Amusement from Micro$oft Trial

<http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1998/nov/11/111100885.html>

                                           Las Vegas SUN

November 11, 1998 

Tech Terms Stump Microsoft Players

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Perhaps Microsoft attorney John Warden explained it
best: "There are a few of us, including myself, who still use fountain pens
and legal pads."

And boy, does it show at the big antitrust trial in Washington.

A case that's full of technical jargon like ISPs, OEMs, NTs, and CPUs may
seem no place for techno-neophytes. Yet some key players in the Microsoft
trial sometimes seem just that.

Could it be that Warden, Justice Department attorney David Boies and
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson are showing their age when they
stumble over technology's lingo, seemingly less familiar with it than the
average 8th grader?

The signs were apparent from the beginning.

Microsoft is renowned for its Powerpoint software, the standard for
business presentations worldwide. But when Microsoft's Warden made his
opening statement, he stuck to an old standby: the overhead projector,
sliding documents one by one, adjusting the focus by hand.

Compare that to the government's flashy, high-tech presentation, with Boies
underscoring each point with documents enlarged by computer on screens
throughout the courtroom.

Yet Boies has shown he's no technophile either.

Take, for example, his repeated references to "American Online," known to
most people as AMERICA Online, the world's leading online service provider.

Then there was the day Boies questioned a witness about a "LOW-jin."

"Log in?" the witness offered. "L-o-g, i-n?"

"Yes," Boies replied, realizing his mistake.

"You're going fine," reassured the witness, one of the nation's top
technology excecutives, Netscape's James Barksdale.

"I knew that, I knew that. I was just testing to see whether you were
paying attention," Boies said, providing one of the trial's few laughs.

To be sure, the case is a complicated one for both the average person and
the judge overseeing it without a jury. And Jackson's unfamiliarity with
some of high-tech's terms has been clear throughout.

"How do we know this is from Microsoft?" he asked once, when Warden
introduced an e-mail note.

"Where it says, 'From: Microsoft.com.' That's Microsoft," Warden explained.

"OK," the judge said, satisified.

There have been surprises.

When an Intel executive explained recently that his company used Netscape's
Internet browser, not Microsoft's, for the company's internal information
network, Jackson asked: "For your intranet?"

Some spectators gasped that Jackson knew the correct terminology to
distinguish the public Internet and a company's private intranet. Jackson
merely rocked back in his chair, looking pleased.

More common, though, has been this type of exchange: In a closed meeting,
Jackson urged Microsoft attorney Warden to speed up his cross-examination
of a witness.

According to the transcript, Warden said he would try but he wasn't as far
along with the witness as he had hoped.

The judge: "Well, he's not being evasive. He's being responsive to your
questions."

Microsoft attorney: "Sometimes he doesn't seem to understand them, but
that's in good faith."

The judge: "Sometimes I don't understand them, either."

Microsoft attorney: "Sometimes I may not understand them myself."

With that, the judge said: "Let's take a 10-minute recess."


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