Okay, so Microsoft's a monopoly. More to the point, legally speaking, ever since Judge Jackson's momentous and ratings-boosting "findings of fact" in the "Redmond Justice" case, Microsoft's been found to be a monopoly that has used its monopoly power to extend its reach into other markets. While we'll have to wait for "findings of law" to see just what that behavior means from a legal standpoint, few people seem to doubt that, barring a settlement, Microsoft's going to be found guilty, guilty, guilty. So... Now what?

See, given how blatant Microsoft's been about strong-arming its competitors (not to mention how badly the Redmond lawyers bungled their case), proving the company guilty is the easy part. The tough bit is coming up with a remedy that would prevent Microsoft from repeating these antitrust infractions in the future. For a while now it's looked like the government's been leaning towards a fairly drastic action: that of breaking up the company into lots of "BabySofts." But what's this? A faithful viewer known only as The Operative from Damage Control whispers that some members of the government's team are going soft on the whole breakup option. The Los Angeles Times reports that Betty Montgomery, the attorney general of Ohio, is wussing out on the breakup and instead favors "curbing some of Microsoft's aggressive business practices by prescribing what actions the software giant can and cannot take in its business dealings." Because that worked so well the last time around. And "two other state officials" also say they've got their doubts about breaking up the company.

Now, personally, we at AtAT don't know if even a breakup is going to change things all that much. In fact, given the Windows stranglehold on the computing world at this late stage in the game, we can only assume that those government officials who think a breakup is "too drastic" are sniffing a bit too much Liquid Paper. We wish we had a better suggestion... Oh, what the heck-- let's just send everyone at Microsoft to the chair and be done with it. "Cruel and unusual" my Aunt Fanny.