This is an explanation, not a suggested course of action. It may seem an 'unfair' disparity, but any attempt to legislate against such 'unfairness' will ultimately make things even more unfair.
One such 'suggestion' is tarrifs. This will undoubtedly put millions of Chinese laborers out of work, and will also drive up the price of the good that consumers pay. The only 'benefit' is allowing a domestic competetitor to overcharge their customers. That is what I would call unfair. Even if x number of Americans become unemployed I can guarantee they will be infinitely better off than if 100x Chinese are unemployed.
I heavily doubt this claim, but even if it were true China also has record GDP growth. They may lose a million manufacturer jobs, but if they gain 2 million service jobs they're sitting pretty.
I agree with much of what you said except:
"While other countries respect trade laws at the expense of their workers, industry and economy, why should China be allowed to be any different?"
The whole point of trade is that it isn't an expense. It's the only 'free lunch' there is in economics. If Japan were to put up big barriers to US imports, the US would be MUCH worse off by putting up barriers to Japanese imports.
Protectionist policies hurt everybody, except for a minority of grossly inefficient competetitors interested in keeping their profits high by exploiting consumers through tariff legislation.
You really have to put yourself into a Chinese man's shoes to understand. If a company goes overseas and offers you a job that pays $0.70/h, 12 hours a day, in a tiny little hot room, there's no way you would do it, right?
Not necessarily. Getting $0.70/h may be a blessing if the alternative is making $0.40/h for a domestic company, or more likely not working at all. We can only assume that because this Chinese man freely accepts the job that no other better alternatives exist. To remove this job opportunity for him may make us feel morally superior, but it won't help him put food on the table.
Like tariffs, quotas are used to protect domestic industry at the expense of foreign industries and more importantly consumers. They usually require this protection because they either have a poor product or a product that costs much more than their competetitor's. Preventing imports forces consumers to spend more than they normally would on the same good.
However in terms of software this may be a blessing for China. Linux's problem isn't price so much as it is marketing. However the real question is whether China will be able to use Linux or must they code their own O/S?
Maybe I'm nuts, but aren't a lot of these problems partly due to users as well?
Anyone could code a program for limits to delete an essential file, but you wouldn't blame Linux if someone had the idiocy to click on it. Same with spyware.
I only wish we could debug computer illiteracy.
Okay to summarize let's see what kind of propositins you are in favor of
"The issue is the requirement to bundle this software for the much-needed discounted licensing for Windows."
For these kind of changes to be made, it obviously has to be legislated, I take it that's what you're arguing, yes? So:
Make it illegal for Microsoft to have OEM agreements with their vendors. That is, no all-of-nothing agreements.
Okay I think I see what you're getting at, but I don't see why the free market can't decide this themselves. For example:
In the current system, if Dell just wants to have Linux boxes, they can, and they will be able to undercut their competetitors by at least $100 since licensing fees no long exist. Would this cause a massive sales shortfall? That really depends on how happy consumers are with their systems. It'd be interesting to talk to some of the people at Dell why they stick with MS stuff. Obviously they must know something about Linux, and they must have some enlightened theory why consumers would hate it.
But let's back up, this isn't about Linux as you said. You say Dell should be able to keep the XP O/S, but be able to change some of the bundled software without incurring a price increase, yes? This is where the all-or-nothing agreement starts hurting.
Because if Dell rejects the agreement, and signs up with Opera, they will be particularly burdened with price increases for violating the licensing agreement. And I doubt bundled-Opera is worth $200 to any consumer.
This point may have some merit. But as an obvious proponent of the free market I think the onos should be on the competetitors to find other ways of reaching their consumers by other means, rather than vendor agreements.
Adobe, ICQ/AIM/Trillian, ZoneAlarm, Winamp, WinRAR, and CDex are all monumental examples of unbundled software (well maybe not AIM) that have succeeded under these pressures. Even Firefox is making incremental gains; have you ever heard of a Firefox user switching back to IE? Indeed, have you ever heard of anyone switching BACK to MS software?
This has been happening for the last 6 years or so. Its slow growth. But there is growth. An interesting indicator of this is some of the games I'm able to play on my Linux desktop today.
But, frankly, its not enough. Why shouldn't Dell be able to tap in to this market too?
Well as you said it's not just Linux. I think a lot of non-MS software has been proliferating quite well despite the vendor agreements. Government regulation has a way of causing a multitude of negative side-effects. Eric Raymond, one of the heaviest open-source advocates: "The whole premise of antitrust law is wrong," says Raymond. "Governments don't break up monopolies, markets do. Governments create monopolies."
Actually we do still vote in our elections, but that's not the problem. There's an old adage that says: "People elect the government they deserve". In other words, people who ignorant of economics are going to elect anybody with a policies that 'sound good', but fail miserably in practice.
So while the governments may be applying policies that 'people' want, they are often horribly counter productive. How often do you hear, "Gas prices are too high." or, "My landlord charges me too much."? Then they demand that the government "do something" and it always ends in dire consequences.
You're missing the point. Given a linux distro and given XP, she will find XP much easier to use, ceteris peribus. Of course one doesn't know everything about Windows, just enough to get by. And if she DOES have a problem there's a nice number to call. Do these Linux distros have a number? No, they've got web boards, if you can find them. And I'm sure most people can't
If you still resist, go ask an XP user why he hasn't tried Linux. he won't say "Because XP has locked me in.", be'll say, "I have no reason to." or "I'm happy with XP."
Branding doesnt mean dick these days.
I can only assume you haven't taken any marketing courses, or maybe any courses at all... The brand name of a company itself will be worth many times more than just the company assets (known as 'Goodwill' on accounting statements.
Let's look at the classic OEM argument:
From what I know, computer vendors get a 70% discount on MS products if they solely ship MS products. That's a good deal. But is it 'unfair'? Once again let's take a look:
Let's say you are the manager at Dell. You can choose to only ship cpus with XP at $100 per head, or ship different computers, but any cpus that have XP will cost $300. Which do you choose? This is a trade-off with obvious pros and cons. For most managers, they stick with Microsoft. Why? Because it makes no sense to ship other operating systems that very few people want when it causes your best product to go up $200. Now, why doesn't anyone want other operating systems? Let's look at the competetion for IBM machines: Linux and BSD, really. And who does Dell commonly ship too? Certainly not geeks, their borderline insulting advertisements show this. So all the non-geeks, also known as 99% of the population, want an operating system that is nice and user-friendly. And what falls into this category? Windows XP.
So as a manager at Dell, you COULD tell MS to take their deal and shove it, and only have Linux boxes. But you would hardly sell a single computer. Why? Because you neglected 99% of the market.
Until Linux stops catering to geeks, and starts catering to average Joes, MS will continue to dominate. Couldn't vendors solely offer Linux, which doesn't cost them a dime? It's a better O/S right? Then why don't people want it? Either because they don't know about it, they don't know enough about it, or no one has given them reason enough to switch: most are happy with XP; the poor fools.
Okay, but let me concede. IF Linux is truly all this wonderful user friendliness you purport, then wouldn't it be gaining marketshare? YES! It does, but mostly buy word of mouth.
You seem to think the Marketing is only advertising; it isn't. It's supply chain management, product management, logistics, consumer trends, etc. Getting these OEM deals was a brilliant move in the supply chain. Linux could very easily go up to one of these vendors (or perhaps start at a smaller one) with their own marketing teams and explain to them how great and user friendly Linux is. But they don't.
Government is responsible for property rights. Anything beyond that is questionable. Anytime Microsoft has commited fraud, or stolen anything, or commited violence, they were punished. And they should be. But not for making business decisions and the millions of independent decisions of their consumers to use their products.
I'm a science major, and I would never work for Microsoft. As you said, they don't innovate and would certainly not be a good company to work for. But there are reasons why they got where they are. Hell, they didn't START OUT a 'monopoly'!
Businesses are still businesses, they won't buy into software that doesn't have any marginal benefits. Unless they truly make a decent product nobody is going to hop on board.
Although it is unfortunate; if MS does nothing they are neglecting security issues, if they give away patches they are tightening their grip, if they charge too much they are exploiting their monopoly. Short of giving away Mandrake CDs there's not a move they can make that won't be reviled.
1st point: Capitalism can't work with corrupt governments. And Russia is amoung the worst. it has done very well with the states, and privatizing indsutry in China has done wonders for their economy. Of course it's fallible, but it's far better than the alternatives.
The OEM argument has been presented to me numerous times, and it simply doesn't hold water. I'll explain:
From what I know, computer vendors get a 70% discount on MS products if they solely ship MS products. That's a good deal. But is it 'unfair'? Once again let's take a look:
Let's say you are the manager at Dell. You can choose to only ship cpus with XP at $100 per head, or ship different computers, but any cpus that have XP will cost $300. Which do you choose? This is a trade-off with obvious pros and cons. For most managers, they stick with Microsoft. Why? Because it makes no sense to ship other operating systems that very few people want when it causes your best product to go up $200. Now, why doesn't anyone want other operating systems? Let's look at the competetion for IBM machines: Linux and BSD, really. And who does Dell commonly ship too? Certainly not geeks, their borderline insulting advertisements show this. So all the non-geeks, also known as 99% of the population, want an operating system that is nice and user-friendly. And what falls into this category? Windows XP.
So as a manager at Dell, you COULD tell MS to take their deal and shove it, and only have Linux boxes. But you would hardly sell a single computer. Why? Because you neglected 99% of the market.
Until Linux stops catering to geeks, and starts catering to average Joes, MS will continue to dominate. Couldn't vendors solely offer Linux, which doesn't cost them a dime? It's a better O/S right? Then why don't people want it? Either because they don't know about it, they don't know enough about it, or no one has given them reason enough to switch: most are happy with XP; the poor fools.
Don't think these companies are making unconscienable profits though. Just because the price of a US stamp is $0.50 doesn't mean it costs $0.50 to send it. They take tax payer money to make up for their inefficient price schemes.
If none of the remaining 30% has above 5% (or even if they do), they can also be aquired by the monopoly. Or, the monopoly may choose to price the product/service below the cost and wait for the competition to go under. Or whatever.
This is often cited as the reasons for 'anti-dumping' tariffs and the 'infant industry' argument. Both have been refuted by economists. Let's look at it:
If a company decides that they will indeed operate at a loss to drive a company out of business, and let's say they are powerful enough to do this, and let's say that they actually have the financial resources to continually have negative earnings, and let's say all their shareholders don't jump ship and are some how clued into this scheme; could this drive a company out of business? Certainly. Is there one example of this happening? Not that I know of. If you know one I would love to hear it. More often then not a company drives another out of business not by operating at below cost, but by operating very close to cost. This is what Wal-mart does, and they do it very well.
But let's say this does occur and now there is only one firm left in this particular industry. And let's say they increase their prices. All the previous resources of the previous bankrupt company don't vanish, and all the knowledge of thier personnel don't vanish either. Once huge profits are made by the 'monopolizing' company another company can quite easily buy up the now discounted assets of the bankrupt company. Now the 'monopolizing' company has to cut costs again.
Of course this is all theoretical. I would have a source but no company has ever gotten past step two: Jacking up the price once there are no more competetitors.
Fuck Marketing? Marketing is the very reason why Firefox hasn't caught on. Changing brand identity every few years is a serious problem. If you don't believe in marketing that's your business, but don't complain when computer illiterates don't know of it, or don't know anything about it. Word of mouth is painfully slow, especially when people keep trying to look up Phoenix instead of Firebird or Firefox or Firepig or whatever the name-of-the-year is.
I live in Canada, a city of about 1 million people and I go to University where you would expect more Linux users. And maybe there are, but the people I talk to happily use XP. Would they switch? Maybe, but Linux hasn't told them why they should. And that is Linux's fault, not Microsoft's.
Does Grandma have the time or ambition to fiddle with a computer? Probably not. With Mandrake you do have to fiddle a lot more, and it is a larger learning curve. Even Mandrake people will admit this, why you resist is beyond me.
You seem to think she's going to have a compsci friend amoung her bridge club, which is of course completly insane.
The reason Linux and Firefox hasn't caught on has nothing to do with Microsoft's supposed monopoly. 'Bundling' and OEMS have nothing to do with the open-source's failures as a business, or lack thereof.
There are rational explanations for the slow growth of Linux, like the lack of marketing (such as with Firefox). Until then word of mouth will indeed slowly creep up their market share. It's happening already, like you said, so why force it? I didn't say Linux wasn't a threat; it is. But the best product in the world isn't any good if no one has heard of it. Once word-of-mouth starts spreading (and it spreads exponentially) and market share increases, Microsoft will perk up. Whether they decide to innovate (which will succeed if it's truly better) or 'lock down' (which by itself will never succeed) or market better (which by itself succeeds) is up to them.
People need to be eased into these things. They don't need the government ordering companies around.
So a company with 70% market share would no longer need to worry as much about the rabble with 30% market share? I can agree to an extent. Their current products and services will suffice for the time being. But as soon as they stop innovating, what's to stop that 30% from rapidly gaining strength?
I'm not a fan of unions either. However I see no issues with the OEM deals, in which I could write a book about and will leave out of this discussion.
The government's role is to protect property rights and fraud. But you are right. Every always excuses the Big Dogs of doing something 'evil', rather than providing a much needed good to their consumers, which is largely the case.
Since when do companies ever stop competing? You may have a case with oligopolies and collusion, but these are extremly rare.
And how do companies 'elumiate' the opposition? Usually it's by providing a cheaper good (Wal-mart) or a better good. If they do it through legislation then that is wrong and the law should be revoked.
The Post office IS a monopoly. No one is allowed to send mail under $0.50 to post boxes. Not because they won't be able to compete, but because the government says so. Just because it's not a necessarily 'evil' monopoly, its ineffeciencies justify its liquidation.
How convenient there wasn't a single argument in that little diatribe. Oh right, this is slashdot, a band of rabid Linux dogs where everything is free and corporations never satisfy customers.
I seriously someone mods this up. It's something all slashdotters need to read before they start their irate seething that perhaps Henry Ford, A&P Grocers, and even Oracle and PeopleSoft got where they are because they satisfied customers better than their competetitors.
All jokes aside, and with this article it could take awhile, we should at least look at the reasons for MS taking this approach.
If it's free, like most of their service packs, well then great. However if it's just some GUI rubbish like XP Plus! or something equally retarded at least we aren't being forced to download it.
But what if they charge for it? For home users this is irrelevent since they will just get it off p2p or their friends. So really this question goes to the businesses: Will this new release be worth the price of an upgrade? What are the benefits and costs? Every business asks this. Without knowing what is in this release I can't imagine many people would adopt it. Why? Because the difference between Windows98 and Windows98SE was stability, and XP is reasonably in relation to other Windows releases. So what exactly are they offering new that would entice businesses to spend money? People have said Windows' greatest competetitor is Windows; and they're right. Innovation is a problem for MS, but that's not surprise.
Yes. It's a good thing they clamped down on Henry Ford, that evil monopolist. Not to mention Wal-mart, the single most efficient company in the history of the US that has saved consumer $20 bil. Just keep stamping those bastards out!
Fine. But do you propose? Taking out the 'slave master' ie. corporation? Of course not, you would only impoverish people further. It SEEMS like slavery only superficially. Isn't that lawyer making $100 000 a year a slave to the government? Isn't the Staples manager a slave to his hire-ups? Technical, yes. But the difference is they can leave any time they want. However they don't because if they did they would be impoverished. The relationship is perfectly amicable, even if you live paycheck-to-paycheck. Such is not the case in real, bonified slavery.
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This is an explanation, not a suggested course of action. It may seem an 'unfair' disparity, but any attempt to legislate against such 'unfairness' will ultimately make things even more unfair.
One such 'suggestion' is tarrifs. This will undoubtedly put millions of Chinese laborers out of work, and will also drive up the price of the good that consumers pay. The only 'benefit' is allowing a domestic competetitor to overcharge their customers. That is what I would call unfair. Even if x number of Americans become unemployed I can guarantee they will be infinitely better off than if 100x Chinese are unemployed.
I heavily doubt this claim, but even if it were true China also has record GDP growth. They may lose a million manufacturer jobs, but if they gain 2 million service jobs they're sitting pretty.
I agree with much of what you said except:
"While other countries respect trade laws at the expense of their workers, industry and economy, why should China be allowed to be any different?"
The whole point of trade is that it isn't an expense. It's the only 'free lunch' there is in economics. If Japan were to put up big barriers to US imports, the US would be MUCH worse off by putting up barriers to Japanese imports.
Protectionist policies hurt everybody, except for a minority of grossly inefficient competetitors interested in keeping their profits high by exploiting consumers through tariff legislation.
This is a bullshit argument.
You really have to put yourself into a Chinese man's shoes to understand. If a company goes overseas and offers you a job that pays $0.70/h, 12 hours a day, in a tiny little hot room, there's no way you would do it, right?
Not necessarily. Getting $0.70/h may be a blessing if the alternative is making $0.40/h for a domestic company, or more likely not working at all. We can only assume that because this Chinese man freely accepts the job that no other better alternatives exist. To remove this job opportunity for him may make us feel morally superior, but it won't help him put food on the table.
Like tariffs, quotas are used to protect domestic industry at the expense of foreign industries and more importantly consumers. They usually require this protection because they either have a poor product or a product that costs much more than their competetitor's. Preventing imports forces consumers to spend more than they normally would on the same good.
However in terms of software this may be a blessing for China. Linux's problem isn't price so much as it is marketing. However the real question is whether China will be able to use Linux or must they code their own O/S?
Maybe I'm nuts, but aren't a lot of these problems partly due to users as well?
Anyone could code a program for limits to delete an essential file, but you wouldn't blame Linux if someone had the idiocy to click on it. Same with spyware.
I only wish we could debug computer illiteracy.
"The issue is the requirement to bundle this software for the much-needed discounted licensing for Windows."
For these kind of changes to be made, it obviously has to be legislated, I take it that's what you're arguing, yes? So:
Make it illegal for Microsoft to have OEM agreements with their vendors. That is, no all-of-nothing agreements.
Okay I think I see what you're getting at, but I don't see why the free market can't decide this themselves. For example:
In the current system, if Dell just wants to have Linux boxes, they can, and they will be able to undercut their competetitors by at least $100 since licensing fees no long exist. Would this cause a massive sales shortfall? That really depends on how happy consumers are with their systems. It'd be interesting to talk to some of the people at Dell why they stick with MS stuff. Obviously they must know something about Linux, and they must have some enlightened theory why consumers would hate it.
But let's back up, this isn't about Linux as you said. You say Dell should be able to keep the XP O/S, but be able to change some of the bundled software without incurring a price increase, yes? This is where the all-or-nothing agreement starts hurting.
Because if Dell rejects the agreement, and signs up with Opera, they will be particularly burdened with price increases for violating the licensing agreement. And I doubt bundled-Opera is worth $200 to any consumer.
This point may have some merit. But as an obvious proponent of the free market I think the onos should be on the competetitors to find other ways of reaching their consumers by other means, rather than vendor agreements.
Adobe, ICQ/AIM/Trillian, ZoneAlarm, Winamp, WinRAR, and CDex are all monumental examples of unbundled software (well maybe not AIM) that have succeeded under these pressures. Even Firefox is making incremental gains; have you ever heard of a Firefox user switching back to IE? Indeed, have you ever heard of anyone switching BACK to MS software?
Well as you said it's not just Linux. I think a lot of non-MS software has been proliferating quite well despite the vendor agreements. Government regulation has a way of causing a multitude of negative side-effects. Eric Raymond, one of the heaviest open-source advocates:
"The whole premise of antitrust law is wrong," says Raymond. "Governments don't break up monopolies, markets do. Governments create monopolies."
Actually we do still vote in our elections, but that's not the problem. There's an old adage that says: "People elect the government they deserve". In other words, people who ignorant of economics are going to elect anybody with a policies that 'sound good', but fail miserably in practice.
So while the governments may be applying policies that 'people' want, they are often horribly counter productive. How often do you hear, "Gas prices are too high." or, "My landlord charges me too much."? Then they demand that the government "do something" and it always ends in dire consequences.
If you still resist, go ask an XP user why he hasn't tried Linux. he won't say "Because XP has locked me in.", be'll say, "I have no reason to." or "I'm happy with XP."
I can only assume you haven't taken any marketing courses, or maybe any courses at all... The brand name of a company itself will be worth many times more than just the company assets (known as 'Goodwill' on accounting statements.
Let's look at the classic OEM argument:
From what I know, computer vendors get a 70% discount on MS products if they solely ship MS products. That's a good deal. But is it 'unfair'? Once again let's take a look:
Let's say you are the manager at Dell. You can choose to only ship cpus with XP at $100 per head, or ship different computers, but any cpus that have XP will cost $300. Which do you choose? This is a trade-off with obvious pros and cons. For most managers, they stick with Microsoft. Why? Because it makes no sense to ship other operating systems that very few people want when it causes your best product to go up $200.
Now, why doesn't anyone want other operating systems? Let's look at the competetion for IBM machines: Linux and BSD, really. And who does Dell commonly ship too? Certainly not geeks, their borderline insulting advertisements show this. So all the non-geeks, also known as 99% of the population, want an operating system that is nice and user-friendly. And what falls into this category? Windows XP.
So as a manager at Dell, you COULD tell MS to take their deal and shove it, and only have Linux boxes. But you would hardly sell a single computer. Why? Because you neglected 99% of the market.
Until Linux stops catering to geeks, and starts catering to average Joes, MS will continue to dominate. Couldn't vendors solely offer Linux, which doesn't cost them a dime? It's a better O/S right? Then why don't people want it? Either because they don't know about it, they don't know enough about it, or no one has given them reason enough to switch: most are happy with XP; the poor fools.
Okay, but let me concede. IF Linux is truly all this wonderful user friendliness you purport, then wouldn't it be gaining marketshare? YES! It does, but mostly buy word of mouth.
You seem to think the Marketing is only advertising; it isn't. It's supply chain management, product management, logistics, consumer trends, etc. Getting these OEM deals was a brilliant move in the supply chain. Linux could very easily go up to one of these vendors (or perhaps start at a smaller one) with their own marketing teams and explain to them how great and user friendly Linux is. But they don't.
Government is responsible for property rights. Anything beyond that is questionable. Anytime Microsoft has commited fraud, or stolen anything, or commited violence, they were punished. And they should be. But not for making business decisions and the millions of independent decisions of their consumers to use their products.
I'm a science major, and I would never work for Microsoft. As you said, they don't innovate and would certainly not be a good company to work for. But there are reasons why they got where they are. Hell, they didn't START OUT a 'monopoly'!
Businesses are still businesses, they won't buy into software that doesn't have any marginal benefits. Unless they truly make a decent product nobody is going to hop on board. Although it is unfortunate; if MS does nothing they are neglecting security issues, if they give away patches they are tightening their grip, if they charge too much they are exploiting their monopoly. Short of giving away Mandrake CDs there's not a move they can make that won't be reviled.
1st point: Capitalism can't work with corrupt governments. And Russia is amoung the worst. it has done very well with the states, and privatizing indsutry in China has done wonders for their economy. Of course it's fallible, but it's far better than the alternatives.
The OEM argument has been presented to me numerous times, and it simply doesn't hold water. I'll explain:
From what I know, computer vendors get a 70% discount on MS products if they solely ship MS products. That's a good deal. But is it 'unfair'? Once again let's take a look:
Let's say you are the manager at Dell. You can choose to only ship cpus with XP at $100 per head, or ship different computers, but any cpus that have XP will cost $300. Which do you choose? This is a trade-off with obvious pros and cons. For most managers, they stick with Microsoft. Why? Because it makes no sense to ship other operating systems that very few people want when it causes your best product to go up $200.
Now, why doesn't anyone want other operating systems? Let's look at the competetion for IBM machines: Linux and BSD, really. And who does Dell commonly ship too? Certainly not geeks, their borderline insulting advertisements show this. So all the non-geeks, also known as 99% of the population, want an operating system that is nice and user-friendly. And what falls into this category? Windows XP.
So as a manager at Dell, you COULD tell MS to take their deal and shove it, and only have Linux boxes. But you would hardly sell a single computer. Why? Because you neglected 99% of the market.
Until Linux stops catering to geeks, and starts catering to average Joes, MS will continue to dominate. Couldn't vendors solely offer Linux, which doesn't cost them a dime? It's a better O/S right? Then why don't people want it? Either because they don't know about it, they don't know enough about it, or no one has given them reason enough to switch: most are happy with XP; the poor fools.
Don't think these companies are making unconscienable profits though. Just because the price of a US stamp is $0.50 doesn't mean it costs $0.50 to send it. They take tax payer money to make up for their inefficient price schemes.
If a company decides that they will indeed operate at a loss to drive a company out of business, and let's say they are powerful enough to do this, and let's say that they actually have the financial resources to continually have negative earnings, and let's say all their shareholders don't jump ship and are some how clued into this scheme; could this drive a company out of business? Certainly. Is there one example of this happening? Not that I know of. If you know one I would love to hear it. More often then not a company drives another out of business not by operating at below cost, but by operating very close to cost. This is what Wal-mart does, and they do it very well.
But let's say this does occur and now there is only one firm left in this particular industry. And let's say they increase their prices. All the previous resources of the previous bankrupt company don't vanish, and all the knowledge of thier personnel don't vanish either. Once huge profits are made by the 'monopolizing' company another company can quite easily buy up the now discounted assets of the bankrupt company. Now the 'monopolizing' company has to cut costs again.
Of course this is all theoretical. I would have a source but no company has ever gotten past step two: Jacking up the price once there are no more competetitors.
Fuck Marketing? Marketing is the very reason why Firefox hasn't caught on. Changing brand identity every few years is a serious problem. If you don't believe in marketing that's your business, but don't complain when computer illiterates don't know of it, or don't know anything about it. Word of mouth is painfully slow, especially when people keep trying to look up Phoenix instead of Firebird or Firefox or Firepig or whatever the name-of-the-year is.
I live in Canada, a city of about 1 million people and I go to University where you would expect more Linux users. And maybe there are, but the people I talk to happily use XP. Would they switch? Maybe, but Linux hasn't told them why they should. And that is Linux's fault, not Microsoft's.
Does Grandma have the time or ambition to fiddle with a computer? Probably not. With Mandrake you do have to fiddle a lot more, and it is a larger learning curve. Even Mandrake people will admit this, why you resist is beyond me.
You seem to think she's going to have a compsci friend amoung her bridge club, which is of course completly insane.
The reason Linux and Firefox hasn't caught on has nothing to do with Microsoft's supposed monopoly. 'Bundling' and OEMS have nothing to do with the open-source's failures as a business, or lack thereof.
There are rational explanations for the slow growth of Linux, like the lack of marketing (such as with Firefox). Until then word of mouth will indeed slowly creep up their market share. It's happening already, like you said, so why force it? I didn't say Linux wasn't a threat; it is. But the best product in the world isn't any good if no one has heard of it. Once word-of-mouth starts spreading (and it spreads exponentially) and market share increases, Microsoft will perk up. Whether they decide to innovate (which will succeed if it's truly better) or 'lock down' (which by itself will never succeed) or market better (which by itself succeeds) is up to them.
People need to be eased into these things. They don't need the government ordering companies around.
So a company with 70% market share would no longer need to worry as much about the rabble with 30% market share? I can agree to an extent. Their current products and services will suffice for the time being. But as soon as they stop innovating, what's to stop that 30% from rapidly gaining strength?
I'm not a fan of unions either. However I see no issues with the OEM deals, in which I could write a book about and will leave out of this discussion.
The government's role is to protect property rights and fraud. But you are right. Every always excuses the Big Dogs of doing something 'evil', rather than providing a much needed good to their consumers, which is largely the case.
Since when do companies ever stop competing? You may have a case with oligopolies and collusion, but these are extremly rare.
And how do companies 'elumiate' the opposition? Usually it's by providing a cheaper good (Wal-mart) or a better good. If they do it through legislation then that is wrong and the law should be revoked.
The Post office IS a monopoly. No one is allowed to send mail under $0.50 to post boxes. Not because they won't be able to compete, but because the government says so. Just because it's not a necessarily 'evil' monopoly, its ineffeciencies justify its liquidation.
Sure tit-for-tat isn't justified, but you didn't really give me much to go on.
I'm still waiting for a reply.
A post that was quickly modded down had similar arguments, albeit more agressive:s --A_Joke.shtml
http://solohq.com/Articles/Rowlands/Antitrust_Law
How convenient there wasn't a single argument in that little diatribe. Oh right, this is slashdot, a band of rabid Linux dogs where everything is free and corporations never satisfy customers.
I seriously someone mods this up. It's something all slashdotters need to read before they start their irate seething that perhaps Henry Ford, A&P Grocers, and even Oracle and PeopleSoft got where they are because they satisfied customers better than their competetitors.
All jokes aside, and with this article it could take awhile, we should at least look at the reasons for MS taking this approach.
If it's free, like most of their service packs, well then great. However if it's just some GUI rubbish like XP Plus! or something equally retarded at least we aren't being forced to download it.
But what if they charge for it? For home users this is irrelevent since they will just get it off p2p or their friends. So really this question goes to the businesses: Will this new release be worth the price of an upgrade? What are the benefits and costs? Every business asks this.
Without knowing what is in this release I can't imagine many people would adopt it. Why? Because the difference between Windows98 and Windows98SE was stability, and XP is reasonably in relation to other Windows releases. So what exactly are they offering new that would entice businesses to spend money? People have said Windows' greatest competetitor is Windows; and they're right. Innovation is a problem for MS, but that's not surprise.
The best thing to do is either switch O/Ss, complain to Miscrosoft, or downgrade the graphics if the option permits.
BTW your user name is great. Awesome show.
Yes. It's a good thing they clamped down on Henry Ford, that evil monopolist. Not to mention Wal-mart, the single most efficient company in the history of the US that has saved consumer $20 bil. Just keep stamping those bastards out!
Fine. But do you propose? Taking out the 'slave master' ie. corporation? Of course not, you would only impoverish people further. It SEEMS like slavery only superficially. Isn't that lawyer making $100 000 a year a slave to the government? Isn't the Staples manager a slave to his hire-ups? Technical, yes. But the difference is they can leave any time they want. However they don't because if they did they would be impoverished. The relationship is perfectly amicable, even if you live paycheck-to-paycheck. Such is not the case in real, bonified slavery.