Bill Gates took the stand today in his company’s trial on charges that it’s anti-competitive. Iowa’s one of nine states holding out against a settlement another nine states accepted last year. Steve Del Bianco is a spokesman for the Association for Competitive Technology, and says Iowa’s Attorney general is helping push a lawsuit that would do harm to many kinds of small businesses such as consulting firms, software developers and others who’ve built their businesses on the Windows operating system. Del Bianco says he had an information-technology firm that used to do business with Iowa clients. He says the plaintiffs’ remedy would cost Iowa businesses and consumers a lot because it would make Microsoft change programs they use. Del Bianco says his group isn’t saying Gates and Microsoft are blameless in having a control of the computing world that approaches a monopoly.They’d agree with last summer’s court of appeals ruling that Microsoft should quit doing a list of about dozen anti-competitive things. When some of the states agreed to a settlement with Microsoft, Iowa Attorney general Tom Miller announced this state would continue to pursue the suit because it was in the best interest of consumers.