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A L S O__T O D A Y The 21st Challenge No. 14 Results By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau High-tech designer drugs 21st Log Yahoo profits -- stock plunges - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Video games of all shapes, all sizes, all platforms: Revel in gamer heaven in Table Talk's Digital Culture area - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y The cookie monster of Putnam Pit By Matt Welch An angry muckraker seeks access to the municipal computer systems in a small Tennessee town (10/15/98) Service with an artificial smile By Robert Rossney Supermarket clubs point the way to a future of corporate-mandated friendliness and Stepford clerks (10/14/98) Getting to know all about you By Jennifer Vogel Attention, shoppers -- what you tell supermarket clubs may be used against you (10/14/98) The joy of Perl By Andrew Leonard How Larry Wall invented a messy programming language -- and changed the face of the Web (10/13/98) Typing for nonconformists By Alex Marshall The Dvorak alternative keyboard is a boon for the aching hand (10/12/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

SEE YOU IN COURT | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - 3) It's the money, stupid. Still, is Microsoft quaking in its boots? Hardly. In fact, a Gates memo leaked to the New York Times this week suggests that complacency, not fear, is the order of the day in Redmond. The new Gates memo stands as the latest and most hilarious revelation in a long line of public-relations gaffes -- from last winter's "you can't remove our browser without crippling Windows" fiasco to the abortive "stealth blitz" of commissioned letters to the editor, op-ed pieces and other "spontaneous testimonials" that the Los Angeles Times revealed. Throughout this battle Microsoft has built its defense around a claim that the software behemoth, with all its billions of dollars and impregnable market share, is actually a highly vulnerable and desperately insecure operation that must constantly look over its shoulder lest it lose its primacy. Certainly, the software industry is volatile, and if Microsoft seriously screws up over the next decade or two it could suffer, say, IBM's fate -- becoming a merely huge and important technology company rather than an overwhelmingly dominant one. But if there were any doubts that the vision of Microsoft as a terrified weakling is and always was a joke, Gates' memo clears them up. In the document (which the Times apparently agreed not to quote directly but only to paraphrase), Gates "boasts that Microsoft's position in the computer industry is stronger than it has ever been" and contends that "one of the company's biggest challenges will be finding ways to continue motivating employees who in many cases are so wealthy from their Microsoft stock that they no longer have an economic need to work." So we now have proof from inside Microsoft of something we could hitherto only guess: that Microsoft's long-standing claims of vulnerability are intended less for the public, which couldn't possibly take them seriously, than for internal consumption -- as a prod to keep millionaire engineers from slacking. You can just hear Gates crack the whip: "Work harder! Or Netscape and Sun will eat up your stock options!" 4) Court may be the wrong place to fight Microsoft. Even those who believe that Microsoft has a monopoly and sometimes wields it in unfair ways -- and you can count me in this group -- need to ask themselves whether the courts will ever be able to deliver an effective remedy. The technology industry has always favored a "keep the government out of our business" approach, and even Microsoft's direst enemies feel a little queasy about turning to Washington for relief. But the real problem with the courts is that they move too slowly, and anyone with a wallet as big as Microsoft's can work the system to its own benefit. If it loses in district court, there's always the appellate court, and beyond that, the Supreme Court. By the time the process is done, a couple of generations of processor chips and operating systems have come and gone, and Microsoft will have chewed up and spat out whichever market sector the lawsuit was about in the first place. 5) If Microsoft is the Evil Empire, look for the Force. One problem with every challenge to Microsoft, past and present, is that each company has set out to beat Microsoft at its own game and supplant Gates' proprietary monopoly with a new one owned by somebody else. One reason few people are shedding big tears for Netscape is that Netscape hoped to leverage its browser to gain a competitive advantage just as Microsoft was leveraging its operating system. This is still Netscape's business plan -- only now, instead of using the browser to try to take control of the desktop, Netscape plans to use the browser to promote its Netcenter "portal." A frontal assault on Microsoft is always going to be a losing battle. But there are other approaches. Today, the one worth paying attention to arises from the Linux camp of free software/open source code advocates. They're the first Microsoft challengers who don't want to become "the next Microsoft"-- and that gives them both a leg up in popular support and a strategic advantage. If Linux -- an operating system collectively developed by idealistic engineers and widely available for free or close to it -- is able to keep making itself easier to use and grabbing market share, the net effect will be to reduce the overall value of Microsoft's operating-system monopoly. The more people turn to an open-source OS that can be distributed dirt-cheap, the less Microsoft will be able to charge for Windows. If Linux becomes a serious contender in the mass market, Microsoft will have to think about giving away Windows for free. And while its control over the Windows standard would remain a hugely powerful asset, Microsoft's loss of billions of dollars of OS profits would go far toward leveling the competitive playing field in the software industry. Even more than its aggressive tactics, it's the company's huge war chest that enables it to keep trouncing the competition: Whoever Microsoft can't beat, it can always buy. Antitrust law seems unable to solve this problem, and traditional competitors just want that money for themselves. Linux is fundamentally different. As Bob Young -- CEO of Red Hat Software, the leading distributor of commercial packages of Linux "installations" -- explained it recently to the New York Times: "My job is not to compete with Microsoft. It's to lower the value of the operating system market. Microsoft makes $5 billion in operating system sales. If I get that market, I automatically make it a $500 million market." Linux remains very much a long shot in this game, and Microsoft routinely dismisses it as a threat. But if I were Bill Gates, I'd be less worried about the Feds than the Red Hats of the world: It's Bob Young's words that would be keeping me awake at night. SALON | Oct. 16, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - E-mail Scott Rosenberg. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E _.T A L K Come talk about the Microsoft trial in Table Talk's Digital Culture discussion area.