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The parallel between Microsoft and AT&T does not hold. AT&T was/is a
utility company. You had absolutely no choice in the matter. If you used
the phone, you used AT&T. If you use a computer, you do not have to use
Microsoft. To wit, there are several prominent members on this list who do
not use MS on PCs. Perhaps you may have missed the OS-skirmishes in the
past, but several people are using MacOS as a very viable alternative to
Windows 95. There are even OS/2 users and even Amiga users.
Your entire contention is flawed and just smells of success envy. Why do
people automatically assume that success was achieved through cheating and
then desire the successful to be punished? Me, I admire success. I think
success should be rewarded not punished.
I really believe that SUN, Netscape and Oracle, not being able to achieve
and/or maintain success, have paid off certain people in government to go
after Microsoft. After all, this administration has shown a willingness to
be bought. Further, our dearly beloved Attorney General, after being
hounded to do her job about the campaign fund raising scandals, needed
something to divert attention from her failings. What better target to go
after than a successful company. Especially one that everybody loves to
hate. Even if the DOJ loses, and they will, nobody will remember the
scandals, and MS will probably spend a lot more protection money in
Washington, just like many other companies do, to protect their interest.
What cracks me up about this whole fiasco is that Netscape is THE
undisputed leader in Web Browsers. Do people think it is going to
disappear overnight? If it does, perhaps it was meant to be. But consider
this, this administration is pushing the Internet into our schools, without
our approval. (The FCC has instituted a special tax just for that purpose.
This tax was not approved by Congress and was not voted on by our elected
representatives. It will kick in next month in your phone bill.
Fortunately, the phone companies, the much maligned baby Bells, MCI,
Sprint and AT&T, balked at raising their rates without explanation. They
did not want to take the blame for the increased rates. The FCC recently
agreed to have the tax called Universal Access and a few weeks ago, decided
to reduce the revenue from $2.65 billion to $625 million.) Anyways, the
government is pushing for Internet access in all the schools, yet they want
to prevent a company which gives away a very viable Net browser, from doing
so. Perhaps Netscape wants to get large sums of money from the government
to buy Netscape and put it in all the schools. Netscape would then be very
grateful to a few government officials. . . No, that can't be. We are
getting into dark conspiracies here. The DOJ must have a pristine pure
reason for going after an evil successful company.
What scares me about this whole affair, is the government getting into
things it which it has no business. The DOJ is now asking that the judge
give them review authority on anything that MS will release in the future.
That attitude smacks of another time, on another continent, read your
history books. This is the same government which recently admitted failure
in trying to upgrade the IRS computers and admitted to having wasted years
and $4 BILLION dollars in the endeavor. You want these people to tell
Microsoft and other successful companies what to do and what to release or
not release? Not me.
I suspect that in a few years, there will be another operating system for
personal computers. Or maybe the paradigm will have shifted again and
Oracle will turn out to be right, that NCs are viable. (Personally I like
PCs and I like Windows 95/98 and NT. I know it very well, and I have no
trouble with it. I have spent the time and made the effort to educate
myself in this matter. Just as I spent the time and made the effort to
educate myself in MPE. I use good equipment and I install only good
software.)
One sure thing about this industry, it is in a constant state of flux.
Witness IBM, they had a monopoly far more pervasive than MS. They did the
hardware and the software, and the financing. You could not buy a machine,
you rented it and the costs were astronomical. DEC came about and started
eating away at IBM. HP did the same and others followed. At first,
displacing IBM mainframes seemed like an impossible task, but now, that is
history. IBM played the Washington game very well and was never seriously
bothered by the government. Heck, in California, the government almost
made the use of IBM computers mandatory at some point.
In 1986, IBM wanted to get into the telephone switching equipment game. In
those days, I worked at Northern Telecom, supporting HP computers, so I was
really interested in this new development. IBM bought ROLM and made no
bones about the fact they were going to use their monopoly and push their
telephone switching gear onto their existing customers under the guise of
data switching equipment. Northern Telecom was much smaller than IBM and
they were still fighting with that other giant monopoly, AT&T. Northern
had much better equipment than either IBM or AT&T. ComputerWorld, that
IBM marketing agency, kept up a steady stream of articles predicting gloom
and doom for the existing telephone switching companies and the eventual
conquest of said industry, by IBM. We waited anxiously for the IBM
juggernaut.
All for naught.
Three years later, after losing US$3 billion, IBM quietly sold the
manufacturing and research part of ROLM to Siemens and retained the sales
force. IBM gave up on the telephone business and went back to computers.
The government never said a word about this one. They let the market do
what they do best, decide for themselves.
There is an exceedingly close link between net browsers and user interface.
To quote Scott McNealy of SUN, "the network is the computer." There is
also a close association between an OS and application software or database
management systems. If tomorrow, MS started giving away SQL Server with
every copy of Windows NT Server, the clamor would be deafening. Yet, I do
not recall ever hearing people gripe about the fact IMAGE was being given
away gratis with MPE. Or VPLUS, a user interface.
On the other hand, I constantly hear people saying that HP should bundle in
more stuff into MPE and HP-UX. Yet, you want Microsoft to unbundle
Internet Explorer. You could at least, be consistent. I am. I was dead
set against the unbundling of IMAGE from MPE. I have always wanted
indexing in IMAGE direct from HP. Go back and read past issues of the
SIGIMAGE newsletter. I want all this bundled in MPE.
If someone provides a better product than what HP can provide and HP does
not prevent me from using it, that is fine too.
I want MS to keep IE bundled into Windows. Having IE bundled into Windows
does not prevent someone from installing Netscape. Also note that no
computer manufacturer wants to pre-install Windows without IE. Why? It's
not because they are afraid of MS, it's because they are afraid of the
customers. The end users will not want Windows 95 without IE. They want
it bundled in. If they do not like it, they can always easily install
Netscape. Netscape is more than willing to provide information and
installation routines that will displace or remove pieces of IE. I know of
several people who have both IE and Netscape.
Judge Jackson, went he stated he removed IE in 90 seconds, just underlined
the total farcical aspect of this entire affair. Shortly, I presume the
judge will understand that anyone can remove IE, or at least the visible
portions, and that anyone can install Netscape or any other browser,
without interference. They can elect to have 2 or more browsers if they so
desire. Having the DOJ say that MS must remove IE from Windows 95 is
actually a slap in Netscape's technical face. The DOJ is in effect, saying
that Netscape is too stupid to maintain their lead and they need help.
If Microsoft has elected to use a browser paradigm for their GUI, that is
their business. They probably see some benefit in having just one team
working on a user interface for both web and system access. I personally
do not like the browser interface. There really is nothing to prevent some
company from offering a replacement for the Windows GUI with one of their
own. It has been done in the past. Netscape could do it now.
John, the reason we have comparatively low long distance rates in the US is
because the companies are not government owned. The vast majority of the
PTTs in the world are government-owned and therefore inefficiently run and
always in need of more money. The governments also slap on extra taxes.
Taxes are the reason things are so expensive around the world. A gallon
of gasoline does not cost any more when it is delivered to Europe than it
does went it is delivered to the US. Until it gets to the pump. Then taxes
are added on, in the US about 35-40 cents, in Europe about 3-4 dollars
worth. If other countries allow their governments to tax them, that is
their problem. Reduce the government and you reduce its insatiable need
for our money.
Bottom line, you cannot hold back the human spirit and ingenuity. PCs are
incredible pieces of engineering and their power is increasing at an
exponential rate. Some other OS will come along and, in the fullness of
time, it will displace Windows. Whether this OS will come from Microsoft
or another company remains to be seen, my guess is it will be someone else
and it will have voice recognition built in. But I do not underestimate
MS. They are working very hard on voice recognition also. Windows 2000
could turn out to be Talk2Me 2000.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah and Happy New Year to all of you. I wish
you all, unreservedly, success in your endeavors and happiness in your
life.
Kind regards,
Denys. . .
Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com www.hicomp.com
-----Original Message-----
From: John D. Alleyn-Day [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 1997 12:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: DOJ vs. MS: PC-savvy judge
Glenn Cole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
<lots snipped>
>While I personally question both the legal and ethical actions MS has
>taken, I have no idea how a "fair" outcome can result without splitting
>MS into separate OS and app companies. I'm certainly not calling for
>that, and neither is DOJ. It will be interesting to see what happens.
On the other hand isn't this exactly the point? The Bell system was broken
up precisely because the local parts of the Bell System made it very
difficult for other long-distance companies to compete on an equal basis.
For those of us that remember the startup of MCI, it is almost miraculous
that they were able to stay around. The Bell System did everything in
their power to put them out of business.
It is pretty hard to introduce competition in the local phone system - the
present attempts only mess around with minor billing and administrative
aspects and don't really touch the physical plant. Similarly, it is
difficult to have competition in the OS business because it is so closely
tied to the hardware and because there must be a uniform interface for
application developers. In fact, MS has a monopoly in the OS. It is using
this monopoly to restrict competition in application development and
therefore should be regulated just like any other monopoly.
MS should be broken up, just as the Bell system was broken up, so that the
OS is kept completely separate from applications. There were definite
disadvantages to the breakup of the telephone monopoly, but we learnt to
live with them and now have the cheapest long-distance rates in the world
(by a considerable factor). So with breaking up MS - there will be
disadvantages in the short term, but, in the long term, greater competition
will lead to better and less expensive software.
John D. Alleyn-Day
Alleyn-Day International
408-286-6421 408-286-6474 (Fax)
[log in to unmask] http://www.Alleyn-Day.com
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