Stewart Stremler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(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.
Well stupid seems like a oversimplification to me. There is a lot of IS
people who don't realize the full ramifications of let's say Excheange which
requires AD and then IIS for web access. They then discover that IE is
required and which has then opened their environment to a bunch of viruses and
worms.
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?
AND.........Microsoft is using it's revenues that have been derived as
direct result of it's monopolistic tactics to acquire other companies.
> 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
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