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Microsoft

Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice 421

Posted by samzenpus from the run-for-the-hills dept.
GMGruman writes "A recent Microsoft video on OpenOffice is naively seen by some as validating the open source tool. As InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues shows, the video is really a hatchet job on OpenOffice. But why is Microsoft so intent on damaging the FOSS desktop productivity suite, which has just a tiny market share? Rodrigues figured out the real reason by noting who Microsoft quoted to slam OpenOffice: businesses in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe that aren't already so invested in Office licenses and know-how. In other words, the customers Microsoft doesn't have yet and now fears it never will."
The Courts

Submission + - Is it Unlawful to Execute an Innocent Person? 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Michael Dorf, a professor of Law at Cornell University, has an interesting post on FindLaw about the case of Troy Davis, convicted twenty years ago and sentenced to death for the murder of off-duty police officer Mark McPhail. Since then seven of the nine key state witnesses against Davis have recanted their testimony, "claiming in affidavits that they were pressured by police to name Davis as the perpetrator," writes Dorf. "Meanwhile, additional evidence has been found indicating that Coles, the prosecution's star witness against Davis, was the actual killer." Yet despite national and international attention neither the Georgia courts nor the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board has seen fit to stop Davis's execution. Last week in response to his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court ordered that a federal district court in Georgia "should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis's] innocence." The Court's order in Davis was not unanimous though as Justice Scalia wrote that even if the district court were to find Davis to be innocent, there would still be nothing unlawful about executing him (PDF). The Supreme Court's finding comes on the heels of a report in Texas that the execution of Cameron Willingham in 2004 for setting a house fire that killed three young children was based on faulty investigations that ignored eyewitness reports and failed to follow accepted scientific procedures. "Does the Constitution forbid the execution of an innocent person who was convicted and sentenced to death after a trial that was free of constitutional error but that nonetheless led to an erroneous verdict," asks Dorf."

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