********** 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. [...] *********** 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------