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

To: margie who wrote (46104)	6/7/2000 1:51:00 PM
From: margie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

I think there is so much rush to convict Microsoft now, without allowing any time for discovery, or public comment as the Tunney Act requires, partly to prevent a promising new Internet standard, SOAP, from being adopted, which will favor this standard over Sun Microsystems Java. IBM's SOAP for Java could potentially become an Internet standard for linking Web-based software. The IBM software is based on XML, a Web standard for exchanging data. The product is a working version of a communication technology developed by IBM, Lotus Development, Microsoft and others. June 1, 2000 "SOAP will succeed where other technologies have failed Gartner Viewpoint By Mark Driver news.cnet.com Interoperability and coexistence is a new Microsoft focus and is a cornerstone of its Distributed Internet Architecture 2000 and upcoming Next-Generation Web services architecture. Microsoft has reasons to push SOAP. It is the companies first significant attempt to establish itself as a provider of enterprise data center technology within environments in which it must coexist with other platforms, such as MVS, AS/400 and Unix, instead of replacing them. IBM has similar reasons to support SOAP. The vast majority of large IS organizations will have Microsoft as well as Java platform products. Ironically, IBM has had considerable input into the evolution of many Java technology areas for some time. However, much of the credit and focus for those innovations has gone to Sun Microsystems. "SOAP will succeed where Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) have failed because it is simple, Internet-friendly, based on XML and is implementation-independent. ?It is not a replacement for COM or Enterprise JavaBeans or even CORBA components--it is simply a wrapper technology to make those services more accessible over the Internet." "SOAP will be the first real test of Sun's Java Community Process, as several vendors inevitably will push to include SOAP support directly within the core Java platform." It will be very interesting to see if the not-so-"benevolent dictator" permits it?.

To: margie who wrote (46104)	6/7/2000 2:27:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Innovations vs the Consumer. I had an interesting discussion with a group of engineers about an innovation for the next generation of PCs, it's reasons and effect on consumers. The story begins about 5 years ago. A major cause of consumer complaint was the tangle of wires behind their computer, with 9 or 24 pin serial, and parallel ports, and video ports that looked a lot like the 9 pin serial. There was also the problem of adding new items to PC, which meant opening up the box and plugging in a variety of cables and different power connectors. A consortium of PC OEMs, Intel, Microsoft, and others looked into the problem and decided that it would be advantageous is PCs had a USB port for low speed device connection and a high speed "firewire" connection. So far so good. There are differences between USB and firewire besides their speed and power ratings. In particular the firewire is a complete protocol which allows communication between like devices (i.e. two firewire enabled devices can talk to each other). USB requires a master-slave arrangement. When Sony developed a chipset that implemented a complete firewire solution it got Microsoft and Intel worried. If devices could talk to each other, such as a camera to a disk drive, and not require a PC in the middle, then the whole PC centric plan was threatened. Now comes the innovation. Together Microsoft and Intel developed the USB 2.0 specification. This is a higher speed USB (but not as high-speed as firewire). Most important it requires a Master-slave communication arrangement (and windows 98 is the only current master). Intel assured that firewire would only be available as a PCI add-on, thereby negating much of it's speed. The goal is to is to grab enough of the high speed periferals that firewire will remain marginalized. What does this mean to the consumer. It means that these USB ports which are supposed to allow the connection of any USB periferal will now work with some (if the are low speed USB 1.0) or maybe with others (if they are USB 2.0). The cables and connections may look the same, but the 1.0 specified cables will not carry the higher frequency USB 2.0 traffic. High speed USB 2.0 devices can be hooked through a USB 1.0 hub (like a keyboard or monitor hub) but the device won't work. In short the consumer gets voodoo and frustration under the banner of an innovation. All this to be sure that you can't connect your scanner to your printer without a PC in the middle. TP

To: margie who wrote (46104)	6/7/2000 3:49:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Margie, Your article states, among other things, that "consumers haven't been hurt". That statement is false. Consumers have been grievously injured by the M$FT monopoly. The best reason for breaking up M$FT is that it will benefit the consumer.

To: margie who wrote (46104)	6/7/2000 6:14:00 PM
From: Michael L. Voorhees	Respond to of 74651

(EOM)

To: margie who wrote (46104)	6/7/2000 6:15:00 PM
From: Michael L. Voorhees	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

"At some point, though, somebody has to hold up the Microsoft prosecution against the real world and ask what's really going on here." What's going on here is simple enforcement of existing antitrust law which prohibits predatory business practices (including tieing of products to gain access to other markets) in the PC Operating Systems market. Such actions harm consumers by restricting choice created by competition. It's rather obvious (in my opinion) that MSFT did such in that market. The remedies will make the split companies (in whole) greater than a single company. Maybe you need to start lobbying for the repeal of the antitrust laws. Your arguments (as well as many MSFT executives and lawyers) seem to be more targeted at the unfairness of the law not whether the law was broken or not. My opinion is the antitrust laws are much needed laws especially in the networked world. Just my humble opinions.