[Am-info] FIN says Americans support MS/DOJ cave-in

[Erick Andrews]

On Fri, 01 Mar 2002 10:04:25 -0800, Mark Hinds wrote:

>A friend forwarded me his FIN newsletter from from MS.
>
>Who are these guys (cited in newsletter below)?
>http://www.techleadership.org/5010/wrapper.jsp?PID=5010-7&CID=5010-022602B
>
>---------- Forwarded message ---------- From:
>Microsoft@Newsletters.Microsoft.com> To: foo@bar.com Date: Thu,
>28 Feb 2002 18:41:24 -0800 Subject: Freedom To Innovate Network
>Newsletter Reply-To:
>    3_26466_BABB0CF3-C7B8-D011-A499-0000F8600A96_US@Newsletters.Microsoft.com
>
>February 28, 2002
>
>Public Opposes Non-Settling States' $80 Billion Plan, Supports
>Settlement in Antitrust Case
>
>To cancel your subscription to this newsletter or to stop all
>newsletters from microsoft.com, read the directions at the bottom
>of this message.
>
>The public supports the bipartisan settlement between Microsoft and
>the Department of Justice and nine states, and wants the remaining
>holdout states to settle, according to two recent surveys.
>
>According to an Americans for Technology Leadership poll, 55 percent
>of respondents believe the settlement between the DoJ and Microsoft
>"does about the right amount" while 25 percent believe it actually
>"goes too far." (Full results at www.techleadership.org). In a
>separate survey released this week by Ipsos-Reid, 73 percent said
>the nine holdout states should settle the case with Microsoft.

This is interesting propaganda.  

Prof. Liebowitz's $80Billion is based on costs of taking out "middleware", 
though he conveniently doesn't define what this middleware consists of.  
He admits this in a footnote.  But software programs have names and their 
functions can be defined.  His number is theoretically based on costs of 
porting this "middleware" to other OS's and additional testing that must
be borne by manufacturers and consumers.

When I looked over dozens of Tunney Act comments last night, it was 
interesting to see that many of the first ones were against the settlement
and had real names and addresses of the commenters.  Toward the end
of this huge file (yeah, about 56 MBytes*, unzipped), more and more were
in favor of the settlement, mostly "boiler plate bodies", often complaining 
about wasting taxpayers money, signed by the likes of "Joe" or "Jane" with
Hotmail-style e-mail addresses.  So the above statement, "55 percent...does 
about the right amount", makes no credible sense to me.

My biggest observation in all this, which has been said before:

                             Microsoft pays no income tax.

Makes you think, eh?


*Gosh, imagine how big it would be if it was in MS *.doc format!

-- 
Erick Andrews