Re: Believe me, you WANT to read this!

From: Richard (riplin_at_Azonic.co.nz)
Date: 11/27/03 

Date: 26 Nov 2003 17:09:35 -0800

"JerryMouse" <nospam@bisusa.com> wrote

> No, we need a monopoly -

Well _we_ certainly do not need a monopolist, especially not an
American one.

> at least for operating systems.

Simply not true. What is required is standards that may be used by
any and not some contrived 'industrial standard' that is obscure,
protected and designed primarily to protect one company.

> In most cases, consumers come out better under monopolies

Certainly the monopolist will tell you that.

> than some sort of imposed competition.

There is no 'imposed' competition. There is no need for imposed
competition, just get rid of the imposed monolopoly illegally gained
through 'per box' and leverage. The courts found this and yet haven't
stopped MS.

> Remember, the arch monopolist John Rockefeller brought down the
> cost of kerosene from three dollars a gallon to less than five cents in only
> three years. This essentially destroyed the whale-oil industry but gave
> economical lighting to the masses. Standard Oil was eventually broken up,
> but not because of pressure from consumers.

And MS brought down the price of web browsers to zero dollars,
essentially destroying Netscape and many other companies in the
process, and also gyping spyglass out of its revenue.

(Spyglass wrote IE for a fee for each copy of IE _sold_. MS _gave_ it
away and thus didn't send any money to Spyglass - 'normal' business
practice for MS).

But MS have _not_ brought down the price of Windows or Office to '5
cents' so your analogy is simply crap. When DR-DOS was gaining some
market share against MS-DOS MS did bring down the price of MS-DOS to
zero dollars by bundling MS-DOS plus Windows 3.11 at the same price as
Windows 3.11 alone and by imposing per box pricing so that you paid
thge 'MS tax' if you bought a machine with DR-DOS installed.

The kerosene pricing was _entirely_ to kill off competitive products
and was nothing to do with consumer benefits. And this is exactly how
MS operates.

> In the case of software, a monopolist is his own worst competitor.

It is true that MS's greatest threat used to be old versions of
Windows - users sticking to Win98 or WinNT were a threat to MS's
revenue stream.

This is why MS tried to make selling a computer without an OS
'illegal' by the box makers, or at least a breach of reseller
agreements. With XP you cannot replace the hardware and keep the old
OS, you must buy a new copy.

> Unless he
> constantly innovates - offering a better product - his revenue stream
> disappears.

MS does not innovate at all. They steal or buy in innovations and
claim them as their own.

A recent claim by MS was that there was no innovation in browsers.
Certainly there has been no innovation by _MS_, all the innovation was
by Spyglass (who wrote IE) and by many other companies. While MS did
add features to IE they were entirely directed at breaking standards
and other browsers so that IE _had_ to be used and therefore Windows
had to be.

As for 'better' products, they only make them better enough. XP is a
better Windows but is not a secure product because MS don't want it to
be. They want to keep the threat of viruses, piracy and attacks
because those are from non-MS parties. MS can keep offering 'better'
products as long as 'evil' others can come up with new ways of
attacking Windows.

MS will leverage monthly updates into rentals to continue the revenue
stream, they will never actually fix the problem because then there
will be no need to update or upgrade.

> Monopolists are only a bad deal for consumers if the item the
> monopolist offers is a consumable - food, transportation, communications,
> etc., but not always even then (kerosene).

Which is why MS are trying to turn licences into rentals. A
significant proportion of corporates are already on expiring licences
rather than perpetual ones on the 3 year scheme. As it happens the
next scheduled release of Windows is just outside the majority of
those 3 year contracts. How convenient.

> Let's examine the "good of consumers and commerce" notion. The price of
> Windows has not risen appreciably (if at all) since version 1.0

Simply not true when taken as a percentage of system price. Today for
a low cost system the MS licences is the single biggest component. For
most systems MS makes more money than the hardware manufacturer and
marketer of the system.

Prices have tracked down continuously for the whole industry _except_
for MS.

> while the
> features and power have increased immeasurably. How is that bad for
> consumers?

Not 'immeasuraby' at all, except in terms of CPU cycles and GBytes
required.

While a basic computer has improved in power and capacity by a factor
of several thousand over the last 20 years and reduced in price by a
factor of 10 or so MS has done little except rake off the cream and
keep its prices up.

> Commerce? Ye Gods, Micros~1 is one of the nation's leading
> exporters,

How insular of you to view it that way.

> millions of people earn a living using tools crafted by Micros~1,
> productivity is at an all time high.

You seem to think that is attributable to MS only. In fact many of
those tools were _not_ crafted by MS at all, they were bought in to
ensure that MS controlled the market place.

> No, we would all be better off by letting Micros~1 do what it does best.

'All' being 'all shareholders' no doubt.

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