across as "being too strident," Fester said. He stressed that the Redmond, Wash., company is fully complying with the court's preliminary injunction.
With the proverbial raised middle finger, of course, but never mind.
"We took the high road and didn't do any of the lobbying like Netscape [Communications Corp.] and Sun [Microsystems Inc.] did," Fester said. "There has been a rewriting of history."
Right, Bill was on top of the internet all along. We keep forgetting. And Microsoft never, never lobbies, those trade deals with China and that new copyright bill and that export tax credit on software licenses just appeared out of thin air. Bill plays golf with that other Bill just for recreation, you know. Dueling pasty white thighs, as Letterman would say.
The Seattle Times article is more in depth, and actually sounds sort of conciliatory. Even old Steverino backs off a bit. But, in the end:
Microsoft offered computer makers a choice of a version of Windows 95 with the browser files stripped out, which crippled the product, or a 2 1/2-year-old version of Windows 95 that contained no browser files.
Jackson is due to hear from Microsoft and Justice Department technical experts next Tuesday on the department's request that the company be found in contempt of the judge's order for, in the department's words, "jerry-rigging its own products - deleting files that otherwise need not be deleted."
But had the company merely removed the Explorer icon - as Judge Jackson did in a 90-second demonstration in his courtroom Dec. 19 - without taking out the underlying files, Microsoft would have risked accusations of hoodwinking computer makers, Herbold said: "We get slammed either way."
There seems to be some confusion here, between the Compaq saga of the sacred icon, and the idiot Judge who doesn't understand that that add/remove thing means what Microsoft wants it to mean. I stand by my reading, which is that every update to Win95 since the original release (still for sale in the stores, of course) is now officially "part of IE". And I stand by my interpretation that Microsoft is still calling both the lawyers and anybody who knows anything about what's going on here a bunch of idiots. Less stridently, of course. I feel much better now.
Of course, Microsoft could actually try to explain what's going on, what pieces generate HTML, why that HTML must be read by IE, what the interface between what we used to call the browser and the HTML generators and the OS actually looks like. Maybe even give some annotation on the list of 228 files, the deletion of which cripples Windows 95. But, in the words of that old Watergate-era figure, Mr. Nixon himself, "That would be wrong!"
A seasoned tactician known for fiscal thriftiness since joining Microsoft in 1994 from Procter and Gamble, Herbold said Microsoft plans no change of strategy for its appearance before Judge Jackson in next week's hearing.
Cheers, Dan. |
