At Trial, Microsoft Says Key Meeting Was a 'Setup' nytimes.com
More coverage of the current spin cycle. It's getting pretty bizarre, first Bill said it was to tell Netscape about those "cool new features", then he forgot, then it was all Andreeson's fantasy, except that because of that Jim Clark email, it was what Netscape wanted all along. Now, it's entrapment and conspiracy.
"Isn't it a fact," Warden declared, "that the June 21, 1995, meeting was held for the purpose of creating something that could be described as a record to be given to the Justice Department to spur them on to take action against Microsoft?"
Barksdale replied, "That's absurd."
Sounds pretty absurd to me. They could have bugged the room, made secret tapes and all that. Entrapment is a pretty tricky thing to claim here, anyway, given all the similar accounts of Microsoft meetings with other companies. It all sounds like standard Microsoft business practice to me.
Boies said that Microsoft's effort to portray the June 1995 meeting as a Netscape conspiracy suggested that Microsoft's lawyers were straining to try to discredit a powerful allegation in the Government's case. "Any time a defendant says, 'We were set up,' I think that tells you how a trial is going," Boies said.
Until Microsoft puts forward a coherent account of what that meeting was about from their point of view, my small mind has to go with Boies. A shotgun defense doesn't satisfy the consistency hobgoblin very well. I don't know how it plays on the legal front, though.
After four full days of cross-examination, Warden closed the questioning of Barksdale this evening by entering into evidence a note that had been written in jest by several employees for display on Netscape's internal computer network.
"Next Monday Netscape will release two or three more bug-ridden beta versions" of Netscape Navigator, the note began, adding that the program "is faster than a dog with no legs, if the dog's up to his waist in treacle. And dead."
Barksdale explained: "We allow our employees to let off steam this way. Mostly they complain about the food in the cafeteria."
Of course, the purveyors of Windows 98, the OS formerly known as Windows 97, that was supposed to suck less, not to mention NT2K, the OS for the next millennium, and Windows 2001, an OS odyssey, ought to be a little careful about who's pot they're calling black. But it's all good entertainment, I say. I wonder how long Bill's self imposed silence can last?
Cheers, Dan. |
