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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16407)	1/20/1998 4:06:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 24154

Jeez, Gerald, what are you, a lawyer? :^) Or has Sal convinced you to follow Bill Harmond, embrace the Dark Side, invest in Microsoft? :^):^) I won't argue against you, there's certainly enough ambiguity here to make a case, and that's Microsoft's right. At this point, it does seem to be getting down to the sacred icon again, which isn't where I'd draw the line, but there you go. For a slight contrast, from news.com Rich Gray, an antitrust attorney at Bergeson, Eliopoulos, Grady, & Gray who has been following the case, said today's matchup goes to the government. He explained that both sides discuss at length an "add/remove" feature that removes the Internet Explorer icon from the Windows 95 desktop. Judge Jackson suggested in a court hearing that applying the utility to Windows may have been enough to comply with his order. Microsoft has insisted that the running the feature leaves the majority of the browser intact and therefore would not comply with the preliminary injunction. "The government is saying [to Microsoft], 'You could have and should have used the add/delete option.' Microsoft is almost saying, 'We read the court's order to say that wouldn't have been good enough,'" said Gray, who added that the government has outlined a good argument that Microsoft intentionally proposed an unworkable solution. "You don't lose your common sense when reading a court order. Microsoft should have read the court's preliminary injunction and complied in a way that made sense." And, on the good faith thing again, Microsoft attorney Steven Holley asked Cole: "The court has ordered Microsoft to give OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] a version of Windows 95 without IE. What would Microsoft have to do to allow other applications to access the Web [without IE]?" Cole said: "We would have to add back some files, change install scripts, and make sure it works. So we would have to do quite a bit of work." Add back some files, change some install scripts. Quite a bit of work? I'd guess a lot less work than the lawyers are doing passing on Bill's manual message. The make sure it works part, why bother, it's up to the OEMs who aren't going to use it anyway. Microsoft gets to say it's in compliance without the gigundo middle finger, the DOJ is left scratching its head and looking pretty silly, the OEMs get an extra CD to use for a coaster. Microsoft still gets to appeal, and be vindicated on principle if the higher courts see it their way. Me, I get to keep saying The Economist's prayer, and doing the Sherman cheer. Cheers, Dan.

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (16407)	1/20/1998 10:11:00 AM
From: Justin Banks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Jerry - So the correct answer must lie somewhere in the middle. As I read your logic, you would allow some of the files which constitute part of the IE product to remain on the machine, those shared libraries which are part of IE but are necessary fo other parts of Windows to run. Is this correct? Yes. However, those pieces that are only relevant to the execution of IE would be required to be removed. If so, who gets to decide which shared libraries are essential for IE to run? In other words, who gets to decide where on the continuum the correct answer lies? See above. Pieces that are only required by IE would need to be removed (ie.exe, ie.ico, etc.). If MSFT has put OS stuff into ie.dll, that should stay, although from a systems engineering standpoint, to put OS stuff into a product's shared library is silly and stupid. And (a legal, rather than technical question), why is any one answer better than another? In other words, don't you have to go outside the Consent Decree to find the correct answer? To what source, then, do you look? One of the problems with this case is that people are trying to look at the legal aspects (the specification), without considering the technical aspects (the implementation). While this approach is viable during a design phase, what the court is now trying to do is actually implement the decree, and so implementation (the technical side) actually becomes more important. Having decided what the goal is in the consent decree, one must examine the way things are currently built in order to understand what one must do in order to satisy the decree. Currently, the product in question, IE, is sprinkled throughout the filesystem, as icon files, executable files, libraries, configuration stuff, etc. If one wants to mandate removal of IE, one merely has to find out what things are needed for IE to run, but not needed for other things, and remove them. which, of the three components does GM have to remove in order to comply with the government's order? Who decides, and how do they make the decision? o Ornament : not needed for doohicky functionality, but it's only used by the doohicky : it goes o Cap : needed for doohicky functionlity : it goes o Thermometer : not needed for doohicky functionality and used for other stuff : it can stay -justinb