>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.
I am forced to applaud this sentiment and once again concede that Mr. Dancey
has an outlook on the industry that is well nigh perfect for the role he
finds himself in.
(You do realize though that you have now irrevocably lost the last of the
"open source" guys who were still hanging on, don't you? Not to mention
giving most of the people on SlashDot spastic fits.)
Faust
>From: "Ryan S. Dancey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: [Open_Gaming] Rant #2
>Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 21:07:45 -0700
>
>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
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