From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Apr 8 17:23:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA14904 for chat-outgoing; Tue, 8 Apr 1997 17:23:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from po2.glue.umd.edu (root@po2.glue.umd.edu [129.2.128.45]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA14895 for ; Tue, 8 Apr 1997 17:23:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from baud.eng.umd.edu (baud.eng.umd.edu [129.2.98.183]) by po2.glue.umd.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA01998; Tue, 8 Apr 1997 20:23:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by baud.eng.umd.edu (8.8.5/8.6.4) with SMTP id UAA10589; Tue, 8 Apr 1997 20:23:39 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: baud.eng.umd.edu: chuckr owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 20:23:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@baud.eng.umd.edu To: dennis cc: Peter Dufault , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FW: Unix Gurus shift to Microsoft (fwd) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970408185120.00b162c0@etinc.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, dennis wrote: > >> I wonder how long its going to take for the courts to bone up on this and > >> understand what Microsoft has become. The WebTV acquisition is very > >> troubing to me, as well as the fact that they also announced that the will > >> be selling "diskless workstations". Pretty soon they will make everyone > >> buy hardware from them also...it seems fairly clear that thats the > direction > >> they are taking. > > > >Courts don't do it, Justice and Congress do, and they are completely > >baffled by computers in the first place. Some judges actually spend the > >time to learn the issues involved, but congressmen, unless it's > >politically needed, never do. As long as Mom and Pop are happy with MS, > >congress will leave them alone. > > bunk....mom and pop were happy with AT&T..it took sprint and mci and ibm > to get attention. The Justice dept (I thought Justice== courts???) still > doesnt > understand the AT&T breakup, and they never will probably, but the impact of > microsoft is MUCH more damaging than AT&T. AT&T, at least, was doing good > things, microsoft is a vulture. This is getting too far afield from FreeBSD, so I won't be replying again after this. Courts != Justice. Courts==Judicial branch, Justice == executive branch. Back in 1984, Justice had a antitrust suit of considerable ago going (and not really getting anywhere) when AT&T decided to offer the breakup. The Courts approved it, but didn't force (or even suggest) it. Neither Congress nor our Justice Dept knows enough about computers to appreciate our concerns, and they won't take them seriously until their game programs stop working. ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 9120 Edmonston Ct #302 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and picnic, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 3.0 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------