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Motion Denied (11/22/98)
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Five full weeks have passed in the new season of "Redmond Justice," and Microsoft is getting increasingly annoyed with the government's repeated practice of showing excerpts of Bill Gates' deposition before a witness is called. The portions of the testimony that the government has been showing uniformly reveal Gates to be forgetful, angry, difficult, combative, and less than credible. That's why, according to a Seattle Times article, Microsoft's lawyers officially requested that the judge prevent those excerpts from being shown in that manner. In a closed-door session, they requested that the government instead be forced to show the deposition in a single eight-hour chunk, instead.
Unfortunately for them, Judge Jackson sees nothing wrong with the manner in which the government is presenting that evidence. He rejected the request, stating that he found it "very effective" to hear Bill answer questions that were relevant to whatever issues were being addressed in court at the time. He went even further, suggesting that "if anything, I think your problem is with your witness, not with the way in which his testimony is being presented." Slam! Indeed, at this point is seems that Gates' unresponsiveness during his deposition could well be Microsoft's biggest liability in this case. If you're wondering what to get the world's richest man for Christmas, how about a big heaping helping of credibility? Then Microsoft could call him as a surprise witness and the fur could really fly.
What we find really interesting in the article is how Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray refers to Gates' testimony as an "immaterial sideshow." So the testimony of the man who is running the company on trial, and who has been personally named as the one who called for many of the alleged anticompetitive practices, is now "immaterial"? That's certainly a novel interpretation of things. Hang on tight, folks, because it just gets better and better...
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SceneLink (1170)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/22/98 episode: November 22, 1998: If you're still waiting for Mac clones to re-emerge, you may want to put those hopes on ice and take a look at Apple's new "Mac-compatible" logos. Meanwhile, no one seems to be talking about how Apple plans to solve the three-slot Mac problem, but Robert Morgan has pulled an about-face on the issue. And in "Redmond Justice," Bill Gates' testimony continues to be a thorn in Microsoft's side...
Other scenes from that episode: 1168: Clone War Epilogue (11/22/98) It's been quite a while since Steve Jobs retook the helm at Apple and started making some bold changes. Probably the single most controversial move he made was to end the first era of Mac cloning; in retrospect, we at AtAT admit it was almost certainly the right move, but at the time we, like many others, were skeptical and worried... 1169: Slots Up Its Sleeves (11/22/98) Speaking of those missing six-slot systems, the debate continues to rage over whether or not Apple's making the right decision in shipping and planning professional-level Macs with three PCI slots-- four, tops...
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