From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Sat Jan 15 2000 - 23:23:25 MST
Ross A. Finlayson <raf@tiki-lounge.com> On January 15, 2000 Wrote:
>I feel quite comfortable that the defense lawyers were well funded and given
>adequate time to produce documents and edited video tapes, it's not my place
>to say if they were or not.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know or much care if the "justice" department's
actions against Microsoft were legal or not. I do know that the actions were
immoral and showed just as much intelligence as you'd expect from hack
politicians and civil servants.
>We Americans don't live in a completely socialist country
Fortunately that is true.
>it is not completely capitalist either.
Unfortunately that is true.
>So then, if the government is to take some action, which it would be bound to do
>upon ruling of antitrust violation sans rehabilitation,
Rehabilitation? Do you mean if they would only stop being so damn successful, if they
would stop spending their own money so wisely, if they would just stop making
products that people wanted to buy?
>it should be to open it up and "level the playing field",
It's interesting, there are 3 common phrases that, although not offensive in
themselves, have never, ever, been used in defense of anything I agreed with.
The 3 are:
1)Life is sacred.
2)you can't cry fire in a crowded movie theater.
3)Level the playing field.
>The responses to this post mostly show a general sense of antipathy towards the
>government and specifically regulation.
That's because you're on the Extropian list and that's our thing.
>The food producers are regulated somewhat, so that all packaged foods
>have a list of ingredients and rudimentary nutrition information.
Not needed. If people value such information then it's a good marketing tool
and so the regulation is redundant, if they don't value it then the regulation
is worthless.
>Advertising is supposedly truthful.
Government getting into the truth determining business makes me very
nervous, I'd rather do that little chore myself thank you very much.
>My opinion is that the people who pay to use this Windows to interoperate
>with the many others that use Windows have the right in cases to fully
>comprehend the functioning of this software,
I don't see why they have that right, it's not what they bought. They knew, or they
should have know, that the software it was not open source, Microsoft never said
or even hinted that it was.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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