Allchin Admits MSFT Violated the Law

An Anonymous Coward writes: "CNN is running what amounts to a two part article about the nine states who are continuing their case against Microsoft in which Jim Allchins admits Microsoft violated the law. The first part of the article deals with Jim Allchins assertion that there is no way for Microsoft to remove Internet Explorer from Windows without crippling the OS. However, he admits that the demonstration in court which showed this crippling was in fact rigged and that they have not done studies to se if it would be possible to produce an OS without the browser imbedded in it. The second part of the story involves Allchin admitting that Microsoft has violated the law but refused to specify the violations. 'I don't think that I can summarize those,' Allchin said. 'I'm not an attorney.'"

Rigging as a Business Practice

[Trinity-Infinity]

How many others have rigged as a rule? Enron had an entire Energy Securities Trade Center occupying a floor of an office building in Houston. They rigged that demo for the gov't.... The gov't rigged its missle tests (and those still failed!).

No need to mod or flame. I just think its interesting/sad that companies stoop to this level. Now excuse me as I go rig my code so my boss will sign off on it before the deadline...

Hmmm...

[dghcasp]

Ballmer complained that it would be too expensive to build a version of the Java programming language to package with Windows, as requested by the states. The states clarified that Microsoft wouldn't have to bear those costs.

Build?

Something wrong with just licensing the one that Sun already provides for free? That provides cross-platform portability (more or less) right out of the box?

Oh wait, sorry, I forgot I was talking about Microsoft.

Re:The difference between slashdot and microsoft

[aredubya74]

Wonder why Allchin didn't use the ubiquitous "IANAL" acronym? Surprisingly, it's because his own last name is a very similar acronym!

ALLCHIN -
A Lying Lawyer? Clearly, He Is Not!

Embedded browsers

[jayhawk88]

and that they have not done studies to se if it would be possible to produce an OS without the browser imbedded in it.

Hello, Windows 3.11? Who are these people kidding?

When 9x codebase first came out, I know the idea of "integrating" Windows Explorer with Internet Explorer was some big huge revolutionary idea, but isn't it about time to admit that idea has pretty much run it course? 5 versions later, and the most Microsoft has done to get rid of Windows Explorer is hide it under the Accessories group. I don't see any of my lusers actively using this "browse your local drives through IE" feature, they all still differentiate between IE and Explorer/MyComputer.

Re:Rigging as a Business Practice

[doconnor]

One difference with the Mircosoft case is when they rigged the demo, they where doing it in court. They where clearly commiting prejury. In the Enron case it may be just fraud. In the missle test it was probably just lying.

Re:this isn't news

[Mr_Matt]

Allchin isn't Bill Gates, and he isn't Steve Ballmer. Allchin admitting that Microsoft broke the law would be like if slashdot's janitor came out and said that moderation violates free speech.

Neither is Allchin Microsoft's janitor...he is, after all, a vice president of the company and the guy in charge of Windows. So no, it's not like he runs the company, but he does run the part that's relevant to the discussion. As such, admitting that a demonstration made for a judge was rigged is news to me. But I'm not a cynic like you, so who knows.

I won't even dive into the lame moderation analogy - if you're one of those guys who dilutes the public ability to challenge real violations of our First Amendment rights by whining endlessly over situations where the Amendment doesn't apply (say, a privately-owned website like /.), then I don't have the time of day for you.

Allchin Is Not A Programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

The quote in the article is that "Technically I just couldn't do it."

OK, so Allchin cannot remove IE. Can Real Programmers remove IE?

MSFT is selling XP embedded AS MODULAR!!!

[tz]

Ok, if I spend a lot of cash and agree not to sell it in a real consumer PC, Microsoft will sell me a version of XP where I can mix and match parts. I think I can even remove the browser. This is their embedded version of XP (does it have product activation?).

But although they say it is too technically challenging to re-engineer windows XP so OEMs can do it, in their embedded section this is a selling point.

At the risk of sounding pro-MS...

[Control Group]

I seriously wonder what people (the nine states included) would do if MS stripped Windows down until it was just the OS itself. Bye-bye, calc, notepad, wordpad, solitaire, ftp, telnet, minesweeper, icons, windows, menus...

This could be a classic case of "be careful what you wish for."

Re:I don't get it

[sqlrob]

They aren't saying that they can not create a new OS without an embedded browser - they are saying that they can not remove the already embedded browser (Internet Explorer) from their current OS's without breaking them to the point where they would no longer function.

But you could. Yes, it would break anything that used it. But if something else (Mozilla?) was put in supplying the same interfaces? Why (technically) does it have to be IE?

Re:gee could that blurb be a little more biased?!?

[GSloop]

>>"he admits that the demonstration in court which showed this crippling was in fact rigged"
>Gee does he? I must have missed where in the article he actually said that.

I can't cite a web page, but Allchin did in fact appear to be a deer in the headlights when the government questioned him about the inconsistancies of the referenced video evidence. On further questioning, he basically stated that the system must have been setup wrong. He then stated that MS would redo the test, and it would be re-submitted as evidence.

MS later completely withdrew its' video testimony completely. That may not be a blatant confession, but it does say a couple of things to me.

Either:

A) At best, MS couldn't design a decent test, using the same software engineers who designed the product.

Or

B) At worst, MS blantantly rigged the evidence and attempted to willfully mislead the court.

If you were betting $1000, which choice would you bet on? Me, I'd pick B. But silly me, I'm probably just stupid.

Any way you look at it, it's scary. It either means you can't trust any of MS's testimony, because they couldn't find their butts with both hands, or you can't trust any of MS's testimony, because they refuse to be honest.

Either way, it amazes me that anyone believes ANYTHING that MS says. Clearly, at best they simply don't know anything.

Cheers!

Re:More Interesting "Bundles"

[clontzman]

Apparently the reason is because Outlook uses OE for its newsreader. If you, from Outlook, try to view newsgroups, you're popped into a version of OE with the mail section stripped out.

Not that you were looking for an actual answer but there it is.

The reason MS won't unbundle...

[3vi1]

Okay, okay... Any programmer in their right mind *knows* that the browser isn't an absolute, integral, part of the OS. Of course, MS is doing everything they can to 'fix' this - through actions like the change in direction of their help files from the old RTF-based nightmare. But, what has Microsoft gained? Millions and Millions of dollars in browser revenue? Put down the crack-pipe. It seems to me that all they've done is secure their position against other OS's. As I recall Netscape wasn't free when all this first started (if you were honest). I would have thought it natural that Apple or someone else would have integrated the browser with the OS and used it as a leverage point against Microsoft. Microsoft successfully countered any attack along these lines ahead of time without paying Netscape an arm and a leg to do it. I will bet my left testicle that had MS reached a licensing agreement with Netscape that right now Netscape would be swearing up and down on their mothers graves that browser integration into an OS is a 'great thing for the user'. Download a Linux distro and what do you find? A web browser is included. Users obviously *want* web browsers, and they like them to be included. Web browsers today are as integral a tool as notepad or calc... I'd hate if they weren't included because "they're not core to the OS" or "they stifle competition in the Hello World/Notepad programming arena". I like where the Windows help system is headed. I like easy access to online updates. I like the possibilities here. And, if such browser-enabled services are going to be basic parts of the OS I would expect *some* kind of browser to be included so that I don't have to install extra software just to unlock the full power of the OS. I don't just want the browser integrated in Windows. I want it integrated in *all* OS's. Okay, I'm done with my pro-MS mini-rant. *Now* you can flame me for my moronic opinion. Maybe I'm the *only* guy who likes IE. I'm a freak like that.

Microsoft didn't commit perjury

[maxpublic]

Microsoft didn't commit perjury. Microsoft, Inc., isn't a person and can't think, speak, or act. It's nothing more than a legal abstraction for an actual body of workers and equipment bound together in a commercial endeavor.

No, Microsoft didn't commit perjury. But folks who work for Microsoft did. Now, if *I* were to commit perjury in a court of law *I'd* go to jail. Why, then, are you protected from punishment when you commit felonies while working for a corporation?

Max

IE isn't needed for Windows 9x

[stuarth]

We can prove IE isn't really required for windows 9x. Here is a company that provides the tools to remove it - for free.

http://www.98lite.net/ieradicator.html

Though some (microsoft) software requires it to be present - such as Money 2000 - or so I've heard.

So why doesn't this discussion about if its part of the operating system go away? We discuss if this application is part of the O/S most weeks. Its an application they added to their bundle, despite it reducing the reliability of their software.

Its almost funny that MS want to own the web-browser for windows so badly! They give it away for free, it reduces the security and reliability of their operating system even though it isn't really needed, you can't remove it even from a server that doesn't even have a console attached. It's hurting their products quiet a lot... they must be desperate to take all this pain.

Re:gee could that blurb be a little more biased?!?

[scorcherer]

Either way, it amazes me that anyone believes ANYTHING that MS says.

If they are being tried in court, how can anything they say be used as evidence one way or the other? Is this just another thing of American legal system I don't comprehend?

It's like asking an axe murderer: Did you kill those people? -No, honestly not. -OK, we'll let you go then.

the real news

[pohl]

I think the real news here is that Microsoft finally admitted that it does not follow basic, time-tested principles of good software design, such as modularity,good separation between interface & implementation, and proper separation of kernel & application responsibilities. If they practiced good software design, they would be able to remove IE from windows.

Re:I don't like MS, but...

[Discoflamingo13]

Thank you for being honest. For a lot of people, Windows is the solution that will carry them over for a long time, and a lot of my people (that being the BSD/GNU/Linux guys I hang with) need to realize that as well. Personally, I don't think the issue should be about the browser - it should be about the anti-trust issues (multi-OS booting OEM rigging, locking Mac people into Word and refusing to ever update it unless Internet Explorer was the default browser, etc.).

The only thing I really take issue with in your post is file defragmentation as a feature. On virtually every other filesystem I'm aware of, setting even decent heuristics for file allocation/deallocation (not necessarily great/excellent) is enough. File fragmentation for Windows is a design problem, and selling a time/resource-wasting method to combat poorly-designed tertiary memory storage as a feature has always irked me. Every filesystem gets fragmented over time, but the issue should not be "how many days" versus "how many months."

Re:No study is necessary.

[Prior Restraint]

so I just can't uninstall Internet Explorer and have all of my applications work.

Big deal. I can't upgrade Windows and have all of my applications work. Does that mean Mircosoft can argue that Windows version x is a critical part of Windows version x+1? Put another way, since when is the ability to run every existing application a feature of Windows?

I find Netscape on Windows... slower. I clocked it - IE loads faster on my PII/350 with 128MB RAM (Windows 2000) than my Athlon 1500 with 512MB RAM loads Netscape 6.

I would suggest that part of the reason for that is the fact that by virtue of running Windows 2000, you've already loaded most of the IE DLLs into memory. Again, to look at things from another perspective, would IE load faster than Netscape on (say) a Mac? How about Solaris? (I honestly don't know.)

In closing, I'd like to point out what so many others have elsewhere: even if we grant that Windows needs an HTML renderer to function, why does it have to be IE? You mentioned that lots of other Microsoft products simply call an API. That's just begging for someone to write a wrapper for Gecko and drop it in place of shdocvw.dll and/or mshtml.dll.

Geez.. of course it's possible...

[kko]

We're fooling around with WindowsXP embedded (unforunately!) at the office, and it's just your standard edition of WindowsXP, and you get a bunch of tools to help you remove whatever it is you don't need, and create some policies on the machine.
Hell, the instructions tell you to start with a machine that has a "normal" version of WindowsXP Professional...
Now, the first thing to go was IE. And the system runs perfectly. So MS should cut the "IE being absolutely necessary for Windows' emotional well-being" bullcrap.

Oh, and maybe some brilliant lawyer should bring Windows 2000 Embedded or WindowsXP Embedded to the case...

Re:Who would believe Allchin ?

[tswinzig]

I don't mind if you use it on your own system, but a bunch of lawyers forcing its removal from the Windows retail or OEM distribution is fucking insane.

Would you also think it's insane to break up a monopolist like Microsoft, since that would likely also impair your business?

If so, your basic premise is that anything that could disrupt your business is insane, even if it's justified.

If that is not your position, then you should see where Microsoft has broken the law and they will be punished. Those building their businesses on top of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices will suffer as well.

Re:Who would believe Allchin ?

[Reziac]

So bundle the parts of IE that your app needs WITH your app's installer (just make sure it installs the IE components without tying them to the OS), just like a shitload of apps already do.

In fact I acquired IE4 solely because Pagemill insisted on installing it, and did so with its own installer.

Or better yet, stop relying on IE (yeah, this may be a tall order from a coding/API standpoint, but IMO it'd be wiser in the long run).

I've pretty much stopped installing ANY app that relies on IE, not because of IE, but because as a rule such apps are every bit as ill-mannered as IE itself. Not exactly a good start to a product review. :)