Letters to the Editor

Providing options with sex education

HOV lanes just make traffic jams more horrible

Microsoft ruling: Windows of opportunities or a system’s crash?

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I respectfully disagree with Kenneth Smith’s column on the Microsoft case.
The essence of this case is simple: Can a competitor compete solely on his bank account? It is proper and legal to compete on service, technology or any value added offer. It is illegal to compete on the size of your wallet. Why? Because the richest will always evolve into a monopoly; then there is no market, just dictation.
We know that a pure monopoly is not needed, the model works if an oligopoly is created a few fat-cat “competitors.” The proper role of government is to maintain the level playing field, the same reason the police officer walks the beat.
The referee need not be a superstar; he just needs to know the rules, watch and blow his whistle. Capitalists often cheat because they are greedy.
R.L. HAILS SR.
Olney

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Kenneth Smith’s column on the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Microsoft was perceptive.
Microsoft’s guilt is that it was innovative, creative and imaginative, both in the development of its products and the marketing of these products to consumers.
As Mr. Smith stated so accurately, if competitors not as innovative as Microsoft can rent Attorney General Janet Reno, what industry could be next: automobiles, washing machines, condoms?
The computer software-using consumer is the loser. Cicero stated that justice is applied so that no one shall suffer wrong and that the public good is served. Apparently, that is not Miss Reno’s definition.
PAUL KINNEAR
Abingdon, Md.

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Giving away software is one of Microsoft’s methods of flooding the market with shoddy goods and building up a customer base of users of those shoddy goods.
When a new Microsoft product doesn’t test market favorably against its competitors, instead of going back to the drawing board and improving its new product, Microsoft merely resorts to this “give it away for free until enough people are hooked” approach.
Personally, I loathe Internet Explorer and pray that Netscape can survive Microsoft’s asinine marketing practices. Microsoft’s products should be driven by expert programming talent not expert marketing talent.
ROBERT JACKSON
Bethesda

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I think the Justice Department is misnamed. The department will not enforce the laws on the books and now is out to see how much it can extort from a business serving the public.
The Microsoft case is just like the tobacco deal. Demonize the target, encourage critical news, create a finding of guilt and establish how much can be taken from the business in cash or destroy it all in the name of justice. What a crock.
WAYNE ARMSTRONG
Champaign, Ill.

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I’m grateful that I can get up in the morning and read The Washington Times. Kenneth Smith again emphasizes the short-term prospects people who manage companies have. Big government is not the way to go but there seems to be much caving in to those who want that. Keep up the good work. I hope the column influences some people to act differently.
CHRISTINA HOLDERREED
Tucson, Ariz.

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This is in response to Ron Nehring’s column (“Prelude to regulation?” Commentary, April 6) and the hand wringing of many other people concerning the fate of Microsoft.
For those of us who have sat at our personal computers and lost data from system crashes, computer freezes and just plain illogical operations, let alone a complete lack of intelligible instructions we say, good riddance.
The software industry, and Microsoft particularly, has an arrogance and consumer-be-damned attitude that surpasses all understanding. This attitude has been verified by my colleagues at numerous computer fairs.
Software designers have said they have a product, and that if the public wants it, the public will have to conform to their way of operating software. In other words, take it or leave it.
The point made by Mr. Nehring that there already is competition fails to recognize that integrating competing software into one’s computer requires a level of computer sophistication that exceeds that of the average user, myself included.
The entire situation is driven by what I perceive to be Microsoft’s customer-be-damned attitude. Real open competition is the only way to solve the problem.
CHARLES E. HEIMACH
Arlington