Microsoft's Refrain: Where's the Harm? nytimes.com
That would be the Chicago School defense, as tersely stated by Randolph of the appeals panel. Which, I'd say, is Microsoft's strongest card. They should be arguing it, it's just all this PR smoke that gets on my nerves.
Where's the harm? Windows sucks, to be equally terse. Windows 95 sucks, and Windows 98 was supposed to suck less, but by all indications it doesn't. Nothing much new in Win98, except "free" IE, bundled/integrated so tightly you can't get rid of it if you try. But, it's flying off the shelves!! It's what the people want!!!
In the postmodern economics of software, it looks like the only way to compete is free, which seems odd to me.
On another front, from yesterday:
Microsoft: On Top of the World. (For Now.) nytimes.com
I'll leave this one go without comment too. Old timers here might want to dig up an old NYT Sunday Magazine cover story, from a few months back, about Phil Knight and Nike. The story was Nike wasn't so cool any more, and Phil blamed himself for screwing up the brand name. To question Bill on the same subject would be "totally random, beyond bizarre", of course.
On a lighter note, we have:
A Few Quirks Exposed in the Microsoft Trial nytimes.com
But then, not even last week's key witness professed much technical expertise. As James L. Barksdale, the head of the Netscape Communications Corporation, sat on the witness stand for three days, he responded to several questions by protesting that he was not a technologist.
During a closed conference with the judge and the other lawyers late last week, Warden said of Barksdale, "Sometimes he doesn't seem to understand" the questions, "but that's in good faith," according to a transcript made public.
Judge Jackson said, "Sometimes I don't understand them either."
To which, Warden responded: "Sometimes I may not understand them myself."
It's all beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, of course. On that front, Microsoft is as usual doing its level best to keep it that way, in the neologistics department.
Microsoft officials declined to confirm it, but word is that in the summer months leading up to the trial, the company leaders decided to ban a word: browser. Certainly, the defense team labored to avoid using the term in court last week.
As a key part of its defense, the company is trying to argue that Internet Explorer, the browsing software used to explore the World Wide Web, is an integral part of the Windows operating system. To concede otherwise might reinforce the Government's accusation that Microsoft rolled Internet Explorer into Windows mainly to undermine the market for Netscape's browser.
So the software formerly known as a browser is now referred to by Microsoft as "Internet Explorer technologies" or "browser functionality."
Hey. The software formerly known as a browser. I used to use that one, I should look it up. Joel Brinkley, you out there?
In court on Thursday, for example, Warden asked Barksdale a question about "Internet Explorer technologies," to which Barksdale shot back:
"Oh, you mean the browser?"
No, Warden answered, he meant "Internet Explorer code, Internet Explorer technologies."
"It's a browser," Barksdale retorted.
Warden refused to take the bait. Through another five minutes of questioning, he resorted to one circumlocution after another to avoid using the word.
"Is it possible to separate what you call Internet Explorer from Windows 98?" he asked at one point. And later, Warden asked about the "functionality in Windows that you call the browser."
Barksdale did not back down either.
"The browser itself is not a part of Windows," he insisted. "But it is called into play by Windows when browser functions are needed." -- JOEL BRINKLEY
Well, to get back to the beginning of this note, I just wish Microsoft would quit worrying about all this air supply business and ship a Windows that sucked less. Not in the business plan, I guess, Win98 is the end of the line. After they ship NT2K, the OS for the next millennium, they may finally get around to doing the consumer version of NT! On the Windows schedule, that would make it Windows 2001, an OS odyssey.
Cheers, Dan. |
