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An Immodest Proposal (11/18/98)
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"Redmond Justice" lurches along in its fifth week, as IBM executive John Soyring testifies that Microsoft's "contract restrictions on software developers" pretty much killed OS/2, IBM's PC operating system that tried to compete with Windows and wound up winning only a tiny chunk of the market. Apparently Microsoft gets programmers hooked on their programming tools and then forbids them to use them to write software for any non-Microsoft operating systems. A New York Times article has more details, but it's just more of the same allegations. We'll be glad when Microsoft's witnesses start showing up, because that should really get things rolling.
The real news, however, is happening on the sidelines: Larry Ellison (head guy at Oracle, member of the Apple board, Steve Jobs' best friend, and notorious blabbermouth) announced in a news briefing that he's figured out how to resolve the whole Microsoft antitrust issue. According to ComputerWorld, Larry's suggestion is not to split Microsoft into several "baby 'Softs" responsible for different products, but rather just to divide them into two equal halves, one run by Bill Gates and one run by Microsoft president Steve Ballmer. Here's the innovative part: each half would work on the same products.
The idea is that suddenly you'd have some real competition driving innovation in Microsoft products. Whose Windows is better? Which Office is less bloated? Which Internet Explorer actually supports real Java instead of a watered-down brew? We at AtAT are not typically effusive when it comes to Larry's ideas, but we plainly admit that this one is brilliant. And for those of you who thought he was joking, well, that's what they want you to think.
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SceneLink (1158)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/18/98 episode: November 18, 1998: Not too many companies would give free personal iMacs to all their employees, but we can think of at least one. Meanwhile, if you want an iMac and need a Zip drive, you now have several options, and Larry Ellison hits upon the solution to ending the Microsoft antitrust problem once and for all...
Other scenes from that episode: 1156: Early Year-End Bonus (11/18/98) Have you ever wished that the company you work for was a little... well, cooler? We're guessing that the employees at Kaidan don't. If you happen to have done any work with QuickTime VR, you have probably heard of Kaidan-- they make object rigs and tripod turntables for the acquisition of pictures to be stitched into QTVR panoramas and object movies... 1157: Zippity Doo Da (11/18/98) It's taken a while to kick into gear, to be sure, but the flow of peripherals for the iMac really seems to be picking up speed. The iMac, as we're sure you're all aware, has only a single peripheral interface: USB...
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