While we're in the anti-microsoft groove, here's a good diatribe from this week's issue of the Britnerd zine Need To Know:
A hushed public awaits: and, in the pages of Time magazine,
Bill Gates puts THE CASE FOR MICROSOFT. But years of
conviction play with a man's recollection. Every every one
of Bill's arguments points to the company's guiltiest
moments. With a split Microsoft, he begins, a future MS
"tablet PC" with handwriting recognition would not exist,
because Microsoft's OS and App developers need "real-time
collaboration" to pull it off. But MS had designs on a
"tablet PC" before: when they wrote Pen Windows, a
piece of FUDware designed to kill Jerry Kaplan's GO.
Back then, Microsoft bristled at any suggestion that their
OS and App departments colluded. Now the party line is that
it's vital for the consumer. In 1991, Gates goes on to
explain, MS Office developers invented the toolbar. "Had
toolbars been created elsewhere, they no doubt would have
been patented and never incorporated into Windows [as the
taskbar]". How very true: except toolbars *were* invented
elsewhere. In MacPaint. In 1984. At that point, Gates
entered into a secret agreement with Apple to use
Mac-ish features in the Windows OS, in return for developing
apps for the Mac (no monopoly here: yet). Moving to modern
day concerns: Bill says that the DOJ scheme would slow down
innovation, impeding "Windows updates that could protect
against attacks like the Love Bug virus". As opposed to now,
when Microsoft denies liability for the jelly-weak security
of Outlook? Gates end with his own horrific vision,
post-Microsplit: Apps and OS mini-Bills that could never
work together, because the DOJ demands that "no technical
information can be discussed that is not 'simultaneously
available' to the entire computer industry - which would be
a practical impossibility". An impossibility, of course,
which open source projects - and hell, most of the rest of
the industry - manage every day. Except, that is, when
Microsoft sues for publishing MS's proprietary extensions to
their work. And this is the case *for*?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,44557-2,00.html
- well, that is where my theory just falls to the ground
http://www.headgap.com/~macstar/macpaint/About_MacPaint.html
- cute pictures of old Mac apps to take bad taste away
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/04-27tv2.asp
- this isn't helping, is it
http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/12/dohlove.JPG
- the smoking gun! (see centre right)
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
