Micro$oft Lost Appeal!

I heard from a friend that said the NYTimes said that micrsoft lost their appeal!
they are appealing again, and we should know the final outcome in months or less

I guess this is my birthday present
My birthday is today!

Micro$oft sucks... HAPPY BIRTHDAY Chrono!!!!!

Here is the source
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/04/technology/04SOFT-BOOK.html

And the article so you don\'t have to signup

braham Lincoln was a superb trial lawyer, and his key strategy was concession. \'\'Sometimes,\'\' a colleague recalled in admiration, \'\'when his adversary could not quite prove what Lincoln knew to be the truth, he \'reckoned\' it would be fair to admit the truth to be so-and-so.\'\' It bolstered his credibility and cost him nothing in the end: \'\'What he was so blandly giving away was simply what he couldn\'t get and keep.\'\'

\'\'The client would sometimes become alarmed,\'\' a second colleague wrote, \'\'thinking that Lincoln had given away so much of the case that he would not have anything left.\'\' He would concede every point but the essential one, the one he needed to win.

That is not, on the evidence of two new books about the Microsoft antitrust trial, how litigation is conducted at the big law firms today. Microsoft and its lawyers, Ken Auletta writes in \'\'World War 3.0,\'\' believed that \'\'their mission was to refute nearly every assertion submitted by a government witness.\'\' They practiced \'\'cross-examination by checklist\'\' and \'\'often meandered into baffling digressions.\'\' In the end, John Heilemann writes in \'\'Pride Before the Fall,\'\' \'\'the overarching impression conveyed by Microsoft\'s defense was one of indiscriminate flailing.\'\'

There was a kind of perverse consistency between the company\'s trial tactics and its evidence. Bill Gates\'s disastrous deposition, which played a central role in the trial, was a comic masterpiece of evasion and obfuscation. The transcript shows us a Gates who quibbles, truculently, with the meaning of words like \'\'concerned,\'\' \'\'ask\'\' and \'\'very.\'\'

The Clinton Justice Department did not take on this icon of the high-technology economy lightly. It knew that its attack on Microsoft would be the most significant antitrust lawsuit since the endless and ill-fated litigation against I.B.M. that wound down in 1982 and comparable in importance to the lawsuit that ended in the breakup of the Standard Oil trust in 1911. It recognized that courts are just not very good at understanding, much less regulating, new technologies. And it feared that its central accusation -- that Microsoft abused its market power by bullying everyone in sight -- did not quite add up to an antitrust violation.

The Justice Department more than once offered to settle this case on terms that now seem extremely generous. That Microsoft chose to litigate, and so badly, is mystifying. At the hands of David Boies, the government\'s lead lawyer, it lost the trial quite thoroughly and sustained damage to its reputation and to its corporate morale and focus.

The case is now on appeal, and the company\'s prospects are good, because the government\'s evidence on the important question of how consumers were hurt by Microsoft is thin. Microsoft may also have reason to think that the Bush administration, which has signaled that it does not think much of the lawsuit, will not be eager to cement a trial victory by the man who handled Al Gore\'s post-election litigations.

Gates\'s demeanor in his videotaped deposition reflected, many thought, the callow, arrogant and recklessly aggressive corporate culture at Microsoft. That culture propelled Microsoft\'s success, but it was not up to mature reflection on the implications of a federal antitrust suit. Gates\'s father spoke sympathetically but revealingly about his son\'s plight, in terms any child could understand: \'\'His own government suing him, that\'s not chocolate sundae.\'\'

Grown-ups might have litigated the case differently. Though Microsoft denied it, there can be little serious question that it possesses a monopoly in the market for personal computer operating systems. (Boies, who represented I.B.M. in the last great antitrust war, told Heilemann that he counseled I.B.M. to concede it was a monopoly.) Nor is there real doubt that Microsoft has employed its monopoly power in aggressive ways against potential competitors, notably Netscape.

Microsoft could have conceded all of this, at great benefit to its credibility and stature, and it would have lost nothing at trial. That is because, as the Supreme Court has put it, the antitrust laws were enacted to protect \'\'competition, not competitors.\'\' The crucial gap in the government\'s case was in proof of harm to consumers.

Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who presided over the trial, told Auletta privately that this was a point on which his decisions against Microsoft were vulnerable on appeal. \'\'There was insufficient evidence in the record,\'\' he said, \'\'to say Microsoft ever priced its operating system at the level that as a monopolist they could have.\'\' Judge Jackson relied instead on far more speculative theories of potential harm.

The key figure in Auletta\'s book is Judge Jackson. He emerges as a straightforward and plain-spoken man. He was not, perhaps, perfectly suited to the case; he rarely used a computer and had no particular background in antitrust law. But until he refused to hold a hearing about the government\'s proposed punishment at the very end, he managed the case brilliantly. He also had the good judgment to allow himself to be offended on behalf of all of us on those occasions when Bill Gates and his troops threw candor overboard.

Auletta interviewed Judge Jackson for some 10 hours on the condition that his comments not be reported until after he issued his decisions. (Jackson talked to reporters from The New York Times and other news organizations on similar understandings.) The judge also let Auletta see the handwritten notes he kept during the trial.

Microsoft\'s trial blunders make for entertaining reading. But because the coverage of the trial in the daily press and in the business magazines was of exceptionally high quality, there is little fresh material from the trial itself in these two books. Both began as endless magazine articles. Heilemann\'s, a beautifully executed example of long-form journalism, occupied almost the entire November issue of Wired magazine. It makes a slim and appealing book.

Heilemann is a perceptive observer and a fine writer, and \'\'Pride Before the Fall\'\' is full of sharp portraits of the participants, pithy and colorful quotations and a veritable pileup of telling anecdotes. His sense of the legal issues is sure and sophisticated. Joseph Nocera, who covered the trial for Fortune magazine, commented that there were moments in it that revealed \'\'the secret history of the software industry.\'\' This is Heilemann\'s theme, and it provides his book with a sense of structure and lots of mischievous gossip.

He details, for example, the efforts in the computer industry to encourage a federal antitrust lawsuit even while trying to leave no fingerprints, a result of a \'\'toxic mixture of fear of Microsoft and cynicism about the government\'s competence.\'\' Even when the doubts about the government\'s resolve and prowess had long since been laid to rest, and even when the case was won and only the punishment was to be decided, the leading figures in Silicon Valley lay low. Their fear of Microsoft was convincing proof of its monopoly power.

Auletta\'s magazine piece, though less than half as long as Heilemann\'s article in Wired, was the longest The New Yorker had published in decades, the author writes, when it appeared in the summer of 1999. In book form, it has metastasized into something quite unmanageable.

Auletta is the dean of the mogul beat. He brings his billionaire sources, their fuzzy big-picture perspective and his own impressively exhaustive reporting to his account of the trial and its place in the evolution of the new economy. There is a lot going on in \'\'World War 3.0,\'\' but little of it is engaging as narrative or valuable as commentary. Auletta has talked to everyone, has read everything and has set it all down, but he leaves it to the reader to make sense of a mountain of jumbled facts and impressions.

Allowing this sort of access during a pending case is a radical breach of judicial custom and decorum, and it is quite likely a breach of ethical rules that prohibit judges from extrajudicial comment on pending cases. Yet one wonders, particularly where no jury is involved, what the harm might be. Jackson would have run afoul of no ethical rules had he said all that he told Auletta from the bench; his comments are sometimes provocative, often insightful and always a contribution to the historical record; and if they show, as Microsoft contends in its appellate papers, that he is biased, it is better to have that bias open rather than hidden.

Both authors had seemingly constant access to David Boies. He comes across in both books as direct, thoughtful, measured and honest. Judge Jackson told Auletta that Boies was the best lawyer ever to argue in his courtroom. Boies made masterly use of the documents and e-mail messages Microsoft was compelled to turn over. These materials, which revealed a company running on geek testosterone, allowed Boies to perform cross-examinations, Heilemann writes, that were \'\'devastating to the point of sadism.\'\'

For Boies, Heilemann notes, refuting every aspect of a witness\'s testimony \'\'was unnecessary and maybe unwise. Better to drill down on a few crucial points and throw a haze of doubt on the witness\'s trustworthiness.\'\'

Not all of the evidence Boies used was recent. A central incident underlying the lawsuit -- a meeting at which a Microsoft executive either did or did not threaten to \'\'cut off\'\' Netscape\'s \'\'air supply\'\' -- took place in June 1995. Half a decade is a geological span of time in the software industry. In the meantime, Microsoft won the browser wars and Netscape was swallowed by America Online, which went on to ingest Time Warner as well. Yet the resulting litigation is nowhere near its end. Courts, which are rarely competent to regulate technology to begin with, surely cannot do it on a schedule entirely divorced from the pace of technical development.

This means, among many other things, that whatever Microsoft\'s crimes, there cannot be a fitting punishment. The remedy Judge Jackson endorsed -- splitting the company into two parts, one for the Windows operating system and the other for applications like Microsoft Office -- bears no particular relationship to the conduct in question and, worse, may create two monopolies where there was one. In the end, there may be -- for reasons of time, technology, politics and even the law -- no appropriate remedy here. Except of course for the litigation itself, which has put the company on the defensive in a way no other remedy could.

\'\'I should dread a lawsuit,\'\' wrote the legendary Judge Learned Hand, \'\'beyond almost anything else short of sickness and death.\'\' And he was talking about ordinary civil litigation, not mortal combat with the government.

True, I.B.M. won the last comparable government antitrust lawsuit. But the lawsuit diverted I.B.M.\'s attention, sapped its resolve, harmed its reputation and hobbled its ability to innovate.

Bill Gates, who started his company by outwitting I.B.M., learned a lesson from I.B.M.\'s experience. It was the wrong lesson. \'\'The minute we start worrying too much about antitrust,\'\' Gates is reported to have said, \'\'we become I.B.M.\'\' In fact, Microsoft lost its edge -- it became, in this sense, I.B.M. -- by worrying too little about antitrust, about the power of the government and about the sort of conduct and intellectual honesty we expect from major corporations.

I\'m gonna believe you on that one, cause I don\'t really feel like reading that whole post, and also happy birthday, what age have you become?

Originally posted by politiepet
I\'m gonna believe you on that one, cause I don\'t really feel like reading that whole post, and also happy birthday, what age have you become?

I\'m 17 now

um well i hope billy boy can fix this mess up, either way who cares the man has mor emoney then he will ever be able to spend.

It doesnt really matter if they lost this apeal anyway. In a few months Bush will drop the case and nothing will happen in the end.

Originally posted by Chrono
I heard from a friend that said the NYTimes said that micrsoft lost their appeal!
they are appealing again, and we should know the final outcome in months or less

I guess this is my birthday present
My birthday is today!

   Strange that I can\'t find this information in the NYTIMES or anywhere.  Any kid can say anything...

   I heard from a friend who said that he read in the Los Angeles Times that Sony was going under.

   Now, isn\'t that a little screwed up?? Maybe you need some help from a shrink.  I mean getting excited about something like this is just sad and shows that you need a life.

   I mean thats really sick... Do you hate Microsoft that bad because they are becoming a big problem for Sony.  Sony is just an electronics company, they aren\'t God or anything.

Congratz on your 17th birthday chrono...

that\'s a nice b-day present

Originally posted by AxL
It doesnt really matter if they lost this apeal anyway. In a few months Bush will drop the case and nothing will happen in the end.

I don\'t think Bush will drop the case (and its not up to him to decide, its up to Ashcroft). But he (Ashcroft) probably won\'t pursue it as harshly as Janet Reno did. But that doesn\'t mean, he will drop it.

I cant be bothered to read all that!
happy birthday anyway!!!!

Oh this maybe true and it may be a big fat lie!!! I have yet to hear this on msnbc. So until I do I will not believe it. I really don\'t care. Most of the ppl in fall in love with gaming companies like they are family or they love them. I could care less what happens to ms I just like the xbox. Same for sony If they lost a lot of their share and was sinking fast as long as they could continue to make a system I would not care.

Microsoft is not a gaming company. They are an office productivity company. There Xbox is a feble attempt to take over the Video game section of the tech industry. Maybe it\'ll do good in the USA, but in Japan and europe, it\'ll get about a %20 market share I think (Sony has an %80 market share in those countries)

Microsoft is not a gaming company. They are an office productivity company. There Xbox is a feble attempt to take over the Video game section of the tech industry. Maybe it\'ll do good in the USA, but in Japan and europe, it\'ll get about a %20 market share I think (Sony has an %80 market share in those countries)

Gee what do you think SONY IS?????
you think sony got into this business, saying we love making video games let\'s give something back to the community, YEAH RIGHT. SONY saw the money and the potential to make lot\'s of it. MS is no different, and by the looks of it this time round, it seems sony was way more interested in the money than the games. Sony wants to use the gamming market to push forth there other products (more money). I wouldn’t be surprised if PS3 had dvd player,mini disc player, and a sony viao computer inside.

That fact is MS and SONY are in this for the money.(not that they don’t like making games) Now Nintendo and Sega as well, but, by your analogy that would mean only Nintendo and Sega are the ones that should have that right to be called a real video game company, there roots started there as opposed to SONY and MS.

None the less i\'m sure MS and SOny will come out with sweet games, oh yeah and sega and pokeman-fisher-price-nintendo too.

"Gee what do you think SONY IS?????"

Sony is a Consumer electronics company. SCEI is the gaming part of it. If you really didn\'t know that, you are an idiot. Why do you hate vudei games? that post you just nade sounds like you hate video games