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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (9976)	5/29/1998 4:26:00 PM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

All- Here's a noteworthy item (and discusion) from Slashdot. Sun's recent joining of Linux International, I feel, portends good things for Darwin sales and moreover, the greater Unix mindshare. slashdot.org John

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (9976)	5/29/1998 4:31:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 64865

Cheryl, it does seem like as you say, "MSFT supporters have acquired a siege mentality that has replaced the former unbridled optimism of the 1995-1997 era." I recognise that Sun and MSFT are legit competitors, and it's good that Sun is a healthy competitive company. McNealy and Gates have been taking shots at each other for a long time, and this is natural. But lately it's more than Sun, and more than Sun and Netscape and Oracle. Now it's Sun/Netscape/Oracle/Federal Government, all gunning for Microsoft. a) A Federal Government that may have $100 billion budget surplus in 1998, by one estimate I saw recently. b) Joel Klein is petitioning congress for more money for his Anti-trust division. When the money seems to be there and it's for official government business, Congress is probably going to just fork over whatever is needed and asked for. "Fine, shut him up, just give him the money, we have more important things to discuss". c) Joel Kline operates under the Clinton administration, which is riding high by a public that cares only if the Bull market gives their mutual fund a 20-25% annual return. d) The Anti-trust division has "broad and sweeping powers". In other words, very subjective authority. No hard and fast rules. Matters are "looked into". Sales meeting memos and "for fun" videos made to lampoon the competition are scrutinized in a very serious light. Freedom of speech seems actually in jeopardy. It doesn't seem to matter if any specific laws were broken, because anti-trust is subjective. e) Joel Klein is NOT acting, speaking, or writing like an impartial investigator. I could deal with all this. Microsoft could deal with all this, and probably will. But Cheryl, the DOJ is acting irrational. That is the added ingredient which, when mixed in with everything above, puts Microsoft supporters into a siege mentality. In negotiations prior to the suit being filed, the DOJ actually asked that Microsoft hide all vestiges of their OS. What kind of insanity is that? The Win95/98 OS interface is a Graphical User Interface. Designed so the consumer can "use", the PC. Easily. Graphically. The Win95/98 OS is a graphical interface. And the DOJ just boldly asked Micrsoft to throw away probably a billion dollars or so at least worth of work, which MSFT has probably spent to date on the interface. Okay, we don't know exactly what the DOJ asked for, and perhaps this is an exaggeration. But the alternative was equally bizarre: Ship Netscape and one other browser with the Win98 CD. Talk about a bizarre request. A whole anti-trust suit, which could drag on for years and cost 100s of millions of dollars, just to get MSFT to bundle Netscape Navigator on the Win98 CD? That is irrational. As one analyst said, if that was all the DOJ wanted, MSFT probably would have gladly did it. But clearly the DOJ wanted far more. Perhaps I'll feel better once the trial gets under way, and suggestions for compromise are at least studied in the light of day, and sifted for some semblance of reason. Really I have nothing against Sun. I wish them well, and I wish Java well. I wish Corel well, and IBM/Lotus well, and Symantic well, and all the other 6,000 or so companies well who are laboring to build neat products for PCs. I personally feel that it's quite apparent the Microsoft can take a lot of the credit for the PC as we know it today, with the vast array of choices of software and peripherals to go along with it. Scanners for $150. Color Active-Matrix notebook screens for $200. I could go on and on. Don't kid yourself, it would not have happened if it were not for Microsoft (Intel too, but somewhat less-so than MSFT). Of that I'm convinced 100%.