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

To: PMS Witch who wrote (41384)	4/6/2000 11:40:00 AM
From: werefrog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

"'fessing up' is inappropriate when one is not guilty" Not really. I've seen many defendants submit to a plea bargain rather than expend their funds, time & trouble of a trail, etc. MSFT is guilty by the findings of the court and any appeal is limited by what it will accomplish. In fact, if the supreme court rules against msft, they will have to accept any punishment that is mended out. JH

To: PMS Witch who wrote (41384)	4/11/2000 4:51:00 PM
From: Fred Levine	Respond to of 74651

Microsoft Criticized by Software Group For Not Adhering to Browser Standards By REBECCA BUCKMAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL A grass-roots software-developer group is blasting Microsoft Corp. for not adhering to industry-wide technical standards in its new Web browser -- and promoting proprietary technology instead. The criticisms from the group, the Web Standards Project, come just a week after a federal judge ruled that Microsoft illegally protected its Windows monopoly against competitors and attempted to monopolize the market for browsers. The group contends that the latest version of Internet Explorer, to be shipped later this year along with the Windows Me operating system, adds features that don't comply with Web standards that Microsoft had pledged to support. As a result, developers writing applications for the Web could find that their programs only work on Internet Explorer and not on competing browsers, such as Netscape's Communicator, said Jeffrey Zeldman, a New York Web designer who is the group leader for the project. "They seem to be saying, 'We're the market leader, we can do whatever we want and we don't have to implement the standards,' " Mr. Zeldman said. "If Microsoft does this ... then when you go to a site using Netscape, you may not be able to buy a book, read an article." Microsoft responded that it never said its newest browser would support 100% of the standards adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, which is the dominant group working on common protocols of the Internet. But Shawn Sanford, a group product manager for Windows, calls Internet Explorer the "most compliant" of any browser with the W3 standards. "We have to work with a wide range of customer segments and develop technology that will fit for all of those people," Mr. Sanford said. He said Microsoft isn't trying to bully developers into working with any particular browser or operating system. Still, angry developers have peppered part of Microsoft's own Web site with criticisms about the standards issue. Messages in a discussion group following an article about the new browser urge Microsoft to "please support W3C standards, FIRST, before implementing proprietary, [Internet Explorer]-only, Windows-only features," according to one message, posted by an anonymous author. Another poster was more direct: "Your betrayal of Web standards is an almost unparalleled event in cyberspace," the developer wrote. Several people criticized Microsoft for focusing on new bells and whistles, like colored scrollbars, instead of adhering to common standards. One poster, however, said the blistering messages just came from "Microsoft bashers" sympathetic to the company's arch rival, Sun Microsystems Inc. fred