Ho-ho. Hah-hah. Clap hands and squeal with glee. Yes, it's the day after the judge's ruling that Microsoft is indeed a monopoly, and I read the papers with relish, savoring every word.

Also: "Computers running on Microsoft's digital systems simply are not very user friendly, the judge concluded. Computers could have been more easily usable, he found, if Microsoft had not worked so aggressively to kill off innovations by its rivals. By pushing its Internet Explorer web browser, and by making it next to impossible to take that system out of a computer, the judge said, Microsoft made computers more sluggish and harder for consumers to use." Bam! Pow!

Shall we go to The Washington Post? Not to overdo it, I'll just quote its reference to "voracious monopolist that has hindered innovation, harmed consumers and run roughshod over its rivals." Zing! Ka-Pop!

Long time readers will recall my July 1998 column gently entitled "Microsoft is Evil." (Others, of course, should journey to my web site at feldwick.com to view those musings.) My feeling have not changed over time, probably because I deal every day with the bugs, traps and downright horses**t that is Windows and its control over systems.

Let's face it: things just don't work as they should. Install a new tape drive, follow the instructions to the letter, install the backup software, and start a test. Bombs away. Call the manufacturer's Tech Support. Delete files, rename files, download new drivers from web sites in Taiwan. Okay, looks good now. Fifteen hours later, the tape is making whirring sounds and still not finished. Reinstall software, call Tech Support again ... on and on and on. No wonder most people throw their hands up, or throw the machines out the window. Also no wonder that most computer people talk to themselves often and incoherently.

For much too much money, you can subscribe to a Microsoft service called TechNet, where you get a collection of CDs each month full of notes about how to fix problems, etc. Type the word "bug" in their search engine, and you get 2,000 entries, the maximum it can find. Type the words "lockup" or "freeze" and you get hundreds more. Could there be problems here?

I have used this service to find answers to why Outlook freezes when there is an asterisk in the subject line of an e-mail, or why a Compaq machine will do very strange things if you do a regular un-install on TabWorks, its graphic interface, or all sorts of other obscure traps that should be routine activities. In many cases there is no way that a sane person (or even an insane one without TechNet) could figure this out. The complexity level has just gone so deep that there are endless chances for things to go wrong. Strangely enough, they do.

What does this have to do with Microsoft's monopoly? Just the belief that systems could have been made more reliable and crashworthy if the Evil Empire had not worked so hard to stomp any potential rivals down into the dirt. How dare a rival system challenge the totality that was Windows (or its companion products--remember that Word now accounts for 93 percent of the word processing market)?

Bill Gates continues to bleat about "freedom to innovate." What junk. At least now it has been officially repudiated, and maybe we can see some real innovation.

Is it too late for things to change? Even if Microsoft is broken up like the old phone company (and I believe it will be, in some form), it will take a long time for the industry to recover. The robustness of technical thinking in this country, and the fortunes to be made if you can, indeed, make a better mousetrap for computers, are our best hopes that this will happen. Especially now that Microsoft is likely to be restrained.

Joy, oh joy. He-hah. Dance a little dance. Microsoft is officially evil. Now, if I can just e-mail this off to the editors before the machine freezes ...