From the Dark Side--Microsoft's Judgement Day

in its antitrust trial may well be today according to rumors circulating around the web and print media for the past week. Microsoft's last minute settlement offer Friday is thought to be well short of the mark required by the Justice Department and States' Attorneys General. However, digitalMASS reported yesterday that it looked better to some government lawyers on Monday and this may cause Judge Jackson to delay his conclusions. Judge Jackson is slated to issue his conclusions of law soon, if not today, and everyone expects that he will decide that Microsoft broke some antitrust law. The trial will then enter the penalty phase where Microsoft could be broken up into several companies to preclude further harmful monopolistic practices and to inject greater competition in the personal computing operating system and application market. If a breakup occurs, I hope that network server Windows NT/2000 is separated from the Windows NT/2000 client and 95/98 lineage to end that monopoly that has all but killed the Mac and other clients in large business/government enterprises. [Dana Baggett contributed]