Dave Winer's latest davenet piece is worth the read. Very interesting to connect the larger war on terrorism with the smaller battles being fought in the internet arena. So much of modern fighting is about information and intelligence gathering. These things really do fit together.
I haven't said anything about the microsoft settlement because I don't think there's much to say. It's horrible, but not unexpected. I don't have enough information to be sure, but Dave's ideas feel right to me. Micorsoft and the governement made a deal - we just don't know what kind of deal. And given Microsoft's power and reach (especially in light of this settlement) they have quite a bit to give the government. So yes, it does scare me. Read the davenet piece for a good understanding of why.
However, there are some things working in the other direction. Mozilla, for instance, might turn out to be rather important (like it seemed in the beginning, but hasn't seemed to me for a long time now.) Sure that project has been slow to evolve, but that might be because there wasn't much need for it. Internet Explorer is a good browser. Even netscape 4.7 is a good browser (although it gives web designers fits.) But if Microsoft suddenly started censoring web sites through its control of the browser (with a wink and a nudge coming from the government) I think you'd see an explosion of interest in Mozilla. People do care, they just don't always care ahead of time. Outlook might actually be harder to unthrown (outside of the mail client in mozilla, are there any mature open source mail clients?) but I can't see how Microsoft could choke things off as easily with Outlook as they might be able to do by (mis)using Explorer. But again, if they tried that (in a full scale assault on freedom way) people would just make the jump most tech savvy people have been arguing for them to make for years: don't use microsoft products.
So I'm not as scared as I might be by all this. On the other hand, Dave's P.P.S. about loving the checks and balances provided by the judicial branch doesn't bring me much comfort. Remember the last presidential election? The lower courts - maybe - but the supreme court has lost my vote of confidence.
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I haven't said anything about the microsoft settlement because I don't think there's much to say. It's horrible, but not unexpected. I don't have enough information to be sure, but Dave's ideas feel right to me. Micorsoft and the governement made a deal - we just don't know what kind of deal. And given Microsoft's power and reach (especially in light of this settlement) they have quite a bit to give the government. So yes, it does scare me. Read the davenet piece for a good understanding of why.
However, there are some things working in the other direction. Mozilla, for instance, might turn out to be rather important (like it seemed in the beginning, but hasn't seemed to me for a long time now.) Sure that project has been slow to evolve, but that might be because there wasn't much need for it. Internet Explorer is a good browser. Even netscape 4.7 is a good browser (although it gives web designers fits.) But if Microsoft suddenly started censoring web sites through its control of the browser (with a wink and a nudge coming from the government) I think you'd see an explosion of interest in Mozilla. People do care, they just don't always care ahead of time. Outlook might actually be harder to unthrown (outside of the mail client in mozilla, are there any mature open source mail clients?) but I can't see how Microsoft could choke things off as easily with Outlook as they might be able to do by (mis)using Explorer. But again, if they tried that (in a full scale assault on freedom way) people would just make the jump most tech savvy people have been arguing for them to make for years: don't use microsoft products.
So I'm not as scared as I might be by all this. On the other hand, Dave's P.P.S. about loving the checks and balances provided by the judicial branch doesn't bring me much comfort. Remember the last presidential election? The lower courts - maybe - but the supreme court has lost my vote of confidence.
- jim 11-08-2001 2:54 pm