The other shoe drops (MS Trial)

[RacerX]

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly stated in a discussion about file formats warned the parties that she wanted all documentation " In Word. We don't want Acrobat. That doesn't work."

Okay, why doesn't it work? PDF doesn't require you to buy anything in order to read it or in many cases to make it. It can be read on more platforms than almost any other file type (a majority of the files I have on my Rhapsody ThinkPad are PDFs, and Adobe didn't even make a version of Acrobat for Rhapsody). Word cost a lot and the documents can only be read on a handful of platforms (Windows and Macs mainly, and some others using StarOffice or AbiWord if it is saved as a Word 97 doc).

They finally decided on WordPerfect, but then again who has WordPerfect? Is there a free WordPerfect reader out there? What about platforms that don't have a WordPerfect solution available to them?

I think this shows that Kollar-Kotelly is very bias, not that asking the parties to reach a settlement (after a conviction had been upheld by a higher court and her duties only required her to decide on a punishment) wasn't a bias act to begin with.

[BlingBling 3k12]

our judicial branch of government can be pretty stupid sometimes....

[adambyte]

Hey, what about rtf? I know Mac OS X's "TextEdit" uses rtf, why isn't rich text format more popular? And what programs would use it in Windows or linux?

[BlingBling 3k12]

Wordpad can open RTF files... pretty much anything i do can open RTF files...

[Boyko]

It's not the justice department - yes, this particular judge is an idiot. But it's the "mindshare" that Microsoft has. Like it or not, MS Word *Has* become the standard - of course, that alone should tip the judge off as to what the entire case is about... and these comments in and of themselves are certainly justifiable grounds for appeal.

I don't think that the judge wanted PDF because PDF is not editable, it's also (on some windows systems) buggy and prone to crash. Furthermore, they take longer to load. And you can't do a line-by-line search of key words, something perhaps very iimportant in a legal brief.

Long story short, I can see why that this particular judge made the decision, I just don't think the judge realizes that the very issue which she is supposed to decide is playing writ small on the judge's computer itself.

Most people, when asked about the Microsoft case, will shrug - most people have never even *heard* of Word Perfect. "Why doesn't everyone just use Word?" is what they'd say. "I don't get this big deal about all this, how can you have a computer without windows on it? Wouldn't it be pointless then?"

The point is, Microsoft is *so* big a monopoly that it's patently inconcevable to some to think that there could even *be* competition.

Brian.

[RacerX]

brought up by adambyte
Hey, what about rtf? I know Mac OS X's "TextEdit" uses rtf, why isn't rich text format more popular? And what programs would use it in Windows or linux?

Actually I love rtf/rtfd format, they work great with AbiWord and StarOffice (for the unix end of the market), the only problem is that not all programs format (or read formats) the same way with rich text.

brought up by Boyko
Like it or not, MS Word *Has* become the standard...

There in lies the problem, this "standard" is proprietary, exclusive and expensive. Microsoft does not make the Word format easy for others to read/write, the application Word is only available to Windows and Mac users (are a premium cost) and the only free Word reader is for Windows.

I don't think that the judge wanted PDF because PDF is not editable, it's also (on some windows systems) buggy and prone to crash. Furthermore, they take longer to load. And you can't do a line-by-line search of key words, something perhaps very iimportant in a legal brief.

But why would the Judge want documentation summitted to be editable? When we were still using paper, I don't remember courts asking for documents in pencil. What I left out was that this was for storing these documents on a CD, you wouldn't be able to edit them anyway.

As for buggy, I've used Acrobat on almost every Windows version Microsoft has released since 3.1. Adobe provides more and better tools with the Windows version of Acrobat, and Windows is the only platform Adobe makes the production version of Acrobat Capture for. As a former imaging consultant in the legal field, I had to set up such systems for large law firms, and Capture was able to deal with PDFs and TIFFs (group 4), which are the standards in document imaging. PDFs work beautifully in Windows and are searchable. Acrobat can also be used for OCR to make scanned documents searchable. As I recall you can setup Acrobat to search other PDF documents outside of the one you have open. And because you can add links within a PDF, you can make both a table of contents and and index of not only a given PDF, but also all other PDF documents on a CD.

What is not known by many is that currently Litigator’s Notebook is the standard for legal imaging tools (though I thought highly of DocuLex myself). It is a TIFF based program that works with a database of the images, but is both not as easy to use as Acrobat and also requires all parties involved to have a copy of Litigator’s Notebook. As I pointed out, Acrobat can do a search of all PDF documents within a directory, can have a single index PDF document that is linkable with all other PDF documents within a directory, and wouldn't cost other parties any additional money for a viewer.

[AdmiralAK]

Grrrr....this enrages me
the sheer ignorance os some people, the same people that are appointed to prezide over this anti-trust trial mandate the use of software that is questioned! This alone should give a guilty verdict to M$!


My question too is WHY would the court need editable docs ? They are evidence, not drafts for college essays!



Admiral

[Klink]

I had thought the decision of abusive monopolistic practices by MS has been decided by Jackson and upheld through appeals in favor of the US. Isn't Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's role in these proceedings to rule on possible settlement?

Interesting fact- She was selected randomly by a computer program from a pool of 10 judges available to take over the suit. Some writers comment this was purposely done to hamper MS's objections to a biased Judge.

On the good foot - Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has been known to hand out stiff penalties for criminals found guilty. Not a criminal case but attitude could count.

Racer where did you find that quoted comment of "...That doesn't work.". I'm interested in reading the whole of the comments.

Decent links -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_...ft/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/bus...00/1642199.stm
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm (for the brave)