At 12:28 PM -0500 6/11/00, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <a04310100b5696e17666a@[207.111.242.204]>, on 06/11/00
> at 10:44 AM, Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
>>>
>>>-- Use it's monopoly with hardware vendors to prevent competition's
>>>product from being pre-installed on new equipment.
>
>>Oh? You mean that if Tim's Computer Company buys some motherboards and
>>power supplies and processors and such that his company is "prevented"
>>from selling Linux or Plan 9 or whatever on it? How does Microsoft
>>enforce this--guns?
>
>And you are completely missing the dynamics of the market. Gateway sells
>only M$ software or on the next release M$ software doesn't run properly
>on Gateway machines. Exactly how long would a Gateway or a Dell stay in
>business if M$ software didn't run on their machines?
Not my problem, or the government's problem that some vendor fails.
Apple would no doubt fail if IBM and Motorola stopped making PPC
chips. This doesn't mean the government has any constitutional or
moral authority to force IBM and Motorola to stay in this business.
This situation is replicated many times. Intel has an 80-90% share of
the PC market. Cisco has a similar, or even higher, share of the
router business.
If Gateway would fail by not working with Microsoft or Intel, for
example, then it will behoove them to do thusly. When Intergraph
tried to cheat Intel, Intel stopped supplying them with advance info
and non-catalog details.
(Likewise, I was involved with Intel's "CRUSH" campaign, designed
explicitly to drive AMD out of business. We withheld technical
details of our chips from selected customers and worked closely with
"loyal" customers to supply them with advance looks at chips,
technical data, etc.)
>What at first
>started out as a mutually favorable arrangement for both parties is now
>nothing more than a M$ extortion racket.
You have no understanding of the word "extortion."
You confuse market share, e.g., the decision by most consumers to
choose Windows over OS/2 or Plan 9 or DrDOS, etc.
Furthermore, Netscape and Sun picked this war when they announced,
respectively, that their plan was to have "the browser as OS" and
"Java as OS." Recall that Andreesen and Clark and such were touting
Netscape Navigator as the "Microsoft killer," as the environment in
which word processors and spreadsheets and such would live. Didn't
quite happen this way, did it?
Microsoft can hardly be faulted for fighting back. In fact, they did
with their integration of the browser into the OS what Netscape was
_talking_ about doing but never did.
Netscape kept on bloating up their browser to the point where 4 and
4.5 were 12+ megabytes of crashing cruft. Like many others, I
switched to Explorer a year or two ago. I like it a lot.
No one forced me to do so. (In fact, Navigator came installed on my Mac.)
>
>As far as the quip about enforcing with guns, M$ is not beyond the threat
>of force to bully those who challenge them. While M$ does not have their
>own standing army with guns they have a very active "army" of lawyers who
>have the power to drag you through the court system at considerable cost
>(and there is a standing army to back up any of their rulings).
You also have no appreciation of the concept of "initiation of
force." The break up of Microsoft is initiation of force. Period.
Get a clue.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
