begin oe_protect.scr
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [ hawat.thufir@xxxxxxxxx ] on Sunday 09 July 2006 21:58 \__
>
>> Aunty Diluvian wrote:
>> [...]
>>> >With this high-level corporate censorship, it's not really surprising
>>> >that "Linux just doesn't fit their perceived model of a computer.".
>>>
>>> Linux does not fit the perceived model of a computer of many
>>> people. It is a cheap shot at capitalism from socialist do-gooders.
>>> While that may work well in the third world countries is flies
>>> in the face of everything that is America.
>> [...]
>>
>> Err, railroad trusts in the 1800's weren't "American," that was
>> capitalism run amok, otherwise known as laissez faire capitalism, which
>> is almost univeresally rejected now..
>>
>> Competition, capitalism *is* the preferred model. However, microsoft
>> has achieved, effectively, total vendor lock-in across the board, thus
>> the finding that microsoft has monopoly power. Monopoly power is
>> american? Not in my america.
>
>
> Monopolies can only ever be tolerated under a state of emergency or in poor
> economies, in particular sectors such as telephony and other basic
> infrastructures. The other case for exception are
> government-backed/assigned/monitored monopolies. Suppression of competition
> is an open door to a dark age and manipulation, extortion and the
> destruction of a middle class.
The concept of a natural monopoly is what must be considered. Although
I've discovered here that this concept appears to have been politicised
in the US, rather like much science has been, however, the fundamental
requirements are:
1. An industry which has a limited userbase
2. An industry which has an exceptionally high infrastructure cost
3. An industry which has limited/capped income per user
4. An industry which presents commodity items to the user
Essentially, these include pretty much anything which includes delivery
of commodity services to premises where the infrastructure costs cannot
be shared. That would include normal telephony, gas, electricity,
water, waste supplies and such like. It would not include eg., post
(because the roads are paid for by someone else), it would not include
mobile telephony networks, as the air-interfaces are shared, and have
no particular cost (other than government licensing costs).
This model also fits some distribution networks rather well, for example,
most railways in Europe are government owned and/or shared, although
train operators need not be. Similar, gas supply in the UK has a shared
transport infrastructure, but multiple supply companies who add gas to
the core and sell it on.
In telecoms, the LLU (local-loop unbundling) which has affected much (but
not all) of the EU does the same thing, as do regulated interconnects
into the trunk networks.
Failing to understand this model results in the collapse of apparently
healthy companies - the recent demise of AT&T being a good case in point.
Oddly, the US protected the baby-bells by allowing them local loop
regional monopolies, but permitted trunk network competition. As AT&T
didn't buy into any local loop until it was too late, they were unable
to stave of their collapse.
The PFI in the UK has been reasonably disastrous, as far as I can see,
as the private companies are looking for a fairly rapid pay-back,
whereas governments are looking for a long-term infrastructure. For
example, the new generation of schools built under PFI have all,
apparently, been unsuitable for use as schools (who let them go ahead, I
wonder?).
>
>
>> If, when a consumer buys a computer from dell and there are *five*
>> options for the OS for any given hardware, *then* you can make
>> arguments about capitalism.
>>
>> When a consumer buys a cell phone, there are a multitude of options.
>> When a consumer buys a car there are a similar multitude of options.
>> Why not for a computer? Because microsoft exerts monopoly power.
>
>
> Precisely.
Actually, if you look at cars, there are not so many options left now,
as the market has transformed into an oligopoly. This generally happens
in infrastructure intensive industries, particularly those with very
high development costs for new products and fab costs. This market will
descend into a duopoly or monopoly unless governments prevent it from
doing so, /or/ there is a left-field play which makes them irrelevant
(say, somebody invents a flying sailing car or something).
>
>
>> Furthermore, there does exist *application* software which can be
>> purchased for linux. Bill Gates has said "we've always been an
>> applications company" and I think that's great. Microsoft developed
>> apps for the mac. why not for linux? obviously, microsoft wants to
>> maintain vendor lock-in.
>
>
> Microsoft has conceded and dropped its initiative to port applications to Mac
> OS. Apparently, Apple has become too strong a threat. IE5 and Media Player
> have not been a continued initiative, to name just two prominent examples.
Why bother to invest in a market which is so tiny, when most of your
market is so large? I suspect that the key battleground is going to be
free office suites & browsers and the like running on Windows; once
people realise that openoffice, abiword, firefox and so on are good
enough for their day to day usage, they'll realise that they don't need
windows any more either.
>
>
>> If there were effective competition then microsoft would be developing
>> apps for different OS's.
>>
>>
True.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
|
|
