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A Big, Stinkin' Mess (7/27/00)
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Hey, do any of you classic TV fans remember an old courtroom drama called "Redmond Justice"? It's been a long time, we know, but in the grand tradition of shows that churn on seemingly forever like some deranged Energizer Bunny, it's back and ready to rock. Or, more accurately, to crawl, at the internationally-renowned pace of the U.S. justice system. The story so far: Microsoft broke more antitrust laws than most legal experts even knew existed; David Boies and the rest of the government's legal team ran rings around the company in court; Judge Jackson found them guilty, guilty, guilty; the government tried to kick the appeal upstairs to the Supreme Court; and now Microsoft has filed its official objection to that Appeals-Court-bypassing plan.
According to a ComputerWorld story, Microsoft's basic argument is that the case is just far "too messy" for the Supreme Court to tackle. In its filing, the company says the case involves "a morass of procedural and substantive issues that can be resolved only through a painstaking review of a lengthy and technologically complex trial record." Hmmm, sounds like Microsoft's case in no small part resembles Microsoft's products. (Bug list, anyone?) Anyway, the company is basically telling the Supreme Court, "trust us on this one-- you don't want to get involved." We've got to wait until at least October to find out whether the Supreme Court feels up to the task, or whether it would rather let a historically Microsoft-friendly Appeals Court untangle the stickier issues first.
Meanwhile, though, Microsoft also managed to use its filing to throw in a few well-placed jabs at Judge Jackson. A Reuters article notes some of the juicier excerpts: apparently the company feels that the judge's willingness to grant interviews about the case raises "serious questions" about his "impartiality," and "betrays a misguided belief" that the Justice Department was "entitled to the remedy of its choice, no matter how extreme." In other words: "Wah, wah, wahhh... the mean ol' judge only gave us a million years in which to settle, and then he accepted a breakup proposal without letting us stall for another six months." Hey, what can we say? Some people are never satisfied.
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SceneLink (2445)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 7/27/00 episode: July 27, 2000: Shadowy details emerge about Apple's rumored new handwriting recognition software for the Mac. Meanwhile, Motorola's being awfully quiet about its upcoming G4+ processor, and Microsoft files its request that the Supreme Court kick its antitrust appeal back down to its good buddies in the Appeals Court...
Other scenes from that episode: 2443: A Future Of Blisters (7/27/00) Okay, we're all for a healthy dose of minimalism-- "Simplify, simplify" and all that-- but does anyone get the feeling that Apple may be taking the philosophy to some rather extreme ends? Take the Cube-- there are a lot of things it doesn't have compared to its less forward-looking brethren: there's no fan, no slots, no tools needed to open it up, no mechanical power button (it's an electrostatically sensitive proximity sensor instead), no visible ports until you turn the thing over, and darn near no space taken up on your desk... 2444: Waiting For The Plus (7/27/00) Call us nuts, but sometimes we miss those heady days of Apple back in the mid-'90s. Yes, those were the days of Copland and the failed cloning initiative and a zillion other Apple missteps that almost killed the company, but at least we still had our illusions about how the PowerPC was going to bankrupt Intel "any day now..."
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