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Skriven 2006-06-07 23:09:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2477.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 03:52:51 +0000 (UTC), "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:69e982551s1prjdqmm1gvrlh08mltmg6d8@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 03:40:42 +0000 (UTC), "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>>news:nfh482pbp6knf8cvfdpjkh2g5qju85827c@4ax.com...
>>
>>>>>> It isn't. Internet Explorer is an excellent example. When Netscape is
>>>>>> in business, the two companies released product after product, each
>>>>>> with loads of new features. But the moment Microsoft had succeeded at
>>>>>> driving Netscape out of business, they stopped all development.
>>>
>>>Yup, they drove a company that was giving away its product outr of 
>>>business.
>>>A company that was funded by an ouotrageously overpriced IPO during the
>>>height of the internet bubble.
>>
>> "Officer, arrest that man -- he just shot someone to death!"
>>
>> "Nah, the guy he shot had a liver condition -- prolly woulda died
>> anyway."
>
>Ultimately I go back to my subsequent question.
>
>So what?

So it's right to break the law and cause some unknown degree of harm
to another company and to competition?

We all saw the results on our desktops, saw at first vibrant
competition which resulted in the rapid introduction of new features
as the two browsers leapfrogged one another, then saw MS kill Netscape
with illegal expedients and saw the development cease. No more
competition, no more market, no more Netscape, which might have
created other products. The dismal gray of socialism, and investors
losing their money.

You can question Netscape's business strategy, and, really, I'm
inclined to agree with you -- I never /have/ figured out how they were
going to make money. But no one can say for sure what would have
happened, what Netscape would have done had it been free to compete on
a level playing field, and there are even today some browser makers
that seem to make money giving their product away, including the one
that I use, Avant Browser.

And, ultimately, the courts found evidence that Microsoft had harmed
Netscape, and Microsoft ended up paying Netscape $750 million in
damages.

Microsoft acted illegally, and damaged competition to some degree. And
when competition is damaged, we all suffer, because innovation slows
and we end up paying inflated prices. Argue if you will about what
might have happened, but those facts seems to me more than enough.

>I'm not.  Firefox is still growing and I've had several ideas that I might 
>suggest
>or write and submit for potential inclusion to FF myself.
>
>> That's part of the harm of bundling: most people don't know, or don't
>> have the time, and will use the stuff that's on their computers, no
>> matter how bad.
>
>MS used to just include Notepad and Write with Windows.  That didn't
>hurt sales of Word (or WordPerfect for that matter).

Not sure about Write -- are you sure it was included with the OS, or
are you thinking of Wordpad? Anyway, they do included Wordpad and
Notepad. But neither are full blown apps designed to compete with
commercial products: Notepad is just a very basic text editor and
Wordpad is a very basic word processor that last I checked couldn't
even handle justification. Nothing wrong with that.

>The interesting thing about PCs is that you accumulate things.  Very few 
>people
>use a PC and keep only the same software they first installed.  It was much 
>more
>common before people got connected to the internet, but now a lot of people
>get different software from all over the place.

Well, no, but when MS includes something like a free browser most
people /do/ keep it, as witness the fact that even today the vast
majority of people use IE rather than the probably superior Firefox.
And MS did more than bundle a browser -- they made it impossible to
remove. Sellers couldn't make Netscape the default browser and users
who installed Netscape slowed down their computers because they had
/two/ browsers running. (Microsoft claimed in court that IE couldn't
be removed -- whereupon some enterprising programmers did just that.)

>Remember how they said that by putting MSN on the desktop in Win95 it was 
>going
>to crush AOL and every other online service?  Guess what, MSN has not 
>exactly
>taken over, has it?

Sometimes they destroy the competition, sometimes they don't.
Sometimes  they succeed in part. MSN didn't destroy AOL, but it
certainly did grab a percentage of the market from other service
providers, far more than they would have gotten if the service hadn't
been bundled.

>MS has introduced a new graphic format to take on JPG.  Do you really think 
>that
>Windows is going to make WMP files replace JPG?  I doubt it.  MS Money comes
>in Office...how many people care?

Another case in which they didn't succeed despite dumping and
bundling. After that, they tried the other favorite tool of
monopolists -- buying the competition. (Then dropped the bid because
of antitrust pressure.) And I can think of other cases in which MS's
anticompetitive behavior failed -- the net framework, forex, or
passport, or MSN messenger. Some of these things fail these days
because other companies are so familiar with Microsoft's business
practices that the moment MS suggests a standard or sets up a
procedure they run the other way.

But, you know, this is like excusing a bank robber because half the
time he screws up the robbery.

>> And Microsoft is about to do it yet again, this time by making their
>> own search engine the default on Vista. Not only are they doing that,
>> but in typically underhanded fashion, they've made it unnecessarily
>> difficult to change the default to Google or Yahoo.
>
>And I can see how doing so is suddenly going to wipe the memory
>of   W W W . G O O G L E . COM from everyone's mind.
>Type it once, drag it to the toolbar and it's always right there on top.

Many people will just use what's there and what's more convenient.
Half of computer users don't even know you can do that. And clicking
on a toolbar and going to an extra page is an inconvenient extra step.

Hell, I know computers, but I didn't take the time to change the
default for searches myself. It was just too much trouble because
Microsoft made it too much trouble.

Bottom line: MS they did this to give themselves an unfair competitive
advantage, and that's illegal for a monopoly.

>> That's not competition -- it's the business equivalent of socialism.
>
>Missed that one.  MS says "We have a browser over here and a
>search engine designed to be used by browsers over here.  Maybe
>it would be good for business to let people know about the search engine
>from our browser."
>
>Socialism is telling MS..."No, we collectively own the stuff
>you created and we'll tell you what you have to do with it."

The essence of socialism is no competition and no choice. And trusts
destroy competition and choice, which is why they're illegal. I don't
think it makes much of a difference that it's a private monopoly
destroying the choice rather than the government: in a way, it's
worse, since we get to vote out the government if we don't like what
they're doing.

So is it, strictly speaking, socialism? No, but my point is that
trusts have many of the same effects, because they destroy competition
and free markets. Calling it corporate socialism is the same as
calling corporate subsidies and tax breaks corporate welfare.

>> I rather think yo misread me, which isn't surprising because I was
>> getting tired by the time I wrote it and said "nah" when I considered
>> clarifying it.
>>
>> Anyway, my point was that there was no competitive disadvantage to
>> Microsoft from allowing others to write add-ins for their product.
>> Quite the contrary. OTOH, had they deemed the add-ins a threat, you
>> can bet they wouldn't have been there, or would have been hidden, like
>> the infamous undocumented calls that benefit their own applications
>> developers.
>
>First, Gates went on his yearly "Thinking" retreat years ago and came
>back with the clearest and most succinct view of the industry and
>how to make money at it:  control the APIs.
>
>At that time Lotus and Ashton Tate (remember them?) were fighting it
>out with the first attempts at suites.  AT's was "Framework."  I forget
>what Lotus' was.  They both failed (again because they misread the
>market and failed in their approaches...it was LONG before Office
>appeared).
>
>It's not a matter of "If MS decided it wasn't in their best interest" 
>because
>releasing the APIs is exactly what the entire MS philosophy is.  MS wanted
>to recruit developers'  They've been very good at it.
>
>Even so, let's go down the "If it wasn't good for MS to release their API's
>they wouldn't do it."
>
>So what?
>
>How many companies do you expect to act against in their own interests?

I expect companies to act within the law.

>>>> They're damned if they break the law, and all the evidence -- the
>>>> memos, court decision after court decision here and abroad -- says
>>>> that they have, repeatedly.
>>>>
>>> And lately the judge says they're conforming to the judgement.
>>>They paid their fines, they're within the court appointed bounds.
>>>Get over it.
>>
>> No. The judge wanted to break the company up. He was relieved by the
>> appeals panel because he made the mistake of talking to freely with
>> the press, and the case went back to a gutless wonder who asked the
>> parties to settle. At that point, Microsoft's support of Bush paid
>> off, and the Administration corruptoids agreed to a laughably
>> meaningless wrist slap. I've no doubt that Microsoft has been within
>> the bounds of that sham settlement, just as they've complied with its
>> laughable EU equivalent. Though despite what you said
>
>OR... a panel of appelate judges recognized that the particular
>judge in question was not just biased but made the mistake of
>demonstrating it in public and so they appointed another judge
>that wasn't rabidly anti-MS.

Dude, everything the judge said about MS was correct and inevitable
given the circumstances. /The appeals court supported his findings of
fact./ Judge Jackson's mistake was to become so riled by Microsoft's
in-your-face behavior that he mentioned some of his opinions before
his decision.

>Of course your assumption that because the subsequent judge
>didn't break up MS because THEY were the ones that were
>biased is your opinion...but that's all it is.

The subsequent judge asked the parties to make a last attempt at a
settlement, which was very weak on her part but reflected her view
that a settlement would be "in the best interests of the country"
after 9/11. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration had taken office,
and the bought-and-paid-for bastards agreed to a sweetheart deal that
the Clinton DOJ wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole. That deal
was universally decried as ineffectual, and many of the state
attorneys general refused to go along with it:

' "The state attorneys general who today rejected the settlement
agreement between Microsoft and the Department of Justice were right
to do so, and we support them," Paul Cappuccio, AOL Time Warner's
general counsel, said in statement. "That agreement fails to protect
consumer choice and promote competition, by leaving Microsoft free to
continue to abuse its monopoly".'

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-275440.html

Time has proven them right: as Judge Jackson pointed out, Microsoft's
behavior hasn't changed at all.

>>>> They're criminals, pure and simple, who bully their competitors.
>>
>>>So does Apple.  So does IBM.  So does Sun.
>>>So do unions.
>>
>> "So does Genghis, and so does Joseph, and so does Atilla . . ." Do you
>> think I advocate this behavior when others enrage in it?
>
>I don't know.  I've never heard you express such outrage at anyone else.

Because Microsoft is currently doing far and away the most harm, and
because the other subjects haven't come up, and, really, because
neither Apple nor IBM nor Sun nor unions froze my supposedly robust XP
system last night and left me to clean up the godawful mess.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, the butchers of Darfur, the
twirly-eyed fanatics in Iran, and the lawbreakers in the White House
are more important than Microsoft. Certainly, if I had to choose, I'd
prefer to see them dealt with than Gates.

And in terms of what I'd /rather/ talk about, well, I'd rather talk
about energy, because I find the engineering challenges and
possibilities interesting whereas the Microsoft discussion is merely
criticism of sleazy business tactics.

But the discussions here aren't systematic.

Speaking of which, weren't we going to drop this topic?

>>><snip...decade old news>
>>
>> Now you can argue that the letter you snipped is an aberration, or you
>> can try to prove that he's changed his stripes, or you can say that
>> the sort of behavior it depicts isn't associated with Grade A
>> assholes, but in a subthread that is after all about Bill Gates's
>> character and why I have such little respect for him you can't merely
>> write it off with a casual snip.
>
>But I can, largely because the letter is no big deal.  Let's assume that he 
>did
>see that email before the day before.  If you can prove it...nail him for
>perjury!  Absolutely.  No question.  Until then, we skip that part and go to
>the part about OpenDoc.
>
>Did MS have to threated to discontinue Mac Office?  Nope, because
>without MS apps supporting it, it was dead .
>
>Even if MS DID threaten Apple with discontinuing MS products on
>the Apple...so what?
>
>MS made more money from Mac apps than Apple did.
>Not that many people would not have given up on Apple because
>there weren't MS apps; someone else would have siezed
>the opportunity and made some money.
>
>If MS doesn't want to write apps for Apple, that should be their
>business ... because it IS their business.

Sure. What it is not their business to do, and not legal to do, is to
extort Apple by threatening to damage them by withholding those apps.

>Is it playing hardball?  Sure.  So?

Because we tried robber baron capitalism, and it didn't work. Are you
familiar with the Standard Oil case and the history of the antitrust
law? Antitrust laws are important to the economy because they maintain
free markets.

Look at OPEC and the energy crisis of 20 years ago to see what cartels
do. Or the diamond cartel.

Do you really want to go back to the days when you had to pay extra
for a telephone that wasn't black and had three models with two
dialing options to choose from, when long distance calls were a
luxury, and when you had to be a Fortune 500 company to afford a
modem?

Look at what happened to AT&T: they couldn't compete once the market
was freed.

Look at what happened to the old line air carriers: they couldn't
compete when the market was freed.

Do you want to go back to the days when a plane ticket cost $800, or
would you rather pick up a market economy ticket for $129? We might as
well hand the country's economy to Lenin.

>> So here it is again, and this time
>> I'll up the ante a bit by asking for a yes-no answer: do you think
>> that Gates's behavior, as depicted herein, is respectable or legal, as
>> opposed to oafish, loutish, thuggish, and low?
>
>Was it legal?  What was the legal outcome?

It was found to be illegal.

>Oafish?  No, it was shrewd business without putting the best interests of
>a competitor above their own.

I disagree. Business isn't all dog-eat-dog. Much -- even most --
business occurs on the basis of a handshake. Negotiations and
contracts and disputes, yes, but a bottom line of trust that the guy
you do business with is going to deliver on his end of the bargain.
When you forget that trust, the only ones who benefit are lawyers.

>Was it hardball and likely to piss off Apple?  Sure.  Then again,
>Apple was pushing OpenDoc specifically as a rival technology to
>undercut MS' existing COM.  A number of other vendors were going
>to get together to promote OpenDoc.

That's the way it's /supposed/ to work. Competition.

>BTW, there actually were technical difficulties with OpenDoc at the time.
>IIRC, No product ever promised to support both COM and OpenDoc
>(but I might have missed some).
>
>You seem to have the expectation that MS should exist to make
>sure no one goes outof business, help everyone else undercut its
>own technologies and products and smile and give away their
>money while doing it.

Not at all. What I'm saying is that Microsoft should compete on the
merits of its products, rather than breaking the law by using its
monopoly power to bully competitors. And I'd say the same thing about
any company.

As I said somewhere else, I used to think highly of Bill Gates. I
think he would have done almost as well had he not broken the law,
because he was that valuable rarity -- a smart technophile comfortable
with business. Too many tech companies in this country are run by bean
counters or marketing people who don't understand the company's
business, whereas many smaller companies are run by engineers who
dislike the business end (been there, done that). Gates was that
valuable rarity, someone who combined technical knowledge with
ambition and greed. But I can't advocate criminality. Hell, I'm not
advocating perfection -- competition doesn't always allow that -- but
Microsoft was /way/ off the scale, almost in Standard Oil land.

>Will MS press an advantage when they can? Sure.  So would almost
>any business.
>
>Having said all of this, I think MS is on the decline...and that's 
>inevitable.
>MS is too large, too sluggish, to hated (because of their success and their 
>own
>actions...there IS a consequence to playing hardball).

Absolutely.

>I actually welcome the decline...as long as it's replaced by something
>reasonable that grabs the dominant position inthe marketplace (for the
>reasons that I mentioned elsewheree).   Unfortunately the Linux
>community is blowing it and Apple isn't capable of it.

I agree -- I think we're pretty far from a viable alternative. So
either there's going to be some kind of as-yet-unglimpsed paradigm
shift, or Gates and Ballmer will retire and the company will become
reasonably well-behaved, or we'll see foreign competition and the
whole thing will become moot.

IBM looked like a 40-foot giant back in the days when /it/ was the Big
Bad Monopolist. So did Kodak. So did the movie industry. All of them
lost control when their core business changed.

>> Seriously, Carl, there was a time when I admired Gates myself -- for
>> his intelligence, his drive, his toughness and business savvy. It was
>> behavior like this, reported in so many quarters, that changed my
>> opinion. And for that reason I don't think you can blow it off. That
>> would be like saying "What, you distrust Richard Nixon? But Watergate
>> happened a decade ago."
>
>Distrust is fine.  Monitor extra carefully? Perfectly reasonable...but 
>villianize him
>as though he was a murderer because he plays hardball in the interest of his
>company?  I personally find that extreme.

I don't equate him to a murderer. But I do have to ask myself this:
why is he the Big Hero and Admired Philanthropist when his
law-breaking netted him billions, saddled us with bugs, poor design,
and high prices, and crippled the once-innovative software industry?
The radio-stealing junkie on the corner does a lot less harm to others
than Gates has, and he goes to jail.

>To use this as an excuse to 
>discount
>and even denounce his giving 1/3 of his wealth directly to people needing it 
>most
>is also extreme.  BTW, Bill & Melinda have made multiple trips to third
>world countries and one reason Bill stepped down was to spend more of his 
>time
>working with thre foundation.  It wasn't just a matter of writing a check; 
>he's
>actively involved.

Personal involvement I can appreciate. The rest meanings nothing to me
either way, because, as I said, there's no real sacrifice involved: he
can buy popularity the way John D. Rockefeller did, and assuage his
conscience, if he has one.

>>>I will grant you that to configure Linux can be trying sometimes, 
>>>depending
>>>on your hardware and the distribution...but you can't blame MS for that.
>>
>> First of all, most people can't do that.
>
>Actually, distributions such as Gentu (sp?) have apparently become
>much better, and you can get a CD (or burn one yourself) that will
>run the distribution directly from the CD to try it out and see if it will
>recognize your hardware etc.
>
>You have to do more if you don't have a broadband connection, but then
>again that's what makes buying a PC with a pre-installed OS rather
>convienient. :)

And this is /way/ beyond the capacities or interests of most people,
who use PC's as appliances. It's like buying a refrigerator and then
having to choose and buy a compressor and coils and then having to
install and troubleshoot them at home.

>> And second of all, even those
>> of us who can are typically stuck with MS software because of one or
>> another indispensable application.
>
>Which is of course the real strength of the Windows platform.
>Still,  MS didn't force developers to write Windows apps.  MS didn't
>force people NOT to write OS/2 apps...developers chose not to.
>
>Again, if the Linux community ever decides to encourage people to
>make money on the platform...then we have a new ball game.

I don't think they will. They're too into geek space.

>> Experience taught me long ago that
>> using non-standard applications was a mistake in a business setting --
>> it just took too long to get the files up on the client's machine, and
>> there were always problems, and it was not something that the client
>> appreciated or understood.
>
>None of which are MS's fault.

They have a history of manipulating file formats to keep them
proprietary and a constantly moving target.

>> So while I would use and recommend Linux in
>> an appropriate application, no, I don't think you can say that it's
>> anything but difficult to use non-MS software. I don't even do it at
>> home: I would have to jump through too many hoops to do so.
>
>
>I got OpenOffice downloaded and running in a very short time.
>It needs work, but it's usable.  Thunderbird installs as well as
>any other app and even imports your settings from MS's apps.
>
>That gives you the majority of what most casual users need.
>Actual business apps...that's the problem with Linux.

And ease of use. And then there's the "no one ever got fired for
buying IBM" syndrome.

I have a friend who saves his clients lots of money by outfitting them
with Open Office Linux desktops. As you say, they're fine for most
casual users. But I've seen relatively little of that.

Wouldn't work for me. Document interchange with clients is hard enough
when one is dealing with /Microsoft/ apps. And I've found that clients
are rather unforgiving when you run into delays, even when the delays
are caused by bugs and old software on their systems. Typical (and
almost verbatim) discussion:

"You're running an old version of Word, and it won't display this
file."

"I highly doubt that."

(*sigh*)

>OpenOffice is not exactly niche.

A question of definition, perhaps. From what I've seen, open source
apps never get out of the niche category, in part for the reasons you
mention below, in part because they aren't marketed and don't cost
anything, and that's not something most businessmen understand: if it
isn't marketed, they don't hear about it, and if it's free, they
assume there's something wrong with it.

>Check out SourceForge.  Better yet,subscribe to a channel
>with your RSS reader.  There are dozens of Open Source apps
>added every day.  Most of them are smaller, but not all.
>They are there, but again the issue is the Linux mindset; even if
>you find the app, the support is in question and businesses
>justifiably balk at that idea.
>
>Linux has a firm grasp on the gun that it uses to shoot itself in the foot.
>Self-inflicted wound; no pity from me.  They do have a possibility
>using an interesting model for some business apps (I won't go into this
>because I'm already putting everyone to sleep)... but I don't
>know if it will gain any traction.

No, just another illustration that we need a commercial alternative.

>>>Josh...See the list above. On top of that you can get one of several free
>>>SQL databases such as FreeSQL or MySQL.  You can get all of the above
>>>software (except Linux of course) to run on Windows too.  Most Linux
>>>devotees claim that is all 80% of all users ever need.
>>>
>>>You also seem to ignore that there is a HUGE amount of software written 
>>>for
>>>the Windows platform that is tailered for business.  Almost all of this is
>>>not written by MS.  If all you notice is little niche apps that run on
>>>Windows besides Office, you're not looking very hard.
>>
>> Big niche apps, then. Same thing. I use my share of third-party
>> programs -- I'm using one now -- but Microsoft has killed most
>> innovation in the popular ones, the word processor, spreadsheet,
>> browser, media player, and so on,
>
>That's just wrong.  Because of Open Office, MS was forced to embrace
>XML as a file format.  Because of FireFox, MS is working on IE7.  MS
>is even rewriting Outlook Express (probably because of TBird).

I said most innovations, not all. And Firefox is /precisely/ the
example I started out with. After they killed Netscape, they stopped
developing IE, even announced that it was a "mature technology" and
that they weren't going to upgrade it when asked why they weren't
adding things like tabbed browsing. And so it went for years until
Firefox started grabbing market share. Then, suddenly, they went to
work on a new version.

I can't think of a better example of how the destruction of
competition cripples software development and innovation, and its
presence gets it moving again.

>MS keeps adding to Office every release.
>
>There's not that much room for a new WP, SS, etc because for the ***vast***
>majority of people Word and Excel is much more than people need.  If they
>need more they can usually get an add-in.  On top of that, as you pointed
>out yourself  "using non-standard applications was a mistake in a business 
>setting."
>
>So, MS is adding to Office all the time, they're still feeling pressure
>from Open Office, and having a standard is a GOOD thing.

People don't need more features, they need better software. Microsoft
can't innovate on its own. Its been years since they added much to
Office that was of interest to anyone. Just more and more bloat,
things you have to disable when you install the new version.

You seem to be using that as a benchmark for what would happen if
there still /were/ competition in the word processor market. I say
we'd start seeing lots of improvements, lots of creativity. And I
think experience bears that out.

>> and now they're taking aim at Google and the makers of antivirus
>> software, just as they did at Netscape and Word Perfect and all the 
>> others.
>
>In case you haven't noticed, Google and others are constantly going after 
>them too.
>The whole Java movement earlyt on was pushed to try to kill MS. People
>were (unwisely) saying that we wouldn't need an OS, just a browser.

Which was of course mere silliness.

>I've already mentioned a group of people that not only weanted to kill MS,
>they wanted to take MS's place.

But you seem to forget that I have no problem with competition. My
entire purpose is to /encourage/ competition by preventing unfair
monopoly activity.

>As to anti-virus...seriously...people (correctly) complain that MS's OS
>are too vulnerable.  You expect them to NOT try and improve their security
>when people expect better security in the OS?  Of course they want to
>add anti-virus, anti-spyware, software...and they should.

That's true /if/ they include it for free. But they aren't going to be
including their antivirus for free. They'll be selling subscriptions.
And that would be fine, too, if they didn't abuse their monopoly power
to sell their own app and put the competition out of business.

>You want to compete with MS?  You have to make something better, not
>simply just as good or a little bit better.  That encourages innovation.

No, the whole point is that that isn't the case. In most cases you
can't even get capital to make something better, because venture
capitalists know what Microsoft will do to you -- imitate your
product, take a loss by bundling it for free and making it impossible
to uninstall and even turn off, purposely make their products
incompatible or hide the info you need to interoperate or put in
undocumented hooks that give their products an advantage, and put you
out of business. Etc.

>> Don't get me wrong: Microsoft doesn't always succeed at doing this.
>> They tried giving away Money, but even at that price, they couldn't
>> touch Quicken, and IIRC the Clinton DOJ kept them from acquiring what
>> they couldn't conquer. They tried forcing that asinine MSN messenger
>> down our throats -- I /still /have to look at that annoying icon,
>> though they stopped trying to make you register. MSN itself was only
>> marginally successful at stealing business from AOL (itself an odious
>> company). And if I thought hard enough, I'm sure I could come up with
>> some other cases in which they failed.
>
>Yup. Please not that the current downward spiral of AOL is also
>self-inflicted, and MSN is apprently not geting the market share
>that AOL is losing.

And it couldn't happen to a more deserving company. Even MS makes
better products than AOL.

>> That being said, they've succeeded more often than they've failed,
>> killing DR-DOS
>
>They certainly helped, but DR DOS was doomed anyway.

How do you know that?

>> , OS/2
>
>IBM destroyed OS/2, not MS.

Ditto. I don't know anyone who used OS/2 who didn't say it was better
than Windows 3x. And yeah, IBM did a poor job of marketing it, but we
all know that the main way to get an OS into peoples' hands is to put
it on the desktop, and Microsoft's illegal licensing made that
impossible.

>, so many others...
>
>
><snip...covered>
>
>>>It has a bearing on their survival (which is the topic that you brought 
>>>up).
>>>Microsoft had no reason to go hard after Apple because
>>>for many years Microsoft made  muich more money on Apple software than 
>>>Apple
>>>did.  Apple has always (rather stupidly) considered itself a hardware
>>>company.
>>
>> Never said it didn't, though I don't happen to agree with your
>> argument here -- I mean, MS would make the same money selling Office
>> if everyone ran Windows.
>
>MS is a software company. It sees itself as a software company.
>If MS finds a way to make money writing software for Linux, it will.

They could make plenty of money doing it now, but they don't want to
provide a product that would boost the fortunes of Linux. They'd
rather lose money on office suites than threaten the Windows monopoly.
Office is their cash cow, but they know that it's Windows that gives
them a privileged position in the marketplace.

>> I've long suspected that the real reason they
>> bailed out Apple was because they wanted some technology, or because
>> they were at the time under so much legal pressure for their
>> monopolistic behavior.
>
>I suspect that they bnailed out Apple for 2 reasons: To settle a bunch
>of cross filed lawsuits and to make sure that Apple survived so that
>they could point to another alternative in the market place during
>the lawsuit.

My thoughts exactly.

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                 
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