I wonder if even “unsuccessful” impeachment works
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Is someone actually saying this? Who would ever say “regardless of legal case”? Countless companies right now are breaking anti-trust laws already on the books (they’re just not being enforced)… The “policy ends” in question would be the established rule of law, which was enacted to improve competition and ultimately, the quality of life for ordinary people. Hell, it’s even bi-partisan.
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Nokia for some reason put an ex-Microsoft exec (Stephen Elop) in as its CEO, replacing a life-long Nokia employee. Elop then proceeded to infiltrate Microsoft tech. Then Nokia was sold to Microsoft. Then it was closed down. There’s no proof he was a mole but he might as well have been. Oh and I left out the 18 million euro exit bonus, his move back to Microsoft, and his special-case preferential income tax treatment from Finland.
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It’s not quite as straightforward as that. Microsoft Solitaire (and Minesweeper) convinced an awful lot of business types that DOS was dead and and DOS-based software was obsolete. This forced a bunch of software companies to rush their conversion efforts, and WordPerfect was Exhibit A.
The DOS version of WordPerfect 7 was a really excellent piece of software - a couple of my clients are still running it under vDOS - but the Windows version of WP7 was a nightmare: slow, crashy, and buggy as hell. It took WordPerfect two or three major releases to get back to being a usable word processor; by that time ,Word had eaten their lunch and they’d entered the cycle of mergers and acquisitions from which they’ve never emerged.
Microsoft crushed WordPerfect, basically, because the applications wing of the company talked to the operating-system division, and so Microsoft developers were better able to write Windows applications than developers from other companies. A lot of ink has been spilled over the question of whether the coziness of that internal relationship crossed any legal bright lines; I’m not really sure. (There’s plenty of evidence that the OS division went out of their way to assist any developer who asked for help - Raymond Chen comes to mind. It’s just that the guys at the other end of the building asked for help more consistently.) Microsoft did do a lot of skeezy stuff in those days, but I think WordPerfect was its own worst enemy: at first they didn’t take the necessity of a Windows version seriously, and then they panicked and rushed to release a steaming pile of crap.
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I personally think that pushing back on Word is one of the most important things any business user can do. Its no good for the computing world to have only one word processing solution. Take it from somebody who’s seen their whole industry lead around by the cock by AutoDesk.
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I agree; I personally use LibreOffice whenever possible. I suppose to be truly virtuous I ought to buy the current Corel WordPerfect suite and use it, but life is too damn short for that noise.
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Probably won’t work with Trump. Some historians contend that it worked with Johnson, but the reconciliatory impulse can be a dangerous one.
Quite a number. I certainly recall a sentiment during the banking crisis that the fact that the bankers had brought the world to the brink of economic collapse should be enough to prosecute. What law? Nobody knew and was almost besides the point. Wrongdoing had definitely been done, and bringing a case would have a salutary effect on the industry.
So, no, that cases should only be brought when they are considered winnable is not a given. Allowing companies to “walk” simply because they have carefully shaped their actions to break no laws (or at least make successful prosecution nearly impossible) is not always popular.
If you say so. But I don’t doubt the existence of that general sentiment or unfocused desire for punishment.
Interesting article on the lack of post-2008 prosecutions here.
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Excellent article. I’ll keep that one bookmarked. Thanks!
I think I a decent case can be made for government using unwinnable prosecutions to deter technically legal but massively harmful and unethical behaviour on the part of corporations. I just don’t think the over-all costs of that behaviour outweigh the benefits.
Darn tootin’, Bill! And there’d be a Zune in every pocket too, I suppose?
Brilliant. I shall be borrowing that chemistry analogy for the future.
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