Linux-Advocacy Digest #311, Volume #27 Sat, 24 Jun 00 14:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Daniel Johnson")
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From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:07:27 GMT
"Bob Hauck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 21:26:12 GMT, Daniel Johnson
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >"Bob Hauck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> >> A company with these things [a monopoly - ed]has special
> >> responsibilities, according to the law.
> >
> >So we keep being told. Yet you offer no *moral* defense of this;
>
> I think the burden of proof is on you to defend your position that
> anti-trust laws are not moral.
Hmmm... So you feel that whatever the government does is moral
by default, no matter how much harm it does to how many, until
proven otherwise?
I find this hard to accept.
It's not like the harm the proposed remedy would do is anything
less than blindingly obvious, after all. You don't think it
needs an *affirmative* defense? I've got to explain why
it's bad to harm consumers?
> These laws were passed originally
> because of serious abuses by the so-called "robber barons" of the late
> 1800's. These were real abuses that caused real hardship for workers
> and for consumers.
What abuses?
What I know of is the *theory* that had Standard Oil not been broken
up it would have eventually raised prices. But that did not *actually*
happen.
Can you provide abuses that *actually happened* from a private
monopoly, that these anti-trust laws might address?
I say private because I am aware of abuses by *public* monopolies,
like the post office, but I don't think they apply: anti-trust laws
don't affect them anyway.
Plus, those monopolies have *legal* protection; it was against
the law to put someone elses phone into AT&T's network, or so
I understand.
One can argue that MS also has legal protection: They have
basically been shown to have a monopoly of Windows; this
isn't surprising- the copyright laws grant them a legally
enforcable monopoly of Windows.
Still, if that sort of monopoly is harmful, it argues for
changing or repealing copyright laws, rather than one-off
attacks on individual companies.
> The laws have been applied successfully many times
> in many different industries (railroads, oil, shoes, and communications
> to name a few).
Well, yes, that's true. Does it prove anything?
> You need to convince the Congress to repeal the law if
> you think it is immoral. Wishing it were so won't make the verdict go
> away.
I know it. But that doesn't make it right. It infurates me that you
people think you've got a right to take Internet Explorer away! It
infuriates me that you hafe the *gall* to pretend you are doing
it for the consumers (like me) you will *directly* harm.
Which is why I'm not always as polite as I should be. :/
But you can't expect to screw the vast majority of computer
users and not get *somebody* mad at you.
> However, as a point of information, the moral justification for the
> restriction is that to allow a monopolist to leverage a monopoly into
> new areas is bad for both the market and for society. If, for example,
> we allow Standard Oil to parley their oil monopoly into an automobile
> monopoly, I think it is easy to see how this could be bad for consumers
> and for the functioning of the market.
So, you are saying that it is morally acceptable to punish people
for things they *might* do?
That does seem to be a fouding princinple of anti-trust law, I may
say.
But don't you think that those of us you wish to harm might object?
Anyway, it seems a very dubious principle in general. Are you
sure you want to embrace it?
> While it may be true that "in
> the long run" the market will take care of itself, it is also true that
> in the long run we are all dead.
This isn't consistant with the remedy your beloved Judge has come
up with; it does short term harm and justifies it with the prospect
of possible long term gain. (Well, if "competition" is understood
to be "gain", which isn't immediately obvious. But I do suspect
that Judge Jackson thought that way.)
> Contrary to the simplistic idas of Ayn Rand and her followers, pure
> capitalism does not work for the good of society any better than pure
> socialism does.
I am not an objectivist; but I've said a number of things that
pretty much prove I'm not a socialist. Presumably you must
suppose that anyone who isn't a socialist must be an
objectivist.
Well, that or you're just trying to create a straw man.
> And it is the overall good of society, of the people,
> that representative government is supposed to maximize.
That is a controversial statement, actually. But even supposing
its true, it is *very* clear that the proposed rememdies for
Microsoft are *bad* for society overall, and good only for
a small minority.
The usual jusification for them is *not* that they are good
for society, but they will "create competition" some day in the
unforseeable future. This is, we are told, meant to counterbalance
the obvious immediate harm of degrading Windows.
Its all purely speculative, and it presumes that "good for society"
and "create competition" are the samething, more or less.
> Corporations
> are not people and the maximization of their wealth and power is good
> only insofar as it furthers the larger goals of society.
Why should society have 'larger goals' that hurt most of the members
of society? Why is society so important that it is worth treading on
actual, real people?
> It is
> therefore moral to put limits on corporations. What these limits ought
> to be and how they are to be decided is of course a legitimate subject
> of debate, but I think it is self-evident from history that government
> has some role to play in the market.
You seem to be arguing for government *itself*; this doesn't
support any particular policy, unless you take the view that
government has an inherent right, even obligation, to do
everything possible for (and to!) its subjects.
I bet you wouldn't support such an extreme notion. I bet
there are *particular* policies you favor, and others you
don't.
> Over and over we have seen that some regulation is in fact required to
> prevent exploitation
This word, "exploitation", makes me nervious. It's used by some
as a derogatory term for employment itself; most people don't
think employment is a bad thing, but perhaps I should ask: Do you?
In particular, do you accept the premise that it is 'exploitation'
to make a profit in a business which employs people?
> of workers and consumers and to allow freedom of
> choice in the market to provide the benefits of healthy competition.
That doesn't justify the punishing MS's attempts to compete
with Netscape, though. If you want freedom of choice, then what
MS did should be encouranged: they gave users another choice
(Internet Explorer); they did not take Netscape away. They wanted
to, yes, but they didn't do it.
> This is not a new idea, nor is it a bad one. And it is not the same
> thing as the government setting up a five year plan for how many shoes
> are to be made, or deciding what features are to be put into Windows
> next year.
I just deleted three paragraphs of expletives that used to be here to
'address' that absurdity. I'll try, one more time, to be polite. It's
getting
difficult for me, as you can no doubt tell. :( Unfortunately, pages of
obscenity don't really work out to a convincing rational argument, so
I'd best restrain myself.
Okay. Deep breath.
Yes, my dear Bob, it is the same. "Deciding what features are to be put
into Windows next year" is precisely what the courts are trying to do. There
really is nothing unclear about this; they've decided that Internet Explorer
makes Windows too good to compete with, so they have ordered it removed.
That is deciding what features Windows gets.
That is what I object to. That is what I think needs *moral* defense;
and not just "well of *course* MS deserves it- prove they don't";
why do *I* deserve it, Bob? I'm one of the people you want to screw.
> >Anything that hurts Microsoft must be good.
>
> And anything that Microsoft does must be good, according to you.
I did not say that. But I do say that what Microsoft has actually
done has been good for the most part.
[snip- more of the same]
> >Welcome to the land of capitalism. I know, you suppose
> >that nothing good can ever come of greed. Yet it works.
>
> Please don't tell me what I suppose.
I'll try to be more polite.
> Greed does cause some people to
> do great things. Others do great things out of other motives.
Do they? "Great" things?
> I do
> not want to live in a society that honors and encourages greed to the
> exclusion of all other motives, and this has not historically been the
> case in the US. Our society is not the pure-capitalist utopia that you
> appear to think it should be.
You object to me telling you what you think, and yet say things like this.
I object to getting screwed for your sake. I didn't bring political
theory into this; even if Marx *were* right, I'd still object to being
screwed for your sake.
Your claims of moral superiority are dubious. You want your toys
to be better supported; you are tired of all the development effort
going to Windows, not Unix. Tired of hardware that isn't supported;
software you can't run.
I can understand that, actually. It's not unreasonable.
But let's face it- that's not a 'higher' motivation. It's greed.
> We have a thing called "representative
> government" here, whereby a diversity of motivations and approaches to
> life are supposed to be supported.
Representative government does not exactly encourage diversity; at
its best it enforces the majority's ways on all. At its worse it can be
manipulated by a minority to the disadvantage of the majority- which
is what we are seeing here.
That is, in theory, why American government has those infamouse
checks and balances. It's to keep the people from having
their own way. :D
Not that it always works, mind you.
> And in fact, greed alone does not work to build a good society, unless
> perhaps you think the Mafia is an example of such. Greed may be good,
> but greed alone is most certainly bad.
This high-falutin' argument doesn't lead anywhere. You aren't
representing some higher purpose- you represent your *own*
greed; why is your greed better than Bill Gates?
I say Bill's is better than yours- he seeks his fortune by
giving people what they want; you are trying to take away
what people want.
> >Well, at least you realise that the most common approach to
> >proving this (ie, MS didn't do it the Unix way! WAAAAH!) is
> >unconvincing. Leslie hasn't figured that one out yet. :D
>
> The original discussion was about whether or not MS has intentionally
> sabatoged interoperability to make competitors look bad. It think it
> is clear that they have, and not because of working or not working with
> Unix specifically.
It's clear MS has made their competitors look bad.
And if you call their added features "sabotaging compatibiliy"- which
you do- then what you say becomes true.
And yet I object. I object to the facile redefinition of features into
sabotage.
That is the argument I so harshy charactarized above.
> We just tend to use Unix examples around here
> because we're posting from a Linux group and various flavors of Unix is
> the major competitor on the server right now.
I'm not sure the server market is relevant, but maybe it is;
I'd point out that Judge Jackson seems to feel that it isn't.
> What you are doing, and what MS does, is to throw out some alternate
> explanation for what happened that could possibly be true if you look
> at that one incident in isolation.
I've been known to do that. :D
But not just right now. What I've been doing is point out the word
games being played here- features become "sabotage" when
they don't fit neatly into a Unix paradigm.
> Then when a "smoking gun" is
> produced in the form of an email or a witness or a piece of code or
> whatever, you explain it away as the action of a "rogue employee" or as
> a "simple misunderstanding" or "incompetence" or that we just don't
> understand how business works.
This hasn't happened on this thread- at least not the part I've seen.
Actually, when it does happen I usual point out that it doesn't say
what it is purported to say. :D
Those e-mails and things are so often exagerated, don't you know.
> We are supposed to look at each
> incident in isolation and not see the recurring pattern.
I've been trying to point out the pattern to you, honest. It's just
not the pattern you want to see.
The pattern is MS winning because its competitors ignore what
their customers actually need in favor of "standards" and
other technological issues that don't matter a damn when
the rubber hits the road.
You can screw *me* by taking Internet Explorer away. But
MS will continue to rule the roost as long as you insist
on ignoring what the customers who have put MS where
they are actually want.
> So we have MS being supposedly "gung ho" on interoperability yet they
> can't make a simple telnet client work right and play NDA games with
> Kerberos.
That's right. MS is gung ho about interoperability- *not* standards. It's
important to understand the difference; what MS is doing makes no
sense unless you do.
> We have email from Bill Gates asking about ways to sabotage
> compatibility with the Palm OS, and we get spin about how that's not
> really what he was talking about even though the words seem perfectly
> clear.
I don't recall anyone putting such an email up in this thread; I haven't
read this one. I have seem people produce MS emails and
attribute completely absurd meanings to them, but not here and now.
> We're not supposed to notice that MS has a competing product
> that isn't doing well.
Oh, no, please do notice that. It's important.
> We have IBM testifying that MS threatened to withold Windows if they
> preloaded OS/2, and that kind of thing is supposedly just "good hard
> captialism" and not an unethical abuse of a monopoly. Apparently
> anything short of guns is ethical in the world of the future.
:D
Well, I'm not sure why MS is obliged to support a competitor, except
for the bizare prinicple that monopolies are obliged to do things
that are bad for them because they are monopolies. I've never
really understood that reasoning.
It really does not seem like particularly "hard" capitalism to me.
I understand that It's certainly not central planning, but that doesn't
make it the sort of Extreme Capitalism you can see on Fox, soon to be
an Olympic sport. :D
> We have Marc Andreeson testifying that MS wanted to create a browser
> cartel, and we are to believe that he's just disgruntled and a liar.
Oh, I can see MS wanted *that*. I really can't see them *getting* it,
but it's the kind of thing MS would want. MS is really into the world
domination thing. :P
> We are presented a picture of MS being the only company that was smart,
> that they did not need to do anything unethical, that all of their
> competitors lost simply because they were stupid and made mistakes, in
> spite of the fact that MS has made as many mistakes as any of them.
Did they? I don't see that.
> And on and on. This may be convincing the first time, or the second,
> or the third, but at some point it begins to look like an exercise in
> prevarication. Rather than being an actual defense, it is simply an
> attempt to create doubt, like a small child making up a new story to
> fit the situation. That is not a convincing defense. Not to the
> judge, to me, or to Leslie. What Leslie and I have a hard time
> figuring out is why it convinces you.
Well, bear in mind that I didn't actually say most of that stuff. You've
attributed the opinions of other posters to me I think. Kind of a colage
of the different views you've had to argue against.
My defense is that MS has mostly done positive things- albeit for
greedy reasons- for the industry and for consumers.
I have, of course, had to point out what positive things they've done,
and sometimes tried to make a case why they are good things.
I have never tried to say that MS has charitable motives. That
is untenable; the e-mails you mention certainly do show that MS
was not acting on such motivies. I do say that we should ignore
MS's motivies; we shouldn't censure them based on what they
think, however distasteful their thoughts may be.
> Now, when the case is lost and MS is to be broken up, you begin to
> attack the law that was applied. You say it is immoral according to
> some new economic theory of yours.
I was unaware that economic theories determined morality.
> You attack the government, saying
> it is on a vendetta on behalf of MS's competitors.
I don't think I said that, either. I think they want to expand;
this was an opportunity to do so. I'm sure there is nothing
personal on their part.
> You attack the
> judge, a Reagan appointee, as being on an anti-business crusade.
I don't think I said that either. But I am wondering why you think
Jackson's Reaganite provenance is important; are you of the
opinion that it means he must be "pro business" somehow?
> This sounds a lot like whining to me.
It is a lot like whining.
I know it makes you uncomfortable to listen to the squeals of
your intended victims.
But I try not to lose too much sleep over that. :D
> MS lost the case because they
> did not put up a credible defense.
That's not really so. Their defence had significant flaws, but it was
good enough to make the DoJ abandon their tying and
market-foreclosure charges and switch to something else.
In any reasonable court, the DoJ would have lost at that point. You
aren't really supposed to change the charges halfway through.
MS certainly could have done better, but even so they didn't do
all *that* badly.
> The reason for that isn't some
> amazing strategy they have up their sleeve, or a conspiracy against
> them, or a lazy judge, or any of the other things you cite.
I didn't cite anything; I don't *know* why Jackson is doing
what he's doing. I can guess, but they are only guesses.
[snip]
> >> >Perhaps we're smarter than Unix developers. :D
> >>
> >> Fuck you. 8->
> >
> >Awwww. Did I hurt your feelings? :P
>
> You have a habit of saying insulting things and then sticking a :D in
> there so that I am supposed to take it as a joke. I wanted to call
> your attention to this.
I know it. But I really am trying very hard to control my anger at you,
and what you are trying to do to me.
Believe me, before editing this post contained long passages
chock full of obscenities. How I really feel is much, much
harsher than what I am putting in this post.
I apoligize for the insulting comments I've occasionally
let through.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:07:29 GMT
"Leslie Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8ikceq$ssn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <W1S25.10264$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Daniel Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >> They did make it more difficult to use samba servers
> >> on unix systems instead of NT. This wasn't an accident.
> >
> >Well, if you are going to rely on the internal inplementation
> >details of NT, you can't be too shocked when this happens.
>
> Yes, this is precisely why wire protocols are the correct
> level of interoperability.
Hmm?
Are you saying that wire protocols are teh correct level of
interoperability *because* they leave you dependant on
internal implementation details, so you break more
easily?
Surely you don't mean *that*.
[snip]
> >They made no such attempt. They merely trying to make Java
> >a useful Windows-development tool *as well* as as
> >cross-platform boondoggle.
>
> Right... It was just accidental that if you built something
> in J++ it wouldn't run even under Windows as an applet
> under Netscape. Sure it was.
This just isn't reailty.
J++ could build portable *and* nonportable classes.
[snip]
> >I think you underestimate the intelligence of Windows programmers;
> >we're clever enough to know the different between portable
> >stuff and Windows specific stuff.
>
> No, I've seen it firsthand. The guy in the next office spent
> weeks building a java applet under J++ that for no obvious reason
> would not work under Netscape. Then days finding out how he had been
> tricked.
Okay, so there is at least one Windows programmer who writes
cross-platform code but doesn't bother to find out what's portable
and what isn't.
I stand corrected.
I nevertheless cling to the notion that most of them, when they want
to write portable code, do check. It's not like you wouldn't have to
with any *other* Java tool.
[snip]
> >No, that's how progress happens. It's *good*.
>
> No, it is the end of progress if you accept the non-interoperable
> version. Which is *bad*.
Well, aren't you glad that Windows does it the interoperable
way, rather than just adhering to Unix standards?
> >> But then they supplied
> >> extensions to some of the existing servers that were broken and
> >> insecure. If you can't beat your competitors product, break it...
> >
> >The frontpage extensions are not their competitors product;
> >it is *Microsoft's* product, broken or no.
>
> Yes, but the unix servers that were compromised by these extensions
> were forced to install them only for compatibility.
They weren't forced to install them at all; they installed them
for the features they offerered.
[snip]
> The law doesn't prohibit competing. It just prohibits
> leveraging the desktop monopoly as the mechanism for
> competition. I have seen no claims that MS should not
> be allowed to make a browser, or even give it away.
As I said, I doubt the intent was to prevent competition,
even though I must admit that the effect is just that.
I don't think the authors of the Sherman act ever
envisioned it being used in a market where virtually
everyone has a 'monopoly' over some niche or other.
They were thinking of commodity markets; and oil
in particular, as I understand it.
[snip]
> >Apparently you feel the law details what features belong in an OS.
>
> No, just how competition is allowed to work.
Then you agree that the DoJ shouldn't be demanding the
removal of Internet Explorer from Windows?
> >Does that not frighten you just a little?
>
> Not even close to the alternative.
Better software scares you that much? :D
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