Probably just enough. It's the Windows+Office lock-in that's so damaging. If Office ran under Linux that would really unblock things. Also the other provisions in the proposal (http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f4600/4639.htm) look good.
Re:Will MS Really Suffer or Will It Soar Like Bell
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Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 1
Punishing past behaviour is a matter of fines or civil remedies. The point of a break-up would be to stop future anti-competitive behaviour (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). I agree that MS's shareholders including BG would benefit greatly if the company were broken up (thier anti-competitive practices are ultimately self-defeating). But so would the consumer and the industry as a whole.
The whole point of having Anti-trust laws is to stop companies with monopolistic positions competing unfairly. What MS don't/didn't seem to understand is that, with power, comes responsibility. Actions that might be legally acceptable if you have 9% of a market are unacceptable if you have 90%. As for 'freedom to innovate' - what innovations have come out of MS?
There are still fudamental problems: a. Minds/Brains are certainly Large Poincare Systems. But the essence of a digital system is that there is an epsilon below which disturbances of epsilon make no difference. b. Set of computable functions of non-deterministic Turing Machines is equal to that of deterministinc TMs, so it's not clear that mere randomisation makes a real difference to machine behaviours. c. It's unclear what the defintion of a 'non-deterministic machine' might be.
The only certain thing about 100yr predictions is that they'll be wrong, *unless* they are dealing with mathematical truths. It is clear that no digital machine can accurately emulate a Large Poincare System and (by Lucas' Theorem that no deterministic automaton can accurately emulate the human mind. It may prove possible to grow spiritual wetware artificially (after all, the AI that works is Artifical Insemination) but no digital computer, however facily programmed, is anything but a Turing Machine.
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Probably just enough. It's the Windows+Office lock-in that's so damaging. If Office ran under Linux that would really unblock things. Also the other provisions in the proposal (http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f4600/4639.htm) look good.
Punishing past behaviour is a matter of fines or civil remedies. The point of a break-up would be to stop future anti-competitive behaviour (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). I agree that MS's shareholders including BG would benefit greatly if the company were broken up (thier anti-competitive practices are ultimately self-defeating). But so would the consumer and the industry as a whole.
The whole point of having Anti-trust laws is to stop companies with monopolistic positions competing unfairly. What MS don't/didn't seem to understand is that, with power, comes responsibility. Actions that might be legally acceptable if you have 9% of a market are unacceptable if you have 90%. As for 'freedom to innovate' - what innovations have come out of MS?
There are still fudamental problems: a. Minds/Brains are certainly Large Poincare Systems. But the essence of a digital system is that there is an epsilon below which disturbances of epsilon make no difference. b. Set of computable functions of non-deterministic Turing Machines is equal to that of deterministinc TMs, so it's not clear that mere randomisation makes a real difference to machine behaviours. c. It's unclear what the defintion of a 'non-deterministic machine' might be.
The only certain thing about 100yr predictions is that they'll be wrong, *unless* they are dealing with mathematical truths. It is clear that no digital machine can accurately emulate a Large Poincare System and (by Lucas' Theorem that no deterministic automaton can accurately emulate the human mind. It may prove possible to grow spiritual wetware artificially (after all, the AI that works is Artifical Insemination) but no digital computer, however facily programmed, is anything but a Turing Machine.