Word: jacksonism
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...Then the seduction began. The lure of seeing his opinions printed verbatim in the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal would be a heady tonic for anyone who moves in the power circles of Washington D.C., let alone a district court judge in the autumn of his years. Jackson may well argue that he simply could not contain himself; his rage at the disingenuousness and the arrogance spewing forth from the Microsoft bench day after day was as ill-disguised inside the courtroom as out - more than once he called a recess, red-faced and practically spitting, to compose...
...After he'd declared Microsoft a monopoly and in violation of antitrust laws, there were signs that Jackson was bone-crushingly weary of it all. He'd been on Microsoft's case, in one form or another, for over five years now. His remedy ruling was effectively a one-fingered salute to the appeals court: if this is wrong, it said, don't bring it back to me. He must have known they'd take the bait. It didn't matter: his point had been made, and made loudly...
...even the most rabid State Attorney General will blanch at the idea of going back into court, especially with such a legal jumble of a ruling (would we have to have a rerun of the whole trial, or just the remedy phase? Looks like it's up to Jackson's successor to decide...
...That doesn't mean that nothing changed. Look at Redmond these days and you'll see a kinder, gentler Microsoft. Many of the players who earned Jackson's opprobrium are gone; even Gates has receded under the considerable shadow of CEO Steve Ballmer. Windows XP, due out this fall, is much more respectful of non-Microsoft software than its predecessors (they've made it very easy to choose Netscape as your default browser, for example). Dubious add-ons like the "smart tags" that linked words to websites chosen by Microsoft have been quietly ditched...
...much of that is a result of the trial? It's hard to say. But Microsoft was never an intentional ogre; it was just a company that grew very big, very fast, very aggressively and never had any adults around in the playground to bring it down to size. Jackson correctly surmised what was necessary: someone needed to beat Microsoft's head against a brick wall repeatedly and remind it of the existence of the rule of law. He took on the role, and the official branding of bias that comes with it. The payoff will take a little longer...