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Microsoft

Gates Book and DOJ Trial Contradictions 28

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it-never-looks-good-for-uncle-bill dept.
Veralden writes "Here is a story about Gates and another MS witness contradicting on how their sales data is recorded. According to Gates, they have sales results in digital form and a witness testified that they have paper sales records. MS denies this, but the article seems to take a more objective view. " Here is the story.
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Gates Book and DOJ Trial Contradictions More

Gates Book and DOJ Trial Contradictions

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  • Can You Say "Perjury"? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I knew you could :-).

    As noted in the article, this probably won't
    have much, if any, impact on the trial. But
    one has to wonder at Gates' and Microsoft's
    arrogance.

    Here they are, in an "IT Trial of the Century",
    the odds-makers are probably quoting odds heavily
    against Microsoft, and Gates authors a book
    with statements that *directly* contradict, or
    at least call into question--the testimony of
    one of their primary defense witnesses?

    Hello?

    And that oh-so-believable statement from MS
    spokesperson Mark Murray, "explaining" the
    apparent disparities between the trial
    statements and Gates' prose. Come on. They
    must think us all complete idiots.

    They wonder why even the IT trade press itself
    (once blindly in love with MS) is becoming just
    a mite cynical? Must be that "pro-Linux" bias
    at work again.

  • huh? (Score:1)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    I don't see the comparison...

  • What do you want to bet that Microsoft's email policies get a major overhaul after this whole thing is done? That is if it hasn't already happened. Probably purge every couple of weeks and never keep backups. If they even get a whif of an investigation, employee harddrives will probably start to spontaneously combust.

  • As the subject says, I heard that it was already being discounted heavily because they think it won't sell.

  • Slashdot is to MS vs DOJ thing as the mainstream press was to the Bill/Monica thing. The normal press isn't covering this trial NEARLY as much as Slashdot is.

    Just enter your preferences and turn off the "Microsoft" subject. I think that's what I'm about to do. I want to read news about new and interesting things, not more about "Evil Microsoft".
  • Testing.
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  • 1-2, 1-2 (It's the Wu)
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  • Third time.
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  • Some revisions
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  • gah? (Score:1)

    by mikpos ( 2397 )
    He means that the media goes nuts on every little "update" which has nothing to do with the trial itself. Very silly.
  • "basicly he said that they can track sales but not how much they make from the sales on their computers...... YEAH RIGHT"

    I hate to sound as if I am defending M$, but for a large corporation, tracking profitability by product line, by customer, etc. doesn't sound easy and in fact is not easy at all. Try working on a large ERP project sometime - there are cases out there where the ERP implementation took a few years, but the promised profitability analysis system wasn't finished for a decade, if ever.

    For just one quick example, where would you charge the costs for the trial? To the Windows 95 group? The Windows 98 group? The IE group? The company as a whole? Some allocation? Why? And that's only one of the millions of classification and allocation decisions that have to me made to determine profitability.

    On this one, I would be inclined to believe what was said at the trial.

    sPh
  • "What [Gates] says [in the media] is not under oath," said Ronald Katz a partner at law firm Coudert Brothers.

    What this says to me is that it's ok for BG to lie in the media to the general public, since he's not under oath.. or maybe I'm just a cynic?
  • Let's see...
    • Bill says that they know sales figures by product by sales channel.
    • MS traditionally has claimed a "Chinese wall" between OS development and application development.
    • MS now claims that they can't calculate profit and cost by product, which is different than sales.
    A cynic would say "just subtract the departmental costs for OS development from the OS sales, and do the same for applications.

    In slight defense of MS, I have to point out that MS is largely a sales and marketing company, and they might not do a very good job of splitting indirect costs (such as sales trips, marketing studies, and some advertising) into separate OS / Application components.

    What they need is an "Activity Based Costing" (ABC) study.

    Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

  • You have to wonder if is is really dumb or really tricky. Probably Tricky.

  • The only problem is that Billy is taking about sales in general. The witness was talking about profitability on the windows os in general. There was an article in ZD that had a MS exec. saying the above statement, basicly he said that they can track sales but not how much they make from the sales on their computers...... YEAH RIGHT
  • although i despise bill gates and alot of his business practices, i'm beginning to get annoyed with the whole MS vs DOJ trial in general. they're almost as bad as the whole Bill and Monica tribulations.

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