| Thursday,
January 24, 2002 Joel Rosenberg on
Microsoft:
You write:
"We come to a new phase now. We will see
what happens. But the lawsuit is effectively dead and will stay that way.
The main outcome is that those who started it now face a new level of
tribute they must pay to the government. Microsoft went from nothing to an
enormous lobby effort. Their rivals must match that. They can't really
afford it, but it is they who opened that front and it is they who must
now pay."
I agree with all that, but it's not only the folks
who opened that front who are going to suffer (and, to be accurate, also
benefit) from Microsoft's increased political leverage. To the extent that
politicians are for sale (which, I maintain, is in some ways more and in
many ways less than is generally believed -- I don't think that, to pick
two very different polticians, either Newt Gingrich or Paul Wellstone are
for sale, although Bob Dole and Bill Clinton pretty clearly were, within
limits) Microsoft can afford to buy the best. Ditto for the courts. To the
extent that a lawsuit is just combat fought by legions of $500/hour
privates in expensive suits, Microsoft can stomp on some kinds of
competitors, but is going to have real trouble with the Open Source
guerillas, who don't have to retreat into the Sierra Maestra and wait for
outside aid from the Soviets in order to be able to fight another day.
(How's that for a screwed up metaphor, eh?)
That said, there are other players who can -- and
apparently will -- sit down and play some no-limit with Microsoft. See http://www.msnbc.com/news/692302.asp?0na=x21019B3y&cp1=1
. Am I hearing the sound of somebody shelling Fort Sumpter? I honestly
don't know, but . . .
I'm not sure how much the benefit to AOL would be,
but my back-of-the-envelope calculation is that AOL *could* create Aunt
Minnie's AOL Linux Install CD set, including documentation (necessary for
AOL support people to support it), for less than $10,000,000 , in six
months from a cold start. That first CD is expensive, granted -- but the
incremental cost of the 2nd is trivial...
Will they? I dunno, but if they do buy Red Hat,
they've positioned themselves to do that, if they want to, and while I'm
not at all sure that they want to, they just might . . .
The prospects are intriguing, and AOL will almost
certainly be some real competition to Microsoft, but I note that they are
playing the politics and courts game rather than investing in market
competition. This bodes ill for all of us.
And as you point out, if politicians are for
sale, Microsoft can afford the best. It wasn't all that long ago that
Gates was horrified at the idea of putting money into the political
system. Well, now it's Balmer who decides.
AOL likes proprietary stuff. Proprietary Red Hat?
I just read your comments in the "Current
View" regarding the Microsoft Antitrust Trial dragging on. Were you
aware at the time that AOL had just filed an antitrust suit in the DC
Circuit Court against Microsoft regarding the bundling of Internet
Exploder with Windows and its effects on Netscape?
I have strong mixed feelings about Microsoft. OK,
maybe I should say I don't like Microsoft, but I find your argument that
the opposition to a large extent committed suicide to be persuasive. Of
course, there's the question of where M$ would be today if IBM had been
more careless about following the antitrust decree against them.
That still doesn't mean we don't need competition in
the marketplace.
Given a battle between M$ and AOL/T-W/CNN, I find
myself longing for a way both companies could lose.
I guess that's it for now.
Phil Fraering pgf@globalreach.net
I'd like it even better if we all won.
Mr. Pournelle:
Interesting article this week. One thing though: I'm
not sure that it's accurate to say that Gates "bet the company"
on .net. Probably a bit dramatic.....Back when MS started pushing windows
and DOS was the cash cow (and Office was still in a back room somewhere)
it might have been fair to say that Gates bet the company on Windows. Now
that MS has $36 b-b-b-billion in cash, .net could easily become a bug on
the wind shield with the main result being some egg on their collective
face. Yes, it would throw a wrench into their strategic plans but a
company with that much cash can afford a misstep or two.
Regards,
Andy Harrover
As Netscape proved, a couple of years head start
isn't decisive any more. Between .NET and the activation stuff, Microsoft
is making some very significant bets.
Hi Jerry,
Having read your current Byte.com column, I can't
let your comments on the Microsoft Antitrust trial pass without comment.
First, I'd like to point out that it isn't over.
Nine of the State Attorneys General are still holding out for meaningful
remedies.
Second, Microsoft isn't being punished for being
successful, they are being prosecuted for illegal activity. They didn't
just give away the Internet Explorer, they commingled the code with the
operating system and insisted on making explicit calls to it in the HTML
help system to make it practically impossible to remove. (This delayed the
release of Windows 98, lead to longer start up times and increased system
instability.) They also used the strength of their monopoly to keep OEMs
and ISPs from dealing with Netscape.
Finally, you continue to dismiss the suit as being
entirely for the benefit of Microsoft's competitors but not in the best
interest of consumers. Restoring competition IS in the best interest of
consumers. Look what competition has done for consumers in the hardware
arena. There are lots of brands to choose from, performance improves
steadily while prices fall. What do we see in operating systems and office
suites? Few choices and gradually rising prices. That's not even
considering Microsoft's new licensing terms which border on extortion. It
seems that they went a bit too far and had to back off a bit. But the
resistance owes less to any potential competition than to the possibility
of standing pat. Even Microsoft admits that their strongest competition
comes from previous versions of their own products.
I should know by now that you aren't about to change
your opinion on this matter, but I just couldn't let it go unchallenged.
Sincerely,
Rick Fane
1. It's over. It may drag along for a while as
the lawyers hope to manage a lot of money, but the trial lawyers bet on
Gore, not Bush. It's over.
2. Government doesn't restore competition it
picks winners. If there were a genuine chance of government action
restoring real competition I'd be cheering them on. In fact playing with
lawsuits merely subsidizes lawyers. The best that would come of this is a
$6 rebate to 100 million people, which would be accompanied by hundreds of
millions to lawyers for bringing the suit.
3. The only real competition will come from
engineers and technologies not from lawyers.
4. I presume you want a Federal Operating Systems
Commission which will allocate market share, tell consumers what they
want, and fix prices. That will really fix things.
If IBM had in fact fought the war they started
back in OS/2 Charting The Course for the Future days, and shipped IBM
computers with OS/2, and either developed an office suite or worked hard
to get one based on Word Perfect working with OS/2 we would not have this
situation. If Netscape had DONE something with THEIR monopoly on web
browsers we might not be in this mess. But here we are, and
government isn't going to make it better, nor will enriching law firms.
And now Microsoft is buying politicians.
We had better HOPE it's over.
You may well be right. Microsoft can afford the best
justice. We shall see what happens in the coming months. The new judge is
too recent a factor for an accurate prediction of the future. But you know
that if she makes any ruling Microsoft doesn't like, it will end up before
the Supreme Court.
What is really on Microsoft's side is their staying
power!
Greg Brewer
Precisely
And an orchid nomination:
The revival of the OS/2 client, renamed eCS by
Serenity Systems is this readers Orchid of 2001. Talk about bang for the
buck, wow! There is life without m$. As solid as Linux but better because
its object oriented. The Workplace Shell is still without an equal IMHO.
eCS has made it possible to fully boot from a CDROM and load Staroffice
without any sign of the OS. I could go on for hours but I just want to
send you my two cents.
Regards, Paul Treciokas
email ptre@ieee.org
I have not seen this yet. Thanks.
Now several from Roland Dobbins:
Robert Hanbury Brown, RIP
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,60-2002038476,00.html
Perpetual Motion:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020122/lf/ireland_invention_dc_1.html
Recovering a stolen mac:
http://www.macscripter.net/unscripted.html
The Outlook Worm of the day:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_99323.htm
The Simputer:
http://www.simputer.org/
And of course Science in the news:
Read it and weep:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020122/lf/ireland_invention_dc_1.html
Quote "Perpetual motion is impossible. This is
a self-sustaining unit which at the same time provides surplus electrical
energy" As one wag at slashdot.org put it, that sentence parses to
"Perpetual motion is impossible. This is a perpetual motion
unit."
Ah, today's schools...
David A. Paterson
--- A random thought for the day:
Thought for the day: Bagpipes (n): an octopus
wearing a kilt.
And you are surprised? I love the image of an
octopus with kilts though.
I am not sure how to classify this one:
Yes, we really do put up with the crazies in Nor.
Cal. To wit:
Wireless-Free Mendocino Mendocino, CA is becoming a
haven for people who claim to be "electrically sensitive,"
meaning they can detect, and are harmed by, electromagnetic fields. A
local ISP, the Mendocino Community Network, gave up on plans to extend
high-speed wireless service to the area because a local group (Wireless
Free Mendocino) convinced the Historical Review Board to deny a height
variance necessary to construct a cellular tower. The Cellular Phone Task
Force is trying to have portions of the Telecom Deregulation Act of 1996
declared unconstitutional for similar "safety" reasons. Wired
News has the story.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,49841,00.html
_____________________ Chuck Ruthroff Assistant to
the Bishop Sierra Pacific Synod, ELCA Synod Website: http://www.spselca.org
Heh. Given the courts in Northern California the
suit might have legs.
And then:
>From time to time, I am petulantly driven
to complain about the minor annoyances of a Caltech scientist's life.
And then I read a news article that puts my troubles
in perspective:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3801/archaeologist_tired.html
"Making matters worse, such encounters have had
little to no scientific value. 'It's always, "I will drink your
soul" or "I will chew the flesh from your bones" with these
hellish apparitions,' Whitson said. 'When I ask them if that means the
ancient Etruscans did, in fact, add copper to their mixing clay to make
their urns more sturdy, they don't even seem to hear me.'"
--Erich Schwarz, counting his blessings
Indeed.
And Clark Myers observes:
Be nice to imagine all the Guardsmen in BDU saluting
the medal. Some times and places everybody else honors the award.
"And when we disarmed they sold us,
and delivered us bound to our foes,
and the gods of the copybook headings...
I can hardly believe it. Look what M$ did with W2k
SP2.
----- from http://www.theinquirer.net/24010221.htm
-
I was helping a friend figure out why his W2K Pro
machine, on which he'd installed Apache/win32, wouldn't support more than
a handful of connections. A bit of googling turned up the following HP
support note:
http://www.hp-eloquence.com/sdb/html/998559406.html
In summary, MS used W2K SP2 to slip the old
10-concurrent-connection limitation public outcry forced them to remove in
the days of NT4 workstation back in!
-Martin Dempsey
You're surprised? Astonished? Really?
Hi Jerry,
Nice to see you're still writing for Byte. In your
January 21 column, you say, "It was pretty hard to explain why giving
a free web browser with every copy of Windows did the public (as opposed
to Netscape) any harm..."
Well, I'm part of the public and I used to use
Netscape exclusively. I loved it so much that I bought a copy to support
the company that makes it. But Microsoft's policy of giving IE away for
free kept Netscape from generating any real revenue. Eventually they had
to sell out to AOL. Even then, Microsoft's free IE policy so starved
Netscape for development funds that they fell way behind in features.
Eventually I had to stop using it and now my employer has had to remove it
from our company's computers because so much software "breaks"
when it's used.
I'd say the public was severely damaged by the
effective removal of Netscape from the market.
Dave Mullenix djmullen@tds.net
Netscape had a year or more head start, during
which time they loudly announced that they would make an operating system
of their browser and drive Microsoft out of business.
If startups which had no revenue could raise
money why couldn't Netscape, which in fact did right well for its
founders? You have an interesting view of history, but it doesn't look
like what really happened.
It pretty well proved the dictum that 90% of
winning is showing up. Microsoft showed up and ran scared. Netscape and
IBM, having declared wars, forgot to fight them, and never showed up. The
result was pretty inevitable.
Are you telling me that Netscape's present owners
haven't the capital to invest in making it work?
Competing with Microsoft will require a package:
browser, some kind of applications suite to compete with Office, and an
operating system. Of those at least two have to be good enough, and the
third has to be better than what Microsoft offers. During the dot com era
there were plenty of opportunities to develop those but that didn't
happen. There was lots of capital floating about.
Corel tried. Corel tried hard. Perhaps a bit more
capital and they would have made it. Star Office has tried, and is almost
there. But none of those can stand still. The parts are just about out
there, some kind of Linux based OS, an applications suite, and a browser.
It hasn't come together yet. It may never, or it may.
But.
The alternative to market based competition is a
National Computing Commission that will set prices and allocate shares.
That ought to be fun.
From Rod McFadden
ENRON EXPLAINED: In case you were wondering how
Enron came into so much trouble, here is an explanation reputedly given by
a Colorado Aggie professor to explain it in terms his students could
understand.
Capitalism -- You have two cows. You sell one and
buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and
retire on the income.
Enron Venture Capitalism -- You have two cows. You
sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of
credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a
debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four
cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six
cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company
secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all
seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company
owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Now do you see why a company
with $62 billion in assets is declaring bankruptcy?
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