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Court Ruling Was No Victory For Microsoft BY ROBERT H. BORK AND KENNETH W. STARR While trumpeting last week's "victory" in the Court of Appeals, Microsoft executives would do well to recall the words of King Pyrrhus after his famous battle with the Romans: "One more such victory and we are lost." The truth behind the spin is that Microsoft's victory was not even pyrrhic. A quotation from George Armstrong Custer would be more appropriate, if only he'd been available for a press conference after Little Big Horn. The government won on the central issue in the case: Microsoft was held to have monopolized the operating-system market in violation of the Sherman Act. I never thought I would agree with anything Bork and Starr wrote! thanks to Scripting News
Zoe and I drove Robby and Robyn up to Vancouver, B.C., yesterday to catch a flight to Munich where they will be joining Jenny for the next two years.
 Robby is my son and Robyn's uncle. Jenny is my daughter and Robyn's single mom in the Army who needs Robby with her for child care.
 Robby and Robyn moved in with me 9 months ago and it has taken this long to get everything set up to get them to Germany. Having a 2 1/2 year old in the house has made it hard to get things done, especially when you work from home. Life has been overfull. Last night my house was very empty. So was my heart.
Hatchet Politics As we watch RAN's [Rainforest Action Network] struggle with Boise Cascade and watch corporations in general develop new weapons against their critics, it is useful to take a step back. The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (which leaves them with the unfortunate acronym POCLAD) does just that. The group's thought-provoking work on the questions of corporate power in a democracy go beyond redressing a specific wrong to ask what we can do about it in a larger sense.
A happy Fourth of July from our United States of Corporate America. (Cameron - Do you have one of these flags? I want one!)
 As everyday people freshen up Old Glory for the national birthday, Corporate America is revelling in a Golden Age. A shrinking number of the planet's biggest businesses -- AOL Time Warner, Shell, Nike, Microsoft, McDonald's -- are the money behind presidents, the power that drives global trade rules, the voice of authority on how we live and the way we think. Corporations have all the rights of we, the people, but thousands of times more money to make the system work for them. We call this system "democracy." But today it looks a lot like corporate rule. thanks to adbusters via BookNotes
Kodak tangles with Microsoft over Win XP "We were being frozen out," says Mr. Gerskovich, a 44-year-old Kodak vice president. "Consumers were effectively being denied a choice of which photo software they could use. More important, they should be able to send photos to any Internet printing service they choose--without paying a tax to Microsoft."
Kodak's story offers a snapshot of a now-familiar tale in the software business. Despite the government's antitrust case against Microsoft, which was partly upheld and partly reversed by a U.S. Court of Appeals last week, the software giant continues to use its monopoly operating-system software as a lever to pry its way into new businesses. And companies such as Kodak are responding by crying foul, hiring antitrust lawyers and lobbyists. How can anyone not see what a monster Microsoft has become? Does anyone think a non-structural remedy in the anti-trust case is going to do anything to even slow down Microsoft? thanks to Dan Gillmore
Lance Armstrong rated the number one rider after his Tour de Suisse victory. The Tour de France starts Saturday!
Zoe and I walked around Honeymoon Lake by moonlight tonight. (Full moon on the 5th.) It was a little after 11pm. We met halfway between our houses and she was excited about a red object a little below and to the left of the moon. She thought it was Mars. I said maybe it might be Jupiter. We stopped at my place and Guy Ottewell's Astronomical Calendar confirmed it was Mars. Tomorrow night it will be below and to the right of the Moon. The moon will move more and more to the left of Mars over the next week. Check it out. Houses, here on Whidbey Island, are often amongst trees which is nice but makes it difficult to do any stargazing but for a small hole of sky above. There is a lot of sky here at Honeymoon Lake. Sky which is not near any city lights and is great for star gazing.
Craig, at BookNotes, had the Garcia/Grisman CD as a featured CD as well as a link to the home of Dawg Music and a piece on the Pizza Tapes. This prompted me to write him a note and thank him for his efforts which he published on BookNotes (July 2). And he added my weblog to his list of weblogs. Does this mean that more than both my friends and my sister will be reading this? The pressure is on! I even updated my blog list. Thanks, Craig, for mentioning TestingTesting. Those of us lucky enough to have a labor of love still like to know if anyone notices. Not that, if it is a true labor of love, a lack of fame and riches will slow us down. (Maybe just discourage us a teensy bit once in a while.)
I dropped Andrew's van off this morning and picked up my motorcycle. I don't own a car. Two wheels good - four wheels bad unless, of course, you have to move. I stopped off at the Star Store to pick up some groceries. After loading the bike, I was starting to put on my helmet when an elderly woman came out of the store and started to walk by me. She must have been in her eighties. She had that tired stiff legged walk of the old. As she came abreast of me she looked over at me for a moment and asked "Doesn't that helmet get hot?" "Not if I keep moving." I replied. She thought for a moment and then waved a finger towards the bike. "When I was riding those things they didn't have helmets." She then continued on with her stiff legged walk.
I just unloaded the last load! I'm moved out. Why am I surrounded by all these boxes?
I'm in the final despair of moving. I should be done by tonight. I have to be done by tonight. Andrew needs his van back. If I had remembered what fun this is I would have moved more often.
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