From: John McCormac (jmcc at domain hackwatch.com)
Date: Wed 17 Oct 2001 - 05:21:30 IST
cybersean3000 at domain yahoo.com wrote:
>
> Keep these things in mind:
>
> * Microsoft has over 90% of the desktop market, yet the American
> government has difficulty declaring it a monopoly. IBM and Standard Oil
> were declared monopolies and broken up with a much lower percentage of
> market share.
The IBM Antitrust case was dropped when Regan was elected president of
the US. Kinda deja vu there. Actually there is a very good book about
the IBM case by one of the lawyers who worked on it. The interesting
point is that Microsoft has not had the findings of fact (or most of
them) struck out and still stands guilty. Because M$ are now seen as
critical to the US economy, a breakup would be particularly dangerous so
a not so damaging penalty may be imposed. This could be a massive fine
which in the long run could have a far deeper effect.
> * American President Bill Clinton, and his disciples, stopped the
> "Clipper Chip Montra" after Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gates played a round of
> golf. I am sure that the conversation went something like this "You
> know, Mr. President, what you are trying to do with the Clipper Chip, we
> have been able to do with software for years." Is nobody concerned about
> the "wake on lan" feature?
This seems as accurate as the IBM breakup. :-) The cryptanalysis of the
Clipper algorithms showed some interesting flaws. Perhaps it was all a
very clever ruse to have people continue to use crypto that the alphabet
soup groups were familiar with. (Weiner's DES Cracking engine was within
the range of the resources of these agencies long before EFF managed to
implement it.) The vast majority of people using the internet and or
Windows do not use encryption. Clipper also had applications beyond
computers.
I don't particularly like Microsoft and their products but I think it
would be better to hammer them with facts rather than inaccuracies. When
you hit these scumbags with errors, it allows them to escape easily and
it allows them to represent you as just one more Linux fanatic.
Regards...jmcc
-- ******************************************** John McCormac * Hack Watch News jmcc at domain hackwatch.com * 22 Viewmount, Voice: +353-51-873640 * Waterford, BBS&Fax: +353-51-850143 * Ireland http://www.hackwatch.com/~kooltek ******************************************** -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6 mQCNAzAYPNsAAAEEAPGTHaNyitUTNAwF8BU6mF5PcbLQXdeuHf3xT6UOL+/Od+z+ ZOCAx8Ka9LJBjuQYw8hlqvTV5kceLlrP2HPqmk7YPOw1fQWlpTJof+ZMCxEVd1Qz TRet2vS/kiRQRYvKOaxoJhqIzUr1g3ovBnIdpKeo4KKULz9XKuxCgZsuLKkVAAUX tCJKb2huIE1jQ29ybWFjIDxqbWNjQGhhY2t3YXRjaC5jb20+tBJqbWNjQGhhY2t3 YXRjaC5jb20= =sTfy -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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