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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 1999)
$ EDITOR Josh Funk OPINION EDITOR Mark Baldridge EDITORIAL BOARD Lindsay Young Jessica Fargen Samuel McKewon Cliff Hicks Kimberly Sweet ' V ■" - • > ■ • \ QUOTES OF THE WEEK ' We have a competitive edge because of the technology we have. That margin is going to disappear if we don’t move fast. _. Beth Klosterman, member ofNU’s Task Force on Administrative Efficiency Microsoft is committed to resolving this matter in a fair and responsible manner, while ensuring that the funda mental principals of consumer benefit and innovation are protected. Bill Gates, responding to the finding by the court that Microsoft abused its monopoly It was time for the family to close that chapter of their life. Marlene Ford, of Ford and Ford -Auctioneers Inc., on the recent sale of Bob Devaney memorabilia I thought it was just like throwing money away. Charles Anderson, whose wife “threw away” $70 a week on lottery tickets for five years before winning $5 million-plus We didn’t realize what all it entailed in running a fraternity and why things had gone wrong. Jaron Luttich, president of the remark ably reformed Chi Phi Nobody’s even gotten close to getting sick. Darren Peterson, NU on Wheels cab dri ver At this point it was all quiet. Everything just stopped. . Christiane Mischek, on the announce ment made in Germany 10 years ago that the Berlin Wall had been opened That’s just totally wrong. Athletic Ticket Office Manager John Anderson on the ticket taker accused of letting a group into a football game for $100 Several times a year I’ll have an officer tested for communicable diseases. Police Chief Tom Casady It’s a dream of mine but won’t seem true until it actually happens. I contin ue to work for it every day. Chris Mihm, Texas center, on his hopes to play in the NBA When someone comes up to you and asks if you want to be in a movie, you’re not like, “Oh, forget it.” Mike Callahan, star of David Iske s fresh man effort, “The Dean s Boys ” We’re playing with students’ money. ASUN Communications Committee Chairman Heath Mello In my mind I’m going a hundred miles a minute. Sharolta Nonen, UNL and Canadian national team soccer player " - Jr: > • . . : - •_■ Editorial Policy Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Fall 1999 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, its employees, its student body or the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author. The Board of Regents serves as publisher of the Daily Nebraskan; policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. The UNL Publications Board, established by the regents, supervises the production of the paper. According to policy set by the regents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its student employees. Letter Policy The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guarantee their publication. The Daity Nebraskan retains the right to edit or reject any material submitted. Submitted material becomes property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous submissions will not be published. Those who submit letters must identify themselves by name, year in school, major and/or group affiliation, if any. Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St. Lincoln, NE. 68588-0448. E-mail: letters@.urtedu. Obermever’s VIEW .. . ... UMH...WHY AREN’i &OIWG ■ANYWHERg? Fool Josh Moenning is a simple-minded fool. He claims that Ron Brown and other Christians are not intolerant of homosexuals, rather they are following the word of God. But if God indeed punishes homosexuals with damnation, then he himself is intolerant. And those who follow God in this respect are no better. Patrick Monaghan senior philosophy Married and Insured In Tuesday’s letters, Chase Petsche argued that the university discourages marriage and promotes homosexuali ty. In his letter he falsely claimed that married students are charged more for health insurance. The health insurance policy charges the same amount for married and unmarried students, $399 each. Only if a spouse is not a student does the policy require that person to pay the standard rate (for Melanie Falk/DN DN LETTERS Monumental Life Insurance Company). As for tolerating homosexuality: As a man married to a wonderful wife, I obviously am not promoting homosexuality. But you must be an evil man if you won’t even tolerate dif ferences in people. Scott Whitney graduate student chemical engineering Spanish Reader I very much enjoyed reading Monday’s column by Horacio Perez. It was stimulating and afforded me the opportunity to practice reading in Spanish. Michael De La Garza graduate student history ■ MicroSurf Marcus Graham’s letter in the Tuesday DN was a rather enlightening account of the predominance of Windows in the professional world. However, I feel it fails to justify the true argu ment at hand. What is said in the media is not a substitute for actually reading the 200-plus page docu ment released %f -Nov. 5. M While the 1 operating sys I tern Windows i::. M is a component | of this case, i'« there are other k 1 focus points Hm for the W Department of W Justice that coa j lesce to the extent * that the govern ment believes \ V Microsoft uses its market power in an unfair way toward firms. The fact that Windows is present in 75 percent of all computers has little to do with the case. A monopoly is an allowable form of market structure in the United States. However, attempts of monopo lization or committing actions to sus tain monopolized market power are illegal. The main question at hand is how Microsoft acquired that market power and if Microsoft uses it fairly. One of Microsoft’s problems is Web browsing. Bill Gates himself stat ed in his 1994 book (I forget the title) that he believed that the World Wide Web would not become a major component of personal computing. He asserted that its main focus would be in the form of business-to business contact. While he made comments like these and only slowly developed Internet Explorer, a small company called Netscape was franti cally developing its Web browser. boon alter, Bill Oates realized his mistake as millions of people jumped on the Internet worldwide, using Netscape. His Internet Explorer had a lot of catching up to do. An easy way to do this was simply to distribute it for free as an add-on to most Microsoft products. Now, all Windows systems automatically install it. Other software, such as Office, do the same. I recently bought Office 2000 for my PC and I couldn’t install the software until I had agreed to let the software install Internet Explorer as well. This practice is uniair to Netscape and other companies that may have wanted to develop a browser but didn’t because who would buy it if Internet Explorer is free? In essence, Microsoft is crowding out the competition by not even giving them a chance, which is an act to sustain a monopoly. Imagine owning a video store where you rent only videos to con sumers, then one day a huge company that produces VCRs but had over looked the video rental market says that if you buy a VCR then you can have all the free video rentals you | want. Your video store isn’t going to be around for too much longer. • Competition means more choice, greater innovation and lower prices in the OS/software industry and, if Microsoft must be broken off into several companies in order to achieve competition, then so be it Andrew Cusano graduate student economics