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To: memery who wrote (20916)	9/10/1998 11:21:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Digital Employees Tell of Threats by Gates nytimes.com Another story on the "Microsoft, and only Microsoft, must be free to innovate" front. The Compaq guys won't talk, having been whipped into submission to the point of banning Netscape from the premises. The DEC guys, at a loss about what to do for a browser in that environment, have a thing or two to say, though. PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Offering new evidence supporting the government's allegations that Microsoft Corp. routinely suppresses competition in any new market that might threaten its monopoly in personal computer operating systems, five current and former executives of Digital Equipment Corp. said that their company was forced to drop a planned Internet product last year under threats from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. The Digital Equipment executives said that the company disbanded a product development group based here after Gates told Robert Palmer, who at the time was Digital's chief executive, that a product the group was developing with a Microsoft rival, Oracle Corp., would threaten an earlier deal for Microsoft to develop a version of its industrial-strength Windows NT operating system for Digital's powerful new processor. That Bill, what a guy. He knows where we want to go, and he's just doing his job, redirecting everybody else back onto One Microsoft Way. After Strecker told the key executives in Palo Alto that the project had been canceled, it fell to one of the laboratory managers to make the announcement in an auditorium near the project site. "People threw things at him," recalled one person who was present at the meeting. He said there were also angry cries of "necktie damage," engineers' slang for poor decisions made by a company's top management. Poor engineers, their anger was misdirected. They just didn't understand about standard Microsoft business practice. Only Bill knows where we want to go! Ellison said that Oracle and Digital had been bidding on a number of major projects in Asia based on the Network Computer design, including a potential order for 500,000 machines in China. He said that Digital's decision to withdraw from the business effectively ended the project. Now if the Chinese would just learn "honesty" and pay Bill for his software, they could have some of his nifty "Winterm" things. Real Soon Now. Cheers, Dan. P.S. to memery: Dvorak's been down on Bill and Co. for a while. My favorite recent piece of his was a little older, zdnet.com, on the summary page titled "Advice for Microsoft: Shut up". Though in the article, that was only #1, and directed primarily at Bill. Bill didn't take that one too seriously, I imagine we'll be subject to daily doses of his special kind of "honesty" for a while.