Word: jacksonism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...decision by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to find Microsoft guilty of violating antitrust laws was a positive step in freeing the computer industry from the anticompetitive tactics of the software giant. After the exhaustive trial and the clear findings of fact issued last November, the public can feel confident that the facts stand fully behind Jackson's decision. Yet justice will not have been fully served until the court specifies an appropriate remedy and the verdict is allowed to stand on appeal...
...language of the decision is unequivocal. Although it is not illegal to dominate a market--for reasons of quality or otherwise--it is illegal to abuse that monopoly power to shut down potential competitors or to gain monopolies in new markets. Microsoft's efforts to this end, Jackson ruled, constitute "a deliberate assault upon entrepreneurial efforts" that had the potential to benefit consumers. In this way, Microsoft placed "an oppressive thumb" on the scales of competition, using its power to tilt the market in its favor...
...evidence at trial showed that the company paid vast sums and "renounced many millions more in lost revenue every year" to decrease the market share of Netscape Navigator--spending that "can only represent a rational investment if its purpose was to perpetuate the applications barrier to entry." Concluded Jackson: "Microsoft's decision to tie Internet Explorer to Windows cannot truly be explained as an attempt to benefit consumers and improve the efficiency of the software market generally, but rather as part of a larger campaign to quash innovation that threatened its monopoly position...
...created a Windows-only version of Java, designed its programming software so that developers would "unwittingly" write Windows-only software and used technical information about Windows as a bargaining chip to force other companies to distribute its version of Java rather than Sun's more compatible version. "These actions," Jackson wrote, "cannot be described as competition on the merits, and they did not benefit consumers...
...NASDAQ is in a correction. No, the market is not crashing. And no, the whole thing isn't Thomas Penfield Jackson's fault. NASDAQ's ticker numbers dropped with the swiftness of an elevator in free fall on Monday and early Tuesday, leaving angry investors waving their fists at Judge Jackson for his ruling against Microsoft Monday afternoon. But as the market rebounded in the second half of trading Tuesday, it became more and more clear that the long-inflated NASDAQ may simply be approaching normalcy, with profitable firms such as Cisco and Intel bouncing back to respectable numbers while...