| Tuesday, May
14, 2002
Galleys nearly done. New scenes nearly done. The Prince goes
off to Nancy Hanger, sometime BYTE columnist and always production editor
extraordinaire, this evening. Whew. As a result of a
complaint from a chap who some six months ago sent me a letter containing
his mail address in the text body, I have gone through and increased the
emphasis on the mail instructions: IF YOU SEND
MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of
the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is
Chaos Manor.
I have included that warning in many places. In general, the
"signature" line of published mail is that which you have
included: I don't go out of my way to find mail addresses and insert them.
There is this from reader Roger Osborne:
Jerry
An interesting reference in The Register to
Microsoft's conviction for software piracy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/25227.html
Regards
It is an interesting story and one I didn't know, but whose
meaning is not at all clear to me. For some discussion see mail.
As I said last week:
Recently I had reason to go back and look at my immediate reaction to
the Penfield Jackson Microsoft Decision. It's at
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=200/byt19991108s0001/index.htm
and I don't have a thing to regret about it.
The reason I went back to look at that is that the Microsoft legal team
is now including that column in their new briefing materials. So be it.
My current views regarding Microsoft's working monopoly:
It is not illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to use
it to harm consumers. There are also illegal practices one must not use in
obtaining a monopoly.
It is my -- call it a judgment since it is an opinion based
on considerable familiarity with the facts -- judgment that Microsoft
acquired its near or working monopoly mostly through the incompetence or
indifference of its competitors, and that Microsoft engaged in a number of
practices designed to harm competitors -- competitors do that all the time
-- but not designed to harm consumers.
That's the past. It is not clear that some of Microsoft's
newest policies regarding registration and activation are not sailing very
close to the wind indeed: that is, they may well get over into that region
in which practices that would be reasonable in a highly competitive
environment are not so in a near-monopoly environment, and may harm
consumers and users. That's a separate matter, and not one relevant to the
current lawsuits. I will add this: I don't think bigger is
better, and I think the country and Microsoft and Microsoft stockholders
would be better off if that enormous empire were somehow and magically
split apart, but having said that, I do not know what the fault lines
would be. I also believe that the open source
movement provides needed competition and keeps Microsoft running scared
and that's all to the good. Whether that is or can be enough competition
is another matter, and I am not at all sure there is anyone wise enough to
know what is best or what should be done now. I do know
that the General Motors near monopoly back in the 1950's was bad for
General Motors and bad for the country, and largely responsible for the
intrusion of foreign cars into the US market system. I do know that GM in
those days engaged in "planned obsolescence" and styling cycles
and quality practices that made my practice of buying a new car and
keeping it forever both rare and one to be engaged in only by the
determined. (I bought an International Harvester and kept that running for
20 years through 4 boys growing up and learning how to drive, and that
well before anyone ever heard of an SUV.) My neighbors sure thought I was
nuts but the car still looked pretty good even with all those miles
including two trips down The Road (the old Baja road before it was paved,
1,000 miles of Bad Road); and it sure ran good. In 1955
Charlie Wilson, GM Chairman, famously said "What's good for General
Motors is good for the rest of the country." I don't really disagree
with that: what I dispute is that Charlie Wilson knew what was good for
General Motors or the rest of the country, and the practices GM was
indulging in, buying most of its competition, buying most of its
suppliers, extreme vertical integration, forcing dealers to choose between
being exclusively a GM dealer and not dealing GM at all, were in the long
run not good for either GM or the country no matter how attractive they
might have seemed at the time. I am not at all convinced
that enormous corporations are good for either the country or, in the long
run, their stockholders. I am not sure that bigger is always better, and I
am certain that often it is not. That includes nations as well as
corporations. But then I have still have fond memories of
living in a federal republic with a republican form of government, in
which the local sheriff and county commissioners and justice of the peace
were far more important to my life than the goings on in a sleepy Southern
town on the Potomac. I doubt we can get back there. And
more relevant to today's subject, I don't have wisdom to know what ought
to be done about Microsoft. I do think it has become too large, and the
pressure to sustain that revenue stream and keep the stock prices up has
become far too great now that the small computer market is saturated and
small computers have become consumer commodities. Growth generated by
exponential expansion of the number of small computers out there is no
longer feasible. If you can't grow you can't sustain a high
Price/Earnings ratio. To grow you must either: buy up your
competition and suppliers and eventually your customers; be selling into
an expanding market; or gaining market share. If you already have the
lion's share of the market, you can't grow by gaining market share. If the
market isn't expanding you can't grow that way either.
Microsoft is caught in a quandary and I see no easy way out
at all. And no, I am not one of those who hates Microsoft, and I don't own
any Microsoft stock -- although had I bought as much Microsoft as I could
the month it came out, I would be a far wealthier man today than I have
become by not owning high tech stocks so I can write about them.
Enough: my point is that punishing Microsoft for the past
blunders of its competitors helps no one but lawyers. But once that lawsuit
is off its back, Microsoft is going to have to face some hard alternatives,
none of them very attractive.
Bruce Pelz, RIP Last
Thursday night at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society meeting, Larry
Niven announced the death of an old friend, Bruce Pelz, sometime Chairman
of the Board and President of LASFS, for many years the chief money gouger
and Treasurer of LASFS, and retired Chief Cataloger of the UCLA Science
Library. He also had the largest collection of fanzines in the universe,
and a fairly extensive collection of comic books. He sold books as a
retirement occupation. I didn't announce anything here
because Larry also announced that the family wanted time to get things in
order before having to deal with condolences. Now I have heard the story
from other sources, and the word is pretty well out. Bruce
was an old if not close friend. We could and did ask each other for
favors and respect each other's confidences. If Bruce had any politics I
am not aware of it. He was a good if sometimes irascible man with a
Puckish sense of humor and a taste for sweet wines. He couldn't be induced
to take care of himself, and after a brief attempt to get him hooked on
some of the vitamins and boosters Niven and I take, I gave up trying. It
was his life. He was younger than me by several years, but he looked
older. Bruce was probably the first person I met at LASFS
on the first meeting I attended in 1964. In those days we lived in San
Bernardino, and I didn't get to LASFS much: I worked for Ballistic Systems
Division of the US Air Force and that took all my time and energy. But one
night I found myself in Santa Monica after a day at RAND with another day
to go, and it happed to be a Thursday night, so I went out to LASFS which
then met at the Silverlake Park. Bruce was in charge of membership and
dues collection, I believe; in any event he spoke with me and introduced
me around. He did that sort of thing. We used to play poker
together. Bruce wasn't very good, which is surprising: I would have
thought he would be. He became addicted to a game called Hell, and other
games I don't play. We also played bridge several times. Time at games
tables counts for knowing people. Sometimes counts a lot. I
never asked him a favor he wasn't willing to try to accomplish, and it is
certain that LASFS would not have its own clubhouse without him. In his
not very quiet way he influenced more people than he probably
realized. He was the original Secret Master of
Fandom. I don't know the Jewish prayers for the dead. Requiem aeterna dona
ei,
Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.
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