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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (33912)	11/13/1999 5:41:00 PM
From: ed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

" I do not think ...." Well, you start to " I do not think ..." " I think ..." again. Where is your proof . From your post , well, I do not think you are a humanbeing of logic thinking !!!! For a smart logic thinking brain, he not just think or not think , but always support with the logic and reason!!!! That is why I "think" you are not a man with brain, supported by your posts !!!!

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (33912)	11/13/1999 6:18:00 PM
From: RTev	Respond to of 74651

I don't think the DOJ will be satisfied with a consent decree. It all depends on the consent decree. The Bell System was dismembered through a consent decree. Even before the 1984 divestiture, the company operated under a series of highly intrusive antitrust consent decrees and laws, one of which had denied the company effective ownership of its intellectual property. It's interesting to consider the unanticipated market-friendly effects of that early (I'm not sure where it came in, 1911? 30s? 50s?) consent decree. It's a mix of agreements and laws, but one of the main notions was to allow folks like Automatic Electric to build telephone switches or handsets that were copies of the technology developed by Western Electric and Bell Labs (which could not, by decree, be sold by WE outside of the Bell System). Later on, it would have far more sweeping effects. Whole industries quickly developed around the transistor after Bell Labs released (as they were forced to do) its specifications to anyone who could use them. Bell Labs developed a new operating system and programming language for Western Electric's new electronic switches, but was not allowed to keep them close to the vest. The source for Unix and C were available to anyone who could make use of them, including hackers at Berkeley. Just found a good history. The paper is an anti-antitrust argument (of course, since it's from Cato), but it includes a great history (once one accounts for the skew) of the odd mix of regulation faced by AT&T through its history: cato.org

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (33912)	11/14/1999 10:52:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Re: Would the Dept. of Justice agree to a consent decree? Everything costs money and time. DOJ has a limited budget and limited staff. The President, moreover, has a history of making compromises, over and above any principles. A consent decree with the proper safeguards, as pointed out in the latest issue of The Economist (their lead article, incidentally) could be as effective as most any other remedy and would cost the government much, much less. As far as monetary damages go, that's for the various parties to consider in the form of individual suits. A consent decree would not necessarily preclude states and foreign governments, in addition to individual companies, from pursuing other remedies. But it would be more difficult for Microsoft to defend against separate damage suits if the court finds against them on the facts AND the law. So far, the only finding is on the facts, and that's bad enough. As I've noted in earlier comments, the only reason for refusing to come to an out-of-court settlement is ego.