The Department of Justice should take a hint from the Microsoft suit: Don't go after Google.

Easy to agree with conclusion of this article at Slate, but not the premises...

“The antitrust prosecution against Microsoft was misguided. To be sure, the government had the facts right—in the late 1990s, the software giant looked unbeatable.”

You think they are beatable now? Apple, the only serious commercial competitor switched to Intel processors, and the majority of Apple computers now dual boot to Windows, or run virtualization software that runs Windows in a window. These copies of Windows which must be purchased separately actually make more money for MS than the copies bundled with a new computer. Apple isn't a competitor, it's a partner.

'When Gates learned that Intel was building a chip that would let programmers deploy enhanced graphics within non-Microsoft operating systems, he wrote to Intel CEO Andy Grove, "I don't understand why Intel funds a group that is against Windows 95." Intel stopped developing the chip.'

And what has changed now, other than they have learned to use the telephone rather than e-mail for these communications? Everyone now depends on Intel, for almost all computing where Microsoft has an interest. The exceptions are fringe, and not insurmountable. Yes, if everyone replaced every PC with an iPhone Microsoft would be in trouble, but that's not about to happen. I'm quite sure that everyone at the Department of Justice that has an iPhone (and there are probably quite a few) are using them to connect to machines running copies of Windows and Office that together cost more than the iPhone itself. While there is a huge infrastructure needed to earn Apple what it makes on that iPhone, for Microsoft, all they produce is a tick mark on a spreadsheet somewhere where DoJ keeps track of how many Windows/Office licenses they “need”.

“The theory behind the prosecution was that Microsoft's mobster tactics would raise the price of software and slow down innovation. But that didn't happen.”

How do you measure something that didn't happen? This reminds me of young people who say things like “If it weren't for Microsoft we wouldn't have the PC as it exists today.” Maybe not. Maybe we would have something more reliable, using less power, not prone to spyware or pop-ups, free from spam. There a lot of innovations that simply didn't happen because both Microsoft and Intel sucked all the oxygen out of the room. The threats posed to MS/Intel by either Google or Apple are all future tense and speculative.

“It got beat anyway. Many of Microsoft's assets turned out not to matter, because upstarts like Google and old foes like Apple found ways to innovate around them.”

With MS still holding majority share in all of these areas and making enough profit every year to buy thousands of small businesses, you have a very creative definition of “beat”.

“Windows and Office—that it was blind to opportunities in new markets. Microsoft couldn't make a Web e-mail system like Gmail, because that would have threatened Outlook.”

But that's exactly what they are doing. “Hotmail” as they used to call it is the equivalent of Gmail in almost every respect that matters... only your get a few more features from it if you happen to be using Windows and Internet Explorer. Office Live will give, again, steadfast Microsoft supplicants like the DoJ full online versions of their favorite applications. The advantage of Google products will evaporate overnight. What's the primary difference between the Google way of doing things and Microsoft way? Google doesn't lock you into a single OS or single Office suit. Microsoft does. Advantage Microsoft.

“Yes, the first iPod didn't work on Windows. In time, it would help render Windows irrelevant.”

Get back to us when Slate or the Department of Justice replace all their desktop PCs with iPhones.

“Google has the resources to keep fighting these fights, and eventually it may win. But nothing in Google's history guarantees success.”

Now you're talking sense. Google's market share could evaporate almost over night. Transition from Windows to Android or anything else could take years (ask the Europeans). Google has the resources to fight Microsoft's well entrenched monopoly now. But setbacks in search would see most of these efforts that threaten Microsoft starved of funding.

“Varney has said that antitrust enforcement is a key tool for regulators to keep the economy running smoothly. But in the tech business, antitrust regulators are often too slow, fighting battles long after they've ceased to matter to consumers.”

I don't know about Varney's politics, but her statements about technology smack of cluelessness. If DoJ is like other federal agencies I've worked with, the top several layers of entrenched bureaucrats are clueless about technology as well. It's not clear they understand the law either. As far as the economy goes, this is a bad time to accuse anyone in Washington of understanding it. Remember that unemployment in Washington is hovering around two percent.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

WOW!

Price Tag of Health Reform Bill Prompts Sparring and a Delay in Congress - washingtonpost.com

In a speech to the American Medical Association on Monday, Obama bragged that he had spelled out $950 billion worth of budget cuts and tax increases over the next 10 years -- an amount, he said, that takes "us almost all the way to covering the full cost of health-care reform."

But the independent CBO estimated that a draft bill by the Senate Finance Committee would cost $1.6 trillion, a figure that Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) described as "a jolt of reality."

That reality can be nasty stuff.

Whitacre Vows to ‘Learn About Cars’ as Chairman of New GM Board - Bloomberg.com

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.

Not to criticize his selection (I don't know enough one way or the other), but if you look at the history of AT&T you will see that it was for most of it's history a monopoly until roughly 1984 when it was busted up into several smaller regional monopolies providing local phone service. AT&T then proceeded to flounder around either merging with other companies or spinning off parts of itself in a desperate struggle to survive as a non-monopoly company.

The regional bells, continuing to rake in unearned profits wisely sought to diversify themselves, going into publishing, cable TV, cellular, and even the furniture business. It would be at least very difficult to catalogue where all the monopoly money ended up, except to say that some of it, if not most of it, ended up wasted on dead-end products and projects. In the process all the baby-bells as they cam to be called went on wild rebranding sprees yielding meaningless names such as Verizon, Qwest and SBC (which might have stood for Southwest Bell Corporation at one time but just stands for SBC (nothing ) now).

I certainly don't know what Whitacre's real resume would look like, but he was at least NOT with AT&T during most of this time, but when AT&T re-merged with SBC in 2005 (AT&T as the company being acquired) he was head of SBC, not AT&T.

Someone else can figure out to what extent he was responsible for the success of what was still a mini-monopoly, I'm more interested in the principle than the individual.

The principle being, as someone put it recently, that most of these companies are not too big to fail, they are in fact too big to exist. I personally think that busting the AT&T monopoly was a good thing, particularly as it wasn't just a big company it was almost an extension of the government in its monopoly powers.

Now, in saving GM (and some banking and investment businesses), we are moving in the opposite direction, that of combining more and more businesses into government run monopolies (including offloading of Chrystler to the Italians so that we at Government Motors only have one remaining private company, Ford, to deal with). Of course we are told that all of this is only temporary. Problem with that is that temporary can turn into a very long time.

The two most likely outcomes are that GM will succeed, at the expense of the only other large American car company, ending real choice, or that through gross mismanagement, it will fail, leaving taxpayers with a big bill to pay and also leaving Americans with only one company to chose from.

Very little that is good can come from this, but our die has been cast, and I will not let those around me forget who (which voters that is) are the responsible parties. Before anyone protests, no, the Obama administration didn't cause it all, they have just provided the "punch line" that shifts our course from heading toward simple socialism to something much much more sinister.

For the real punch in the gut, we should all remember that none of these recent course changes can be corrected during most of our lifetimes, assuming we start correcting them in 2010, which is still doubtful considering new high school graduates know almost nothing about this country's history or how its government was designed to work. Congratulations to all of you who "won".

Postal chief says post office running out of money

"Lawmakers also raised questions regarding recent news reports that Potter is paid as much as $800,000 a year. That is not correct, Potter said. He said his salary, set by Congress, is $263,575. He said the news reports were counting his retirement fund, the cost of his security detail and a $135,000 bonus that would be paid over 10 years after he retires."

Bonus?!!!
Security detail?!!!!
For a "failing company"?!!!!!

Tax it at 90% !!!!!

Anyway, I'm posting here not to further bash the postal service. But I'm not here to praise them either.

Here is a recent personal experience:

I work with a group that recently set about to mail out a book to interested parties in my local area.

We sent out a post card to 20,000 people or so. If they returned the post card with their mailing address we would send them the book for free.

The post office sends out the card to "resident" and distributes them to everyone on certain mailing routes. I get them all the time, you do too, and the senders don't have to be bothered to know your name or address to get those advertisements to you. Now we couldn't afford to send the book to all 20,000 people, but a few hundred is doable, and that's about the number we expected to respond, and that's about what we got.

The book costs us about $2. Postage cost us another $2. The padded envelope was around $1.50 I think an I'm sure we could have done better on that price with better planning.

The surprise was when we got several "postage due" notices back in our P.O. box. Since the postage was applied at the post office and not as a result of us licking stamps, I couldn't understand how we could owe any postage.

Turns out though that some people gave us bad addresses, or we wrote them poorly, or the people have moved. Whatever.

We have to pay postage on having these books returned to us. The postage, also around $2.

I asked the clerk what would happen if I just ignored these postage due things. He had to ask someone else, but the answer was that they would simply throw the packages away.

Since the replacement value of the book is actually a bit less than the return postage (about 50 cents less as I've rounded the numbers above) and the envelope is not re-usable, it's cheaper for us to allow the books to be thrown away than to get them back.

That's just one example of the things I've learned about the way the post office works in the past few years. With regard to getting a P.O. Box, having mailboxes installed at a building, dealing with lost keys, or mailing things out, they have a lot of policies that are just not "customer oriented". The people at the counter are friendly, often shaking their heads along with me at some of the seemingly arbitrary policies.

But consider that the postal service is probably the most "customer friendly" part of the Federal government. Try getting the same sympathetic reaction from the IRS, the Social Security administration, or try even speaking to someone in any other part of the Federal government about anything and you will realize that it is a big uncaring "black box" over which you have no control, other than voting for more of it, or less of it.

No matter what your special hot-button issues are, growth of government is the thing most likely to affect you and your progeny. If you are watching the man move the cups around and not keeping your eye on that ball, you will surely lose.

Charles Krauthammer - The Fierce Urgency of Pork - washingtonpost.com

"And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction."

Report On Water Quality Withheld - washingtonpost.com

"A report that shows a decline in quality in northern Montgomery County waterways has been held from public release for months by county officials who have delayed the gloomy news while they hunt for new methods to allow more development but keep streams healthy.

The unpublished data on the county's four 'special protection areas' show that water quality in northern Montgomery is worse than in previous years and suggest that much of the decline comes from soil disturbed by rapid development in and around Clarksburg, according to several people familiar with the findings. The data suggest that sediment control systems used by builders and required by the county are not working well enough."

Journal of smitty_one_each (243267)

Sometimes I back-and-forth on Slashdot's Journals. Maybe because the articles themselves are so poorly chosen. This one (click the title) is about government deficits or something, and someone implied "oh just raise taxes!". (My remarks here have been extended and revised)...



I know people that call themselves "conservative" because they believe in raising taxes however much it takes to eliminate deficit spending. Such people I gather don't know much about how the government's budget process works nor how the funds allocated get sub-allocated within departments.

Conservatives (real ones that is), here there and everywhere increase deficits because it simply isn't possible (politically) for them to go to every department (or even a single one in most cases) and say "Fire half the staff, and auction off their office contents." Oh sweet Jesus if such a thing were only possible! Cutting taxes without reducing spending explicitly is called "starve the beast", and it helps to slow down increases in government spending (which we absurdly consider "inevitable"). Ironically, cutting taxes often results in increased government revenue for at least a while. But that's a topic for another day.

During the Clinton administration the government was closed down for part of a month so that he could engage in a pissing contest with the Republican Congress. Go read up on all the disastrous consequences of that shutdown...

Back yet? The only thing that was a disaster was the the Republicans gave in. Government workers who I spoke with were at first enjoying their free time off. They lost no vacation time and eventually got paid for staying home. But some of them worried that things were going a bit TOO well without them, and indeed it was. "Critical services" were exempt from this political farce, but the building I worked in was near emptied nonetheless. The group I worked in were not on the "critical services" list, but we contractors didn't want to go without pay for the duration (got that?: government workers were paid for staying home, contractors were not, even though it was contractors that mostly did the work while government people stood around and watched) so one of our bosses found a loophole regarding how we were funded (not taxpayers money as it turned out) that allowed us to continue working. In fact we probably got more work done in those few weeks than ever before or since without all the babbling interruptions from our government taskmasters.

Obama claimed during his campaign that he would approach government waste with a scalpel rather than a hatchet. I'm not going to let anyone forget that.

Clinton claims to have balanced the budget not only be increasing taxes again, but by cutting government. What he means by that is that he didn't reverse course on a military base closings plan that was set into motion by his predecessor. God bless him for that. As far as I know that was the last foreign policy decision that Clinton made before launching some cruise missiles somewhere far far away from Monica Lewinski.

Obama will receive a windfall in the form of (once again) savings on our military budget as we withdraw troops from, well pretty much everywhere I hope, and not because I'm an isolationist, or anti-military. I think the world needs to grow up and stop waiting for us to come in and save the day all the time. Let Germany and France become yet again fearful of what Russia (or Iran for that matter) might do to them if they get into a bad mood. In the process we will learn that former military people don't necessarily make good social workers, there are no farm or factory jobs for them to go back to and our police forces are already well supplied with people who think they are occupying a foreign country (hey did you read about that?!).

I'm just dying to see that Obama scalpel at work. I think he'll wish he had promised to use a hatchet after all.

Thomas Sowell in his book "Basic Economics" starts out with this definition of the term:

"Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses."

Every ten or fifteen years we apparently need a refresher course (or at least some people do).

I hear the school bell ringing now.

Auto aid still uncertain, job losses feared - Yahoo! News

"Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said the economy would be devastated if an automaker were forced into bankruptcy or shut down."

Dat's Fwank to you buddy!

The photos of these congressmen holding their heads and grimacing as though they are actually capable of a coherent thought process is priceless. Oscars to all!

Perot Charts » Charting Government Fiscal Irresponsibility

"The American people must wake up and face the reality that promises made in the past will soon bankrupt this nation. These problems are explained in an easy-to-understand chart presentation discussed further at the bottom of this page. Comments to the charts and other material described to the right are encouraged."

He's BAAAACK.

D.C. Tries Cash as a Motivator In School - washingtonpost.com

"For years, school officials have used detention, remedial classes, summer school and suspensions to turn around poorly behaved, underachieving middle school students, with little results. Now they are introducing a program that will pay students up to $100 per month for displaying good behavior."

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that will work.

I just heard about the results of a program to reward kids who pass proficiency tests to get into college. Results: fewer kids passing, lower scores. Of course the lower scores can be explained by kids taking the test just for the chance to "win" money. Fewer kids passing: Our retarded public education system.

Records Sought in AMD's Suit Against Intel - WSJ.com

AMD filed its suit in 2005, alleging that Intel engaged in a world-wide campaign to coerce its customers into not doing business with AMD. A trial date is set for 2010. News Corp.'s Dow Jones & Co. unit, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, was among the organizations making the request.

Twenty Ten?!

That was news to me, I find it hard to believe.

I wonder if FTC computer systems aren't sabotaging the effort?

FTC Bureau of Competition

The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition champions the rights of American consumers by promoting and protecting free and vigorous competition. The Bureau:

* reviews mergers and acquisitions, and challenges those that would likely lead to higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation;
* seeks out and challenges anticompetitive conduct in the marketplace, including monopolization and agreements between competitors;
* promotes competition in industries where consumer impact is high, such as health care, real estate, oil & gas, technology, and consumer goods;
* provides information, and holds conferences and workshops, for consumers, businesses, and policy makers on competition issues and market analysis.

These guys must be new. What you want to bet they are all running Windows machines?

More Passport Files Breached, File of Beyonce Knowles Among Those Accessed - CBS News

"The Inspector General’s report indicated the agency’s oversight of passport files had “many control weaknesses including a general lack of policies, procedures, guidance, and training'. The agency was also criticized for having no standardized response or disciplinary process for employees who breach personal files."

Uh. How can I add to that?

Oh, yeah... planning for new projects and documentation of past projects could use a lot of work too. But in those things that seems to be just how things are done at the fed level (with some exceptions in the military... planes, helicopters and munitions don't tend to work too well, or at all without planning and documentation).

Fair Tax Videos by a former employer of mine

Microsoft Yahoo Merger

The Chickens Come Home to Roost

Here is my theory, just based on personal experience, with no hard facts (but some rationales) to back it up:

Companies know more about their revenue sources than they are required to report. FASB rules require them to be consistent about how they report, but they are also allowed to change how they report from time to time. You can "book" revenue from a sale immediately, or spread it out over time, or put it off until all product is delivered if you want. I've worked for small, privately held companies where I knew the accounting people, and I know that while changing the way we booked revenue or merging or splitting of a part of the organization often had innocent (i.e. valid business) explanations, the real explanation was often to obscure failures at the executive level. Failures to sell new product, failures to manage cost of delivery, or (and this is especially true of small companies) failures to manage executive perks which often sapped company resources.

In the 2000 time frame I worked for a large organization that signed a volume purchase agreement (VPA) with Microsoft. I don't know when Microsoft started using these VPAs, but I do remember reading that they changed the way they "booked" them about that time too although that didn't strike me as interesting at the time. The process was heralded by people higher up in the organization as a major cost savings, but as time went on and as activities associated with the VPA either happened, or in some cases were just stated to have happened, I began to suspect that there was no actual cost saving and that we might actually be spending more on Microsoft products than we would have otherwise.

I remember us having to come up with a count, which was really an estimate, of how many Windows PCs we (the entire organization) had. I know the count was more of a wild ass guess than it was a count, and the count was rounded up to satisfy Microsoft and (theoretically) get a lower unit cost. This organization was big, very big. Very few of our machines were on the Internet, and most of the machines were only networked locally, in many hundreds of LANs with local administrators. Had some new inventory process been imposed on these people I would have heard about it, and I didn't hear about it. Furthermore, most of these machines were not typical desktops, but were in place to run a specific set of locally written applications. They did not need to run Microsoft Office, for example, but the counting process glossed over that fact and even included the rights to run Microsoft products that weren't in use at all. The whole thing seemed to be a publicity stunt for certain organization managers, sounding great for the customer, but was really a windfall for Microsoft.

We were running Windows 2000, and nowhere near ready to convert to XP since in fact there were stragglers still running Windows NT, so in effect, we were paying a second time for software we already had. No worry though, said Microsoft, the contract includes an upgrade to XP, whenever we decided to do it, that is, as long as it is within five years, after which you do another VPA (I remember out VPA being for five years, but I don't think all VPAs have that term, some are shorter, I don't know if they come in longer terms as well). Nominally in fact the VPA was for Windows XP, it's just that other than writing a big check to Microsoft, nobody cared when or if the upgrade actually occurred. Do I have to spell out the rest of the story?

My guess is that the number of deals such as this is large (the entire Federal government agency by agency for a start) and when Microsoft makes claims about the number of 2000, or XP, or Vista licenses out there it's a lot of accounting tricks, after all, we didn't get an actual copy of any Microsoft products for each machine we ran. Instead we installed off the net, or from copies of copies of copies of the original disks. No need to mess with those fancy laser printed product keys. A single key made all the installs work without contacting the mother ship.

Yes, there was a costs "savings" for these VPAs, but the savings failed to take into account that facts that: (1) the machines were purchased with Windows already installed, (2) previous licenses had paid for the software again, (3) VPA1 had paid again, and (4) a subsequent VPA2 paid yet a fourth time. The savings MIGHT materialize if there were more frequent product releases from Microsoft (but guess who controls that) and only then if the customer were able to upgrade almost immediately (something the technical people know wasn't going to happen, but then the company/government negotiators are not generally technical people).

So, when Microsoft does their quarterly reports on how many licenses of various products they have sold I figure they are about as accurate as a weather forecast for this day next month. This is not just because I don't trust Microsoft, but because I think a lot of companies play these games. Maybe all of them do.

The difference between these "booked" numbers and what Microsoft deposits into the bank every quarter gives them a lot of room to paint a rosy picture when things are dropping off. If that is the case, and they make subsequent cuts or change their business in some drastic way those ruts in income stream can be smoothed out and the problem resolved without stockholders ever noticing. The more other activities the company is involved with, the more room there is to spread the blame around, making it look like the sacred cash cows are still in good shape while only these new (and ultimately expendable) ventures are holding things back.

Of course these book-cooking operations can't hide a monotonically decreasing income picture forever. The actions you have to take in the background get more and more drastic. Microsoft could use the billions they have in the bank to pay off any shortfalls they have, but that doesn't impress the stock market. If instead, you do something to drastically change the way you keep your books, say merge with another large company, spend most of your cash, stock swaps, redundancy layoffs... Some of these actions may actually improve your picture, but even if they don't you get an excellent opportunity to obscure the picture even further and a chance to promise shareholders that once the merger costs are absorbed, things will be wonderful again.

That's what I think is going on here, and because I think Yahoo has been playing similar games, no matter if the merger goes through or not, both companies are going to face dismal futures unless they make actual and substantive changes to their business models rather than superficial ones. (And did I mention the long term costs of ignoring your customers actual needs while you tinkered with your company spreadsheets?)

(This post revised and extended from an original Slashdot comment I made)

Mold threatens Miami courthouse - Yahoo! News

"Across the street, a new 14-story courthouse sits unused, more than $60 million over budget and three years behind schedule. Electrical problems, hurricane damage and contractor disputes are blamed for the delay, which shows no sign of ending."

Report: NARA doubted White House e-mail archives in 2004

"At the end of each administration, records are transferred to NARA. But while the administration is in office, the Presidential Records Act, gives it records management authority.

Since the White House switched its e-mail system from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Xchange in 2002, it has relied primarily on the manual process called “journaling” in which e-mail messages are manually named and saved as .pst files on White House servers."

UGH. (I think they meant to say "Exchange", unless one of the vendors involved has convinced them to use a bootleg version from China.)