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/
Oct 15 '05
476  18013 
On Thu, 20 Oct 2005 22:07:51 GMT, "Mike Schilling"
<ms*************@hotmail.com> wrote or quoted : his status
as employee gives him no additional rights or responsibilities in this
respect.
It may not be so in law, but I think most moral codes put more onus on
the employee than the average citizen.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
On Thu, 20 Oct 2005 09:47:43 -0700, T Beck wrote: So what I'm getting here is, that they abused their monopoly power to
secure their initial deal with IBM.
No they didn't. They didn't have a monopoly -- they didn't even have a
product. (Lying to IBM, while unethical, is not against the law.)
Microsoft's success is directly attributable to one thing: the US
Department of Justice was investigating IBM for abuse of *their* monopoly
position, and where threatening to split IBM up.
Since the DoJ back in the 1970s actually had teeth, IBM was seriously
concerned to not only obey the law, but also been seen to obey the law. So
even though they were quite capable of creating their own operating system
for the PC, they went out and licenced a third-party product.
Unfortunately, in IBM's rush to sign an agreement quickly, they allowed
Microsoft to pressure them into a licence where they paid for every PC
that they shipped whether or not it had DOS on it.
Nobody made IBM sign that deal, IBM thought that it
worked out OK for both parties. As for later deals with OEM
manufacturers, if it's OK for MS to make that deal with IBM,
It isn't okay. It is anti-competitive behaviour, and should be discouraged.
then why
does it suddenly become an "abuse of their power" if they're using the
same business model?
That's basic economics. Something which can be allowed or ignored or even
encouraged when done by small businesses in a competitive market can
easily become harmful and bad for the economy when done by a monopolist or
duopolist in an uncompetitive market.
--
Steven.
"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au... That's basic economics. Something which can be allowed or ignored or even
encouraged when done by small businesses in a competitive market can
easily become harmful and bad for the economy when done by a monopolist or
duopolist in an uncompetitive market.
Microsoft goal is and should be their own success, not the success of
the economy or the market in general. Microsoft's status of a "monopolist"
is only meaningful if you define the market as "desktop operating systems
for 32-bit x86 computers". 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.
DS
On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:47:27 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.com> wrote or quoted : 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.
If what they did to me in the 90s was not illegal it damn well should
have been.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:47:27 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au...
That's basic economics. Something which can be allowed or ignored or even
encouraged when done by small businesses in a competitive market can
easily become harmful and bad for the economy when done by a monopolist or
duopolist in an uncompetitive market.
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.
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. 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.
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. A sensible government cares for smooth
flowing traffic on the roads, with the minimum of delays and the maximum
flow practical. 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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
--
Steven.
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote or quoted: Wrong. The only obligation Microsoft has is to their shareholders.
That obligation has nothing to do with computing - it's to make a
profit. It's MS's habit of doing things in pursuit of profit that,
while short of force, are borderline fraud, and are illegal, immoral,
unethical, bad for their business partners, bad for their customers,
bad for the industry and bad for society that causes people to
characterize them as "evil".
Microsoft still comes in at number 2 - on: http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Busin...ethical_Firms/
Few companies are more despised than Microsoft.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ ti*@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
"Roedy Green" <my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote in
message news:70********************************@4ax.com... On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:47:27 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.com> wrote or quoted :
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.
If what they did to me in the 90s was not illegal it damn well should
have been.
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.
DS
"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au... On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:47:27 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
That's basic economics. Something which can be allowed or ignored or
even
encouraged when done by small businesses in a competitive market can
easily become harmful and bad for the economy when done by a monopolist
or
duopolist in an uncompetitive market.
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.
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.
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 "exclusionary" 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. And I thought that
both OSX and Linux competed with it.
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.
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.
DS
"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> writes: "Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au... On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:47:27 -0700, David Schwartz wrote: That's basic economics. Something which can be allowed or ignored or
even
encouraged when done by small businesses in a competitive market can
easily become harmful and bad for the economy when done by a monopolist
or
duopolist in an uncompetitive market.
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.
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. 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. 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 "exclusionary" 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". 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. Who
do you think originally created all the money that is flowing through
it? 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." 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". 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. And I thought that
both OSX and Linux competed with it.
I guess it hasn't sunk in yet that the existence of competition
doesn't keep a company from being a monopoly. But it does. Companies
that owned less of their market than MS owns of it's market have been
broken up. A classic monopoly behavior is to want the competition to
survive "just barely", because that gives them leverage in
court. Which is why MS has helped out Apple in the past. 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.
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. 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.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:10:24 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.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.
I call that extortion.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.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 "exclusionary" 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
"Roedy Green" <my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote in
message news:s3********************************@4ax.com... On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:10:24 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.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
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 01:00:31 GMT, Roedy Green
<my******************************@munged.invalid > 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.
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 "exclusionary" 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.
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.
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:46:53 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETHIScyber.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.
"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> writes: "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.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 "exclusionary" 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.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> 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 ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote... In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> 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.) en*****@domain.invalid wrote... ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote... In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> 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?
In <m3************@invalid.address>, on 10/18/2005
at 01:21 PM, jo*@invalid.address said: Yes, he deserves credit for what he did.
As well as blame. The commercialization of the Internet was grossly
mismanaged. Take the InterNIC - please!
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to sp******@library.lspace.org
entropy <en*****@domain.invalid> writes: en*****@domain.invalid wrote... ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote... > In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:
> > "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> 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?
No, I wasn't. The statements I made are true: the government charges
you taxes on your property, and in most places restricts the changes
you can make to it and the things you can do in it. I used the words
"rent" and "ownership" in an unconventional way to emphasize the
point.
The conventional usage of "ownwership" ignores these kinds of
facts. So you can talk about "your" house even if you're renting it,
or if the bank still owns most of the house. There are political
groups that are unhappy with these facts, and like to point out the
inconsistencies in the usage of the word "ownership". See <URL: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-propertyrights.htm > and <URL: http://magazine.14850.com/9307/politics.html > for examples of this.
David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au... 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.
You are dishonest, lying sack of shit.
DS
"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@REMOVETHIScybe r.com.au... 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".
No.
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.
This is about whether we're talking *ABOUT* America, you idiot. It's as
if he said the press has no freedom, and I replied, "if you want to talk
about some country where that's true, fine, but this discussion presumed
America as the basis".
Remember, he is the one who said the government owned the economy. That
may be true in some countries, but it's simply *FALSE* in this country. Our
government has limited powers and ownership of the economy is not one of
them.
DS
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org... 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.
That is true. A law *must* put a reasonable person on notice of
precisely what conduct it prohibits and what it does not. At the "fringes",
the tie goes to the runner, that is, the conduct is not illegal. The law is
not supposed to care about things that are trivial. (Except in genuine
private entity versus private entity non-criminal cases, where the law
really is about the slightest tip of the scales and there is no presumption
for either party.)
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.
That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking that the law *clearly* put
people on notice of what conduct is prohibited. That's very easy in
legitimate laws, because we all know what it means to punch someone or to
rob them. It becomes very difficult in illegitimate laws, because there is
no reasonable test to decide whether something is a 'monopoly' or not. This
burden makes it harder for the government to pass unjust laws, and that is a
good thing.
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.
Interesting how you, again, equate a gun and an argument. It is very
important to you to justify responding to arguments with guns. However, I
reject that premise at its roots, not just in your application of it.
DS
<ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk> wrote in message
news:3E******************@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.u k... In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> 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?
His comments are not applicable to America. They are applicable to a
country where the government owns the economy.
No reply is needed to his comments except to point out that they only
apply to a communist or totalitarian state. We don't have one here, so his
argument doesn't apply.
I am not saying "because you are a communist, your argument is wrong". I
am saying, "because your argument is based upon communist or totalitarian
premises about the relationship between the government and the economy, it
does not apply to the United States, and we were talking about the United
States."
I really felt that this was obvious, but I guess it wasn't.
DS
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org... David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.
Here's a question for you, Mike. Presumably, you have the right not to
be shot for no reason at all. Does that right act as a bulletproof vest that
actually physically prevents me from shooting you? If I argued that a person
had a right not to be shot for no reason at all by a random stranger, would
you point out that such shootings occur throughout the civilized world as
some kind of refutation?
The way you respond to what I'm saying shows that you really don't have
any clue whatsoever of what the words I'm using *mean*. Do you even know
what a "right" is? (Such that, for example, it's possible for rogue
governments to violate the rights of their citizens even if those
governments don't recognize those rights.)
DS
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote:
... David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
Incidentally, the perfectly good rationale for this universal existence
of limitations to "doing whatever you want with your property" is known
in economics as *externalities*. Transactions that appear to involve
just one or two parties, and be entirely voluntary between them, may in
fact produce all sort of beneficial or detrimental effects on further
parties who have not necessarily agreed to that. For example, I may
"own" a certain lot of land, but if on that lot I place a siren blaring
and a huge flashing red sign, the energy of the sound waves and light
will inevitably also affect other nearby places, which I do _not_ "own"
(either they're commons, or owned by somebody else), imposing an
externality on owners and/or users of those nearby places.
Of course, while some externalities are entirely obvious (it's hard to
argue against such sirens and flashing lights being otherwise), many
others are subtler and more debatable, so one reasonable society might
acknowledge a certain class of externality and try to regulate it while
another might prefer not to do so. But the general concept of society
as a whole placing limitations on private owners' uses of the property,
based on externalities certain uses might impose on unwilling parties,
is as solid as a rock, both practically and theoretically -- however
much anarchists or extreme libertarians might wish otherwise.
Alex
"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> wrote in message
news:dj**********@nntp.webmaster.com...
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org...
David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.
Here's a question for you, Mike. Presumably, you have the right not to
be shot for no reason at all. Does that right act as a bulletproof vest
that actually physically prevents me from shooting you? If I argued that a
person had a right not to be shot for no reason at all by a random
stranger, would you point out that such shootings occur throughout the
civilized world as some kind of refutation?
The way you respond to what I'm saying shows that you really don't have
any clue whatsoever of what the words I'm using *mean*. Do you even know
what a "right" is? (Such that, for example, it's possible for rogue
governments to violate the rights of their citizens even if those
governments don't recognize those rights.)
I'd be interested in hearing what you think a right is? In Florida, for
example, you have the right to gun someone down if you think they're a bit
too menacing. In Canada, most people find that reprehensible. So does a
Floridian visiting Canada have their rights infringed on by our rogue
government because they're not allowed to gun down menacing looking
Canadians at will? Should they be able to exercise that right regardless and
not have to face the consequences of our laws?
I think "right", however, was the wrong choice of words in this thread;
there is rarely anything codifying a company's "right" to succeed at all
costs and at the expense of all competition (except Crown Corporations and
the like, which are created (in theory, anyway) in the interest of general
population as opposed to it). Your question here appears to be one of
ethics. Is MS ethically bankrupt for pursuing business practices that run
counter to society's established norms, and should they be punished for
doing so? And is their behaviour the more reprehensible because of the
contempt they show for the decisions of society's judicial arm.
Matt
"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:GH******************@news20.bellglobal.com... I'd be interested in hearing what you think a right is?
A right is a scope of authority. That is, a sphere within which one's
decision is sovereign.
In Florida, for example, you have the right to gun someone down if you
think they're a bit too menacing. In Canada, most people find that
reprehensible. So does a Floridian visiting Canada have their rights
infringed on by our rogue government because they're not allowed to gun
down menacing looking Canadians at will?
That's obviously a complicated question but totally unrelated to the
issue at hand, which was one's sovereignty over one's own property.
Obviously issues where a person has to use force against another are going
to be complicated. The existence of complicated questions doesn't make the
simple ones complicated.
Should they be able to exercise that right regardless and not have to face
the consequences of our laws?
I think there are objective criteria in which the use of force is
justified regardless of the laws. However, the strategic decision of whether
to use objectively justifiable force when one may not be able to justify it
to non-objective observers who may use force against you is going to be a
complicated one.
I think "right", however, was the wrong choice of words in this thread;
there is rarely anything codifying a company's "right" to succeed at all
costs and at the expense of all competition (except Crown Corporations and
the like, which are created (in theory, anyway) in the interest of general
population as opposed to it).
My point was that the Microsoft corporation was not an impersonal
entity. It is an entity that is supposed to embody the will and rights of
its shareholders and exists to allow them to act together for their own
benefit.
Your question here appears to be one of ethics. Is MS ethically bankrupt
for pursuing business practices that run counter to society's established
norms, and should they be punished for doing so? And is their behaviour
the more reprehensible because of the contempt they show for the decisions
of society's judicial arm.
It is only proper to show contempt for bad decisions. MS obligation was
to comply with the law and not perform actions that the law put them on
clear notice were prohibited. The court's determination of the relevent
market, on wich all of their other decisions were predicated, was arbitrary
and bizarre, and the law did not provide any notice of how the market would
be determined.
In the sense of interchangeability, almost all operating systems are
monopolies. And if you go by application, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD are
all interchangeable -- there is nothing significant you can do on one that
you can't do on the other.
DS
"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> writes: 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.
Interesting how you, again, equate a gun and an argument. It is very
important to you to justify responding to arguments with guns. However, I
reject that premise at its roots, not just in your application of it.
Another straw man. I never mentioned the word "gun" at all, and none
of the crimes I discussed require a gun.
You apparently aren't interested in constructive intercourse on the
question. You're just interesting in knocking down your own
arguments. Personally, I'd rather not watch you masterbate.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> wrote in message
news:dj**********@nntp.webmaster.com...
"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:GH******************@news20.bellglobal.com...
I'd be interested in hearing what you think a right is?
A right is a scope of authority. That is, a sphere within which one's
decision is sovereign.
Then why were you claiming that a government can infringe on a person's
rights if those rights are not codified or even accepted by those people?
The idea of inalienable rights for anyone in a Western society only exists
if you believe that the rights of Western societies are inalienable and
should be respected everywhere. There is a huge arrogance in that
assumption, though, and once you enter a jurisdiction that does not hold
your rights to be inalienable they are no longer your rights.
You can have generally agreed upon rights, but as you note, those rights can
only be hoped for if the systems exist to enforce them. Once those systems
erode, you no longer have rights only hopes. The more you allow those
systems to be eroded, the less you can expect your rights to exist.
In the end, the slippery slope theory would suggest that if you allow MS to
get away with bad business practices you are in effect giving all companies
the right to leverage whatever means are at their disposal to do the same,
to the detriment of society. In Florida, for example, you have the right to gun someone down if you
think they're a bit too menacing. In Canada, most people find that
reprehensible. So does a Floridian visiting Canada have their rights
infringed on by our rogue government because they're not allowed to gun
down menacing looking Canadians at will?
That's obviously a complicated question but totally unrelated to the
issue at hand, which was one's sovereignty over one's own property.
Obviously issues where a person has to use force against another are going
to be complicated. The existence of complicated questions doesn't make the
simple ones complicated.
I brought it up as an example of why rights are difficult in all cases. You
can't claim that anyone has a right to the land they live on. Your only
legitimacy to ownership comes through goverment and its ability to enforce
that legitimacy for you. And if you really want to get contentious, in
Canada and the US your only legitimacy comes from an artificial transaction
between a landowner and your government at some time in the past to
legitimize its sovereignty over Native American land.
Your only real right when it comes to land ownership is to receive some kind
of compensation if it is taken away. Your government could decide at any
time to expropriate your property to build a new highway (for example), and
you'd be out in the cold. You can try to fight the government in court but
more often than not you'll lose because the greater good of society
outweighs your right to own the land (and the assumption is always that
governments work for the greater good of society).
And add to that all the covenants and municipal laws you have to obey when
purchasing property and the notion that you have sovereignty over your land
becomes even less tenable.
Matt
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:43:44 -0700, David Schwartz wrote: You are dishonest, lying sack of shit.
And David posts his true colours to the mast at last. When rational
argument and logical thoughts fails, fall back on personal insults.
--
Steven.
"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> wrote in message
news:86************@bhuda.mired.org... "David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> writes:
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.
Interesting how you, again, equate a gun and an argument. It is very
important to you to justify responding to arguments with guns. However, I
reject that premise at its roots, not just in your application of it.
Another straw man. I never mentioned the word "gun" at all, and none
of the crimes I discussed require a gun.
You can't be that stupid, can you?! Tell me it wasn't obvious to you
that the phrase "a gun and an argument" means the difference between force
and disagreement.
You apparently aren't interested in constructive intercourse on the
question. You're just interesting in knocking down your own
arguments. Personally, I'd rather not watch you masterbate.
You're are the one who brought up assault and battery and unsafe
driving, equating Microsoft's persuasive negotiation tactics with force in
an attempt to justify responding to them with force.
DS
"Matt Garrish" wrote:
<body not downloaded>
That does it. From this point on my newsfilter is killing
(leaving on the server) any articles cross-posted to more than
three groups.
To all of the snivelling punks polluting the Usenet with their
verbal diarrhea here:
Shut up and go away.
Done.
(I haven't read a single post here, but don't need to. A bunch
of aliases with no posting histories equals trolls equals verbal
diarrhea.)
And my killfile thanks you for the sumptuous feast all of the
aliases used on this thread have given it.
Do your Mommy's know that you are playing with their computers
again?
AC
--
Homepage: http://home.earthlink.net/~alanconnor/
Fanclub: http://www.pearlgates.net/nanae/kooks/alanconnor.shtml
"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:EV******************@news20.bellglobal.com... A right is a scope of authority. That is, a sphere within which one's
decision is sovereign.
Then why were you claiming that a government can infringe on a person's
rights if those rights are not codified or even accepted by those people?
The idea of inalienable rights for anyone in a Western society only exists
if you believe that the rights of Western societies are inalienable and
should be respected everywhere. There is a huge arrogance in that
assumption, though, and once you enter a jurisdiction that does not hold
your rights to be inalienable they are no longer your rights.
You can have generally agreed upon rights, but as you note, those rights
can only be hoped for if the systems exist to enforce them. Once those
systems erode, you no longer have rights only hopes. The more you allow
those systems to be eroded, the less you can expect your rights to exist.
This would suggest that rogue governments can't infringe on the rights
of their people because those people have no rights since their societies
don't recognize any. This is another principle I reject at its roots. Your
rights exist whether or not others choose to respect them.
DS
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 13:52:38 -0700, David Schwartz wrote: The court's determination of the relevent
market, on wich all of their other decisions were predicated, was arbitrary
and bizarre, and the law did not provide any notice of how the market would
be determined.
You keep saying that, as if people could do their word processing and run
their financial accounting software on the micro-controllers of microwave
ovens or the computer in their car engine.
The market of desktop PC is a perfectly obvious and natural market. You
are the one insisting on arbitrarily lumping together who knows what other
products in with the desktop PC. I say "who knows" for a reason -- the
only two examples you have come up with were Apple Macintoshes and
desktop PCs running Linux (both less than 5% of the market *now*, and
even less back when the court was investigating Microsoft). Making your
position even more bizarre, both of these products were recognised by the
court as part of the market in question, both were recognised as potential
competing products put at risk due to Microsoft's illegal behaviour.
In the sense of interchangeability, almost all operating systems are
monopolies.
You don't know what the word monopoly actually means in either law or
economics, do you? What you have written is a perfectly grammatical
sentence that makes no sense whatsoever. If OSes are monopolies, then they
are NOT interchangeable -- but you state in the very next sentence that
they are.
And if you go by application, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD
are all interchangeable -- there is nothing significant you can do on
one that you can't do on the other.
Try telling that to a business that needs to do computerised book-keeping
of wages and payroll.
--
Steven.
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:54:58 -0300, "Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz"
<sp******@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote or quoted : As well as blame. The commercialization of the Internet was grossly
mismanaged. Take the InterNIC - please!
As global bureaucracies go, I think they have done a good job. Can
you imagine herding the cats of egotistical dictators and politicians
from every country on earth who have not a clue about what the
function of domain are?
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
"David Schwartz" <da****@webmaster.com> wrote in message
news:dj**********@nntp.webmaster.com...
"Matt Garrish" <ma*************@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:EV******************@news20.bellglobal.com...
A right is a scope of authority. That is, a sphere within which one's
decision is sovereign.
Then why were you claiming that a government can infringe on a person's
rights if those rights are not codified or even accepted by those people?
The idea of inalienable rights for anyone in a Western society only
exists if you believe that the rights of Western societies are
inalienable and should be respected everywhere. There is a huge arrogance
in that assumption, though, and once you enter a jurisdiction that does
not hold your rights to be inalienable they are no longer your rights.
You can have generally agreed upon rights, but as you note, those rights
can only be hoped for if the systems exist to enforce them. Once those
systems erode, you no longer have rights only hopes. The more you allow
those systems to be eroded, the less you can expect your rights to exist.
This would suggest that rogue governments can't infringe on the rights
of their people because those people have no rights since their societies
don't recognize any. This is another principle I reject at its roots. Your
rights exist whether or not others choose to respect them.
I'd say to that that you're confusing a belief with a right. A belief
doesn't become a right until society acknowledges it as such and puts
measures in place to ensure it. If people are perfectly happy living under
communist rule, who are you to tell them they must have the right to own
property? If that society later acknowledges that it wants the right to own
property then the government (in an ideal society) should respond
accordingly. If the society demands a right and governments denies it, only
then are the people's rights being oppressed (which may be what you were
originally saying now that I look back, but I read it at first as the
citizen's not ackowledging the right either).
The counter-argument is that oppressive socities work to prevent their
citizens from expressing their desire for rights or selectively apply them,
which is all true. Without just laws and the instruments of justice to
enforce them, however, you cannot correct the problem. There is still an
acknowledgement on the part of society that things are wrong, and societal
problems eventually come to a head when the time is right else we wouldn't
be where we are and still not be where we need to go.
I'm not claiming that the world is an easy place to live in... : )
Matt
"Alan Connor" <i3*****@j9n35c.invalid> wrote in message
news:sl********************@b29x3m.invalid... /kooks/alanconnor.shtml
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up...
Matt
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 23:16:24 GMT, Roedy Green
<my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote or quoted : As well as blame. The commercialization of the Internet was grossly
mismanaged. Take the InterNIC - please!
As global bureaucracies go, I think they have done a good job. Can
you imagine herding the cats of egotistical dictators and politicians
from every country on earth who have not a clue about what the
function of domain are?
Imagine assigning two letter abbreviations to 200 five years olds and
getting them to accept their assignments. That would be a much easier
task.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
Op 2005-10-23, David Schwartz schreef <da****@webmaster.com>:
"Roedy Green" <my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote in
message news:s3********************************@4ax.com...
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:10:24 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmaster.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.
If a company wants to be paid for things it didn't deliver, then I think
that is extortion. Microsoft want te be paid a license on windows for
P.C.'s that were sold without windows.
--
Antoon Pardon
In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: This is about whether we're talking *ABOUT* America, you idiot. It's as
if he said the press has no freedom, and I replied, "if you want to talk
about some country where that's true, fine, but this discussion presumed
America as the basis".
Remember, he is the one who said the government owned the economy. That
may be true in some countries, but it's simply *FALSE* in this country. Our
government has limited powers and ownership of the economy is not one of
them.
I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.
Also may I remind you that these newsgroups are international.
Axel
In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: <ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk> wrote in message
news:3E******************@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.u k...
In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote: "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.org> 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?
His comments are not applicable to America. They are applicable to a
country where the government owns the economy.
No reply is needed to his comments except to point out that they only
apply to a communist or totalitarian state. We don't have one here, so his
argument doesn't apply.
The last time I looked, property taxes were enforced in many states of
the USA. Do you deny this?
I am not saying "because you are a communist, your argument is wrong". I
am saying, "because your argument is based upon communist or totalitarian
premises about the relationship between the government and the economy, it
does not apply to the United States, and we were talking about the United
States."
Then you are sadly deluded if you think that the US government does not
make decisions on the economy.
Axel
On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 12:35:13 GMT, ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote,
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said : I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.
And what has his inability to do that to your satisfaction got to do
with the price of eggs?
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.
On Saturday 22 October 2005 05:44 pm, Tim Tyler wrote: Microsoft still comes in at number 2 - on:
http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Busin...ethical_Firms/
Few companies are more despised than Microsoft.
Wrong URL?
No such list appears at that site, although it does link to several
different lists and topic-related sites. The two lists I happened
to check are years out of date (one was from 1994!) and do not even
list Microsoft.
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
On Monday 24 October 2005 08:19 am, Roedy Green wrote: On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 12:35:13 GMT, ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote,
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.
And what has his inability to do that to your satisfaction got to do
with the price of eggs?
Funny you should ask that. Taxation, mostly in the form of income tax
supports a system of farm subsidies in the United States, that pays
farmers for surplus product, thus artificially elevating the price of
several farm products, including milk, cheese, and (you guessed it) eggs.
The purpose of this (ostensibly anyway) is to keep family farmers in
business, because that is viewed as a social benefit in itself (I happen
to agree with this statement, even if it does mean I pay more for eggs --
though the price is still one of the lowest globally, because the US has
such a large natural surplus of agricultural products owing to arable
land and mostly good weather).
Of course it does produce one of the most notorious examples of wastage --
much of that surplus is allowed to rot (or at least this *was* true at one
time, I haven't fact-checked that in over a decade). It has been proposed
that most of that food should instead go to foreign aid, or to programs
within the US for eliminating poverty. Certainly some of it does, I
have no idea what the current balance is, though.
The ability to do this, moreover represents the philosophical point
that the government "owns" the economy, in that it has the right,
representing the interests of the people, to pursue public good by
manipulating the economy. In other words, we do not believe in the
formal concept of a laissez faire economy, nor in the idea of "anarchic
libertarianism".
People who do support the latter kind of idea frequently say that a
company should be "allowed to do anything to pursue profit, as long
as it isn't illegal". But of course, they usually turn around and
say that "there is no natural law". The combination of the two philosophies
is nonsensical -- if law consists only of artificial constraints, then
there is no natural basis for arguing what the law "should" allow. Hence,
only the will of the people matters, which means any form of monopoly
restriction is entirely within the powers of a democratic government
to pursue.
Since this includes ANY economic system from "laissez faire capitalism"
to "pure communism", it has no persuasive power whatsoever, and should
be dropped.
If on the other hand, you believe (as I do), that State law is an
embodiment, backed up by State power, to implement the best approximation
we can manage of "natural law" (i.e. law as evident to at least a
consensus of human minds, albeit through transcendental rather than
empirical derivation), then there IS a basis for arguing what laws
"should" be. But you can't make arguments about what law "should"
be if you don't acknowledge that law is measured against some external
standard.
This is of course, another result of the Human tendency to confuse
"NULL" with "ZERO". The absence of an external system of evaluating
law, does not mean that all laws must be negated. It equates to having
no basis for prefering them to exist or not, and thus abdicating all
right to change them. People who believe this really need, therefore,
to shut up.
;-D
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
"Antoon Pardon" <ap*****@forel.vub.ac.be> wrote in message
news:sl********************@rcpc42.vub.ac.be... 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.
If a company wants to be paid for things it didn't deliver, then I think
that is extortion. Microsoft want te be paid a license on windows for
P.C.'s that were sold without windows.
I think you need to look up "extortion" in a dictionary. I can walk up
to you and say "if you want me to mow your lawn, you must pay me $1 every
time you smoke a cigarette". So long as you can say "no" and all that
happens is that I don't mow your lawn (which I have no obligation to do
anyway), it isn't extortion.
The funny thing is that if Microsoft really had a monopoly on x86
operating systems, their deal would have been fair. Since you can't use a
computer without an operating system and theirs would have been the only
one.
DS
<ax**@white-eagle.invalid.uk> wrote in message
news:5y*******************@fe2.news.blueyonder.co. uk... In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <da****@webmaster.com> wrote:
This is about whether we're talking *ABOUT* America, you idiot. It's
as
if he said the press has no freedom, and I replied, "if you want to talk
about some country where that's true, fine, but this discussion presumed
America as the basis". Remember, he is the one who said the government owned the economy.
That
may be true in some countries, but it's simply *FALSE* in this country.
Our
government has limited powers and ownership of the economy is not one of
them.
I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.
What does that have to do with anything? Look, this isn't a politics or
an economy newsgroup. I don't have to make rigorously valid economic or
political arguments. It's sufficient that they be valid with respect to the
subject at hand. And you can watch people reply to me by saying, "yeah, well
that isn't correct for Afghanistan". Well, guess what, Microsoft isn't an
Afghanistan company.
Also may I remind you that these newsgroups are international.
So what? We are talking about a United States' company's actions with
respect to United States laws. There is no reason to make this about
philosophy, politics, law, international relations or any such things. If we
did that, we would wind up on tangents (just like this one!) that have
nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft.
Yes, in a discussion about Microsoft, I will make economic or political
statements that aren't 100% valid in every possible imaginable case. But
guess what? They'll be 100% valid for the case we're discussing.
And you can watch all the replies about how my statement isn't true in
every possible case. Well, guess what? I only care about one case.
DS This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion. Similar topics | |
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