At 11:15 AM 3/23/99 -0800, Roy Buzdor wrote:
>I never argued that others didn't do it.  When
>I first started working on a 3000 (III), I was
>proud to be working on a system from a company
>that was "above" gouging its customers.  After
>all, stripping away all the euphemisms, is it
>anything other than that?  Whether or not some
>clever marketeer has come up with a less
>offensive name doesn't change the practice.
>If you have a the same piece of hardware and
>software (3000 / MPE) and you sell it to one
>person for $X, and allow them to run U users
>on it, and you sell the exact same equipment
>to someone else for $2X and allow them to run
>2U users on it, I can see that as no other
>practice than gouging (I will grant that it is
>my opinion, not a LEGAL fact).

I sympathize with the responses to this thread, but I think that we must
bear a few things in mind:

1.  Changing a product and then selling it as if it were an unaltered
product is not legal, it is deceptive marketing. Thus, changing a 9000 into
a 3000 and then selling it as a 3000 is not legal. It may be that selling it
as a "3000 formerly known as a 9000" might be legal, but then you  come up
against...

2.  Unlicensed use of software is illegal. Using tools that you have not
obtained properly, or in violation of the license associated with those
tools is illegal. Not the sort thing you'd want to advertise as having done
(see #1!)

3.  The most obvious example of "gouging" is airline seats. The same seat in
the same plane going from the same place to the same destination can cost
$00 or $000 different. I'm glad of this, because if the seat prices were
rationalized, then the proices would not come down, they'd go up! If the
prices of HP3000 were allowed to float to what they might need to be to
provide the quality product that it is, then my guess is that it would price
itself out of the market in no time flat!

I'm not unsympathetic top the out-of-work people, but this happens any time
a company exits a line of business that can no longer support previous
levels of employment. The sensible thing to do, if you can see it coming, is
to find alternative employment!

Just my $0.02

Tony