At the end of the day, MS being left intact means I’ll never have to pay for an internet browser. That’s the way it should be, IMO.
Great.
Here I am, ranting about evil monopolies, big business, and politics, and you people have to be all reasonable about it and show me where I was wrong.
Bastards, all of you.
(BTW, gas prices in North Dakota had been climbing again until yesterday when they dropped a dime. AFTER I filled my tank. I think they were witing for me. What did I do with that tinfoil helmet I made…)
Um they were WAITING for me. You should have seen that post BEFORE preview…
Gah.
Hmm… Interesting, Zoff, hadn’t seen that. Looks like the AG group has a specific remedy already in mind, targeted at breaking up XP. I think I’ll go over and have a chat with Professor Hovenkamp, he’s right down the street from me.
I’m just wondering why people accuse Bush of “being in Bill Gate’s pocket”. Couldn’t it be possible that Bush simply disagreed with the whole case to begin with? Long before he even began his bid for the presidency?
Point well taken, SPOOFE. “Landslide” George made it abundantly clear that he was a deep-dish disciple of Bidness, A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of MammonCo. There was no deception, he was sold to us “as is”, and he is. His administration’s stance is entirely consistent with his values, such as they are.
Power tends to consolidate, money is power, money consolidates. Thats rather the point of all this anti-trust stuff, to prevent an unhealthy concentration of economic power in the hands of people who are no better than We Who Teem.
MicroSoft’s record as an competition throttling entity is abundantly clear. They got away with it so long its almost impossible to sort out how much of thier bloat is ill-gotten and how much a legitimate result of business. However, this results from MS’s rapacity and greed, on its head be it.
Break up? No. Rather pointless. I’m more inclined to favor the open source code approach, let everyone create applications for Windows, and the consumer will benefit from the competition. Otherwise, we’re in for an endless series of Versions, that are only minor improvements on their predecessors, and will be fully compatible with what you got just as soon as you buy Upgrade#N+1.
As for Gates himself, I fear their is no hope, the greed is set too deep. If his fortune is cut down to a mere billion dollars, he will suffer, thats how far gone he is.
I read a paper, I think it was by Felten, he said that companies form natural monopolies around government extension of privileges, in this case copyright monopolies. And this is the worst of the Clinton legacy, it sold consumer rights to groups like the DMCA, SPA, and M$. His remedy for breaking up these monopolies is copyright reform.
M$ is wreaking havoc across the industry. The HP-Compaq merger is just a symptom. MS drains money out of the manufacturing channel and makes it dance to their tune. Everyone down the food chain has to dance to MS’s tune. I have never seen a time with this sort of discontent with MS.
This is, of course, the same George W. Bush who is trying to push through a discount prescription card for senior citizens, despite the fact that a Federal judge recently granted an injunction request against the plan by the National Association of Chain Drugstores, which might, just might, be made up of big businesses. But if we pick and choose our data points, we can all reach whatever conclusions we want.
*Originally posted by Zoff *
Um, since when do seventeen of fifty equal “the rest of”? Enquiring minds and all that. 
redtail23: Only 18 states and the District of Columbia were in the antitrust suit. One of the states dropped out earlier.
By the way, it now appears that New York and California might split from the Feds and the rest of the states in trying to do something about Windows XP (Which makes it sound as if the Feds weren’t planning to try to get an injunction against it).
Yeah, but let’s not forget some of the details of the plan. Namely, that no one’s decided how or if or when the drug companies would be rembursed for the discounts. If Clinton had proposed something this stupid (and I’ll concede that Hillary’s healthcare plan was pretty close to this), the Republicans would have been all over his ass, screeching about creeping socialism, big government, and so on, but the Dubya does it, and nary a peep out of the GOP. Of course, some people say that Shrub has deliberately come up with such a plan, knowing that it’ll get thrown out so that he can appease the voters (“Hey, I made an attemptenation in that directional area.”) and not upset big business. Seems a little smart for the Dubster to me (Cheney on the other hand . . . ;)).