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The LangaList

2-Dec-99

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa About BrowserTune,
HotSpots, Columns, Tips & Tricks, and Other Activities

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1) Hold Onto Your Wallet---Here Come The Lawyers

It was inevitable, I suppose. Within days of Judge Jackson's findings of fact that pilloried Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior, a group of antitrust lawyers in California filed suit "on behalf of consumers" to recover unspecified damages and to remedy the harm that Microsoft supposedly had inflicted on these hapless users. Then lawyers from Florida and several other states joined in with suits of their own.

What a crock.

The Findings of Fact specify amazingly few concrete examples of actual harm to consumers. Three keys ones were that some users might not want a free browser(!); and that Microsoft probably could have charged less for upgrades over the years; and that if Microsoft hadn't been so aggressive, there might be wondrous other products available now from other companies.

There are obvious problems with all of these points, and I've made them the subject of this week's column at InformationWeek Online. In fact, and unlike much of the recitation of  "fact" so far, I try to give very concrete, very specific examples.

Here's one: Judge Jackson--no techie he--seems to believe prices for Windows should have fallen over the years. But consider this: I went rummaging in my closet and dug out the actual original equipment manufacturer install disks for the pre-monopoly Windows 3.0 (circa 1990) that came with a PC I once had. There are five 1.2-Mbyte floppies, or 6 Mbytes total code. My current copy of Win98SE, not including the samples and demos that ship on the CD, comprises 339 Mbytes. In other words, today's Windows ships with 57 times more software than in 1990, yet the software costs more or less the same now as it did then. Yes, there's an easy joke about "code bloat" in there, but any rational observer will admit that a lot of that extra code represents extra functionality. 

Gosh, those evil people from Microsoft! How dare they give us 57 times the software for roughly the same price! They must be punished!

Sigh.

I know I'm in the minority, but I'm not alone. For example, a column in the influential San Francisco Chronicle also concludes that the "Microsoft Ruling Serves Rivals, Not Consumers." (See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/30//ED101835.DTL&type=tech_article . Note that this very-long URL may word-wrap in your email reader or browser; you may need to unwrap it to visit the site properly.) Although I usually agree with very little of that particular author's thinking, this time I think he's dead-on.

To bring this back to my column: I will bet you right now that if the class-action suit progresses, the only real beneficiaries will be the lawyers themselves. And that's ironic: the lawyers will use a largely imaginary harm to consumers to justify a huge and very real monetary benefit to themselves.

But what's your take? Do you think you will actually benefit from any class action suits? Do you feel that on balance, Microsoft actions actually and directly harmed you? Does having more lawyers involved increase or decrease the chances that all this will be settled in a just---and not merely legal---way? 

Come check out the specific examples I give, and then join in the discussion at http://www.informationweek.com/langaletter !

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2) Last Days To Explore Access-Sharing

There are just four more days to join in the current discussion on "New Access-Sharing Solutions." That article and the posts from your fellow readers examine new products for sharing a single Internet connection among several (or many) PCs; and also look at products that prevent *too much* sharing---such as with hackers!

Last chance to check it out at: http://content.techweb.com/winmag//columns/explorer/1999/1122.htm

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3) Let's Play "Name That Replicant!"

Ever get so familiar with something that it becomes unfamiliar again? Well, last issue, I told you about Prilissa, a variant of the Melissa virus (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/nov-29-99.htm#pril ); I mentioned that the name was a hybrid of Melissa and Pril, the nasty female replicant (having a terminally bad hair day) from the movie Blade Runner.

Blade Runner is a great movie with an amazingly textured and complete vision of the future. It's by Ridley Scott (who did that famous Apple "1984" commercial, plus the movies Black Rain, Thelma and Louise, Someone To Watch Over Me, the original Alien, and more), and is based on a Phillip Dick story called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" It features a great, moody  musical score by Vangelis, and a cast of now-famous actors (Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah, Sean Young, Emmet Walsh, Edward James Olmos...) who were then far less well known. Because they still were at the ego-less stage of their careers, they gave great, unselfconscious performances.  I love the movie and know it well; in fact, my very first DVD was a copy of the director's cut of the movie (the one without the sappy driving-into-the-beautiful-forest-together ending). 

But---ahem---the sexy replicant's name is Pris, not Pril. Um, I knew that. Honest. 

Thanks to all the Blade Runner fans who wrote in to point out my lapse. I guess that memory had become "lost, like tears in rain." <g>

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4) Security Problem #1 

If you're running NT4 and IE5 (not IE5.01), then you may be affected by the "IE Task Scheduler" Vulnerability. (Note, this problem does NOT affect Win9x, or other versions of IE).

The problem is in the optional "Offline Browsing Pack" Task Scheduler, which can replace NT's native scheduler. IE's scheduler doesn't check "user privileges" properly, so a non-privileged user can use the scheduler to perform tasks he or she isn't supposed to be able to do on a secured NT machine.

There's a FAQ on this issue at http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/MS99-051faq.asp  

If (and only if) you're running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 on a Windows NT 4.0 system, and have installed the optional Offline Browsing Pack, then you might have this problem. The fix is inelegant: Microsoft says you should install IE5.01, which does not have the vulnerability.

IE 5.01 is at http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/ie501_win32/en/ie501_win32.htm

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5) And Security Problem #2

This one affects people running Windows 95 and Windows 98 (but NOT Windows98SE).

The pre-Win98SE versions of Win9x cached network passwords in a way that could be hacked. 

If you're running Win95, grab the patch at
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95/update/168115/w95/en-us/168115us5.exe

If you're running Win98 "first edition," grab the patch at
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win98/update/168115/w98/en-us/168115us8.exe

Again, Windows 98 Second Edition is NOT affected by this vulnerability.

More info? See: http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/MS99-052faq.asp .

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6) New FREE Book Drawing Now Open!

On Tuesday, Nov 30, I randomly chose another monthly winner of a copy of "Poor Richard's E-Mail Publishing: Creating Newsletters, Bulletins, Discussion Groups and Other Powerful Communications Tools." This book has been described as "An excellent, straightforward manual on email publishing, banner ads, driving traffic and especially ethics."  (I'm waiting for a confirmation email from the winner; if he's disappeared, I'll draw another name. Once I have a confirmed winner, I'll tell you his/her name.)

In any case, it's a brand new month with a brand-new chance to win a book. To enter,  just use the following link to recommend the LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful information; I just may gain a new subscriber; and you just may win a book! (Full details also available via this link):

http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2 

Or, if you'd like to try to win a Palm III organizer, try this link (full details also available here):

http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1

Either way, thank you, and good luck!

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7) New Mac OS

The current PC Mag has a mini-review of the new MacOS 9; the OS is a yawner comprising mostly minor upgrades that still don't correct the Mac's ancient core architectural problems: Under the hood, MacOS9 is still conceptually akin to a decade-old copy of Windows 3.x in the way it handles essential core functions such as memory management.

For a really up-to-date OS, Mac users will have to wait until MacOSX ships next year. If it lives up to its billing, OSX will finally bring the Mac more or less up to par with Windows98---but not Windows 2000.

It's fascinating: MacFanatics loudly cheer when Apple releases a minor update to an obsolete OS design. But yet they pillory Microsoft when it releases minor updates or enhancements to its OS--- an OS that is years ahead of the MacOS in almost every significant regard.

Guess I'm still not thinking different enough. <g>

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8) Just For Grins

From Australia, where summer is approaching, reader Dr. Ian Whyte sends along these notes on "Dead horses and ways modern business deals with them." I'm relieved to see these aren't uniquely American solutions. <g> 

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase the rider's load share.
9. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its
full original cost.
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve
productivity.
16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs
better.
18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred

(fred@langa.com)

(Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a Palm III)

An easier-to read formatted HTML version is available in the "what's new" section of http://www.langa.com.  (The HTML version of each issue normally is available by 9AM EST [GMT-5] of the issue date.) All past LangaList issues are also available via the same link.

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Disclaimer: The tips and other information given in the newsletter are researched and are believed to be accurate, but we cannot and do not guarantee that all the information here will work on all systems, for all users, all the time. All information herein is offered as-is and without warranty of any kind. Neither Langa Consulting LLC, nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from application of any information presented here.

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