Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Peter T. Breuer]

Of course this alleged "harm" is simply a lack of a benefit.

Why is Burger King allowed to close at 10PM? That harms me when I'm
hungry after 10.

They can close when they like because the policy is not discriminatory,
nor is part of an attempt to manage the market. If they were to do
things that harmed the market - such as telling meat suppliers that
supplied them that they couldn't supply anyone else, that would be a
possible candidate for anti-competitive behaviour suits. It would have
to be shown that the arrangement WAS materially anti-competitive,
though, and that's difficult to conceive of because MacDonalds does
not constitute a major portion of the market demand for corned beef,
so they don't have the leverage.

Peter

 

[Mike Meyer]

(e-mail address removed) wrote...

<shrug> Being pissed off about how things could have been done
better is a losing proposition.

I'm not pissed off about it - I've got better things to do. You asked
for prove that desktop software development was crippled by MS. I
provided it.

<mike

 

[David Schwartz]

McDonald's are not in the business of wholesale distribution of burger
patties so your statement is simply sited in the wrong universe of
discourse.

I don't know what drugs you're on, but the McDonald's corporation most
certainly is in the business of the wholesale distribution of burger
patties. One key reason to become a franchisee is to access their wholesale
distribution network.

Coming back to the current universe of discourse, I assure
you that a McDonald's director can go into a Burger King and buy a
burger like anyone else, so no discrimination. Mind you - I'm not sure
if they'd let Ronald in. He's obviously dangerously nutty.

That's not even remotely analogous. Microsoft didn't say that customers
who bought OS2 couldn't buy Windows. They said (in acutality something less
than that) people who buy Windows wholesale can't also resell other
operating systems. This is perfectly analogous to McDonald's saying that
retailers who buy their burger patties wholesale can't also sell Whoppers.

If MacDonalds were wholesale suppliers of hamburgers to the
distribution trade,

They are wholesale suppliers to those people who agree to their
distribution terms. This requires, among other things, that you prepare them
in a precise way and only sell approved items.

then they couldn't discriminate among their
customers for the purposes of altering the competitive nature of the
market in hamburger sales to you and me across the counter.

I'm afraid I don't understand what "altering the competitive nature of
the market in hamburger sales" actually means. What is it that you are
claiming they can't do?

Companies
have been sued for trying that - sports shoe manufacturers, I seem to
recall. They've tried to make sure their shoes are sold only by
specified outlets at specified prices, in order to artificially manage
the market. That's illegal. Sued they got (or perhaps "suede").

What, precisely, is illegal?

DS

 

[David Schwartz]

They can close when they like because the policy is not discriminatory,
nor is part of an attempt to manage the market. If they were to do
things that harmed the market - such as telling meat suppliers that
supplied them that they couldn't supply anyone else, that would be a
possible candidate for anti-competitive behaviour suits. It would have
to be shown that the arrangement WAS materially anti-competitive,
though, and that's difficult to conceive of because MacDonalds does
not constitute a major portion of the market demand for corned beef,
so they don't have the leverage.

In other words, who or what it harms is not the issue. Which was
precisely my point. Private individuals and corporations are allowed to harm
other people, so long as they don't violate the rights of those people when
they do so, for example by using force or fraud.

If a McDonald's opens across the street from my little burger joint
family business, that hurts me. However, it isn't force, it isn't fraud, it
doesn't violate rights, it's just part of life.

Not even the amount of harm is at issue. Burger King firing someone for
cause might result in their family going hungry.

The issue is whether the action is within the scope of the actor's
authority.

DS

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Of course this alleged "harm" is simply a lack of a benefit.

Why is Burger King allowed to close at 10PM? That harms me when I'm
hungry after 10.

Burger King doesn't take actions to prevent you from going to another
vendor who will stay open after 10PM, as you very well know.

Nor is Burger King a monopoly -- if they refuse to open after 10 in the
face of great demand, they only harm themselves. As I said a few days ago,
it is not the place for either us or the government to care about the
success or failure of any specific vendor, but only about the health of
the entire market. As there is no shortage of competition in the fast food
market, the harm done to you by Burger King's refusal to open after 10PM
is not sufficient for anyone to care. If there is significant demand, then
Burger King will merely harm themselves by refusing to open because they
will lose customers to those vendors who do open, and if there is
insignificant demand, then why should anyone care?

 

[Luc The Perverse]

Burger King doesn't take actions to prevent you from going to another
vendor who will stay open after 10PM, as you very well know.

Nor is Burger King a monopoly -- if they refuse to open after 10 in the
face of great demand, they only harm themselves. As I said a few days ago,
it is not the place for either us or the government to care about the
success or failure of any specific vendor, but only about the health of
the entire market. As there is no shortage of competition in the fast food
market, the harm done to you by Burger King's refusal to open after 10PM
is not sufficient for anyone to care. If there is significant demand, then
Burger King will merely harm themselves by refusing to open because they
will lose customers to those vendors who do open, and if there is
insignificant demand, then why should anyone care?

NO! There ~is~ a conspiracy by Egg farmers to not make burgers available
before 10 am.

Burger King used to be one of the last great vestiges of the 24 hour burger,
and now it's gone.

They know no one would buy the shitty egg McMuffins/equivalent if they had
delicious burgers available, so there is something underhanded going on
behind the scenes.

Same thing with pizza. Don't try to tell me that there are not hungry
partiers at 3 am - but are any of the delivery places open? NO!

Why is it this way? Who knows! But when in doubt, blame the right wing
extremist politicians.

 

[Roedy Green]

It was not a discount. I was being denied the right to buy from any
wholesaler. The "deal" MS offered was that I as an independent
retailer had to by ALL my MS OS products retail if I wanted to sell
even one machines without Windows.

That would have been easily enough to put any retailer out of business
if he did not comply.

Even in retrospect, when I kick myself for abandoning my principles,
It would still be a tough decision.

1. I had eight people working for me who would have become unemployed.

2. The city would have lost one of its most ethical retailers.

3. Microsoft would STILL have won.

4. I would have had to put up taunts from people calling me crazy for
destroying my business in what they would see as a vainglorious
attempt to stop the Microsoft juggernaut.

What MS did was put me in a position where felt I had little choice
but to violate my OWN moral code of conduct. That is what has me so
pissed.

It is bad enough to be extorted from. It even worse to be forced into
a racket to extort others.

If any one here considers what MS did acceptable I am glad by their
public stance they have warned others off ever having business
dealings with them because their low standards of conduct.

 

[Roedy Green]

You don't care that because of Microsoft's neglect, there are millions of
zombie PCs running their sub-standard OS across the world, sending
hundreds of millions of spam emails?

Of course he cares. He is a shill. He licks that hand that feeds him.

 

[Roedy Green]

Some of those steps were illegal by U.S.
law.

There is also the matter of the Bush administration interfering in the
DOJ prosecution of Microsoft first thing when they got elected. Can
you smell corruption?

 

[David Schwartz]

Of course he cares. He is a shill. He licks that hand that feeds him.

In an indirect sense. The company I work for does get a lot of sales
because we are "anyone but Microsoft". So we actually profit from people's
dislike of Microsoft's products. FWIW, I do think most Microsoft products
are utter crap with one exception -- in a sufficiently controlled situation,
the product can be demonstrated to be able to do what most people think they
want it to do.

I'm not sure whether or not the market really wants crap. It may be that
Microsoft correctly read that the mass market for software is for crap
software, just like the mass market for science television is for crap
science television. Frankly, I hope not.

It's kind of like how a PBS science special, largely free from market
forces, is generally of fairly high quality. On the other hand, a network
science special shaped largely by market forces, is likely to be about a
person who has learned how to speak with cats or the dead.

DS

 

[Peter T. Breuer]

news:[email protected]...

I don't know what drugs you're on, but the McDonald's corporation most
certainly is in the business of the wholesale distribution of burger
patties. One key reason to become a franchisee is to access their wholesale
distribution network.

Then they are not in the wholesale business. So lock the drugs cabinet.

(What they are marketting is a "brand", complete with clowns and
arches, and a secret formula for making up patties in buns).


Peter

 

[Eike Preuss]

Right, except that's utterly absurd. If every vendor takes their tiny
cut of the 95%, a huge cut of the 5% is starting to look *REALLY* good.

Sure, that would be true if the market would be / would have been really
global. In practice if you have a shop you have a limited 'region of
influence'. Optimally you are the only shop in this region that sells
the stuff, or perhaps there are a few shops that compete with you. Lets
say in your region are two shops competing with you, and you must decide
wether to sell product A (95%) or B (5%), but you may not sell both.
Decision 1: Sell A, share the 95% of the local market with two -> about
32% of the local market for all of you, if all perform equally good
Decision 2: Sell B -> you get the 5% of the market, the others 47% each

This calculation is probably still a very bad approximation of the
truth, but things are definitely not as easy as you state them.

EP

 

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

IBM seems to have had a history of squeezing out competition in the
same way Microsoft has, if I recall correctly.

.... and were told not to by a court. Which is the whole reason for the
existence of IBM clones, whether PCs or mainframes.

 

[axel]

You don't care that innovation in desktop software has been crippled by
the actions of the monopoly player Microsoft?

In 1988, there were something like ten or a dozen word processors
available to choose from, and they were competing on price and features

Yes... I think I used a couple around then.

like crazy. That was then, now there is just MS Office. The most
innovative things Microsoft has added to Office in the last decade? Clippy

Er... Open Office, Apple Works.

Axel

 

[David Schwartz]

Then they are not in the wholesale business. So lock the drugs cabinet.

(What they are marketting is a "brand", complete with clowns and
arches, and a secret formula for making up patties in buns).

So is Microsoft, except the clowns write the software. When a shop sells
machines that ship with Microsoft Windows, it is to some extent the power of
Microsoft's brand that brings them into the shop.

All I'm saying is that if Microsoft had insisted on exclusive deals to
offer Windows at wholesale, that would have been entirely reasonable.
Microsoft actually insisted on something less than this. The Windows name is
a valuable brand, and advertising it and promoting it got you business.
Microsoft doesn't want to see customers drawn in by the power of its brand
being switched to competing products.

How would the McDonald's corporation feel if you walked into a store
because of the pretty golden arches (that in McDonald's opinion, assure the
customer of getting quality McDonald's food) and the person at the counter
said, "try a Whopper, it's cheaper and tastes better too".

There is nothing unusual about wholesale agreements that restrict your
ability to sell competing products.

DS

 

[David Schwartz]

Sure, that would be true if the market would be / would have been really
global. In practice if you have a shop you have a limited 'region of
influence'. Optimally you are the only shop in this region that sells
the stuff, or perhaps there are a few shops that compete with you. Lets
say in your region are two shops competing with you, and you must decide
wether to sell product A (95%) or B (5%), but you may not sell both.
Decision 1: Sell A, share the 95% of the local market with two -> about
32% of the local market for all of you, if all perform equally good
Decision 2: Sell B -> you get the 5% of the market, the others 47% each

This calculation is probably still a very bad approximation of the
truth, but things are definitely not as easy as you state them.

It depends upon how different the products are and how easy it is to
shop out of your local market. If the products are equally good and
reasonably interchangeable and it's hard to shop out of your local market,
then you're right. The more the smaller product is better than the larger
product, the less interchangeable they are, and the easier it is to shop out
of your local market, the more wrong you are.

How often do you hear, "I'd like to use Linux, but I just can't get
ahold of it"?

And how many people do you hear saying, "I'd like to use Linux, but I'm
not willing to shell out the bucks to buy it since I already bought Windows
with my computer".

On the other hand, where you might be right is in the possibility that
Microsoft's lock on the market prevented other companies from making
operating systems at all. That is, that had Microsoft used different
policies, other companies would have introduced operating systems to compete
with Microsoft, and we'd all have better operating systems for it. If
Microsoft's conduct was legal, this argument establishes that the conduct
was necessary.

DS

 

[David Schwartz]

... and were told not to by a court. Which is the whole reason for the
existence of IBM clones, whether PCs or mainframes.

And, perhaps, is the whole reason for the existence of Microsoft. (In
its present form, as the OS vendor for the majority of desktops.)

DS

 

[Peter T. Breuer]

So is Microsoft, except the clowns write the software.

No they aren't. A pc o/s is something you load on an IBM pc, and an IBM
pc is an open format. There is no "microsoft computer", and there is no
such thing as a "microsoft computer shop".

The closest you can get to a complete closed branding in that field, is,
coincidentally, an apple o/s, and an apple computer, and an apple
computer shop. And that's because apple make the confusers in question,
and their o/s. However, I don't think they can stop the shops which
sell apples from mselling pcs too, but then I have never had the
slightest inclination to buy a "brand" like an apple, so I have never
looked, so I don't have an inkling if that is so or not.

When a shop sells
machines that ship with Microsoft Windows, it is to some extent the power of
Microsoft's brand that brings them into the shop.

No it isn't. Quite the opposite - look at a computer shop or a
computer advert, and you will see "Pentium 4 3.4GHz 1MB cache, 1GB DDR
RAM", etc. etc.

Really - bar all the argument-shifting and picking up from nonsense
points, I wish I could find some kernel of sensibleness in your
argument because at times in the past you have acted sane. But not
here! If you have an argument, out with the bones of it. What is it?
Something like "MS can do anything they like to make a profit"? No -
they can't. Is it "MS can't be criticised for behaving like mad bad
bullies"? Uh, uh, yes they can. And so on. What IS your line?

Peter

 

[David Schwartz]

In comp.os.linux.misc David Schwartz <[email protected]> wrote:

No they aren't. A pc o/s is something you load on an IBM pc, and an IBM
pc is an open format. There is no "microsoft computer", and there is no
such thing as a "microsoft computer shop".

That doesn't at all address my point. The point is, there are large
numbers of people looking for computers with Windows installed on them. If
you sell this type of computer, this type of person will come to you.

No it isn't. Quite the opposite - look at a computer shop or a
computer advert, and you will see "Pentium 4 3.4GHz 1MB cache, 1GB DDR
RAM", etc. etc.

And you will also see "Designed for Windows XP" or a Microsoft logo in
the ad.

Really - bar all the argument-shifting and picking up from nonsense
points, I wish I could find some kernel of sensibleness in your
argument because at times in the past you have acted sane. But not
here! If you have an argument, out with the bones of it. What is it?
Something like "MS can do anything they like to make a profit"? No -
they can't. Is it "MS can't be criticised for behaving like mad bad
bullies"? Uh, uh, yes they can. And so on. What IS your line?

No, my point is that this specific Microsoft tactic was a *lesser*
tactic than offering only exclusive wholesale deals and there's nothing
wrong with a company that only offers exclusive wholesale deals.

What Microsoft didn't want was someone going to a store to buy a PC with
Windows and being told that another OS is better and cheaper. If you want to
sell a competitor's products, Microsoft wasn't going to let you use their
popularity to draw that person in.

Why should Microsoft let him build his business selling PCs with Windows
and then let him sell the customers that he admits he would have only
because he sells Windows PCs on a competitor's OS? He says he wouldn't have
had enough customers to stay in business if he didn't offer Windows. Then he
wants to concvince those customers to use a competitor to Windows. Why
should Microsoft let him do that?

If I am working on a new burger that competes with the Whopper, do you
think Burger King corporate is going to let any restaurant sell my competing
burger? So that people who go into a Burger King because they want a Whopper
can be told how my competing burger is cheaper and better?

Exclusive wholesale arrangements are not unusual at all. And one of the
main reasons is that you don't want someone specifically looking for your
brand to then be switched to a competitor.

The point is, he wouldn't have customers if he didn't offer Windows. His
customers are coming to him *because* he offers Windows. Microsoft wants a
portion of the money that he gets solely because he offers Windows. Why
aren't they entitled to it?

He admits, he wouldn't have any business or any customers unless he
offers Windows. That is, it is his offering Windows that allows him to build
a business, a customer base, and so on. Why is it wrong for Microsoft to
want a cut of the business that he has only because he offers their
products?

This is what Burger King does if you want to sell their burgers.

DS

 

[Peter T. Breuer]

That doesn't at all address my point. The point is, there are large
numbers of people looking for computers with Windows installed on them. If
you sell this type of computer, this type of person will come to you.

That is an item of data which is largely true - it's not totally true,
because most people could not care less what operating system is on
their computer so long as it is one which causes them no trouble and
which doesn't get in the way (uh, fail to MS win there, twice) and
which in general is a plus for them rather than a minus (porbably true
for MS windows and most of the hoi poloi, not me). But it's not a
POINT, at least not the intended conclusion of an argument or
subargument, which is what I understand a point to be. The type you
score, that is.

And you will also see "Designed for Windows XP" or a Microsoft logo in
the ad.

If they said that, that would be an actionable statement, because it
isn't, if it is a PC clone - PC's have defined standard interfaces,
that's the idea and design of a PC. Therefore a PC cannot be designed
for an operating system, just as a wall switch cannot be designed for
a lampshade. A PC is designed without reference to an operating
system, just as a lightswitch is designed withut reference to a
particular lampshade.

Will you PLEASE stop these nonsense detours! You know perfectly well
that there is no "windows franchise" in the sense that there is a
MacDonalds franchise. Shops which sell computers do not have
(metaphorical) MS arches over the door. They say "get your compyutas
'ere", not "welcome to the Microsoftiland total experience. Enjoy".
And MS in particular has no hardware side (modulo the mouse and matching
mat). They tried to rig the market in operating systems for the IBM PC,
not get a monopoloy on PC manufacture.

No, my point is that this specific Microsoft tactic was a *lesser*
tactic than offering only exclusive wholesale deals and there's nothing
wrong with a company that only offers exclusive wholesale deals.

That is not a point, it is an incomplete claim of fact plus a judgment
(first half-sentence), and a hypohetical case plus judgment (second
half-sentence).

claim 1a) Microsoft's tactic is X (fill in, please)
judgment 1b) tactic X is somehow not as bad as (sense?) offering
"exclusive wholesale deals" (please define)

hypothesis 2a) Company Z (arbitrary) offers exclusive wholesale deal.
judgment 2b) Company Z does no wrong in doing so.

I presume your argument then goes via 1b and 2b to conclude that there is
nothing wrong with Microsofts tactic X. The logic is fine - it remains
to dispute your claims and judgments.

What Microsoft didn't want was someone going to a store to buy a PC with
Windows and being told that another OS is better and cheaper.

Tough - that's what salespeople are for (notionally, in a shop you
trust).


Peter