Macrosoft Big Bang

[WhiteNight]

QuickSilver, that’s a very good example of an inarticulate rant. Congrats.

Your discussions of other companies might have been valid, if I had mentioned Ford or GM, or oil companies, or dot coms. But I didn’t.

I said that if you invest in a company with a proven track record of illegal activities, you’d deserve to get burned when they go down. If you notice illegal activity and don’t sell you’re stock, you’re profiting off of illegal activities. Whining when you lose money is silly. You can’t takes the heat, maybe you hads better get out of the kitchen.
MS used monopoly pressure to force companies to buy and install their products. Instead of offering volume discounts, based on actual volume, they offered discounts only if every computer an OEM sold shipped with windows, and not just had the disk, but actually shipped with it installed. If companies wanted to install OS/2 or any other OS, they’d end up either buying a copy of Windows for that computer as well, or paying millions of dollars more to buy the suddenly non-discounted OS from Microsoft.

If a company gives out a free cellphone with service, it’s a loss leader. The idea is that you lose a bit initially but sign the customer up for a lucrative contract. What MS did was bundle an (at the time) unrelated product with Windows, free of charge, to deliberately put their competitor out of business. That’s dumping. The difference can be a bit subtle, but depends on the products being related (cell phone and cell phone service) and if you’re in a position to put a competitor out of business.

Then, MS has been implicated but not charged in a few corporate espionage schemes, they’ve done things like the Dr. DOS ‘bug’. They modified Windows so that it wouldn’t run on top of Dr. DOS, claiming that it was a bug in Dr. DOS. That’s illegal in a few ways. They potentially violated a contract with Apple by sabotaging the Office suite for Mac to make the PC versions look better (Inserting numerous delay loops, etc.)

There are a ton of fairly well documented cases where they’ve broken the law, and many others where they maliciously violated a contract and just tied it up in court till the other party ran out of money.

WillGolfForFood: Other than that, your analogy works fine.

Whatever. You still profit from their crimes. So quit whining about your stock losses.

WillGolfForFood: I could argue that nobody was claiming that Microsoft was acting illegally in 1991 when I bought the stock (or, if anyone was making that claim at the time, nobody was paying much attention to them). [snip] I could argue that, until earlier this week, whether Microsoft was committing a crime was still in dispute.

Not quite true. Microsofts actions have been fairly widely known since the late 80s. The latest trial is for their abuse of monopoly powers, not other criminal actions.

WillGolfForFood: I could also point out that by passing Microsoft’s alleged guilt to its stockholders, you’re including virtually every mutual fund in existance (and certainly every index fund).

Ahhh, I forgot that it’s okay if everyone does it.

I see some difference in investing in a mutual fund that invests in MS because many people don’t know where their investment goes. They should find out, but… You on the other hand know exactly where your, until recently, profits are coming from, and what was done to get them.

[StrTrkr777]

Okay WhiteKnight come off the frikin’ high horse.

If you do not like MS fine. But I am tired of people telling others to quit whinning about their losses because they “feel” that MS was doing something illegal.

Who says how volume discounts should work? If FedEx wants to write a contract with a shipper that says “If you ship all your stuff with us, we will give you a 40% discount, but if we find out you ship even one package with someone else, you get nothing.” How is that illegal? If MS only wants to give discounts to those who are loyal to them, then fine. Sounds like good marketing to me.

As for the charge of dumping. If the product is crap no one cares. They still purchase the good product. Only if the free product is good does it really matter. You know what though, even with Netscape becoming a non-contender and with no one else really out there, has MS started charging a bunch for their new version of IE? No, it is still free. Maybe IE is a loss leader to get you to use other MS products that are tightly integrated with each other.

Software is an interesting animal. But I do not believe that MS has done anything that has suppressed the software industry. Had they done so, we would still be using DOS.

So, what if they wrote code that was inefficient for the Apple OS? They will only end up losing business on the Apple side. Who cares if Windows would not run on top of DR DOS? I did not know that they had to make their product run with all their competitors products. It is generally in their best interest to let competing products run with their OS so that they can keep their market share, but if they do not want other software companies to be able to develop programs for Windows then fine. Let the market decide.

You do not have to purchase Windows. (Actually by your thought processes, purchasing Windows or a new PC would be more aggregious than WGFF’s purchase of stock, since the money spent on Windows actually went into the pockets of the Evil MS) If you do not like their products then purchase an iMac. Just drop the holier-than-thou attitude that WillGolf is evil and you are not.

Jeffery

[WhiteNight]

Trekie: Just drop the holier-than-thou attitude that WillGolf is evil and you are not.

I didn’t say he was evil, or that I am not. I just think he should know what to expect, and as such, shouldn’t complain when it happens.

Trekie: So, what if they wrote code that was inefficient for the Apple OS?

So it no doubt violated their contract with Apple. If you contract to have work done, it’s expected that the work gets done to certain standards.

Trekie: Who cares if Windows would not run on top of DR DOS? I did not know that they had to make their product run with all their competitors products.

Well, for one, they lied about it, claiming it was because of a bug in Dr. DOS. Two, they’re in a monopoly position, so rules are different. Three, deliberately sabotaging someone’s business is illegal.

Trekie: Only if the free product is good does it really matter.

Few people knew there were alternatives. Windows came bundled with MSN and IE, and it was hard to uninstall them. They went out of their way to prevent people from using the competitors product instead of simply releasing a their own and letting the market decide.

Intel recently did a similar thing, withholding chipsets (that they were contracted to provide) to manufacturers who made motherboards for AMD K7s.

Trekie: Who says how volume discounts should work? If FedEx wants to write a contract [snip] Sounds like good marketing to me.

There was no exclusive contract. MS offered volume discount to get people to install Windows. That’s fine. But then they later threatened to raise the price unless a copy was purchased for every computer. That’s not illegal except in the context of monopoly control.

Trekie: But I am tired of people telling others to quit whinning about their losses because they “feel” that MS was doing something illegal.

I care about how you feel. Really, I do.

Microsoft has broken the law in many documented ways. Anyone who has been around on the net has seen the articles and proof. This isn’t a ‘feeling’. They also violated many contract and avoided getting harmed because they overwhelmed the competition with lawyers.

[WillGolfForFood]

So many mistakes, so little time. Rather than cover every mistatement you made in your most recent posts, WhiteNight, I’m just going to cover the juicier bits…

Originally posted by WhiteNight:
Instead of offering volume discounts, based on actual volume, they [Microsoft] offered discounts only if every computer an OEM sold shipped with windows, and not just had the disk, but actually shipped with it installed.

No, not even close. The OEMS were offered a discount if they paid a flat fee per shipped PC giving them the right to ship every PC with a copy of Windows on it. Those OEMs were always free to ship PCs with alternate operating systems on them instead. Many didn’t do so because that would involve an extra expense they didn’t want to pay (as they’d already paid for the right to put Windows on each PC). I’m fully aware of the incidents where order takers would tell customers that they “weren’t allowed” to pre-install alternative systems such as OS/2 on a PC - in every such case, this turned out to be a story that a harried order-taker found easier to say than “I’m sorry, we don’t want to do that”.

What MS did was bundle an (at the time) unrelated product with Windows, free of charge, to deliberately put their competitor out of business. That’s dumping.

No, dumping is the tactic of selling your product at a loss, presumably in hopes of driving out the competition so that you can raise your prices later. It’s a charge usually levied against foreign competitors on the basis of “they can’t possibly be making a profit selling their [trucks/steel/CRTs/etc] that cheaply”. Microsoft has always made an outrageous profit on its sales of Windows, and that includes its sales of Windows-combined-with-a-web-browser.

Microsoft has also always claimed (and in this case I agree with them) that their web browser is a logical extension of their operating system. I will point out that the copy of Solaris 2.7 that Sun gave me for my SparcStation arrived complete with a web browser. For that matter, the only user interface that Larry Ellison of Oracle will allow on the operating systems of his Internet Appliances is a web browser. Microsoft’s competitors agree with it on this particular issue.

They potentially violated a contract with Apple by sabotaging the Office suite for Mac to make the PC versions look better (Inserting numerous delay loops, etc.)

It’s truly amazing what folks will tell each other - and then start believing. Setting ethics aside, that tactic would make absolutely no sense from a business point of view, and Bill Gates doesn’t do things that make no sense from a business point of view. Microsoft has long been the largest applications developer for the Mac, and owns a larger percentage of the MAC applications market than it owns of the PC applications market. Microsoft makes more profit when you purchase a Mac than when you purchase a PC because on average folks purchase more Microsoft software for their Macs than they do for their PCs. (The only reason Microsoft makes more profits off of PCs in general is that there are so many more PCs sold than Macs.) The Office suite is a big chunk of the Mac applications market. Microsoft is also currently Apple’s largest investor.

Apple owners’ biggest complaint about Office for the Mac is that traditionally it gets new features only after they’ve shown up in the PC version of Office. Microsoft has always pointed out that that’s only because of that huge PC-to-Mac ratio - it’s more profitable to put new features into the PC version of Office first. Note that new features include speed improvements.

There are a ton of fairly well documented cases where they’ve broken the law … Microsoft has broken the law in many documented ways. Anyone who has been around on the net has seen the articles and proof.

I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to back this particular allegation up, as all of the examples you’ve provided so far have been flat out incorrect.

quit whining about your stock losses

Sorry if I gave the impression that I was whining. That’s not the mood I’ve been in. I’ve been feeling kind of amused, actually.

[mipsman]

I am still baffled by the defenders of MSFT. All I can figure is that you are the same kind of people who supported Mussolini because “he made the trains run on time.”

[CalifBoomer]

mipsman said:

I am still baffled by the defenders of MSFT. All I can figure is that you are the same kind of people who supported Mussolini because “he made the trains run on time.”

Ya know, you got a point there - the federal government knows how to run Microsoft muuuccch better than B.G., I mean just look at all the wealth and new technologies the feds have created…

besides, I just know Microsoft plans to send us all to the ovens as soon as they take over.

::

[waterj2]

mipsman, one of the groups of people defending Microsoft are people who believe that the government has no right to interfere with the way a business is run. This is very much the opposite of fascism.

I’ll illustrate the difference. Fascism keeps its control by killing people that get in it’s way. Microsoft keeps its control because Netscape sucks. If Netscape didn’t suck, more people would use it. As long as Micrsoft is using force or fraud to accomplish its ends, whatever it does is acceptable to me, and probably most libertarians as well.

[WhiteNight]

Califboomer: I just know Microsoft plans to send us all to the ovens as soon as they take over.

Waterj2: Fascism keeps its control by killing people that get in it’s way.

Great arguments guys, but pretty close to Godwin’s Law http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/ …

Mipsman likely meant that people seem to be supporting Bill Gates not because they actually believe he’s right or has done great stuff, but because he’s told them he’s right and done great stuff.

Few people would actually equate BG with the rise of PCs. He was there and cashed in, but IBM wouldn’t have been looking for a PC OS if they weren’t prepared to sell a lot of PCs. Apple and many other companies were selling huge loads of PCs without MS.

To believe that MS caused the PC revolution is akin to believing that Mussolini made the trains run on time. That is, to believe propoganda from those who most benefit if you believe it.

There’s nothing about baking jews in ovens here, or killing people. It’s all about who you trust to give you unbiased news? Someone who stands to gain a lot?

WillGolfForFood: No, not even close. The OEMS were offered a discount if they paid a flat fee per shipped PC giving them the right to ship every PC with a copy of Windows on it. Those OEMs were always free to ship PCs with alternate operating systems on them instead.

Sure, they were allowed to sell a computer with any OS installed, as long as they shipped Windows with it as well. And as long as they paid for it. If they didn’t want to pay the license for every PC they sold, MS threatened to drastically (to retail prices) raise the prices they had to pay for OSes. So, they could ship other OSes, if they wanted to pay for two, and eat the cost, because the user would often refuse, or if they wanted to pay retail prices for every copy of Windows installed…

WillGolfForFood: No, dumping is the tactic of selling your product at a loss, presumably in hopes of driving out the competition so that you can raise your prices later.

So, if you came out in a market and started selling your product for $.01, that’d be dumping, but if you gave it away, that wouldn’t be? Right… You’re right that dumping is selling at less than cost, but free is less than cost, so MS giving away IE was ‘dumping’.

WillGolfForFood: Microsoft has always made an outrageous profit on its sales of Windows, and that includes its sales of Windows-combined-with-a-web-browser.

Of course they did, the idea behind dumping is to not go out of business while doing it. Your profit at the same time as you’re dumping is irrelevent. MS was profiting off of one aspect of its business and dumping in another market. That’s still dumping. They lost money on IE (made nothing) and gave it away for free.

WillGolfForFood: Microsoft has also always claimed (and in this case I agree with them) that their web browser is a logical extension of their operating system.

It wasn’t a very essential part of the operating system, they didn’t distribute HTML help files, or in any way use it. When they tried to make it an essential piece of the OS later, they simply did it by working the browser and OS code closely together, not by actually starting to use the browser in an essential way.

The longer the trial takes and the more people who buy a computer for the net, the more essential the application gets, but it still doesn’t have to be part of the OS. I use Wordperfect suite every day at work, it’s essential to me, but it’s not part of the OS, even though most users I know would be lost if there were no word proccessor applications. But they all seem to be able to buy and use a standalone application.

WillGolfForFood: It’s truly amazing what folks will tell each other - and then start believing.

Implying that you know otherwise. I remember reading an article in a Mac magazine where they talked about this, having looked at the executable, there was a busy loop, something which just counted time and did no usefull function, in the main code, on startup and at other times.

I take the memory of reading an article to be more convincing than your vague assertion that this is made up.

WillGolfForFood: that make no sense from a business point of view. Microsoft has long been the largest applications developer for the Mac, and owns a larger percentage of the MAC applications market than it owns of the PC applications market.

The best guess I heard was that MS was using the poor performance as leverage against Apple, saying that they could break them unless Apple cooperated. If it was to MS’s benefit to help Apple, the only vendor of a viable PC alternative to their OS, why did Apple make MS sign a contract requiring them to continue porting the office suite for some years? If it was as good for MS to do so as you say, they’d be jumping at the chance.

WillGolfForFood: I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to back this particular allegation up, as all of the examples you’ve provided so far have been flat out incorrect.

Sorry, but no. You haven’t offered any proof that I’m wrong, just more opinions. If you were to try to disprove something, then I might try to look for proof to back it up. Until then, you can do the same research I am, go to google and start punching in keywords.

[waterj2]

Mipsman likely meant that people seem to be supporting Bill Gates not because they actually believe he’s right or has done great stuff, but because he’s told them he’s right and done great stuff.

Well then that’s what he should have said. Not my fault if he compares Bill Gates to Mussolini but didn’t really mean to say they’re similar. Either way, my point was that a lot of the MS supporters are people who simply believe that the government has no business regulating business practices that don’t invlove force or fraud.

To believe that MS caused the PC revolution is akin to believing that Mussolini made the trains run on time. That is, to believe propoganda from those who most benefit if you believe it.

It is not necessary to believe that MS caused the PC revolution to support them. Maybe someone simply likes MS software better than the competitors. Maybe someone hates all MS software, but recognizes the company’s right to sell it any way they damn please. To assume that people either think MS caused the PC revolution or are against MS is simply dumb. I support MS’s right to market their software exactly as they have done because I support any company’s right to do so. And if mipsman really meant what you think he did, he should take a class in communication.

[bj0rn]

and AOL is next!

bj0rn - the good guys are the guys that say that they are against the bad guys.

[WillGolfForFood]

Originally posted by WhiteNight:
IBM wouldn’t have been looking for a PC OS if they weren’t prepared to sell a lot of PCs.

Actually, IBM’s top management originally projected total lifetime sales of the PC as only 50,000 units. That’s why they gave Don Estridge the go-ahead to build it using off-the-shelf components and third-party software (actions bordering on heresy for IBM at the time). What the heck, it wasn’t like it was going to be an important product that was going to be around for a long time or anything like that…

Apple and many other companies were selling huge loads of PCs without MS.

I’m sure it seemed like lots of sales at the time, but it wasn’t even one percent of today’s sales. Remember, PCs weren’t an office staple at the time. This might also a good time to point out that virtually everybody other than Apple was shipping Microsoft Basic with their computers, so they weren’t quite running things “without MS”.

That’s still dumping. They lost money on IE (made nothing) and gave it away for free.

It’s dumping only if Ford’s including a radio and a cigarette lighter with every Taurus is also dumping. Actually, Ford’s situation is worse, as Ford has never claimed that either is an essential part of a Taurus’ operation.

It [Microsoft’s IE] wasn’t a very essential part of the operating system, they didn’t distribute HTML help files, or in any way use it.

Note that the very same thing is true of the web browser that Sun included in that copy of Solaris 2.7 that they shipped me for my SparcStation.

If it was to MS’s benefit to help Apple, the only vendor of a viable PC alternative to their OS, why did Apple make MS sign a contract requiring them to continue porting the office suite for some years?

When Microsoft made its investment in Apple, there was some concern as to Apple’s continued viability (a concern that has since evaporated). Microsoft’s announcement that it was going to not only continue to support its Mac version of Office, but would add selected features to it before it added them to the PC version, was made to assure folks of Microsoft’s continued support of the platform.

[handy]

WillGolfForFood, if you buy a new PC with Windoz already on it & you don’t want to use the Windoz, according to the license agreement on the pc, you can simply get your money back for the operating system. Its not much, maybe $50.00. Emachines only pays about $30.00

[StrTrkr777]

Okay Whiteknight, you mentioned the situation of a PC company paying to use Windows on all it PCs and not doing so would mean having to purchase another OS or having to pay full retail.

Let’s say I am MS. I want to do business with Dell. I tell Dell that I know based on their annual report I know that they shipped approximately 9 million PCs (18 billion / $2,000 per PC), so, I will make you a deal, I will sell you the right to put Windows on all your PCs for $50 per machine or $450 million. Now retail price for Windows 98 is over $80 since the upgrade is $80 or for the same 9 million PCs $720 million a savings of 270 million dollars.

Now, if I have a few customers who want something other than Windows, I think if I am Dell I will surely eat that small cost rather than cost myself over a quarter of a billion dollars. If MS says, hey, I will sell you every copy you want for $50 a piece no matter how many you purchase, then Dell has nothing to lose by going to another OS so MS is not protecting their interests. That is what volume discounts are all about.

The reason I support MS is as was stated earlier. I do not go by what MS tells us. I know they have a bias. I go by the business strategies that they seem to use. It does not seem that they are doing anything that any successful company would not also do. I think the gov’t is already involved enough in our lives, I do not welcome the lack of innovation that MS and the computer industry will experience if the gov’t starts trying to run the show.

Jeffery