Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Xah Lee]

Microsoft Hatred, FAQ

Xah Lee, 20020518

Question: U.S. Judges are not morons, and quite a few others are
not morons. They find MS guilty, so it must be true.

Answer: so did the German population thought Jews are morons by
heritage, to the point that Jews should be exterminated from earth.
Apparently, the entire German population cannot be morons, they must be
right.

Judge for yourself, is a principle i abide by. And when you judge, it
is better to put some effort into it.

How much you invest in this endearvor depends on how important the
issue is to you. If you are like most people, for which the issue of
Microsoft have remote effect on your personal well-being, then you can
go out and buy a case of beer on one hand and pizza on the other, and
rap with your online confabulation buddies about how evil is MS. If you
are an author writing a book on this, then obviously its different
because your reputation and ultimately daily bread depend on what you
put down. If you are a MS competitor such as Apple or Sun, then
obviously you will see to it with as much money as you can cough out
that MS is guilty by all measures and gets put out of business. If you
are a government employee such as a judge, of course it is your
interest to please your boss, with your best accessment of the air.

When i judge things, i like to imagine things being serious, as if my
wife is a wager, my daughter is at stake, that any small factual error
or mis-judgement or misleading perspective will cause unimaginable
things to happen. Then, my opinions becomes better ones.

Q: Microsoft's Operating System is used over 90% of PCs. If that's
not monopoly, i don't know what is.

A: Now suppose there is a very ethical company E, whose products have
the best performance/price ratio, and making all the competitors
looking so majorly stupid and ultimately won over 90% of the market as
decided by consumers. Is E now a monopoly? Apparently, beer drinkers
and pizza eaters needs to study a bit on the word monopoly, from the
perspectives of language to history to law. If they have some extra
time, they can sharpen views from philosophy & logic contexts as well.

Q: What about all the people in the corporate environments who are
forced to use MS products and aren't allowed the option/choice to use
Mac/Linux/UNIX?

A: Kick your boss's ass, or, choose to work for a company who have
decisions that you liked.

Q: What about MS buying out all competitors?

A: Microsoft offered me $1 grand for saying good things about them.
They didn't put a gunpoint on my head. I CHOOSE to take the bribe.
Likewise, sold companies can and have decided what's best for them.
It's nothing like under gunpoint.

Q: Microsoft forced computer makers to not install competitor's
applications or OSes.

A: It is free country. Don't like MS this or that? Fuck MS and talk to
the Solaris or BeOS or AIX or HP-UX or Apple or OS/2 or Amiga or NeXT
or the Linuxes with their free yet fantastically easy-to-use and
network-spamming X-Windows. Bad business prospects? Then grab the
opportunity and become an entrepreneur and market your own beats-all
OS. Too difficult? Let's sue Microsoft!

Q: Microsoft distributed their Internet Explorer web browser free,
using their “monopoly� power to put Netscape out of business.

A: entirely inane coding monkeys listen: It takes huge investment to
give away a quality software free. Netscape can give away Operating
Systems free to put MS out of business too. Nobody is stopping Sun
Microsystem from giving Java free, or BeOS a browser free, or Apple to
bundle QuickTime deeply with their OS free.

Not to mention that Netscape is worse than IE in just about every
version till they become the OpenSource mozilla shit and eventually
bought out by AOL and still shit.

• Netscape struggles, announced open browser source code in 1998-01,
industry shock
http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html

• Netscape browser code released in 1998-03. Mozilla FAQ.
http://mozilla.org/docs/mozilla-faq.html

• AOL buys Netscape in 1998-11 for 4.2 billion.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-218360.html?legacy=cnet

• Jamie Zawinski, resignation and postmortem, 1999-04
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html

• suck.com, Greg Knauss & Terry Colon, 2000-04, Netscape 6 mockery
http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/04/10/
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_...s_netscape.zip

• Xah Lee, Netscape Crap
http://xahlee.org/Writ_dir/macos-talk/58.txt

Q: Microsoft implemented extra things to standard protocols in
their OS so that other OS makers cannot be compatible with their OS
while their OS can be compatible with all. They used this Embrace &
Extend to lock out competitors.

A: My perspective is this: suppose you are now a company who's OS sits
over 90% of computers (regardless how this come to be for the moment).
Now, lots of “standard� protocols in the industry is a result of
popularity (RFC = Really Fucking Common), and popularity resulted from
being free, from the RFCs of the fantastically incompetent by the
truely stupid unix tech morons. What can you do if you want to improve
these protocols? If you go with totally different protocols, then the
incompatibility with the rest 10% isn't your best interest. I would
adopt existing protocols, and extend them with improvements. Being a
commercial entity, i'm sorry that it is not my duty to release my
improvments to my competitors. Any of you incompetent IBM/AIX/OS/2 or
SGI/Irix or HP/HP-UX or Sun/Solaris or Apple/AU-X/Mac can do the same,
not that they haven't.

Of course, the universe of moronic unixers and Apple fanatics cannot
see that. The unix idiots cannot see that their fantastically stupid
protocols are fantastically stupid in the first place. The Apple
fanatics are simply chronically fanatic.

Q: Microsoft product is notorious for their lack of security.

A: In my very sound opinion, if Microsoft's OS's security flaws is
measured at one, then the unixes are measured at one myriad. If unixes
suddenly switch popularity with Windows, then the world's computers
will collapse uncontrollably by all sorts of viruses and attacks. This
can be seen for technical person who knows unix history well:

• http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html (e.g.
ftpd/proftpd, inetd/xinetd, sendmail/qmail, X-Windows, telnet, passwd,
login, rsh, rlogin.)

• on the criminality of buffer overflow, by Henry Baker, 2001.
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_..._overflow.html

• Fast Food The UNIX Way:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_.../fastfood.html

• Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/%7Eesr/jargon/

• The Rise of Worse is Better, by Richard P. Gabriel, 1991, at
http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

and plenty other pre-90s documents to get a sense of just how
fantastically insecure unix was and is. Unix today is not just
technically slacking in the “security� department, but the unix
ways created far more unmanageable security risks that's another topic
to discuss.

The unix crime, is not just being utmost technically sloppy. Its entire
system and “philosophy†� created an entire generation of incompetent
programers and thinking and programing languages, with damage that is a
few magnitude times beyond all computer viruses and attacks damages in
history combined. See also:

• Responsible Software License:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w...e_license.html

Q: Microsoft products are simply poor quality.

A: Perhaps this in general is true pre-1997. I think the vast majority
of MS products today have better performance/price ratio then
competitors. This includes their operating system, their input devices
(mouse & keyboard), their X-Box gaming console, their software game
titles, their software architectures and languages (.NET, C#), their
technologies (few i know: SMB), and many of their software applications
(suite of Office, which consistently ranked top since early 90s).

e.g. Tom's hardware review on x-box, esp in comparison with Sony
Playstation 2. (2002-02):
http://www4.tomshardware.com/consume...204/index.html

the leading role of MS Office products can be seen in MacUser &
MacWorld magazine reviews through out early 90s.

Q: BeOS was once to be bundled with PC, but MS meddled with it and
basically at the end fucked Be up.

A: BeOS is a fantastically fucking useless OS. No DVD player, No Java,
No QuickTime, No games, no Mathematica, no nothing. For all practical
purposes, fucking useless in a different way than every donkey unixes.
Not to mention the evil Apple computer, refused to pass the QuickTime
technology, and tried to prevent BeOS from running on Apple hardware by
refusing to release their PPC hardware spec. Be founder Jean-Louis
Gassee wrote an article about it. Who's fucking whom?

Q: X inc tried to do W, but MS threatened to depart.

A: Dear X inc., try to find a bigger dick for your needs. If you cannot
find any, too bad! Suck it up to the big brother and hold on to what
you can get! If you have the smarts, milk him dry! Free country, free
to choose partnership. Ladies, previous night's indiscretion is not
rape the morning after.

Q: I'm not a beer bucket or pizza hole, but i want to do research
over the web. Is there any free stuff on the web i can grab? I'm an
OpenSource advocate, i demand free things.

A: •
http://www.moraldefense.com/Campaign...AQ/default.htm
(The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism)

• http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_repo.../friedman.html (The
Business Community's Suicidal Impulse by Milton Friedman, 1999-03)
local copy

Q: I'm thinking of putting my wife and daughter on the table. What
do you suggest to begin with?

A: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_di...economics.html

Q: Are you confident enough to bet your wifes and daughters for
what you say?

A: No. But I put my reputation in.
-------
This post is archived at:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w...hatredfaq.html

Xah
xa*@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/

[David Schwartz]

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org...

Neither I, nor you, nor the government of any nation, should care a
monkey's toss specifically for Microsoft's success. Microsoft is one
special interest, out of a potentially unbounded number of possible
players in the economy of a country and the world.

No, not at all. It is the gravest act of self-contradiction to
maintain
that one should be allowed to pursue one's own interest while denying
that
same right to others.

Not at all. No one is denying anyones right to purssue their own
interest. What's being denied is the right to use illegal means to do
so. If MS restricted themselves to legal means, no one would have a
problem with them.
The conclusion that the means were illegal is predicated on the
definition of the relevent market as "desktop operating systems for 32-bit
x86 computers". Conduct is not illegal unless some law puts people on
adequate notice that their conduct is illegal. What law put Microsoft on
notice that the relevent market would be defined in the bizarre and almost
nonsensical way?
Unless you or I are specifically shareholders in Microsoft, we should
not
care about their specific success; and the government should be entirely
agnostic about who are the winners and losers in an economy. We should certainly care that Microsoft be allowed to pursue their
own
success. The government should be agnostic about who the winners and
losers
are, but must respect each entity's right to attempt to be that winner. Nice thought. Unfortunately, the government doesn't work that
way. They believe that a practical monopoly is a bad thing, and limit
the things such a company can do, and have been known to disassemble
companies they believe are harming the economy in general.
In other words, they believe the rights of Microsoft to do what they
please with what is theirs is subservient to some general obligation to help
the economy as a whole. I am saying that Microsoft has no obligaiton to the
economy as a whole but instead has an obligation to its stockholders. It
would be the gravest dereliction of that obligation for Microsoft to
sacrifice itself for some general benefit.
The
government's role should be to ensure a level playing field, and minimum
levels of health, safety and environmental standards. There is no place
for government giving special-interests like Microsoft favours. The problem is, people complain when the playing field is in fact
level.
For example, Microsoft's "exclusiona ry" Windows agreements didn't ask for
more than Windows was worth (or nobody would have agreed to them). Yet
they
are considered examples of the playing field not being level. No, they didn't ask for more than Windows were worth. They tilted the
playing field against MS competitors by causing consumers to pay MS
money for products they didn't receive. In most countries, taking
money from unwilling victims without giving them anything in exchange
is called "theft".
It is not theft if you can simply say "no" to the deal and all that
happens is that you don't get the product. Your argument is preposterous. If
you accept arguments that equate guns with arguments, the next step is that
using a gun is a rational response to an argument one doesn't like. Oh wait,
you're already there.
Microsoft's behaviour over-all has been just as anti-social,
anti-competitive and harmful to the over-all running of the economy as a
hypothetical Walmart or Safeway that regularly parked their trucks in
the
middle of the main road for a few hours while they unloaded. The problem is, the government does not own the economy. So it does
not
get to manage it the way it gets to manage the roads it in fact owns. Sorry, but you're wrong. The government *does* own the econnomy.
If you believe that, then there is no reaching you with reason.
Who
do you think originally created all the money that is flowing through
it?
The government created a medium of exchange, but that is not the same as
saying it created the wealth that money represents. The government created
the money simply as a stand in for the wealth that was created by others.
The government charges you for the privilege of participating in
their economy - it's called "income tax". 2000 years ago Christ knew
who owned the economy, and said "Render unto Ceaser that which is
Ceasers."
The government charges you, notionally, for the services it provides. It
is somewhat silly to phrase as this as charging you for the privilege of
participating in *their* economy. I am familiar with just about every theory
for justifying government power, and I know of none that justifies a claim
of complete government ownership of the economy other than those that lead
to Communism or Totalitariansm.
Maybe, just maybe, if Mom & Pop's Corner Store tried it once or twice,
we
could afford to turn a blind eye, especially if the disruption caused by
towing their delivery van was greater than the disruption caused by
their
double-parking. Thousands of people break the law by double-parking for
a
few minutes, and society doesn't collapse. But something that we can
afford to ignore when done by M&P's Corner Store becomes a serious
problem
if done by somebody with the economic power of Walmart, with their
thousands of deliveries by 18-wheelers every day across the country. Again, the analogy fails. You are comparing the government's right to
manage its own property with the government's "right" to interfere with
other people's right to manage their property. Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
property, only they call it "property tax".
I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.
When a criminal willing to use force points a gun at your head, you
lie
to him. You sound like an anarchist to me. This wasn't a criminal, this was
the government. Lieing to random individuals isn't a crime. Lieing to
the government is.
If the government prosecutes people for crimes wherein there was no
notice whatsoever that their conduct was criminal, it is acting criminally
itself. Apparently, in your world the only alternatives are that the
government owns everything or that the government owns nothing. As soon as I
claim anything is beyond the government's power, I'm an anarchist in your
book.
In any case, even if you are right that Microsoft had no ideas... so
what?
Ignorance of the law never has been an excuse for criminal behaviour. It
has always been every individual's responsibility to make sure that they
do not act illegally, and that goes for companies as well.

I am not saying Microsoft did not know the law. I am saying that no
rational person could have expected the law to be applied to Microsoft
that
way it was. The law *must* put a person on notice of precisely what
conduct
it prohibits. However, in this case, the law's applicability was
conditioned
on an abritrary and irrational choice of what the relevant market was.

MS has a long history of dancing with the DOJ, and has been repeatedly
warned about the legality - or lack thereof - of their behavior. No
rational person who knew of that history could expect the law to be
applied to MS in any way other than the way it was.

Since when does the DOJ get to make the law? (George Bush's claims to
the contrary not withstanding.) The issue is whether the *LAW* put Microsoft
on notice. A just law must itself put people on notice as to precisely what
conduct constitutes a violation of that law.

DS

[David Schwartz]

"Roedy Green" <my************ *************** ***@munged.inva lid> wrote in
message news:s3******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:10:24 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmast er.com> wrote or quoted :

If the deal didn't give you more than it cost you, all you had to do
was
say 'no'. I understand the frustration at being forced to pay for
something
what it is worth.

The choice was go along with MS arm twisting or go out of business.
Only because the product they were providing you was so important you
were unable to do business without it.
I call that extortion.

Microsoft had something you need so badly that you could not go into
business without it. So they demanded from you that you pay them what their
software was actually worth to you. That is not extortion. Everyone who
sells something tries to get the maximum possible value for it.

(Of course, you could have gone into business selling servers. Or
Macintoshes. Or another business entirely. It was only to go into the
business of selling PCs with Windows that you had to deal with Microsoft.)

DS

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 01:00:31 GMT, Roedy Green
<my************ *************** ***@munged.inva lid> wrote or quoted :

The choice was go along with MS arm twisting or go out of business.

I call that extortion.

I deeply resent this, because they not only ripped me off, they put me
a in position I felt compelled to become part of their dirty business
scheme. I am angrier for my own uncleanness than I am at my actual
financial losses.

I despise them for corrupting me.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:17:20 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

Microsoft goal is and should be their own success, not the success of
the economy or the market in general.

Neither I, nor you, nor the government of any nation, should care a
monkey's toss specifically for Microsoft's success. Microsoft is one
special interest, out of a potentially unbounded number of possible
players in the economy of a country and the world.
No, not at all. It is the gravest act of self-contradiction to maintain
that one should be allowed to pursue one's own interest while denying that
same right to others.

This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I've seen written down by somebody
educated for a long, long long time. An individual's self-interest may
very well include theft, murder or rape, to mention just a few examples.

Pursuing one's own self-interest is not and never has been an unrestricted
right. At the point that your self-interest harms others, civilization
steps in and slaps you down. You are not allowed to pursue your own
self-interest by dumping your trash over the fence into your neighbour's
back yard. You are not allowed to pursue your own self-interest by putting
a bullet in the brain of that annoying busker on the sub-way playing
Beatles tunes badly. You are not allowed to pursue your own self-interest
in breaking into your neighbour's home and stealing his property. And
neither are you allowed to pursue your own self-interest by engaging in
predatory and anti-competitive business practices.

Now perhaps you personally would like to live in a society where Steve
Ballmer, pursuing Microsoft's own interests, is allowed to have Google CEO
Eric Schmidt gut-shot and left to bleed to death in the gutter, but I
think the vast majority of people think that behaviour like that should be
discouraged, no matter how much money that would make Microsoft.

Unless you or I are specifically shareholders in Microsoft, we should
not care about their specific success; and the government should be
entirely agnostic about who are the winners and losers in an economy.

We should certainly care that Microsoft be allowed to pursue their
own
success. The government should be agnostic about who the winners and
losers are, but must respect each entity's right to attempt to be that
winner.

Certainly. Like any other entity, Microsoft is allowed to live it's "life"
any way it sees fit, so long as it obeys the law. At the point it breaks
the law, then, like any other legal person, Microsoft should be punished,
by fines, prohibitions, seizure of property, and if need be, the death
penalty.

Or would you like to suggest that Microsoft's board of directors should be
allowed carte blache to break any law, commit any deed, so long as it
makes Microsoft money?

The
government's role should be to ensure a level playing field, and
minimum levels of health, safety and environmental standards. There is
no place for government giving special-interests like Microsoft
favours.

The problem is, people complain when the playing field is in fact
level.
For example, Microsoft's "exclusiona ry" Windows agreements didn't ask
for more than Windows was worth (or nobody would have agreed to them).
Yet they are considered examples of the playing field not being level.

Microsoft's exclusively agreements -- no need for scare quotes -- gave
people the choice, sign this agreement or go out of business. As such,
they are as level a playing field as a thug demanding a restaurant pay
"insurance" to him or "lot of flammable goods in your kitchen, terrible if
it were to burn down".

Microsoft's behaviour was merely smoother, wearing an expensive suit, and
written up in lots of legal language, but in effect it was no different:
do what we want, or we'll put you out of business.

Society regulates where and how we park our cars: for instance, none of
us are allowed to park our car in the middle of busy road. and if we
try, our car is likely to be impounded. This is not because there is
anything in and of itself *wrong* with parking at such-and-such a
place, but because of the effect it has on others.

Umm, no. It's because the government owns the roads and operates
them
for the benefit of all. This analogy applies *only* to government
property.

Perhaps you should stop and think for a moment about privately owned toll
roads.

You, as a private individual, are not allowed to detonate a small nuclear
warhead, even on your own property. The government prohibits you from
carrying explosives on privately owned airplanes. I didn't notice the Bush
government shrugging their shoulders and saying "Hey, the World Trade
Centre is private property, it is none of *our* business what people do to
it" a few years back. Perhaps you might say that it was none of the
government's business, if private individuals wish to fly planes into
privately owned buildings, but fortunately no government in the world
agrees with you.

A sensible government cares for smooth flowing traffic on the roads,
with the minimum of delays and the maximum flow practical.

You could replace "government " with "road owner" and the analogy
would
then be correct. Governments don't give a damn if traffic flows smoothly
on private roads.

Yeah, tell that to the operators of CityLink in Melbourne.

Perhaps Walmart or Safeway might find it convenient to park their
trucks on public roads for any number of reasons. Too bad for them: the
benefit to them does not outweigh the loss to everyone else, even if
they don't specifically block access to their competitors.

And this is what any road owner would do.

Not if the road was owned by the people blocking their competitors'
traffic.

[snip]

Microsoft's status of a "monopolist "
is only meaningful if you define the market as "desktop operating
systems for 32-bit x86 computers".

That is *precisely* the market we're talking about. Not "any item that
runs off electricity", not "orange juice", not "pork bellies", not "all
computing devices", but desktop PCs. What did you think the Justice
Department's investigation was about? Motor vehicles?

I thought it was about operating systems, actually.

How stupid do you think we are, that we are unable to tell the difference
between a market and a product? Microsoft's *products* under investigation
in the DoJ case were the operating system and web browser, but the
*market* was the desktop PC market.

And I thought
that both OSX and Linux competed with it.
As you know, because you have been following this thread, an economic
monopoly does not mean that the monopolist is literally the only player in
town. Even today, when Microsoft's effective marketshare has fallen from
97% to maybe as low as 90%, they still hold a monopoly in both the
operating system and the office suite in the desktop PC market.

There is no way Microsoft could have expected the market to be defined
in this way and no way to argue that Microsoft had any reason to
believe their conduct was illegal.

Microsoft have lawyers. Microsoft destroyed emails and at least one
senior manager perjured himself in court. Microsoft created a fake
video demonstration which they then gave as evidence. Do you really
believe that Microsoft's executives are so incompetent that they don't
get legal advice before writing up contracts? Or that nobody in
authority at Microsoft realised that destroying evidence and lying to a
judge are crimes?

When a criminal willing to use force points a gun at your head, you
lie
to him.

Well don't this just take the biscuit. Judges investigating crimes are
criminals pointing guns. I wonder whether you are this understanding about
accused muggers and liquor-store robbers, or if it is only white guys in
business suits that get your sympathy?

In any case, even if you are right that Microsoft had no ideas... so
what? Ignorance of the law never has been an excuse for criminal
behaviour. It has always been every individual's responsibility to make
sure that they do not act illegally, and that goes for companies as
well.

I am not saying Microsoft did not know the law. I am saying that no
rational person could have expected the law to be applied to Microsoft
that way it was.

No rational person could have expected that Microsoft would be expected
to obey the law? You have a bizarre concept of "rational".
The law *must* put a person on notice of precisely what
conduct it prohibits. However, in this case, the law's applicability was
conditioned on an abritrary and irrational choice of what the relevant
market was.

Riiiight.

Because as we all know, micro-controllers for VCRs and desktop PCs are the
same market. If you want to run common business applications like word
processing, book-keeping, web-browsing, etc, you have a free choice
between running those applications on a desktop PC or a VCR.
--
Steven.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 18:02:44 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

In other words, "why don't you go back to Russia, you commie pinko
fascist Jew Nazi".

Mike Meyer has got just as much right to live in America as David
Schwartz. Nice to see how quickly Americans' supposed love of freedom
disappears once they are exposed to views that contradict their own.
--
Steven.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:46:53 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETH IScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

Or would you like to suggest that Microsoft's board of directors should be
allowed carte blache to break any law, commit any deed, so long as it
makes Microsoft money?

Why should the standards of acceptable conduct be any lower for groups
of people (namely corporations) than individuals?

It would be like excusing bad behaviour based on other group
memberships such as churches or gangs.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Mike Meyer]

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmast er.com> writes:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org...

Neither I, nor you, nor the government of any nation, should care a
monkey's toss specifically for Microsoft's success. Microsoft is one
special interest, out of a potentially unbounded number of possible
players in the economy of a country and the world.
No, not at all. It is the gravest act of self-contradiction to
maintain
that one should be allowed to pursue one's own interest while denying
that
same right to others. Not at all. No one is denying anyones right to purssue their own
interest. What's being denied is the right to use illegal means to do
so. If MS restricted themselves to legal means, no one would have a
problem with them.

The conclusion that the means were illegal is predicated on the
definition of the relevent market as "desktop operating systems for 32-bit
x86 computers". Conduct is not illegal unless some law puts people on
adequate notice that their conduct is illegal. What law put Microsoft on
notice that the relevent market would be defined in the bizarre and almost
nonsensical way?

Not at all. The conclusion that the means were illegal was because
*they worked*. If MS didn't have monopoly power, the people they were
dealing with would have laughed at them.

Unless you or I are specifically shareholders in Microsoft, we should
not
care about their specific success; and the government should be entirely
agnostic about who are the winners and losers in an economy. We should certainly care that Microsoft be allowed to pursue their
own
success. The government should be agnostic about who the winners and
losers
are, but must respect each entity's right to attempt to be that winner.

Nice thought. Unfortunately, the government doesn't work that
way. They believe that a practical monopoly is a bad thing, and limit
the things such a company can do, and have been known to disassemble
companies they believe are harming the economy in general.

In other words, they believe the rights of Microsoft to do what they
please with what is theirs is subservient to some general obligation to help
the economy as a whole. I am saying that Microsoft has no obligaiton to the
economy as a whole but instead has an obligation to its stockholders. It
would be the gravest dereliction of that obligation for Microsoft to
sacrifice itself for some general benefit.

You do like straw men, don't you? Nowhere in the what I said does the
word "help" appear; you pulled it out of thin air, and what you said
in general has *nothing* to do with what you quoted above. The
statements don't contradict each other in any way, and both happen to
be true.

The
government's role should be to ensure a level playing field, and minimum
levels of health, safety and environmental standards. There is no place
for government giving special-interests like Microsoft favours. The problem is, people complain when the playing field is in fact
level.
For example, Microsoft's "exclusiona ry" Windows agreements didn't ask for
more than Windows was worth (or nobody would have agreed to them). Yet
they
are considered examples of the playing field not being level.

No, they didn't ask for more than Windows were worth. They tilted the
playing field against MS competitors by causing consumers to pay MS
money for products they didn't receive. In most countries, taking
money from unwilling victims without giving them anything in exchange
is called "theft".

It is not theft if you can simply say "no" to the deal and all that
happens is that you don't get the product. Your argument is preposterous. If
you accept arguments that equate guns with arguments, the next step is that
using a gun is a rational response to an argument one doesn't like. Oh wait,
you're already there.

Yup, we're there - and you brought us there, by referring to federal
judges as "criminals pointing guns".

Of course, there are lots more straw men in this argument. I didn't
mention guns at all - you manufactured that from nothing. Theft
doesn't have to involve guns. Hell, it doesn't even have to involve
the knowledge of the victim, which is the case here. Everyone buying a
system from those that MS bullied paid for an MS OS, whether they got
one or not, and wether they knew it or not - and MS got the
money. They didn't even realize they were being robbed, so saying "no"
was never an option.

Microsoft's behaviour over-all has been just as anti-social,
anti-competitive and harmful to the over-all running of the economy as a
hypothetical Walmart or Safeway that regularly parked their trucks in
the
middle of the main road for a few hours while they unloaded. The problem is, the government does not own the economy. So it does
not
get to manage it the way it gets to manage the roads it in fact owns.

Sorry, but you're wrong. The government *does* own the econnomy.

If you believe that, then there is no reaching you with reason.

Who
do you think originally created all the money that is flowing through
it?

The government created a medium of exchange, but that is not the same as
saying it created the wealth that money represents. The government created
the money simply as a stand in for the wealth that was created by others.

Another straw man. Saying "the government owns the wealth that was
created by others" is not the same thing as saying "the government
owns the economy".

The government charges you for the privilege of participating in
their economy - it's called "income tax". 2000 years ago Christ knew
who owned the economy, and said "Render unto Ceaser that which is

The government charges you, notionally, for the services it provides. It
is somewhat silly to phrase as this as charging you for the privilege of
participating in *their* economy. I am familiar with just about every theory
for justifying government power, and I know of none that justifies a claim
of complete government ownership of the economy other than those that lead
to Communism or Totalitariansm.

Of course you aren't familiar with it. Statists seldom admit that
their system means the government owns the economy.

Maybe, just maybe, if Mom & Pop's Corner Store tried it once or twice,
we
could afford to turn a blind eye, especially if the disruption caused by
towing their delivery van was greater than the disruption caused by
their
double-parking. Thousands of people break the law by double-parking for
a
few minutes, and society doesn't collapse. But something that we can
afford to ignore when done by M&P's Corner Store becomes a serious
problem
if done by somebody with the economic power of Walmart, with their
thousands of deliveries by 18-wheelers every day across the country.
Again, the analogy fails. You are comparing the government's right to
manage its own property with the government's "right" to interfere with
other people's right to manage their property.

Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
property, only they call it "property tax".

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

You couldn't be more wrong. Then again, that's nothing new.

When a criminal willing to use force points a gun at your head, you
lie
to him.

You sound like an anarchist to me. This wasn't a criminal, this was
the government. Lieing to random individuals isn't a crime. Lieing to
the government is.

If the government prosecutes people for crimes wherein there was no
notice whatsoever that their conduct was criminal, it is acting criminally
itself. Apparently, in your world the only alternatives are that the
government owns everything or that the government owns nothing. As soon as I
claim anything is beyond the government's power, I'm an anarchist in your
book.

Yet *another* straw man. I do hope you enjoy arguing with yourself. I
never said the government owning nothing was an alternative. Nor did I
say you were an anarchist.

In any case, even if you are right that Microsoft had no ideas... so
what?
Ignorance of the law never has been an excuse for criminal behaviour. It
has always been every individual's responsibility to make sure that they
do not act illegally, and that goes for companies as well. I am not saying Microsoft did not know the law. I am saying that no
rational person could have expected the law to be applied to Microsoft
that
way it was. The law *must* put a person on notice of precisely what
conduct
it prohibits. However, in this case, the law's applicability was
conditioned
on an abritrary and irrational choice of what the relevant market was.

MS has a long history of dancing with the DOJ, and has been repeatedly
warned about the legality - or lack thereof - of their behavior. No
rational person who knew of that history could expect the law to be
applied to MS in any way other than the way it was.

Since when does the DOJ get to make the law? (George Bush's claims to
the contrary not withstanding.) The issue is whether the *LAW* put Microsoft
on notice. A just law must itself put people on notice as to precisely what
conduct constitutes a violation of that law.

In that case, we hav an *awful* lot of unjust laws, because laws
seldom disallow "precise" behavior. Which is the only rational way for
a system of laws to work. Requiring that the law predict *everything*
that someone might do to harm others and explicitly listing all those
cases is silly. Instead, you outline a class of actions and tag them
all as illegal. That's why we have laws against assault and battery
and unsafe driving. And laws against exercising monopoly power in an
unfair manner.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[axel]

In comp.lang.perl. misc David Schwartz <da****@webmast er.com> wrote:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message

Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
property, only they call it "property tax".

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

Why would you say that - Mike Meyer made a point to which you have
obviously no answer. Or do you deny that his comments on this matter
of property are true?

Axel

[entropy]

ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k wrote...

In comp.lang.perl. misc David Schwartz <da****@webmast er.com> wrote:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message

Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
property, only they call it "property tax".

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

Why would you say that - Mike Meyer made a point to which you have
obviously no answer. Or do you deny that his comments on this matter
of property are true?

Methinks David simply missed that Mike was being facetious. (Irony
and facetiousness don't translate well into print, as Frank Zappa
once noted.)

[entropy]

en*****@domain. invalid wrote...

ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k wrote...

In comp.lang.perl. misc David Schwartz <da****@webmast er.com> wrote:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message

> Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
> places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
> permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
> property, only they call it "property tax".

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

Why would you say that - Mike Meyer made a point to which you have
obviously no answer. Or do you deny that his comments on this matter
of property are true?

Methinks David simply missed that Mike was being facetious. (Irony
and facetiousness don't translate well into print, as Frank Zappa
once noted.)

Uh, you _were_ being facetious there, weren't you Mike?