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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (15560)	5/21/1998 9:34:00 AM
From: jhild	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22053

Well Dave, Microsoft is free to publish whatever they want. This has never been the issue, at least for me. Coercive contracts that require bundling and exclude competitors are, I am sure, even against your ethical standards.

To: DMaA who wrote (15560)	5/21/1998 12:04:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22053

Disregarding the merits of the government case, I found the arguments presented in your story specious and fallacious. Leroy Murdock in the Orange County Register, May 17: Microsoft does not produce steel ingots or rubber tires. It sells copyrighted intellectual property. The copyrighted material IS produced by MSFT. I see no difference between tires and software as both are products from a manufacturer. When I entered programming in '60 a debate ensued as to whether software programs could be patented or copyrighted. The later was court decided. One could even argue that both tires and programs are designed to send you round and round.<g> A government prior restraint against such an offering should be no less chilling than if Justice stopped next week's issue of Time magazine. . . . Time magazine has PLENTY of competion, just go to a magazine rack. W'98 does not. What box maker can I call that will sell me INTC-like machine with an Operating System installed that is capable of running MSFT Word? Just as publishers print books by authors, Microsoft should be free to publish software by computer programmers. Once again here, MSFT is a manufacturer, not a publisher. A publisher will pay an author at (or about) the time a works is published. MSFT retains programmers on the payroll (or through contract) to produce software. What programmer is willing to go unpaid until MSFT decides to publish his/her work? Where is the quid pro quo? o~~~ O