Wow, I don't think my three sentence comment quite deserved that rant. It
was meant as a comment on technology, not on Microsoft itself. And I think
you pulled my statement slightly out of context because I was responding to
a previous post. That post was on technology, and my statement was embedded
in his comments. I don't care if Microsoft is a Monopoly, but last time I
checked, legally they were. Perhaps an another Judge will overturn that,
but again, I don't care.
But, I leave it at that, there is no reason to even have this discuss on
this list, we talking d20! I apologize to everyone for provoking it. :)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ryan S. Dancey
> Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 11:08 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [Open_Gaming] Rant #2
>
>
> From: Chris Davis
>
> > Just for the record. This is not true. If Microsoft hadn't created
> > a Monopoly, the market would have produced cross platform languages
> > such as java, perl, or python much more quickly. Different OSs
> > wouldn't be the problem that it is today.
>
> I have to respond to this. I'm sorry if everyone will now begin
> wincing and
> clicking the next button. I apologize in advance for the following
> diatribe.
>
> There was a time when there was an OS installed on more computers than any
> other, and it wasn't a Microsoft OS. It was Apple's OS and Apple
> computers
> comprised the marketshare leader in PCs. Before that time, virtually all
> (meaning something like 80%) of "home computers" sold in the US
> ran the same
> OS - Tandy's TRS-80 OS.
>
> When MS-DOS was still in version 1.0, long before anyone could
> even begin to
> cry MONOPOLY, there were lots of cross platform languages. BASIC, the
> product that MS used to build its initial revenue stream was one of these,
> and in fact MS-BASIC was shipped standard with many distributions of CP/M
> and other computing platforms.
>
> Pascal (primarily in the form of Turbo Pascal from Borland) was likewise
> widely avaiable for CP/M, MS-DOS, APPLE-DOS, etc.
>
> There was a language called LOGO that had radically advanced graphics
> capabilities. FORTRAN and COBOL were used in various dialects on most
> mainframe computers. The original C language was defined in the
> early 70s -
> and C was >designed< to be a cross platform language - you were
> supposed to
> write entire OSs in it; like, for example, UNIX. I could go on for hours.
>
> Though I was very young and a long way from being a professional, I
> certainly participated in a substantial amount of development and systems
> work in those years on many platforms, and I can tell you from direct
> personal experience that the standardization achieved by
> Microsoft, IBM and
> Intel is a driver of the PC explosion and the rapid and successful
> deployment of massive computing power directly to the desktops of millions
> of homes and offices. The proprietary solutions offered by Tandy, Apple,
> Osborne, and a hundred other PC manufacturers didn't foster creativity,
> didn't foster competitiveness that mattered to consumers, and
> didn't do much
> at all for advancing the technical capabilities of the PC, or the
> applications available for commercial purchase for PCs. The balkanized,
> fragmented and incompatible world prior to the emergence of the
> MS-IBM-INTEL
> standard was a terrible and awful thing left happily behind as fast as
> possible by virtually every consumer who lived through it.
>
> Microsoft's "monopoly" is a chimera. It is not structural - it does not
> result from Microsoft's control of the movement of goods or services, or a
> natural resource, or a market, or a transportation route. If a new OS
> appears that offered more value to customers than Windows does, Windows
> would vanish just as fast as CP/M, AppleDOS, and the TRS-80 OS. It's the
> only "monopoly" in history that has resulted in steadily
> >decreasing< costs
> to customers, and rapid and continuous >improvements< in the monopolized
> good in question. Judge Jackson is an ass with an axe to grind, and just
> like last time, I fully expect him to be overturned, and reprimanded on
> appeal.
>
> Ryan
>
> -------------
> For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
