On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:43:28 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> ____/ Mike on Thursday 15 November 2007 20:14 : \____
>
>> On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:58:24 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>> ____/ Mike on Thursday 15 November 2007 05:11 : \____
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:11:28 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A year or two ago, Ballmer expressed his fear of Linux by saying
>>>>> that Linux is a competition that is not a company. He didn't know
>>>>> how to defeat it.
>>>>
>>>> This is really a very sad commentary when you consider that it's
>>>> coming from the top exec at one of the largest corporations in the
>>>> country. Never even considered the notion of doing a better job of
>>>> serving the consumer than the competition, no that's a completely
>>>> foreign concept to these monopoly-centric morons at msft. One needs
>>>> to examine a very basic question here: why does a corporation exist?
>>>> The answer should be: to maximize benefit for the society which it
>>>> serves. Normally, competitive markets yield this result for the
>>>> consumer, but in the case of a monopoly this does not occur and the
>>>> net value to society is negative. This is of course why there is
>>>> antitrust regulation, however, as none of it has been enforced
>>>> against msft what has evolved is a highly counterproductive
>>>> corporation run by robber barons which do nothing but try to destroy
>>>> those entities which are actually trying to do a better job of
>>>> serving the consumer. So while in the long run all monopolies are
>>>> eventually destroyed, in the mean time until that happens it sure is
>>>> painful having to put up with the likes of gates, ballmer & co.
>>>
>>> Intel does the same thing to defeat AMD, but that's another story
>>> which I try very, very hard to keep out of c.o.l.a. because it's off
>>> topic.
>>
>> Yes, I agree, and probably going a bit off-topic myself but IMO the
>> world would be better off without a number of corporations of which
>> msft would top the list by a huge margin. When you think about all the
>> good that could be done with the hundreds of billions that msft has and
>> continues to suck out of the economy and it's not just that the money
>> is wasted but that it's used to the detriment of those actually trying
>> to do some good. And to top it all off is the army of ms-shills that
>> keep the oblivious masses brainwashed into believing that msft is
>> somehow (mysteriously) a great company. If the billions of monopoly
>> money were to be spent exposing msft for what it really is rather than
>> whitewashing it I doubt the company would be in existence for very
>> long.
>
> Don't forget the effect on inventors (maybe investors also).
Yes, that's what I meant by "those actually trying to do some good". If
the hundreds of billions were in the hands of real inventors one can only
imagine where the software industry might be today
The
> extraction of money is one thing, but the lack of innovation of another
> (recall IE6 and its total neglect). If Microsoft can eliminate all
> threat, it can continue to extract money without ever changing
> (improving) its products. Microsoft, which is an example of extreme
> capitalism, is probably more harmful than communism, where the industry
> doesn't need innovation to thrive.
Yes, msft is an example of capitalism gone extremely wrong. It's long
been known that corporations left to their own devices will wreak havoc
on a society (toxic waste, sweatshops, unsafe working conditions, unsafe
products, child labor, price fixing, monopolistic gouging, predatory
pricing, bribery, extortion, etc, etc, etc) which is why gov't regulation
is an absolute necessity for capitalism to actually work. Capitalism is
failing badly because of the govt's refusal to enforce antitrust and
consumers are paying the price for the exact reason that you described.
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