OFF: Virus alert (genuine)

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, May 04, 2000 at 08:46:30PM -0700, JOHN M GRAY wrote:
> That's right, I remember now the MS bullies came to my house and forced me
> to use their products.  Get real, they conduct business like most other
> companies, that's capitalism.
>
> >But why is MS so popular? It has brutally taken over the market and more or
> > less forces people to use its software.

Straw-man argument.  Of course they don't force individuals to
run Windows.  They do, however, make every effort to force major
computer makers (eg. Compaq, Dell, HP) to install it, so that
when the buyer gets the box home, that's what they'll run on it
as the path of least resistance.

Windows also has a *massive* advantage from the simple fact that
so many people are already running it -- regardless of its
technical merits or lack of same.  Because of the large user
(read "potential customer") base, developers quite reasonably
write software for Windows first (or only).  For example:

On Fri, May 05, 2000 at 00:09:53 -0400, Andrew Apold <mordru at FLITE.NET>
> Give in.  I was an Amiga developer.  The stuff mac users have
> been saying to themselves these last 4-5 years, we said them,
> too.  It doesn't matter.  Develop for the largest market.

Thus more software is available for Windows, which means more
people run Windows...  Snowball effect -- more formally known as
the "applications barrier to entry" against any potential
competitor to Windows.

Which Microsoft makes every attempt, by means fair or foul, to
preserve.  That's why they were so intent on exterminating
Netscape -- at great cost -- and why they tried to subvert
Java's platform independence.  In both cases, they correctly saw
that anything that makes it easier to write software that's
portable to both Windows and any non-Windows platform, threatens
the golden-goose snowball effect.

Before you respond that I'm just another Microsoft hater (which
I am, and proud of it!), and put my comments down to paranoid
ranting, please do me the courtesy of reading my references --
Judge Jackson's "Findings of Fact" and "Conclusions of Law and
Order" in the recent lawsuit:
        http://usvms.gpo.gov/findings_index.html
and
        http://usvms.gpo.gov/
respectively.

"Applications barrier to entry" is Jackson's term, by the way,
not mine.


On Thu, May 04, 2000 at 23:35:53 -0500, Dan Witt <lwitt1 at USWEST.NET> wrote:
> It's scary when the feds can announce that MS is too
> popular, we're going to chop you up,

It's not a matter of "Microsoft software is too popular", "Gates
is too rich", or any of those other straw men.  It's a matter of
*how* they got that way, and how they stay that way.  Read the
judgement.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
to me, Charlie Brown represented the courage to be sincere in the face of
ridicule. he was NOT a loser.
thank you, Mr. Schulz.
        - Robert C. Mayo