For the time, it seems that Microsoft is out of the woods
concerning the DOJ.  It's past time that you folks get the
intelligent view on the issue and the correct solution:
Government is bad because it takes away freedom.  When
a company grows large enough to take away freedom then
the difference between that company and government nears
a distinction without a difference.  Microsoft has
monopoly power and the free market is hurt because of it.
I have a good laugh when the less-wited object to the
investigation against Microsoft on the grounds that the
company doesn't have monopoly power, especially when
they let us know that they're not using Explorer.  Guess
what!  Eventually they will be using Explorer rather
than Netscape.  And, when they do they'll conclude that
they switched because Explorer is better, not because
Microsoft has monopoly power.  Ignorance.
Digital Research game out with a version of DOS which
was far better than anything Microsoft had.  So, why
did this product not make a real challenge against
Microsoft's DOS?  It took almost two years for Microsoft
to come out with a comparable and compatible DOS.  Can
you say "Monopoly power?"  Now, Digital Research is out
of the OS business, so duh, Microsoft's OS is better,
even though it sucks.
At one time there were half-a-dozen up-and-coming browsers,
each better than what Microsoft had.  What happened to
them?  Can you say "Monopoly power"?
The free market does not make monopolies, government does.
So, the way to break up the Microsoft monopoly is to
shrink the government, not grow the government as many
supporters of the DOJ want to do.  For example, stop
giving patents to software code that isn't an intellectual
achievement but only an obvious method to get to a certain
goal.  Maybe we should do away with software patents and
allow only copyright protection.
Any company ought to be free to take the Windows API and
write (clean room) an operating system that will execute
that API without any fear of patent violation.
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