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More MS Documents and Some Research Tools
Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 11:16 AM EST

marbux has found a page on Wayback, transcripts of the proceedings in the Microsoft antitrust trial. So we are adding that link to our collection. There are copyright questions regarding transcripts, so I'll look into that to see if we can reproduce it here or not, but in the meanwhile, you have the link, and I know you will enjoy it. The Department of Justice has some of them, so those are definitely available. There is no better way to learn how trials work than to attend one, but second best is to read the transcripts. A lot of what you learn in books about the law isn't exactly the way it works in real life, and that experiential knowledge is every bit as valuable as the parts you can read about. So, I hope you will take the time to read the transcripts. Knowledge has power, but you never know which piece in advance will turn out to be vital, so it's good to scarf down all you can. Then you are better equipped to be helpful.

Please do note where you find information on Microsoft's antitrust and anticompetition activities, and which document you found it in, and then leave a comment on the Microsoft Litigation page. All the info is out there, but finding what you need in a hurry is the trick. So that is where our many eyeballs can be a real help, composing a kind of index for others to use as a map. If a FOSS developer or vendor is sued down the road, it could make the difference for them to have such an index ready-made, particularly if they are limited financially.

There are excerpts from Gates' video deposition [DOJ list of all the depositions as PDFs] , but what is, to me, way more interesting is a a discussion where the parties and the judge try to decide what the press and the public gets to see and hear. I think you will see what I mean about fine-tuning when you read that. And as you can see on the list, even with a public First Amendment right of access, some things remained sealed.

I also enjoyed reading the opening remarks of both sides, Microsoft and the government, part one and part two. To preserve it all, in case it suddenly disappears, we downloaded the materials, and I learned about a neat trick in Firefox and some other research tools to share with you.

First, in Firefox, there is an extension called downTHEMall which lets you download all links on a page with one click. Instructions here. Being a female, I thought at first the name was about a shopping mall, as in down at the mall. Disjoint. Anyway, it's a neat trick. If you are in GNU/Linux you already have some fine tools, but this is nice because our poor Microsoft-Windows-using cousins can use it also. Here's my personal how-to from Ian Justman, who found downTHEMall, and told me about it:

1. Install the "downTHEMall!" (http://downthemall.mozdev.org) extension into Firefox.

2. Point Firefox to a particular page whose links you wish to grab.

3. Go to Tools, come down to downTHEMall.

4. Select the links you wish to download individually, or "bulk-tag" them by clicking on "all files" in the "Filter" section of the dTa window.

5. Select a directory to "Save files in".

6. Click on "Start downloads!" and wait.

Speaking of Firefox, you must see today's UserFriendly. There's also Spiderzilla which rebuilds all of the hyperlinks so they work in the downloaded version of a site. It describes it like this: "It allows you to download a World Wide website from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all structures, getting html, images, and other files from the server to your computer. Links are rebuilt relatively so that you can freely browse to the local site (works with any browser). You can mirror several sites together so that you can jump from one to another. You can, also, update an existing mirror site, or resume an interrupted download". Of course, you need to make sure the site allows spidering first, for legal reasons, and, more importantly, for ethical ones, and observe copyright and other restrictions that may prevail, but for private use, it's a good research tool.

Then on Wayback, they offer the following browser plug-in for the Wayback Machine. It's one of those you just click and drag to the browser toolbar. When you visit a page that you want to find an old version of, just click the toolbar link. You will be transported to any historic versions at the Wayback Machine. I haven't investigated if there are any privacy issues, so you'll need to do your own due diligence on that.

And then I learned how to use Amazon's search engine A9, which I thought I'd share with you. Groklaw member Nick has the details:

There are times when a regular Web search will not yield the kind of information you seek, or more importantly will not yield the kind of source material you wish to reference. What if you are writing a report for your upper management and you want to include a quote about the differences between setting up an organization with a vertical hierarchy of management versus a horizontal hierarchy of management? If you did a Google search, you might come up with Web pages on the subject, or someone's thesis paper for business school. But what if you wanted to include a quote from a "reputable" source (that is, a source your upper management might feel comfortable)? Yes, we're talking dead tree sources. So off you trudge to the bookstore to find a book on the subject so that you can type up a paragraph or two to include with your report and give it a "reputable" reference.

Instead of going to the bookstore, why not have the bookstore come to you? If you haven't used Amazon's A9 search engine, here's a quick glimpse of its power. Go to www.a9.com. In the search field type: "horizontal hierarchy" "vertical hierarchy" This way it will search for both phrases. Hit Enter. The search results might initially include sources from the Web as well as books, so on the right-hand side of the screen make sure the Web and Images buttons are "unclicked," and that the Books button is "clicked." Now you are just searching inside books that have been digitized by Amazon. Yes, you are actually searching inside dead-tree books! See the second result in the list, the link labeled "People in Organisations" An Active Learnning Approach"? Under that is a sub-link labeled "page 269." Click that sub-link. The resulting page is a reproduction of page 269 of that book, and you can see how it nicely answers the difference in hiearchies. Now isn't this easier than going to the bookstore?

Not every book has been digitized, and even those that have may not have all of their pages digitized. Sometimes you'll do a search and it will indicate that your search phrase is in the book somewhere but won't tell you specifically where. That just means that page hasn't yet been digitized. But what is there is a treasure trove of material that can augment your search, or in certain circumstances provide you with just the kind of search results you need."

And soon we'll have Google books. This is such exciting news from Google. They will be scanning books and documents from the NY Public Library and 4 universities, and that is exciting enough, so they will be searchable and in many cases fully readable online. The collection will include so many out-of-print books. For others, there will be excerpts, so you can decide if you wish to buy the book. They are asking book publishers to sign up.

But what is even better is that they have chosen as the four Harvard, Stanford, the U. of Michigan, and the University of Oxford. You can read more about it here.

Harvard has only agreed to a test project. Ditto the NY Public Library. And Oxford is offering only public domain books, pre-1900. The announcement says that they will start with 40,000 books at Harvard and then decide whether to go forward with the entire 15 million volumes. That is just Harvard. They will, however, scan *everything* at Stanford, some 8 million books. And 7 million at the U. of Michigan. Stanford and the U. of Michigan have law libraries. I wrote to the U. of Michigan to ask if the law library would be included, and they said not yet, but they're thinking about it. I live in hope. If they ever put the Harvard law library on the Internet, we'd be in business for sure. You can read all about how varied their library is following all the links, and drool. We already have Google Scholar, where you can "stand on the shoulders of giants." We seem to be getting closer to my vision of a Google Legal. Please, Harvard! Please, please, please. Go forward.


  


More MS Documents and Some Research Tools | 89 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
More MS Documents and Some Research Tools
Authored by: entre on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 11:20 AM EST
Typos Here Please

[ Reply to This | # ]

More MS Documents and Some Research Tools
Authored by: BJ on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 11:26 AM EST

> First, in Firefox, there is an extension called
> downTHEMall which lets you download all links
> on a page with one click.

I read this as "down the mall" too, and I'm not even a female. Guess I
like shopping too much.

Anyway, for us command line jockeys, 'wget' will of
course achieve the same thing.




---
__
|Warning:
|Encountered Proprietary Standard and/or Patented Protocol.
|Choose method of payment

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT thread
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 11:33 AM EST

[ Reply to This | # ]

Confused.
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 11:57 AM EST
Why should court transcripts be copyrighted? Surely the only possible
'individual' things will be the formatting (easy to remove), and errors.

Errors might be good EVIDENCE of copyright infringement or non-infringment, cf
Linus and POSIX... but surely they are insignificant when it comes to court
transcripts?

Could someone please help?

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • The collection is protected - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 12:18 PM EST
  • Confused. - Authored by: John Hasler on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 12:25 PM EST
  • Confused. - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 04:43 PM EST
    • Confused. - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 06:22 PM EST
      • Confused. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 04 2005 @ 08:04 AM EST
Then and Now
Authored by: belzecue on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 12:02 PM EST
Gotta love the spin doctors.

THEN (2000):
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815233338/www.microsoft.com/billgate s/bio.htm

NOW (2005):
www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.htm

-----

2000 - "While at Harvard, Gates developed the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer..."

2005 - "While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer..."

2000 - "In his junior year, Gates dropped out of Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft..."

2005 - "In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft..."

2000 - "...a company he had begun in 1975 with Paul Allen."

2005 - "...a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen."

2000 - "...A significant portion of his time is devoted to meeting with customers and staying in contact with Microsoft employees around the world through e-mail."

2005 - removed.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Then and Now - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 04:37 PM EST
Some Research Tools
Authored by: John Hasler on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 12:05 PM EST
> First, in Firefox, there is an extension called
> downTHEMall which lets you download all links on
> a page with one click.
> ...
> There's also Spiderzilla which rebuilds all of the
> hyperlinks so they work in the downloaded version
> of a site.

man wget. Precompiled binaries for Microsoft Windows are available. There are
even GUI versions.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Another Kind of Research Tool--FTP Search Engines
Authored by: Weeble on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 12:42 PM EST

We all know that as far as the Web goes, "Google is your friend". Ditto for Google Groups as far as Usenet goes. But what if you're looking for a particular file (like I was recently looking for the "Swedish Chef" version of Opera)?

I've learned about the FTP search engines, which can often be of help in finding a file, particularly an obscure one.

Now you can do file searches with Google; just put in the name of the file you're after. In fact, I just tried it with ow32enen2656b_bork (the name of the "Swedish Chef" version of Opera) and found a few more links than I had the other day. But that only works if the file's available by http.

Search engines dedicated to FTP files include FileSearching.com, FileWatcher.com, Filemirrors.com, FTPSearch at FreewareWeb.com, and there are a bunch of additional engines listed at FTPSearchEngines.com.

One unique thing about FTPSearchEngines.com is that it has links to some of the remaining few Archieplex servers (Archie is an older method, nearly extinct, of searching for files on FTP servers and Archieplex is a web interface to Archie) which, if you're patient enough to deal with a lot of "server not found" messages due to dead Archie links, can occasionally turn up a gem you've been looking for.

Hope this helps somebody find something you're looking for.

---
On The Trailing Edge of Technology Since 1987.
See my profile's Bio to GrokWeeble me.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Be First - More MS Documents and Some Research Tools
Authored by: webster on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 12:52 PM EST
Reluctant Universities better throw their libraries at Google as soon as
possible. If other sources put your books up first, yours won't be needed. The
firstest with the mostest will forever reap an advantage. Wake up!

---
webster

[ Reply to This | # ]

Document Archival
Authored by: The Mad Hatter r on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 01:16 PM EST


While it may or may not be legal to post the documents here (since they are
public record I would think that it is, but we'd best check first), it probably
is legal to download copies for personal use.

I've been downloading the lot, however I cannot get the following:

February 1, 1999
* Part 1 (A.M. Session - Witness: Allchin)
* Download Part 1 (239k Word Document)
* Part 2 (P.M. Session - Witness: Allchin)
* Download Part 2 (218k Word Document)


Anyone else have any luck with these?




---
Wayne

telnet hatter.twgs.org

[ Reply to This | # ]

downTHEMall
Authored by: kawabago on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 01:35 PM EST
I read it as down-THE-Mall too, but I'm a gay man who hates shopping. So you're
not alone PJ! Funny what people find important enough to comment on... :o)


---
constructive irrelevance.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Bodleian library
Authored by: awildenberg on Sunday, January 02 2005 @ 11:31 PM EST
Although it was mentioned the least, I think the library that people should be
the most excited about seeing go online is the Bodleian library at Oxford.
While the other libraries are amazing, the Bodleian is a copyright library,
which makes it the English equivalent of the Library of Congress: it is supposed
to contain a copy of every book published in England.

Of course the irony of the Bodleian being chosen as a source for such an amazing
project is pretty great. If you've researched there, you know that it is a
truly frustrating experience; you have to request your book one day, then come
back the next to pick it up, you're not allowed to remove books from the
facilities, and before you are allowed into the library, you have to swear an
oath to (including other things) not kindle any fire or bring sheep into the
library. Several people half-joked that the fastest way to get a copy of a
journal article in Oxford was to get in your car, drive to Cambridge, copy it
there, and then drive back again.

[ Reply to This | # ]

now now
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 03 2005 @ 12:02 AM EST
"poor Microsoft-Windows-using cousins", no need to be offensive.
Unfortuantely PJ you have lost a long time supporter with this comment. Windows
is here , windows will always be here for me until there is a viable alternative
for games to be played on a pc with.

At the moment linux does not cut it for this, this install base is just too
small. Slag of microsoft to your hearts content but pick on the users and your
losing support all the way. I have used linux for maabout 10 years, a long time
longer than you have and am aware of its good and bad sides, i am also a
programmer and can grok the technical superiority of linux so please don't try
and flame me as an ignorant.

[ Reply to This | # ]

HTTrack Website Copier
Authored by: NickDeGraeve on Monday, January 03 2005 @ 02:13 AM EST
Back when I was on dial-up I used HTTrack Website Copier to mirror some sites with info that I would often visit while researching some subject. It's GPL soft and comes in Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP and Linux/Unix/BSD flavours.

[ Reply to This | # ]

U.S. Vs Microsoft: The Inside Story of the Landmark Trial
Authored by: geoff lane on Monday, January 03 2005 @ 04:37 AM EST
U.S. Vs Microsoft: The Inside Story of the Landmark Trial
Steve Lohr, Joel Brinkley
McGraw-Hill Education
ISBN: 007135588X

The book is a collection of articles from the New York Times written by two
reporters who sat through the court sessions.
The advantage of this book is that it includes stuff which will never be
recorded in the transcripts.

The book is still available via Amazon.


---
Invention and Innovation are not synonyms.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Wayback? Not for Grocklaw!
Authored by: BigBadBob on Monday, January 03 2005 @ 12:34 PM EST
Of course, I had to try the Wayback plugin as soon as I read about it, and what better site to check? But when applied to Grocklaw, I get:
We're
sorry, access to http://www.groklaw.net/ has been blocked by the site owner via
robots.txt.
Oh well...;-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

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