As the Apple Turns: Scene 146: "I Don't Recall, Senator" (11/3/97)

"I Don't Recall, Senator" (11/3/97)

Speaking of the DoJ, on a related note, tomorrow might be another big day in the investigation of Microsoft's alleged anticompetitive practices involving the "forced" installation of MSIE onto all PC's. Tomorrow a panel of Congressional investigators will hold a hearing on software industry competition, which could engender later hearings on Microsoft in particular. Techweb has the story.

Obligatory Microsoft paraphrase: "PC companies that adopted IE 4.0 did so voluntarily--and did so because of the product's customizability and other technical features." And when those PC companies were asked directly? No comment-- "investigators have had a difficult time ... convincing them to go on the record." Sounds like the poor guys are scared of sleeping with the digital fishies. Suppose it's time for a Witness Relocation Program for large PC manufacturers?

While the issue of the government taking on Microsoft is no big news, it's kind of cool to see that this hearing in particular is really intended to "basically educate some of the members here on what this is about." We get the feeling that some of the congressfolk are more than a little in the dark about the internet and e-commerce. The more these people understand this stuff, the better chance we all have of seeing reasonable and useful legislation on these matters. This hearing, which apparently may even feature a "demonstration of a transaction being performed on the Web," could be as eye-opening as that time George Bush first saw a supermarket laser scanner.

SceneLink (146)

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The above scene was taken from the 11/3/97 episode:

November 3, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)

Other scenes from that episode:

145: Can't Beat It? Buy It! (11/3/97) I once had a computer science professor who swore that one cardinal rule of software development is, whenever you need a new component, it's almost always cheaper to buy someone else's instead of trying to write your own...
147: Another Power Outage (11/3/97) Hmm, Webintosh is reporting that on top of all of Power Computing's other worries, their online store has apparently been shut down. Whether this is an indication of further financial difficulties ("Honey, did you remember to pay the e-commerce bill?"), a symptom of a larger organized sabotage campaign, or a pure and utter coincidence still remains to be seen...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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