Wirt Atmar wrote:
>
> Gavin writes:
>
> > Glenn writes:
> >  > As expected, today the US DoJ submitted a proposal to break
> >  > Microsoft into two companies (Windows vs. applications, though
> >  > I don't think it's that simple).
> >
> >  There's an old story (I'm sure Wirt will know all the details) about some
> >  fishermen somewhere who were upset because of all the starfish what were
> >  competing with them by eating up all the <mumble> that they made their
> >  living catching.  So they dredged up all the starfish and killed them by
> >  cutting each one in half.  They then threw the remains back into the sea,
> >  thinking that was the end of the problem.
> >
> >  Of course what they didn't know is that if you cut a starfish in half, each
> >  half grows back its missing parts, so in the end they found themselves with
> >  twice as many hungry starfish as they started with.
>
> I'll actually tell a story I told Steve Cooper (Gavin's boss) a few days ago:
>
> I've known Bill Gates since 1975, when he was just as geeky a kid as you
> would ever hope to know. Very bright -- and immature to the point that he was
> occasionally petulant. To get an accurate picture of Bill at the time, please
> see:
>
>    http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/9906/gates-mug-shots.shtml
>
> I began teaching in both the electrical engineering and biology departments
> at New Mexico State University in February, 1976. In March, 1976, we won
> First Prize at the World's First Computer Fair in Albuquerque because of the
> speech synthesizer -- and because of that, AICS was born. In early 1976, MITS
> sponsored a get-together simply to find out what in the world people were
> using the little Altairs for that they had been selling like hotcakes. The
> little machines didn't do anything. Keeping recipes and running your vaccuum
> cleaner were the constantly given answers when anyone asked what could you
> possibly do with these things? But that total lack of practicality didn't
> seem to dampen anyone's enthusiasm.
>
> The room at the meeting was filled with about 200 like-minded geeks. No one
> in the room would have -- at the end of that first year -- ever picked Bill
> to become the world's richest person, including George Roberts, Bill's boss
> at the time. However, MITS didn't survive long enough to see the World's
> Second Computer Fair (it was close; the meeting was planned, they just didn't
> make it).
>
> After MITS folded and all of the banks in Albuquerque refused to loan the new
> spin-off company called Microsoft any money (which, BTW, is the most often
> repeated story in Albquerqueamong businesspeople there), Microsoft (all ten
> of them) eventually moved in 1978 or 1979 to Redmond, WA. And I continued
> teaching.
>
> But I wasn't uninterested in the microcomputer market either. The EE kids in
> my classes came to the trailer that we lived in at the time (AICS World
> Headquarters) and assembled speech synthesizers and worked on new projects,
> including the conversion of the HP2645 terminal into a standalone word
> processor. And we never went to sleep because the kids never went home.
>
> I was also teaching graduate classes in evolutionary biology at that time,
> and all of the EE kids knew it, so in 1978 or 1979 or 1980, I don't remember
> precisely, I finally opened up a class called "The mathematics of evolution
> and ecology" to upperclass EE's. The EE kids sat on one side of the class.
> The biology guys, most of whom who were either just finishing or had finished
> their Ph.D.'s, sat on the other side. And I was constantly struck by the
> stark differences in outlook. When it came time to discuss the various
> natures of symbioses, very few of the EE kids wanted anything other than
> total victory ("take no prisoners"), rejecting the idea that evolution always
> tends towards stable solutions rather than quick and "total" victories.
>
> The only exception to that rule is idea of competitive exclusion. If there
> are a number of competing solutions in a fixed arena, and they are all
> approximately equal in their efficacies and appropriatenesses, and they all
> compete for the same, identical resources, there can eventually only be one
> solution. All others will and must be excluded from the arena.
>
> During that class, I took just a few days off and flew to San Francisco for a
> meeting put together by the venture capitalist, Ben Rosen, later of Compaq
> Computer. He had invited all of the major players in the microcomputer market
> (with "major" being a more than an exaggeration). Osborne, Kay, Morrow,
> Kildall and others were on the stage, with Bill Gates being among the
> "others." Everyone on the dais eventually spoke their piece about what they
> saw as the future of the microcomputer market, and when they were done, Ben
> Rosen got up to give just a polite round-up of all of the various points of
> view, saying something like, "It's obviously going to be a big market and
> we've heard a lot of ideas from a lot of people today. There's clearly going
> to be enough room in this market for many different operating systems."
>
> Before he could say another three words, Bill jumped up out of his chair and
> grabbed the microphone and said, "No. That isn't true. There's only going to
> be one winner. This is a situation where multiple operating systems can't
> survive."
>
> I was wildly impressed that Bill understood that so clearly because that was
> precisely the message that I had been driving home in the few previous weeks
> in the evolutionary biology class. I disagreed with Rosen as soon as he said
> it -- although I would never have thought of jumping up and grabbing the
> microphone.
>
> If the DOJ does break up Microsoft into a multitude of companies, each with
> their own version of Windows, I can predict, 20 years later, with the same
> certainty as Bill had then that all of them but the one that Bill Gates will
> head will fail within three to five years. What value is there in a version
> of Windows that is an incompatible "improvement" over the authentic version
> of Windows.
>
> Most people readily realize this, and because of that realization, all
> capital and consumer confidence will flow to the Bill Gates company, as will
> all of the technical competence.
>
> Regardless of how good these economists may be, I consider their
> recommendation to be one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in the
> last decade or so.
>
There are some basic questions here:

1.  Will any analogy hold or is an OS a different species that deifies
    comparison to cars and biological beings as has been done?

2.  Differences include:
        A.  Low reproduction costs.
        B.  Dependence on another factor (the underlying hardware).
        C.  The speed of technological changes today.
        D.  The lack of "GUI" standards..
        E.  On the other hand, the appreciation of most users of what
            a "good" GUI should be.

I wouldn't bet against BG.  economically. I think the A. T. & T. breakup
 is instructive here, BUT the breakup of monopolies helps the consumer
(in spite of some carping here that the AT&T breakup caused confusion.

I could go on about Standard Oil, etc., but I think the major point is
made  -->  "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Nick D.