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Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

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Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#91

Post by sk5t »

listenallyall wrote: post #80
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? There was a reason it was browsers. At the time there was rather a lot of software written against the Win32 API and nothing else. It was a moat. You needed that software, so you needed Windows. The web threatened to bridge the moat -- if people write web applications for Netscape, and Netscape runs on not on…

That's a pretty poor argument for govt intervention. Why? Because all of that Windows-only stuff existed, and the market ultimately rejected it. ActiveX controls? Yeah I remember those. Same with Java applets, Flash, Silverlight. The government didn't need to get involved in getting rid of any of these.

At the time, both Java and standards-compliant browsers posed major threats to Microsoft, and Microsoft did a pretty good job of messing up both. Only in distant hindsight do ActiveX and MSFT's hobbled 1.1 JVM seem inconsequential.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#92

Post by draw_down »

rdiddly wrote: post #26
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3

While there might or might not be questionable or illegal things that Bill Gates did, by himself or as the MS corporation at that time, the over-fixation of the article on how he is talking to the attorney in the deposition seems misguided and amateurish. Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996? Gates: I don’t know what you mean “concerned.” Boies: What is it about the word “con…

Yeah they kind of lost me with this line: "For more than six minutes, Gates is unable to concede even the most basic of facts." Is that the goal he's shooting for? To concede as many facts as possible to a hostile interrogator as quickly as possible?

Throughout the deposition, Gates, ever the tyrant, refused to offer his head on a silver platter to his adversaries.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#93

Post by swiley »

8note wrote: post #90
Sebb767 wrote: post #17

> [...] Microsoft was now comfortable supporting the Davids of the tech industry. This is a 29 year old company with a four-digit number of employees worth 17.3 Billion USD. Fortnite alone seems to have been a quite solid share of the App Store's gaming revenue. This is not a "David". Sure, Apple, Google and Microsoft are worth one to two orders of magnitude more. But this is like seeing a small person fighting a big…

Wasn't David a king? Goliath would have only been up to like double David's size anyways, so orders of magnitude sounds bigger than the David/Goliath difference.

I think at the point he defeated Goliath David was still just a shepherd. There may have been a prophecy he would become king but I don't think he had even been anointed.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#94

Post by swiley »

Sebb767 wrote: post #17

> [...] Microsoft was now comfortable supporting the Davids of the tech industry. This is a 29 year old company with a four-digit number of employees worth 17.3 Billion USD. Fortnite alone seems to have been a quite solid share of the App Store's gaming revenue. This is not a "David". Sure, Apple, Google and Microsoft are worth one to two orders of magnitude more. But this is like seeing a small person fighting a big…

Their currently the best hope of the "Davids" since none of the actually small players stand a chance standing up to Apple.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#95

Post by DavidSJ »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #82
DavidSJ wrote: post #77

Q: Okay. Let me ask you to look at Trial Exhibit 560. This is a message from you to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Chase with a copy to Mr. Maritz and some other people also given copies dated August 15, 1997 at 4:07 p.m. on the subject of IBM and Netscape; correct? A: Uh-huh Q: BY MR. BOIES: And you type in here Importance: High." A: No. Q: No? A: No, I didn't type that. Q: Who typed in "High"? A: A computer. Q: A computer. Wh…

Eh, I think I can understand where he's coming from. There's a difference between choosing "high" from a drop down and manually typing out "Importance: High". The former is kinda throwaway, while the latter is more serious. He's definitely super awkward about it though.

Sure, but he's clearly being evasive. He could simply have said: "I didn't type it; I marked it as high importance."

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#96

Post by mcpeepants »

freshbob wrote: post #88
grogenaut wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been deposed once the other lawyer spent 12 minutes asking me questions around a thing. The crux of the matter was if I had been verbally informed of what a line item was or if it was illegal to charge for said line item. This line item was unmarked on my receipt but marked on a different customers receipt as an illegal item to charge for. Lawyer tried constantly to get me to answer a question that would set t…

There was a reason it was the dining room. The guy wanted to make you feel comfortable, forget all about the deposition and just have a chat... so he can nail you to the cross with your own words.

> took place in my lawyer's dining room

their lawyer would (hopefully) not have that motivation

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#97

Post by listenallyall »

sk5t wrote: post #91
listenallyall wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty poor argument for govt intervention. Why? Because all of that Windows-only stuff existed, and the market ultimately rejected it. ActiveX controls? Yeah I remember those. Same with Java applets, Flash, Silverlight. The government didn't need to get involved in getting rid of any of these.

At the time, both Java and standards-compliant browsers posed major threats to Microsoft, and Microsoft did a pretty good job of messing up both. Only in distant hindsight do ActiveX and MSFT's hobbled 1.1 JVM seem inconsequential.

Neither Java nor "standards-based browsers" are things the govt has any role or authority to protect. The govt (via anti-trust law) breaks up established monopolies, and very rarely.

In fact, if Microsoft was indeed threatened by a programming language, or by a couple of nerdy academics (not even a company), that would greatly weaken the govt's case that they were a dominant monopoly.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#98

Post by cable2600 »

sk5t wrote: post #91
listenallyall wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty poor argument for govt intervention. Why? Because all of that Windows-only stuff existed, and the market ultimately rejected it. ActiveX controls? Yeah I remember those. Same with Java applets, Flash, Silverlight. The government didn't need to get involved in getting rid of any of these.

At the time, both Java and standards-compliant browsers posed major threats to Microsoft, and Microsoft did a pretty good job of messing up both. Only in distant hindsight do ActiveX and MSFT's hobbled 1.1 JVM seem inconsequential.

Microsoft was working on the .NET framework to beat Java. They had J++ to replace Java which became J# and then C#. I think they got sued over it being too much like Java and had to change it.

Now Microsoft has open sourced .Net to run many languages on different platforms.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#99

Post by _-___________-_ »

dundarious wrote: post #69
icelancer wrote: post #37

This was written by someone who has no idea what a deposition is about, or is intentionally misrepresenting it. The USG's depositions were PR stunts, filmed on purpose to make Gates look bad. If you've ever been deposed (and I have), then you know that Gates' approach was close to optimal when dealing with lawyers. Bill's biggest mistake was having a terrible attitude and bad posture when answering questions. He made…

I've watched almost 2 hours of the deposition videos now, and I think Gates went far beyond trying to seek extreme clarity. The diversion in part 4 about document stamps is a case in point. It is an adversarial process, so you must not rely on the usual expectation that colleagues will take the charitable interpretation of your words, but Gates being unable to even possibly understand what his own emails mean, is eva…

"Raising suspicion" isn't really a concern in this context. And of course he understands what his own emails mean. Seeking extreme clarity when discussing them is not the same as not understanding them.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#100

Post by _-___________-_ »

DavidSJ wrote: post #95
ImprobableTruth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think I can understand where he's coming from. There's a difference between choosing "high" from a drop down and manually typing out "Importance: High". The former is kinda throwaway, while the latter is more serious. He's definitely super awkward about it though.

Sure, but he's clearly being evasive. He could simply have said: "I didn't type it; I marked it as high importance."

Yep, he could have been less evasive, and then they'd have a recording of him saying "I marked it as high importance."

Being evasive like this is only a problem in depositions to the extent that it gives the media fuel to make the general public hate you. It's pretty much the optimal strategy in terms of the deposition itself.

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