(I had skipped this response because it was top-posted and a one-line response. A comment on IRC resulted in my re-examining the post...)
begin quoting Randall Shimizu as of Sat, Dec 31, 2005 at 11:32:51AM -0800: > Well you may not care that Microsoft is a monopoly, but I am sure a > lot of businesses care now that they are locked into enterprise > license agreements with Microsoft. Good. Serves 'em right for being stupid. It's not like it wasn't obvious. It's not like they weren't warned. The only problem I have that someone who's been stupid ought not to be allowed to force me to engage in the same stupidity. If the market chooses to be stupid, then let the market suffer the consequences. > Believe me Microsoft is still is a > monopoly despite the fact that it is operating under a consent > agreement. I never claimed otherwise. I just said I didn't care anymore. > The big difference today is that Microsoft has so much > revenue that it can simply acquire anyone who gets in their way. And? > Microsoft's core protocols and api's like AD, dotnet, ActiveX have > but one purpose and that is to extend and embrace and lock the > customer into the Windows environment. I don't disagree. > The end result of is that > Microsoft is able to raise prices when it wants. Just look at all the > subcription schemes for Xbox live or Windows live. Good for them. We've spent a quarter-century pointing this out. Anyone who's chosen to take that path is obviously a consenting adult by now. I do think that any government official that _chooses_ to buy new M$ software should be prosecuted under fraud, waste, and abuse laws, and that refusal to provide or read documents in M$ format should be legally protected, but that's a separate matter. -Stewart "Let the boil ripen for awhile" Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
