Microsoft remedy effective or wrist-slap?

Great Debates
21

Interesting, Tejota. But there are a couple of things about your post that make me rather uneasy with it. One is a claim to prescience about MS’ mindset. They didn’t know this, they didn’t believe that or the other thing. Can you give us some insight into your insight?

Didn’t they have any lawyers? But of course they did, the plea of ignorance will not stand. Could it be, then, that they consulted lawyers who reported back that absitively, posolutley there were no monopolistic practices in what they were doing. And were those self-same lawyers utterly astonished to hear that other lawyers disagreed? Possible, I suppose. Hardly plausible, wouldn’t you agree?

Oooooh, snotty. Dumb, but snotty. It is frequently the case in court rulings that the defendent, convicted of a crime, is severely inconvienced in some way. It is reasonable to expect the MicroSoft, having been found guilty of a crime, might be required to make some restitution beyond a sincere promise to Be Good. If one is convicted of burglary, one can hardly expect to keep the swag, even if one promises never to burgle again, while working out an agreement to keep one’s lockpicks.

It is a distasteful fact of American jurisprudence (such as it were): steal a thousand, go to jail for five years, steal a billion, go to court for five years.

22

Well, thanks for getting the ball rolling, Tejota.

There’s obviously lots to debate here, but a couple of quick points:

Microsoft testified that it was basically impossible to remove Internet Explorer from Windows without breaking it, which was clearly demonstrated to be a false statement (although the MS lawyers covered this by insisting that the only way to prove this would apparently be for opposition witnesses to point to every single line of code in the OS, explain what it was for, if it related to internet browsing, and if it could be removed without harm. Which is absurd.)

Microsoft then presented an apparently fraudulent videotaped demonstration in response to Felton’s testimony. Microsoft had tried to claim they had ‘feltonized’ a single machine, and found that after IE was removed there were serious problems. In fact, the tape they produced showed multiple machines, some demonstrably ‘un-feltonized’. In other words, they lied. On tape. This is obviously the point where Jackson stopped believing anything MS said, and who could blame him?

Microsoft had not then been ruled to be a monopoly, but they were nevertheless operating under a 1995 consent decree, so they were certainly aware that thier actions were under scrutiny and had been found to be unlawful in the past. The goverment’s current case started as a complaint that the company had violated that consent decree. We may never know if this is correct, because the finding of the Jackson court that the decree was violated was thrown out by the appeals court and remanded back to lower court for consideration. There it stands today, with the case soon to be settled, and the specific question of whether the 1995 consent decree was violated remains unsettled (although it was certainly seemed headed the direction of being declared so, but YMMV).

23

Sure, I worked there in the early '90s.

Entirely plausible. MS has lawyers, but the power is in the hands of engineers and engineers don’t think of lawyers as having anything to contribute. Engineers have a rather expansive view of what constitutes an ‘engineering decision’. One would first have to conceive of asking the question ‘Are we a monopoly’ before it would make sense to ask a lawyer.

Also, if you paid any attention to the trial. Even the MS lawers didn’t believe that MS is a monopoly the market that the compete in. In fact for the DOJ to declare MS a monopoly, they had to write a market definition that excluded all OS competitors other than IBM. Apple, Sun, Palm, and all flavors of Unix are excluded from the DOJ definition of ‘relevant market’. MS lawyers were ‘utterly astonished’ that Jackson bought into bootstrapping that transparent.

But even if I conceeded that MS was a monopoly, It still doesn’t mean that they knew that they were. In fact, at the time I was there, we didn’t. we didn’t see ourselves as having a monopoly, much less and unassailable one. Back when we were working on Win95, we were very concerned that OS/2 shipped with a browser and Windows did not. We knew that Win95 needed to ship wiht a browser in the box, but the IE team was way behind schedule.

But even at that point, the consensus in the halls was that the future of the browser was to have the OS just ‘know’ about the internet and have browsing the Web be no different than searching your harddrive. Even before MS had a credible entry in the ‘browser market’ we knew that it made no sense from a users’ perspective for there even to be a browser market. At some point in the future, any OS that wasn’t ‘internet aware’ out of the box was dead meat. We were very worried that that day was already at hand, but needed to get Win95 out the door, IE or no IE.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to cite personal experience, So even though I know what happened, and how little fact is in Jackson’s findings. There’s no way to prove it to anyone on this board. So be it. I’ll stick to arguing what I can prove, unless asked for an opinion.

24

Which just goes to show that Felten committed perjury. It is impossible to remove 95% of the IE code, Although it’s quite possible to remove all of the icons that a user could use to bring up a program called IE.

What Felten knew, but declined to tell Jackson is that even after he ‘removed’ IE, most of it was still there. All he did was hide the icon and a few hundred k of glue code used to manage the favorites menu and toolbar. and a few other UI niceities.

The bulk of IE is really a collection of system services that are necessary for the operation of the Windows shell.

An honest mistake. Engineers don’t know from rules of evidence. They knew that the point they were making was correct, they didn’t know that a ‘dramatization’ wasn’t ok in a courtroom. Hell, if Jackson had been unbiased, this would have been a non-event. You fail to mention that MS was allowed to re-do the tape and the second tape showed the same as the first but without violating the ‘evidentiary purity’ that Jackson wanted.

I blame him. He treated an honest mistake in the presentation of a fact as if it were a lie. He subsequently treated every MS witness as a liar. Jackson’s bias made a travesty of a ‘fair trial’. He distorted every aspect of that trial for the purpose of harming MS.

The unprecedented separation of ‘findings of fact’ from ‘conclusions of law’ was for no other purpose than to attempt to preserve some of that harm from being thrown out on appeal.

Think about that. He knew that he would be reversed on appeal! He knew that he was on the wrong side of the law. but he figured that if he played it carefully, he could do some lasting damage anyway.

Nonsense, the Appeals court indicated that Jackson used the wrong standard to find the tie to be illegal. The correct standard is much more stringent, MS would only have to prove that their design benefitted consumers. This would be trival for them, because the design DID benefit customers.

Also, the appeals court had already overruled Jackson on this issue once before. Even if the other lower court had upheld Jackson, the appeals court would just have him reversed again.

If the DOJ had felt that they could win this point in front of someone other than Jackson, then they would have proceeded, That was the original charge after all. They look pretty silly to bring suit and fail make their case.

MS did not violate the last consent decree. It specifically gave them permission to add features to Windows so long as they could demonstrate that the feature had value to consumers. MS kept that agreement, and if this new agreement happens, they will keep it too.

25

Just out of curiousity, Tejota, but may I ask how much money you make annually from Microsoft-related activities and stocks? Just curious, since from reading many of your previous messages (in assorted threads) I can only conclude that you’re very reliant on Microsoft for your well-being…

[SUB]How did you even find the SDMB in the first place? Was there a link from microsoft.com one morning that you tripped over? :)[/SUB]

26

rjung you conclude in error. I’d say that ad hominem attacks are beneath you, but I happen to know that isn’t true. :wink:

You are entitled do disbelieve this, but it has never been possible to command my loyalty with money. I just don’t care about it that much.

Not that I feel any loyalty toward them, really. But this board is about fighting ignorance, and there’s a lot of that floating about concerning what MS did and did not do.

For the record. I’m not at all reliant on MS for income, havn’t been for years now. I worked for MS from '89 until '96. during that time MS was (nearly) my sole source of income. On the other hand, I’m a programmer, which means that I’ve never been dependant on a specific company for my livelihood.

Even in today’s market, top programmers can always find good work if they are willing to relocate. Back when I was at MS I had standing offers from at least 2 different companies at any one time, at times it was a lot more than that.

At this point, I still have some MS stock, but it is not a significant part of my portfolio.

Oh, and I found SDMB because someone on the Ars Technica board mentioned it as a place where debates didn’t always degenerate into name calling. Turns out that he was right, but one must emphasize the word always :slight_smile:

27

What, do I <bleep> look like <bleep> Mother <bleep>?! :wink:

You’ll pardon me if I prefer to use your posting history as a guide, then. As it stands, IMO it takes rather huge cojones to call Feltin a perjurer – that’s right up there with the Microsoft engineers who shipped a nonworking version of Windows 98 to “comply” with Judge Jackson’s orders to separate Internet Explorer from Windows.

Well, Wildest Bill isn’t around any more; maybe you’d care to step up to fill his shoes? :slight_smile:

28

Really? I’d say that whether or not Windows and IE are inseparable is an objectively verifyable fact. All it takes is a copy of Windows and a debugger. I have all of these things, and I know how to use them.

I have, in fact verified this fact, and guess what, Felten either lied, or he didn’t have the knowledge necessary to qualify as an expert witness. I believe that Felten had the knowledge, ergo, he lied.

Well that is what Jackson told them to do after all. What should they have done? Just removed the Icon and then lied to him about complying with his order? Lets see:

[li] MS tells Judge that removing IE will break Windows. He says remove, they do, Windows is broken. - Judge gets mad.[/li][li] Felten removes Icon and lies to judge - Judge believes[/li]
I think I have my answer: Yes they should have removed the icon and lied to the Judge.

No that really is an ad hominem attack. Skip the smilies dude, If you are going to be vicious, then take it to the pit.

29

I think most of Tejota’s points speak for themselves. I don’t believe almost all of what he says, but then I’m pretty much a Linux bigot (albiet one who thinks Windows is fine if that’s your kick - it’s just not mine). I maybe wrong, he may be right. I don’t think so, but it’s possible.

But anyway, there’s just a couple things I want to clarify. And then I wanna sling some a small bit of mud on Tejota. ;]
Tejota
*
Look, forget about the noise on the Linux-apologists sites. They have an axe to grind, and will not give you the straight dope. If you stick to original sources and shun hyperbole, you will get a very different picture of what happened.
*

One of the things I was taught in my logic class in HS was that the “argument from authority” is not valid. In other words, an idea needs to be evaluated on its own merits in light of the available envidence, regardless of who said it. You seem to think that because Linux sites or competitors to MicroSoft have an axe to grind, their points couldn’t possibly be correct. While I agree that they have an axe to grind and are likely to cast things in the worst possible light, I refuse to dismiss their arguments out of hand simply because they have a vested interest. The same is true of MicroSoft - I’m willing to listen to their arguments. I’m not going to assume everything MicroSoft says is a lie out of hand. I’m going to evaluate both side’s statements with equal doses of skepticism. Right now, with the evidence available to me, this agreement looks like a big win for M$, and it’s not going to do jack to punish them for past transgressions or prevent them from abusing their power in the future. I’m happy to be convinced otherwise, but your arguments thus far haven’t been very persuasive. Now I don’t claim to be unbiased, but give me a little credit - I’m not entirely stupid and closeminded.

ModernRonin2
*
I honestly do believe that Computer Operating Systems do tend towards a natural monopoly. (…) MicroSoft to abuse its monopoly and destroy free and fair competition and customer choice as they have provably done in the past. This agreement doesn’t come anywhere close to punishing them for their abuses of the free market. An effective or appropriate remedy?? Are you KIDDING me??
*

Tejota
*
I’d agree. But these statements seem to contradict each other. If monopoly is inevitable, then there is no point in trying to ‘encourage’ competition that the market. The market itself doesn’t want it. (…) Which, of course, means that consumer choice was doomed no matter what MS did. Nice of you to blame MS for the inevitable. It really helps your argument.
*

My stance on monopolies may seem contradictory if you don’t know my take on free markets. And that take is that free markets, while better than anything else I’ve ever seen - and christ, if you EVER find me advocating socialism or worse yet communism please SHOOT ME, but free markets still fail sometimes. And so things like natural monopolies do exist. But, I do not believe that the simple existance of natural monopolies makes them inherently GOOD. Natural monopolies may be necessary, but if they are, then they are a necessary evil.

All the other natural monopolies (power, telephone, etc…) are highly regulated by the government. Why is this? Because if it were not so, they would utterly screw the customer. Why not? They can do so with impunity! Customers have no choice. They may be allowed to exist, but they are not allowed to screw customers - NOT EVEN IF THEY’RE DOING IT ACCIDENTALLY. So (are you ready for the coup de grace?) if M$ is the holder of the natural monopoly on computer operating systems, then they should be subject to as heavy a regulation as any other natural monopoly. Rates for their services should be set by government committees, subject to public oversight, etc, etc.

The mere idea makes the hair on the back of your neck stand bristle, doesn’t it? I don’t like the idea much myself - I would much rather have free and healthy competition. But that doesn’t seem to be in the cards…
Lastly, let’s sling some mud! But in a good-natured, or at least not malicious way, I hope:

Okay, Tejota I’ll take it at face value that you’re not a paid M$ apologist. (Though I think I’d be within my rights to maybe be a little suspicious, given some of the astroturf stunts that M$ has pulled in the not too recent past - see http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/13046.html ) But assuming you’re just an ex-MS employee who sees them being unfairly maligned, I have a theory about why you might be faster to swoop in to their defense than most people.

It’s said that Microsoft has a very insular culture. And by external standards they’re very arrogant and self-righteous. I’m honsetly not sure those are the correct words - it’s possible it’s a self-defensive reaction since everyone’s constantly slagging on and attacking m$ - sometimes justifiably and sometimes not. So, maybe you’re coming to MicroSoft’s defense because you absorbed that attitude while you worked there. Just a random thought that popped into my head. Probably BS.
-Ben

30

(Cartman voice)
Oh, gawd DAMNIT!
(/Cartman voice)

I swear to god I closed that stupid bold tag. I really did check over that post before I sent it. Argh! Note to self: use preview, dumbass!
-Ben

31

Felton’s functional standard for removing the browser:
“If you’ve removed the ability to browse the Web, as far as the user is concerned, the Web browser is gone.”
That seems a more viable definition than Microsoft’s attempt to claim that every line of code in Explorer is critically important to the functioning of Windows. It’s difficult to believe that MS created a fully functional version of Explorer, and then grafted the rest of the OS onto it in order to maximize the advantages of using portable coding techniques; or the other way around for that matter. It’s far more likely that the OS and browser projects ran on parallel, if interconnected, tracks, and that the final version of the OS/browser was kludged together from incomplete bits of each project. Normally that’s the sort of thing that can be undone. Microsoft presented no evidence that it could not be undone, only that they were unwilling to do it. They certainly failed to show that Felton lied about anything.

32

Nonsense. You could uninstall IE from Win95 using Add/Remove programs (as Felten testified). Anyone could. And Windows still worked fine. In Win98, MS just took out that option and dubbed them ‘inseparable’.

If you’re trying to say that removing lower-level internet services would break they OS, okay, that’s possible. But saying that everything in the OS relies on being able to view HTML documents using a specific application (IExplore.exe) is preposterous.

I also own a debugger. Exactly how did you verify this ‘fact’ to be true? Please provide proof of your statement.

(Come to think of it, Tejota, there’s been a remarkable dearth of cites or proof to nearly everything you’ve been saying. Which doesn’t make them untrue, but certainly doesn’t help your case. Examples & citations, please.)

33

Exactly. And by that standard he lied. He removed only a naive user’s ability to locate a distinct application called a ‘web browser’. He didn’t remove the ability to browse the web, but only the ability to find an app that did only that.

You could still get to the web by opening, say, a help file. Because after Win95 the help system is HTML and hyperlinked, and uses a modified IE as it’s user interface.

But they never said that. It’s easy to call MS a liar if you put words in their mouth. What they did say is that the essential facility of being able to browse the web was integrated into the Windows Shell, you couldn’t remove it without breaking the ability to browse the local hard drives as well.

If you define IE as an icon, then, sure, you can remove it. But if you define it as ‘ability to browse the web’. then you can’t romove it without crippling Windows.

They certainly failed to show this to the satisfaction of the Judge. Since he wasn’t capable of understanding a technical argument, he basically had to take someone’s word for it. He chose to take as a matter of faith that Felten was more credible even though Felten was actually lying on this issue.

34

True, of course Win95 + IE is most of the Win98 shell improvments. If you remove IE, you are back to plain vanilla Win95. No new help engine, no ability to view your HD as a web page, etc.

If that’s all you want in an OS, the by all means don’t upgrade to Win98 or better. No skin off my nose.

Sure it is. And you are putting words in MS’s mouth again. They never said that IExplore.exe is all there is to explore. In fact, they said exactly the opposite.

IExplore.exe is not all of IE, it isn’t even MOST of IE

Just compare the size of the IE installer on Win95 with the size of IExplore.exe if you want proof.

There HTML parsing code is somewhere else, web navigation is somewhere else, FTP lookup is somewhere else. Caching of pages & images is somewhere else. All IExplore.exe contains is a frame window, main menu, tool bar, and logic for managing favorites. (And I’m not sure that it even has favorites anymore).

Sure, fire up IExplore.exe in the debugger, then break.
now go to Debug->Modules and compare the amount of code that resides in \Windows\system with the amount of code in IExplore.exe.

That’s the quick version, if you want the long proof, then
link /dump /imports iexplore.exe to see what it actually calls. Keep in mind that CoCreateInstance() can load up an arbitrary amount of code, so you would have to actually set a breakpoint there and look to see it loads at runtime.

Alternatively link /dump /imports on all of the contents of \Windows\system and correlate all of the .dll’s that make calls into the same set of libraries as IExplore uses. A lot of that will just be noise, but pay particular attention to shell32.dll, netapi.dll, shlwapi.dll & wininet.dll

Or just do this:

CreateWindow(“AtlAxWin”, “”, WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE,
0,0, 300, 400,
hwndParent, NULL, hInst, NULL);

Which creates a Web browser as a child of hwndParent. Because IE is integrated into Windows, it is trivial for 3rd party developers to add web browsing functionality inside their applications.

http://www.codeguru.com/internet/webbrowser_control.shtml

Can’t cite what you know from firsthand experience. Would you accept a reference to http://www.microsoft.com? I thought not.

35

So when they put the OS and the Browser together they consolidated some of the functions. Good for them, by using the same routines they guarantee a more consistent user interface. But that doesn’t mean that the two functionality’s (OS/Browser) are inseparable, only that it would take a bit of effort by some competent and informed coders to separate them.
Was Microsoft’s standard of truth based on things being “impossible” if they cost more than a few million dollars, or delayed product rollout ? Felton’s ability to remove easy access to Explorer without having to resort to Microsoft’s proprietary data is at least suggestive that the MS engineers could have gone much farther than they did without breaking things too badly. Your example of opening a help file in order to bring up modified Explorer code is something that could easily be taken out of the OS; especially by knowledgeable MS employees. At worst they could have built a little stand alone help system like Apple did. You still gaven’t given any evidence to support your claim that Felton was lying, or for that matter that the judge wasn’t capable of understanding the merits of the argument. Microsoft and Felton simply used different definitions of the term “Browser”. Of course Microsoft spent a lot of time trying to weasel out of actually having a concrete definition for the word. That probably didn’t play well with anyone in the courtroom. It certainly set off my B.S. detectors.

36

Yes, true enough. You could remove IE by with code changes and a recompile, but you would end up with the Win95 shell as a result. They are inseparable in the sense that you cant remove IE without also breaking features of the Shell that users (and ISV’s) want and that MS has a perfect right to add.

I say again, Felten did nothing but hide IE. MS could have done that as well, but Jackson and the DOJ never asked for that. They asked for it to be removed.

Impossible means “We can’t do it without rolling back features other than IExplore.exe that users and ISV’s are counting on having, or by bloating our code by giving multiple parts of Windows contain redundant copies of HTML rendering, etc.”

Windows is software, so of course, very little is really impossible. But Jackson had no right to ask them to cripple their software, and the Appeals court agreed.
So,if you prefer Impossible means “Fuck off, you moron, you aren’t qualified to tell us how to design software.”.

That’s probably what set off your BS meter :wink:

Sure they could have, if they were willing to force ISV’s to rebuild all of their help files to a new file format. Or create a separate copy of HTML rendering etc and stick it into the help engine. How does this help customers?

Sure I have, It’s not my fault that you havn’t the necessary background knowledge to do anything other than take someones word for it. The facts are avaliable to anyone with a copy of Windows and the necessary skilz.

I can’t really blame you for not taking my word, but understand. I’m not taking anyones word for this. I can answer these questions for myself. I believe that Felten had the necessary knowledge as well and therefore believe that he lied. It’m prepared to believe that he didn’t have the skilz and thus was not lying, but that makes him unqualified to be an expert witness in the trial.

On the contrary, Feltons definition of browser is quoted in this thread. He lied by that standard.

37

Yes, I’d say this was close to accurate. Arrogance is in full supply. While I was a MS employee, there wasn’t a whole lot of slagging going on. But in the years since I’ve left, it’s become constant. On sites like /. the lies about what MS has done or said are so ubiquitous as to be considered common knowledge. I glad that the tone here on SDMB is codial enough that I can actually give an alternative view without getting personal attacks from more than a handful.

I appreciate your thoughful tone in this thread so far.

38

Sure I have, It’s not my fault that you haven’t the necessary background knowledge to do anything other than take someone’s word for it. The facts are available to anyone with a copy of Windows and the necessary skilz.

[/quote]

What’s with the personal attack here ? Is the high road only something that you encourage in others ?
I’ve been coding applications, TSR’s, drivers, and patches to operating systems since the late seventies, and will happily pit my coding knowledge and disassembler savvy against your self-vaunted “skilz” any day of the week. I think everyone agrees that Windows and Explorer are tightly integrated. But when you say “The bulk of IE is really a collection of system services that are necessary for the operation of the Windows shell” it needs to be pointed out that one person’s system service is another’s embedded application; and if you remove the end user interface, you can reduce any application to the status of a utility library. In that light, the “removal” of IE from the operating system becomes less drastic than the gutting of the OS you, and Microsoft, would have us believe.

The last time I checked, you don’t “hide” code by deleting it, as Felten did. You can do it by encrypting your code, or moving necessary subroutines into the System files, but deletion and hiding are not the same thing. Felton made an honest start at deleting IE from Windows. It’s doubtful that the MS engineers followed up on his work in the same spirit, or do you have credible evidence to the contrary ?

39

Tejota: I can see where you’re coming from with the ‘IE needs these zillion DLLs or it can’t run, and neither could Help or some other bits’. I can even see your point of view. But by that standard, user32.dll is a integral portion of Photoshop. It’s just too broad. You just cannot define all these random (and, yes, related) bits of paraphanalia as being THE browser. Well, of course you can, but I disagree with you.

The ‘we can’t remove this without busting windows’ approach is not an absolute engineering reality, it’s a legal theory, a scorched-earth approach (or perhaps brinksmanship would be a better term) to the MS/DOJ ordeal used by MS to thier advantage.

As for the Help system being busted, just leave in the browser bits for parsing HTML, and don’t accept external URLs. There are several approaches to this that would take, oh, an entire line of code (okay an #ifdef).

See, a cite isn’t all that hard. Thanks.

40

Or you can open that HTML help file with Netscape. See, that was easy.