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To: Scott C. Lemon who wrote (28823)	11/7/1999 5:58:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

> I don;t think that the issue is to remove MSFT at all but to >make it obey the laws of the land.. ... of the moment. ;-) Fair enough. Jackson makes clear (though technically only factually, not legally) that he is using very traditional definitions of monopoly and unfair competition. So 'the moment' has lasted from the creation of the Sherman Antitrust act, through today. So we're talking about a century, now. In general, you are also right that it is impossible to predict the future, which calls into question economic-based laws. But we still place constraints on behavior as a combination of 'best-guesses' as to what works given historical evidence, and also a consensual-though not unanimous-sense of fair play. And at the end of the day, you have to follow the rules whether or not you like them or think them outdated. Lots of gung-ho computer-jockeys (an oxymoron if there ever was one) like to think that they're special, that the rules don't apply to them. We forget that common thieves think that way, too. They can't afford fancy lawyers and Cato institute economists to draw up academic justifications for their behavior, however.

To: Scott C. Lemon who wrote (28823)	11/7/1999 7:22:00 PM
From: EPS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Scott, Will not press the issue here too much but the quote from Duke University Source while containing a lot of interesting descriptions seems to me technically flawed. Aperiodic is the negation of periodicity: a system is periodic if knowing its behavior for a certain period of time say T we will know its behavior for all times (as translating what is known in say [a,a+T] will allow us to know what happens in [a+T, a+2T].., [a-T,a].., etc etc). Aperiodic phenomena can still have nice structure that can be analized in part deterministically. While we don't know all the decimals in the expansion of PI (or any other irrational number for that matter) we still know how to go about and compute many many decimals (have you seen the movie PI?) You can also look at pictures of fractals for other examples on how this can actually happen. In fractals very simple rules allow the formation of very complex non linear behavior which somehow repeats itself but at different scales. At any rate the Duke source states correctly (as I did) that chaotic phenomena comes up in the study of non linear differential equations which are not well possed in the sense that a perturbation of the initial conditions can lead to very different outcomes. This happens a lot in financial math :)..but it is even more obvious with weather prediction.. As of my reading of the findings..YES..I did read a three page supplement (hard copy) in todays NYT with a detailed (but abbreviated :)) synopsis of the findings and with ample details of the judge's analysis of how those facts fit into the theory that MSFT abused its MONOPOLY power against NSCP, CPQ, IBM, INTL etc etc etc. I am not sure I understand why you believe that as a society we should not do anything about MSFTs behavior (as we did with IBMs behavior or AT&T..in the past). You seem to believe that technological changes occurs so fast that we should not bother to correct/punish/deter illegal behavior that undermines competition? If survival of the fittest is the correct paradigm we surely will find a way to survive within the law as well..The survival of the fittest is a long long long term proposition. It does not seem to apply to relatively short periods of time...As a society we act on our current problems and continue to ..evolve. To give a clear signal to MSFT that the behavior they used when they were a small company must change seems to me very important. It may have already curved some of forces that MSFT was ready to unleash towards AOL for example.. What we need to do now is bring the judicial system to work at Internet speed.. Victor