The ruling is that Microsoft has to offer a sub-par operating system along with its full-feature operating system. They're the same price, so no one will buy the sub-par one. Really, nothing has changed.

Timothy:

The decision also requires them to license their communication protocols on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms", which is more significant, and will make it harder for them to dominate server software by tightly tieing it to the client. Unfortunately, "reasonable" probably means "per-unit fee", which will rule out any open-source implementation and thus makes it irrelevant to many of the most significant threats to their dominance.

The theory behind European antitrust law is the protection of other companies no matter how inefficient, dillapidated and outmoded they might actually be. In America, we worry about consumer protection.

Bart, the antitrust suit in the US stood on two leg.

1) Protect a few software firms (including Netscrape) run by Democrats.

2) (Probably the most important) MS gave no money to the DNC, hired no DC lobbyists and had no DC office.

The suit didn't even pretend that any customer was being damaged.

Which was why the Microsoft litigation in America was completely bogus and the whole thing was a political set-up. Any time when the Democratic Party, Bob Dole and Robert Bork are on the same side, you know the fix is in.

Funny how IE development came to a standstill once Netscape was crushed by those illegal tactics. I suppose that served the consumer?

Bart:

Or that the perpetrator is especially vile.

If the perpetrator were especially vile, Bob Dole, the great Dracula of American politics, would be on his side.

Like in WWII?

Mr. Earl;

Yes, it did. It created two browsers, Netscape and IE, both superior to what had gone before. At no point did IE get worse although one could argue that Netscape browsers went downhill after 4.7 (many of our corporate clients simply would not install Netscape versions 5.X and 6.X because they were so bad).

Your complaint is not that consumer interests weren't served, but that those interests didn't continue to get served infinitum. That's utopian thinking, which OJ quite frowns upon.

He got drafted in WWII, got wounded no worse than tens of thousands of Americans, like Dan Inouye, and we've been paying the price for it ever since. The guy never stops whining about them and feels he should get a free pass for whatever self-dealing he does because of it.

Actually, Dole most reminds me of the Sergent de Ville in Les Miserables, a totally evil character who managed to display selfless heroism once in his life, at the Battle of Waterloo, and parlayed that into being respected despite his otherwise despicable behavior.

AOG:

Open markets continue to serve consumers--monopolies don't. MS is premised on ending the former and imposing the latter, because they can't compete in the former.

Bart:

Drafted, but on the side of evil?

No, OJ. Like the Sergent, Dole was drafted on the side of good, despite his personal inclinations, and while on the side of good, apparently displayed some selfless heroism. After the war, like the Sergent, he reverted to his natural criminal blood-sucking self for the rest of his life, using his war injuries to give him cover for his boodling and swindling.

He was drafted by his party to run for office too. Is Republicanism evil as well?

OJ,

There were no Democrats in his part of Kansas and still today they are rare. It is a one-party area. The local elite chose him to represent them precisely because he is the sort of venal stooge they could easily control. The GOP in Russell, Kansas behaves no differently from the Democrats in Jersey City. One party states always do.

Bob Dole is a man who claims his proudest achievement is the Food Stamp Act, who joked that all supplysiders should drive off a cliff in a bus, who was featured on a National Review cover with Bob Michel as the poster boy for GOP failure, and who was called by Newt Gingrich 'the tax collector for the welfare state.'

Why you feel a need to carry his water, I have no idea.

Yes, any Republican could win, but they asked him.

They picked him because he was easiest to control. Dole has been little more than a corporate lapdog his entire career. As with National Review, my sense is that he is exactly what has been wrong with the GOP for decades.

Again, why do you feel a need to defend him when he is clearly hostile to virtually everything modern conservatism is about?

Because he isn't. He's a garden variety conservative--smarter and funnier than most.

You're completely wrong. He's little more than a Richard Nixon who can't play the piano.

I feel utterly safe in assuming that you know as little about him as about most of those you hate.

OJ,

Who better represents modern conservatism, Newt Gingrich or Bob Dole? National Review or Bob Dole? Laffer and Gilder or Bob Dole?

The one who received his party's nomination for president.