IT'S OVER -- MICROSOFT LOST -- BIG DEAL

[John Robert BEHRMAN <jbehrman@netropolis.net>]

  I will go out on a limb here:
  
  Microsoft has lost, the DoJ has won:
  
       Microsoft will cave immediately or after a certain amount of
       posturing and hourly billing by its cereal-box lawyers.
  
       MS will take the Department's deal, which is not costly.
  
       That deal will free the MicroSlaves on the Texas OEM plantations.
       There may be some near-term consumer benefits to that, but not by
       the Christmas sales season now already underway.
  
       The deal will give encouragement to MicroSerfs in the Great State
       of Northern California, but this action will not soon keep MS from
       reducing them to dreary subservience or driving them to open
       rebellion.
  
       In any case, Microsoft will continue to book uncollected revenues
       from Asia and look to the USGoverment or the Pacific Fleet to
       collect them. Collecting foreign royalty is this Administration's
       leverage in the present case, not its Mickey Mouse lawyering or its
       indifferent approach to regulatory and legal matters generally.
  
       Bill GATES will not become the poster boy or patron that the nutty
       right wants him to be. He may join Ira MAGAZINER in a great effort
       to reform anti-trust law along the lines of today's health
       insurance reforms, V-chips, and so on.
  
  My hints, clues, and signals, hardly evidence, for this are just two
  facts:
  
       Microsoft Friday announced its plans for releasing IE4 on the Mac
       and a slew of UNIX platforms. So much for its being an integral
       part of DOS/Windows.
  
       General MORALES piled-on Friday and sued Microsoft for not letting
       him sniff around Texas OEMs. That is no-risk ass-covering, not
       high-risk litigation.
  
  That is it. That is all.
  
  This is not a strategy or accomplishment. This Administration is devoid
  of either. That may be more a matter of history than of personality.
  This is still what Texan Michael LIND calls the Third American Republic.
  It is mock-republican and sham-democratic. It will be remembered for
  pseudo-accomplishments like Desert Storm, like substitution of financial
  stability for national security, and like multicultural kitsch as social
  progress.
  
  Ralph NADER and Ira MAGAZINER think Bill GATES is monumentally
  important. He is just rich, not the same thing. No Administration should
  waste much time, blood or  treasure battling Microsoft to the death or
  carrying water for its rivals, not a single one of which is much
  different, save in trade names. Microsoft should be caned, not hung or
  drawn and quartered.
  
  National strategy for economic and technical progress should focus on
  (1) minimizing the commodity price of digital media, the West Texas
  Intermediate Crude of cyberspace, (2) squeezing indirect taxation out of
  public network monopoly, and (3) using declining costs in all digital
  media to offset the rising cost and hazards of fossil fuel use.
  
  This is a simple and popular, not a simplistic or demogogic, policy. We
  are not quite there yet, but this list has moved a way down the line.
  
  Thanks, again, for your time and PLAYON JRBehrman sends.....
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