CORRESPONDENCE
Correspondence MICROSOFT: GUILTY AS CHARGED Thomas W. Hazlett and George Bit-tlingmayer's article on the Microsoft trial brought to mind a current liberal mantra: "Rates of imprisonment are...
...Therefore, to prefer belief in free will to science—which says that human beings act as they do because they have desires that are rooted in biology and shaped by society—is to prefer mystification to understanding...
...I believe in the free market as much as anyone...
...Just as solely biological explanations for human nature are too determinist to be true, an explanation for human nature that rests solely on individual consciousness is too solipsistic and nihilistic to be true...
...MICHAEL G. MURAD NEW HOPE, MN...
...However, they were irrevocably dedicated to bringing the concepts of constitutional rule of law, free and fair elections, and a republican form of government to their own country...
...The proposition from which traditional morality springs is not the modernist "I think, therefore I am," but something along the lines of "God is, and He has spoken...
...The U.S...
...I do not deny that this item was funny in places...
...That not only suggests that the abuses the DOJ currently alleges in the browser "jihad" have nothing to do with such practices, but that ending such practices did not remedy Microsoft's alleged monopoly power...
...And a barbed wit used to sting the complacent and comfortable into anger, thought, and action can be a worthy tool, and those stung may praise it in the end...
...Sociobiology also explains these truths in a way that would have been incomprehensible to Aristotle, as great a genius as he was...
...With our 200-year tradition of democracy, we can and do take freedom for granted...
...Does that mean we are obsessed with locking people up unnecessarily...
...In many cases, the people were educated (often in America) and had the opportunity to live elsewhere...
...RUSSELL A. PAIELLI SAN JOSE, CA THOMAS W. HAZLETT AND GEORGE BITTLINGMAYER RESPOND: The Microsoft antitrust case must be strong, Russell Paielli argues, if the government is expected to win...
...But Microsoft's dominance in the market is no more proof of the superiority of its software than Bill Clinton's election and reelection are proof of the superiority of his policies...
...Indeed, the June 1998 ruling by the D.C...
...But sheer mockery of the weak and suffering is another matter...
...Paielli's theory that the DOJ antitrust effort is making the world safe for efficiency is rejected by capitalists with money on the line...
...Or, it might be because science, unlike outmoded stereotypes regarding female intellectual proclivities, is not the domain of one gender...
...This is High Noon in the government's browser war scenario...
...Take sociobiology first...
...currently, more than 25 percent of our students are science or math majors...
...The relatively minuscule amount of money appropriated to the NED ($32 million out of a $1.7 trillion budget) constitutes an incredible and meaningful investment in teaching other nations the concepts of democracy and self-rule which have made the United States the "shining city on the hill" of which President Reagan spoke so eloquently...
...Investors with billions of dollars riding on the efficiency of the PC software market short computer stocks like Compaq, Intel, and CompUSA when the antitrust case moves forward...
...JOANNE V. CREIGHTON PRESIDENT MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE SOUTH HADLEY, MA PERNICIOUS PARODY I am writing to protest the tasteless and cruel "War in Kosovo Reenact-ment" playbill (Parody, June 28...
...Since 1990, well over 200 of our graduates have gone on to attain advanced degrees in the sciences and medicine...
...Far from being eliminated, funding for the NED should be dramatically increased, if not endowed permanently...
...The court held that the browser was lawfully and usefully integrated into the operating system...
...If morality depends on that, we are in serious trouble indeed...
...We have looked at stock market reactions to the Microsoft antitrust case in a statistically rigorous way...
...How have we done this if females are predisposed to dislike test tubes and Fermat's last theorem and pulsed molecular beam Fourier transform microwave spectrometers...
...KEVIN L. HICKS MOYLAN, PA DE-FUNDING DEMOCRACY THE SCRAPBOOK is right—zeroing out funding for the National Endowment for Democracy is indeed a "shabby way for conservatives to treat a worthy Reagan legacy" ("Not a Penny for NED...
...I am fortunate enough to have been a trainer at seminars in democracy and political party-building in both Angola and Morocco...
...According to Ferguson, we learn little from it that Aristotle and common sense have not taught us—for example, that human beings have a natural disposition to sociability, and that men are different from women...
...We are more sympathetic to Paielli's attempt to connect the dots, but he draws precisely the wrong inference...
...June 28...
...now, with no significant innovation, it dominates the browser market...
...That hopeless project has been giving me the creeps, to borrow Ferguson's phrase, since I read James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense several years ago...
...MAX HOCUTT TUSCALOOSA, AL Andrew Ferguson deftly presents the problem with attempting to justify traditional morality through reliance on materialistic biology in his review of Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption...
...To believe in it is to endorse not myth but miracle...
...If such extortion is not an abuse of monopoly, what is...
...so, are unintelligible by definition...
...It is no coincidence that both Bills have such difficulty telling the truth under oath...
...These comparisons are wrongheaded and misleading in ways it would take a treatise to fully expose, but I shall be brief...
...Now consider free will...
...At the same time, this institution is a leader in developing new approaches to the teaching of the sciences to undergraduates...
...Microsoft was dictating to manufacturers that they must install (and pay for) Microsoft's operating systems on every single computer they sell—or none...
...Meanwhile, today's new rivals to Windows are not those hand-picked for protection in the government's Java-friendly case filed one year ago, but unforeseen systems like Linux and BeOS...
...Moreover, Microsoft was enjoined from using such contracts in the 1995 consent decree...
...If that is a sign of healthy competition, imagine what unhealthy competition must be like...
...The government said that such competition couldn't emerge so long as Microsoft bundled its browser with its operating system—sorry, but they're wrong...
...Believe in free markets," does he...
...Circuit Court of Appeals found that the government had wrongly accused Microsoft of violating a 1995 consent decree...
...Well—here's his chance...
...And just a few years ago Microsoft was downplaying the Internet...
...Gelern-ter, who teaches at Yale, uses this argument to support his claim that efforts at Yale to hire more female professors in the hard sciences are ill-founded...
...In this century, Mount Holyoke college, along with Bryn Mawr, has been among the foremost producers of women going on to earn Ph.D.s in the hard sciences...
...government has been investigating Microsoft continuously since 1990 and, by its current claims, has uniformly failed to curb monopoly abuses...
...In both places— Morocco, a poor but modernizing north African nation, and Angola, a desperately poor sub-Saharan nation—the people I met were insatiably hungry for knowledge about our political system...
...However, Ferguson's concluding suggestion—that we ought better explain human nature by abandoning materialism as a starting point in favor of human thought and will—is not quite satisfying...
...In fact, our faculty in the hard sciences is now 46 percent female...
...The unleashing of the Internet IPO juggernaut is universally credited to Netscape's hugely successful initial public offering on August 9, 1995...
...Finally, Paielli argues that we are now "getting some significant competition because the DOJ is suing" Microsoft...
...We owe it to ourselves and to other countries to share the secrets of our success, so that freedom can ring worldwide...
...Do I need to remind you that it was thousands of real people, including women and children, who died from this bombing campaign...
...But Justice insists that market developments (including the powerful anti-Microsoft alliance formed by Netscape, AOL, and Sun) have no connection to the case...
...It might be because our faculty has always included a significant number of women scientists...
...Correspondence MICROSOFT: GUILTY AS CHARGED Thomas W. Hazlett and George Bit-tlingmayer's article on the Microsoft trial brought to mind a current liberal mantra: "Rates of imprisonment are skyrocketing even though crime rates are plummeting" ("Befuddled by 'Internet Time,'" July 5/July 12...
...And perhaps Microsoft is finally getting some significant competition because the Department of Justice is suing it for antitrust violations...
...THE MORALITY DISRUPTION Andrew Ferguson's review of Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption belittles as "myth" the materialistic and evolutionary science presupposed by Fukuyama, and suggests that it is no better founded in evidence and reason than the theological myths of natural law and free will and is, furthermore, less satisfactory as a foundation for morality ("The End of Nature and the Next Man," June 28...
...It is amazing how "weak" some find the case against Microsoft, when by most accounts Justice is expected to win handily...
...Paielli asks about Microsoft's all-or-nothing contracts with computer makers, apparently unaware that such "take or pay" contracts can create substantial efficiencies and are quite common in competitive industries...
...Dollar for dollar, the return on this investment far exceeds that of almost every other federal program...
...This ignores the fact that sociobiology does more than reiterate these platitudes, itself an important thing to do given repeated denials of their truth by socialist followers of Rousseau...
...Mount Holyoke graduates are in top positions in the sciences throughout the world...
...In response, I invite Gelern-ter and those who were influenced by his article to look at the example of Mount Holyoke college, which has been a leader in science education since its inception as a women's institution more than 160 years ago...
...Naive computer users have been misled into dependence on Microsoft just as voters have been misled by Clinton's demagoguery...
...Yes, oral sex is sex, and no, a web browser is not an essential part of a general-purpose operating system, regardless of what the definition of "is" is...
...Indeed, many of the positive developments cited in the article occurred aj^er the suit was filed...
...No, crime rates are dropping precisely because more criminals are getting locked up...
...As Plato, Augustine, and Kant all defined it, a free will is a miraculous capacity to transcend the natural order, by making choices that have no explanation...
...ROGER AUSTIN GAINESVILLE, FL WOMEN LIKE SCIENCE, TOO At this late date in the evolution of humankind I was very surprised to see David Gelernter advance the argument that women and girls just don't like math and science ("Women and Science at Yale," June 2l...
Vol. 4 • July 1999 • No. 42
