Last week a group of lawmakers led by Senator Slade Gorton accused the Justice Department of turning countries against Microsoft. Gorton, who represents Microsoft's home state and has received campaign money from the company, said the Justice Department is whipping up suspicions and mistrust of Microsoft in Israel, Brazil, Japan, and France, causing those contries to start similar antitrust investigations. Gorton was joined by Rick White, who represents Microsoft's House district and has also received campaign money from the company.
Gorton and White appeared at the Antitrust in Cyberspace forum, sponsored by Washington Institute Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, two nonprofit organizations "dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government." They were joined by other Microsoft defenders who also made speeches. The only person there defending the antitrust case was James Love, executive director of Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology.
"Microsoft is trying to do for Internet applications what it has done on the desktop -- shut down competition," Love said. "The Internet, in fact, is where all the current innovation is taking place. It has been driven out of the desktop." No hands were raised when Love asked if anyone could name a "Microsoft innovation," even though there were at least a dozen employees of the company in attendance.

Sources close to Caldera's antitrust suit against Microsoft say that a key witness has admitted under oath to deleting documents from computers in a Microsoft office during a previous federal investigation of the software giant. The documents in question would have illustrated Microsoft's predatory activities in attempting to stop sales of rival Digital Research's DR DOS, a product now owned by Caldera. This is the first time anyone from Microsoft has confessed to deliberately destroying information during an investigation. The admission gives Justice Department investigators more reasons to suspect that Microoft is holding back some evidence needed in their own antitrust case. Representatives of the DOJ said that they intend to investigate and will prosecute any obstruction of justice uncovered.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has subpoenaed messages from two internal Netscape message forums. The forums, 'Bad Attitude' and 'Really Bad Attitude,' were used by Netscape workers to vent about their employer and its products. The four thousand largely critical messages sent to the members-only list now go straight to Microsoft's lawyers – leaving many Netscape employees worried that their own bosses could also see the job-endangering messages. A company representative would not say if the documents had already been turned over to Microsoft, but confirmed that Netscape had received a subpoena and was responding to it. They would not comment on the possibility of Netscape managers also gaining access to e-mails.

Last week Microsoft and Sun both gave U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte a two hour lesson about Java technology. The presenatations were designed to bring Whyte up to speed on Java in advance of legal hearings set to begin next month in Sun's lawsuit charging Microsoft with violating its Java licensing contract. Sun engineers showed the judge how compatability across all platforms is necessary and is required in the licensing agreement Microsoft signed. They also explained how The Behemoth has added proprietary extensions to its J++ programming tools. Microsoft's programmers showed the judge how their modification of Java allows developers to put more functionality into the (Windows only) Java programs they build, and countered that J++ has an option allowing programmers to create only standardized Java applets.

Microsoft has announced a new pricing plan designed to lower the cost of NT for small businesses. Now companies that purchase five or more copies of Windows NT Workstation 4.0 also buy the rights to any upgrades or enhancements to the system that are delivered over the next two years. The new licensing agreement, available from now until December 31, costs $38 more than the cost of a single license of Windows NT Workstation. Unfortunately, at the rate things are going there won't be an upgrade or enhancement for NT until 2014.
While Bill Gates spoke at the Microsoft DevDay convention in Santa Clara CA, Oracle set up a booth outside and handed out freebies. Thousands of DevDay attendees received Oracle jDeveloper 1.1 CDs, chocolate covered coffee beans and t-shirts that said "Building for the Web, not just for Windows." Microsoft had no comment.

_{Oracle8i aimed at outmaneuvering Windows Everywhere
Microsoft Wallet to support SET
Microsoft beefs up NT security
Microsoft taking notice of free rivals Linux, Apache
Gates unveils Visual Studio 6.0, talks up development
E-mails reveal Gates nixed Novell-Microsoft collaboration}