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Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

arstechnica.com

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

#101

Post by jtbayly »

Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

You must not have had a Mac in the IE era. Many websites were inaccessible to those who did. The web was not open in those days.

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

#102

Post by Fezzik »

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…

Any and all depositions are recorded, not just those the USG does. Generally just audio though, in my experience. It is one of the primary methods used to (attempt to) impeach witnesses, along with obviously being used to gather evidence. I handled multi-million dollar mesothelioma cases and we had both audio recording and someone transcribing the testimony of deponents at every deposition. Other firms occasionally filmed theirs. Which is just to say there is nothing unique or nefarious about Gates being recorded.

Edit, to add: maybe there are some novice or low-budget attorneys that don’t record them, but if you don’t record them it basically defeats the entire purpose.

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

#103

Post by logifail »

jtbayly wrote: post #101
Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

You must not have had a Mac in the IE era. Many websites were inaccessible to those who did. The web was not open in those days.

> The web was not open in those days

(Genuine) question: is the web open now?

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

#104

Post by greggman3 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70
Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

> 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…

It requires zero malice and zero plans to dominate the market to add ActiveX to IE. I have 1000s of plugins (which MS and partners did via OLE/COM etc...) and a new tech becomes popular (browsers) then it would be obvious to pretty much any engineer that I'd want to find a way make it possible to use those plugins in a browser.

There's no need to make up some story about them doing it to force people to be Windows only.

The same stuff applies all over. Why did Apple use Objective C as the core way to interact with MacOS X? To the person that distrusts Apple they'll claim it is solely to lock in developers. Some developer makes an app in Objective C, it's too much work to port. I'm pretty sure though the charitable view is it was inherited from NextStep. The person that distrusts Apple will still claim it was a choice that Apple could have chose something more compatible but stuck with it because it had lock-in benefits.

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

#105

Post by person_of_color »

noizejoy wrote: post #35

And sometimes I wonder, if that PR problem from so long ago eventually gave birth to current conspiracy theories linked to Bill Gates. Or maybe I’ve read too much Douglas Adams...

Zuckerberg and Gates think you can go from cutthroat business executive to kindly old sweater-wearing grandpa in twenty years. Average folk are smarter than the intelligentsia often give them credit for.

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

#106

Post by jimbokun »

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.

ActiveX controls were rejected, in part, because Microsoft lost their antitrust case and had controls placed on them by the federal government.

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

#107

Post by jimbokun »

listenallyall wrote: post #86
clooless wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say that now in hindsight. Wasn't that clear back then.

Of course. But it strengthens the argument. The govt's job is not to guess what might happen or how the market will react to new technology. It should only intervene as a last resort, when there is absolutely no market-based solution possible. It wasn't like the AT&T antitrust suit, where the defendant had existed, mostly unchanged, for 50 or so years.

The antitrust suit is a big part of why the web succeeded to the extent it did.

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

#108

Post by DavidSJ »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #100
DavidSJ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not if it makes the judge hate you, too.

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

#109

Post by jariel »

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…

"1) How not to have the posture/tone/etc in your voice when answering questions, but...

2) ...that this is an adversarial discussion and you should seek extreme clarity every single time."

Thanks for that.

But if we're being realpolitik about it - shouldn't the 'objective' be to use easy to understand arguments that work well as sound-bytes and zingers, and simpleton analogies so that both the generally uninformed congress, press and population at large will be convinced either directly or by the perpetuation of the 'easy to understand arguments'?

And then to be likeable, which is the #1 thing that will give credibility?

As you say, it's a 'PR stunt - meaning the objective is not 'clarity' - it's more like winning a political TV debate.

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

#110

Post by jariel »

pwned1 wrote: post #4
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…

If you haven’t been deposed this will look weird. But depositions are about “gotcha” moments, so your job as the person being deposed is to play the game and only answer questions with minimal information and force the attorney asking questions to really work for it. It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification. “Are you asking about numbers? Or obje…

"It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification."

That's not 'logical' it's exactly the opposite of 'logical'.

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