This post is aimed at the lawyers and
judges in the current DoJ/Google legal
case.
From this case, I'm concerned, apparently
threatened:
(A) I have some expertise in computing,
worked in and with computing for decades,
written some serious software, taught
computer science in college and graduate
school of famous universities, and
published peer-reviewed original research
in artificial intelligence.
(B) Now computing is my main activity and
the foundation of my business startup.
(C) From credible quotes in the media and
(A) and (B) just above, my opinion is that
the lawyers and judges in the Google case
(a) are poorly informed on and have no
meaningful understanding of computing, (b)
are often seriously misinformed on
computing, and (c) are on the way to doing
serious harm to computing, the economy,
and my work.
I see no opportunity for this legal case
to do any good and would like the DoJ just
to say:
"Sorry, never mind. We made a HUGE
mistake and now drop the case."
For example:
(1) Operating System. I use versions of
Microsoft's Windows, really want to use
only one operating system, considered the
choices, and picked Windows.
It seems to me that Microsoft continually
makes changes to improve Windows.
Some of the changes are for the user
experience and user interface. Mostly
I find the changes poorly designed and
irritating but not a serious problem.
Other changes are for, e.g., computer
security and new hardware, and I like
those changes a LOT.
I REALLY LIKE their .NET software and its
documentation.
I REALLY like the Windows NTFS file
system. And I REALLY like the fact that
the basics of Windows has been quite
reliable, with lots of utility, for 10+
years.
And I intend to start using Windows Server
2019. Versions of Windows Server may be
the most important software in the economy
of the world.
(2) I have lots of computer programs
installed.
Some of the programs I've written myself
in various computer languages.
Of course, for me the most important of
these programs is the Web site server
program I've written for my startup.
Otherwise my most heavily used program is
the text editor KEdit, first written by an
IBM employee in France, and for that
program I've written dozens of macros.
Next is Rexx written by an IBM employee in
England, and for that language I've
written dozens of programs.
I have the D. Knuth mathematical word
processing software TeX which I use for
writing nearly all documents, letters,
etc. For TeX I've written dozens of
macros.
I have a spell checking program Aspell I
use heavily.
I have Adobe's Acrobat installed and use
it to read some important PDF files.
To keep up with some changes in email
standards, I intend to install a recent
version of Microsoft Office.
I am a heavy user of the Internet and,
thus, of Web browsers. As I type this,
the computer has installed Firefox,
Chrome, Brave, and Edge. I use all of
them, use Firefox the most, may change to
use Brave the most, and may install the
current version of Chrome.
So, each of these Web browsers is an
installed computer program out of some
dozens I have installed.
With these Web browsers, I visit Web sites
-- thousands of them.
Some of the Web sites are search engines
or other means of finding content. Some
of the search engines are Google, Bing,
and DDG. But I also do searches at
Wikipedia, YouTube, Stackoverflow, etc.
(3) Defaults. The legal case has a lot of
emphasis on "defaults" in Web browsers and
search engines, and to me this emphasis
is, understated and in just one word, bad.
For the only such "default", I have set
Firefox as my "default" Web browser, but
this setting has almost no effect. E.g.,
if I am using Adobe's Acrobat to read the
PDF (portable document format) file for
the paper
"Tensor Programs I: Wide Feedforward or
Recurrent Neural Networks of Any
Architecture are Gaussian Processes"
and in the Acrobat display click on a URL
(uniform resource locator) of a Web page,
then Acrobat will use my default Web
browser to read and display that Web page.
I rarely do any such thing and there are
other approaches that are plenty easy.
For a "default search engine", I don't
have one.
In recent months I've noticed that I can
do some Web searches from an HTML single
line text box displayed by Firefox, but so
far I've never done this. I don't like
this feature by Firefox because I see no
reason to use it and it takes up limited
space in the Firefox window.
Google is just a Web site, and I get to
that site just like I get to any of the
thousands of other Web sites I go to. No
"defaults" are involved.
DoJ, lawyers, judges, please, Please,
PLEASE forget about computing, the
Internet, computer operating systems,
computer programs, Web browsers, Web
sites, and search engines. Just FORGET
about them.
PLEASE.
Anything you do will be a threat to the
economy, my work, and me.