PC Week Sides w/DoJ (12/21/97)
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As we've been discussing over the last few episodes, the central issue in Microsoft's upcoming January 13th contempt hearing is whether Microsoft can be penalized for following the letter of the injunction is such a way as to defeat its obvious intent. Judge Jackson and a technician functionally removed Internet Explorer from Windows 95 in a matter of 90 seconds, which certainly has the effect that the judge intended. Microsoft claims that removing the browser from Windows 95--all of it, including its dynamically-linked libraries--renders the OS unusable, but that's what the judge asked for.

Well, PC Week appears to be siding against Microsoft on this debate. In their labs, they claim that they were able to prevent IE from loading by modifying only four lines in a Windows 95 setup file. The result, they say, was a current version of Windows 95 that contained all of the improvements made since that OS's initial release and ran perfectly well, but that lacked Internet Explorer. Moreover, they claim that the browserless version is "much better suited for corporate deployment," and that based on their tests, a browserless version of Windows 98 will work the same way.

Microsoft's likely to point out that PC Week's four-line disabling move does not comply with the wording of Jackson's temporary injunction, which requires the removal of "the software code that Microsoft itself now separately distributes at retail as Internet Explorer." But if PC Week's reconfiguration prevents the loading of all of the IE code, couldn't it then be removed from the hard disk without harm?

 
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors
 

From the writer/creator of AtAT, a Pandemic Dad Joke taken WAYYYYYY too far

 

The above scene was taken from the 12/21/97 episode:

December 21, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)

Other scenes from that episode:

  • 289: Long, Strange Trip (12/21/97)   If Mac the Knife's sources can be trusted, Apple's next round of "Think Different" ads will include the image of deceased Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. Now, there were bad vibes a-plenty when Apple used the image of John Lennon in its ads, not to mention Gandhi...

  • 291: BYTE Lauds Apple (12/21/97)   The results are in for BYTE magazine's 1997 Editor's Choice Awards, and Apple walked away with a few honors. You can read about it in a self-congratulatory Apple press release. Mac OS 8 and the Powerbook 3400 both won Awards of Distinction, while the Powerbook 2400 garnered an Award of Merit...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...

Vote Early, Vote Often!
Why did you tune in to this '90s relic of a soap opera?
Nostalgia is the next best thing to feeling alive
My name is Rip Van Winkle and I just woke up; what did I miss?
I'm trying to pretend the last 20 years never happened
I mean, if it worked for Friends, why not?
I came here looking for a receptacle in which to place the cremated remains of my deceased Java applets (think about it)

(1246 votes)

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