Here is the URL of Judge Jackson's 'Findings of Fact' that the government based its case on, in the MS anti-trust case: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm. On that page, you can download the text in HTML, WordPerfect, or PDF format. You can also request a paper copy if you'd rather. It's not really very long. This is a landmark decision that should affect the way desktop computing is done in the future. The case hinged on the Sherman anti-trust act, the principles of which were explained in an article I once read. The author compares this case to Rockefeller's: --------------------- ... In simpler days, this was sometimes called the "common carrier" rule. If you owned the track, you had to convey everybody's freight fairly. If you owned the wire, you had to connect everybody's phone and carry everybody's message. If you owned a movie house, you had to be available for anybody's films. If you owned a cable, you had to carry all television programs. You could be a common carrier or the creator of something to be carried, but not both. Simple but also quaint. Technology has a way of overtaking ideology and blurring such distinctions. The cable companies learned to make their own TV shows and to discriminate against rivals. Now the cable owners think they can also become phone companies and the phone companies are angling to send television shows to my computer. And all these wired companies are being challenged by gadgets that send messages and pictures invisibly through the air. What's an egg anymore? Who's a road? Bill Gates thought his virtual monopoly could never be understood in the old physical terms. And if he had not left a telltale trail of e-mail, the Feds might never have made a plausible case against him. But given the evidence from Gates's own computer, Judge Jackson well understood that Microsoft's imperial triumph had been deliberately and probably illegally engineered. Gates built Windows, a good road to the information market, and then schemed brilliantly to make it practically the only road that PC owners could navigate. Nearly all wagons -- computer programs -- had to fit on his tracks. Gates's own wagons -- the Microsoft programs -- rode free on his Windows highway, and those of his allies were waved onto low-toll express lanes. Rockefeller rebates redux. ... excerpted from article written by MAX FRANKEL --------------------- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sites.netscape.net/wbaldwin To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
