FC: Does it seem like Judge Jackson doesn't like Microsoft much?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36830,00.html

   MS: Trials and Tribulations
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

   3:00 a.m. Jun. 8, 2000 PDT
   WASHINGTON -- If one federal judge won't listen to Microsoft, perhaps
   three of them will.

   Using that argument, Bill Gates has vowed to appeal his company's
   humiliating breakup by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, a
   man who apparently never saw a Microsoft argument he didn't
   disbelieve.

   By now it's clear that Jackson has a personal animus toward Microsoft
   matched only by the predilections of the Linux-loving Slashdotters who
   ritually depict the richest geek in the known universe as Bill the
   Borg.

   "Microsoft has proved untrustworthy in the past," Jackson thundered in
   his breakup order, just a few paragraphs before he signed into law the
   Justice Department's suggested carve-up of the world's largest
   software company, without changing a solitary word.

   All of this must come as something of a letdown -- less charitably, an
   acute embarrassment -- to company officials, who have busied
   themselves for much of the last three years reassuring the public that
   Microsoft did nothing wrong and would be vindicated at trial.

   Proclaiming your virtue after a judge has dubbed you a noxious
   reprobate is not a trivial task, but Bill Gates on Wednesday made a
   valiant effort to defend his corporate honor.

   [...]

   So what drew Jackson's ire?

   One lawyer who has clerked before the D.C. Appeals Court and knows
   Jackson offered his pet theory, on condition of anonymity: "He's just
   stupid. I don't mean generally stupid, but specifically stupid about
   technology. He admitted at the beginning that he doesn't even check
   his own email."

   The lawyer said another explanation is that Jackson, a Reagan
   appointee, is about to retire: "And the only way you create a legacy
   is by doing something unusual."

   "I'm not sure what hair got up his ass, but it's there," the lawyer
   said.

   [...]

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