Microsoft Exploratorium, from The Netly News

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

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http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1685,00.html

The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/)
January 13, 1998

Which Way the Windows
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)

        Looks like it's upgrade time not just for Microsoft Windows, but
   also for Microsoft's legal strategy. As engineers frantically debugged
   the Windows 98 beta last week, senior Microsoft executives roamed
   Washington, D.C., apologizing for their previous arrogance and saying
   they had been misunderstood. Call it Microsoft PR 2.0. "What we have
   not done is communicate" the way the software works, Robert Herbold,
   Microsoft chief operating officer, told The Netly News last Friday.

        But will Microsoft's new humility appease federal judge Thomas
   Penfield Jackson, who already issued a preliminary injunction against
   the Redmond firm? He's scheduled to hear from the company's lawyers
   and the Department of Justice this morning. Both have spent a good
   chunk of the last month complaining about each other: The government
   says Microsoft violated the judge's order, and Microsoft says the
   government is "poorly informed."

        As his attorneys argue the law, Bill Gates will be practicing
   politics -- a skill that will come in handy if Congress holds more
   antitrust hearings when it returns in late January. Pundits have made
   much of Gates's Democratic sympathies, another image he's trying to
   discard (or at least upgrade). Today Gates is scheduled to sit down
   for a private chat with technophilic House Speaker Newt Gingrich
   (R-Georgia), who will also tour the Microsoft campus.

[...]


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http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/afternoon/0,1012,1686,00.html

The Netly News / Afternoon Line
January 13, 1998
Microsoft Exploratorium

   The ugly guts of Microsoft Windows were on display today during a
   six-hour federal district court hearing in Washington, DC. Attorneys
   from Microsoft repeatedly pointed at a list of hundreds of .DLL and
   .EXE files and challenged the government to answer one deceptively
   simple query: Which files are part of Internet Explorer?

   The outcome of the case may well turn on the answer to that question,
   which lies at the heart of the Justice Department's beef with the
   software giant. Last month Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered
   Microsoft to stop using its operating system's popularity to
   force-feed Internet Explorer to computer makers.

   But, again, which files belong to Internet Explorer? The government's
   witness ducked the question. "I can't go through your list and
   say which files are unique to Internet Explorer," replied
   author and computer consultant Glenn Weadock. "I don't think it's
   possible or even especially useful to define a list of files and say
   this is part of, or this is not a part of Internet Explorer."

   Which Microsoft has argued all along -- their browser is integrated
   into the operating system. Yanking it out, the company says, would be
   like amputating a leg: a person could only hobble along, at best. The
   government views this as a weak excuse, at best. "The court issued a
   very simple, broad order and Microsoft through its actions defied
   rather than complied with that order," said Justice Department trial
   attorney Phillip Malone. The government is asking Judge Jackson to
   hold Microsoft in contempt and levey a million-dollar-a-day fine.

   The hearing will continue tomorrow when Microsoft vice president David
   Cole testifies. - By Declan McCullagh/Washington


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