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Are you retarded. I miswrote that. I meant to say that it's not "less of a monopoly today". Double negative got me is all. Did you seriously read me saying over and over "MS is more of a monopoly today than it was in the 90s", then find one example of me writing the exact opposite and think "hahaha! I got him!". Really?

That's pretty darn pathetic.



Change one word and there's no self-arguing. Holy hell. How weak must your position be to do that?

Well, unless we are forward thinking and recognize that what we consider a computer today is going to look as dated as a green screened monstrosity running DOS in 20 years...

If you don't think tablet COMPUTERS are computers, then sure, maybe you have a point. What all the rest of us who are not completely myopic can see is that while MS O-systems might dominate the desktop computer market now, Android and Apple are solidifying their hold in high growth areas of computing. (Cell phones, tablets, laptops)

The expertise/patents/profits they are gathering while they do so will put MS at even more of a disadvantage in the long term as more and more consumers move towards these forms of computing.


Edited, Dec 5th 2011 4:11pm by Olorinus

Oh I wasn't aware you knew what you were talking about since you haven't really had a coherent argument at all over the last few pages. So I wasn't aware that I was actually arguing with anyone who was trying to make a point.

Also less is not a negative. Less fat that is a positive for a lot of people, less air is probably a negative, but we could always drop the bullsh*t and you could just say you don't know what your talking about at all (over the last 2 rants youve had). But then again it is 200x much more fun this way too.

Spin on.








I agree it is an obnoxious sentence/claim., which is why I found it odd you would say with impunity that it is more of a monopoly when it isn't at all. Now that we agree that MS is less of a monopoly than it was can you stop channeling Alma for a bit?




Edited, Dec 5th 2011 7:38pm by rdmcandie

No. It's like saying that the company that sells the HDTV cameras which film the TV shows, and the HDTVs that they're watched on, doesn't really care about which channel you watch, as long as they can force all the networks to broadcast in the format which their stuff uses. That's closer to how MS fits into the market right now.

You're kidding, right? You're lucky if there's one endcap of PC games at GameStop, and I can't remember how many years it's been since I've even seen a software section for Apple computer systems. It's all console gaming today, so that's a pretty **** poor direction to go.



Yes on the first, absolute negative on the second. How the hell do you think that Apple has expanded their Desk Top Market? They gave up competing on it and went in the handheld appliance direction instead. It was a smart decision, but it was driven out of the absolute fact that they could no longer even pretend to be competing with MS for the desktop computer market.



Dude. You really need to smoke less pot.



Are you actually trying to argue that MS's share of operating system sales is lower today than it was 15 years ago? Are you nuts?! Even in the home market, this is simply not true (the exact opposite is). But you're also only looking at a small portion. MS has massively increased its market share in the server space over the last decade or so. The big money is in licensing products to companies. That's why you can buy a Windows install for your home box for a hundred bucks and download home linux distros for free. They all do that because they want people installing their OS on their home systems, so that they can leverage that into sales in the business area. But MS is way ahead in that area. Way way way ahead. And it has steadily gained ground over time.

Do you have any idea how many web servers ran on a windows operating system 10 years ago? Do you know how many run on windows today? Mail servers? Calendaring systems? Meeting scheduling? Name service, account verification, network management systems, document sharing? That's where MS has focused over the last 10+ years, and that's where it's gained massive market share. The stuff you buy/download for home use is only the tip of the iceberg. Enterprise level licensing and service contracts is where the money is.




No. I never said that. I said that when government does step in and regulate companies, it rarely actually does so in ways which benefit the consumers, or which actually limit the monopolistic aspects of the company or industry. Usually, it just shifts the company's focus from a free market product methodology (which usually benefits consumers but hurts competition), to a government regulation methodology (which usually hurts consumers).

My point is that government regulation isn't the solution. It's usually the problem. Or did you forget that the start of this whole part of the conversation was me pointing out that there are two directions you can go when you have too much corruption between public/private players (which if you recall is the whole argument of the OWS folks when it comes to the banking industry): You can either get government out of regulating the market, or get government more into regulating it. My argument was that more regulation is the wrong direction. My semi-rhetorical question about free market monopolies was intended to show that government has at best not helped, and at worst has been the cause of most monopolies (or at least the implementation of the worst aspects of them). When people piped up with Microsoft as an example, my counter was that MS's ability to use its money in ways which forced people to buy its products *increased* after the government got involved.


It certainly didn't decrease. Now maybe you have some magical connection to all of this which trumps that of someone who's worked in enterprise level IT for the entire time frame we're talking about, but I highly doubt it.

Edited, Dec 5th 2011 5:55pm by gbaji

I'm not really following this thread, but if we're discussing MS vs other companies, internet connected devices is a very important metric to consider.

I was going to point this out, but it was late, I was full of TheraFlu, and I realized I just didn't care.

I'm not sure how repeating the same statement again makes it any less absurd. Where you go doesn't matter. I haven't seen a MAC game on a shelf in any store for a long time. You used to have a MAC section, a PC section, and then a console game section. Now, you have a number of console and handheld game sections, a small PC section and no MAC section. It's an irrelevant point given how most games are purchased today, but you're wrong even on your own silly side point.



Huh!???




My argument all along has been that government regulation rarely prevents monopolies, but either creates them directly, or makes them worse. Microsoft is just an example of the government making things worse. How the hell did you read all of those posts by me and manage to fail to get this? Shall I continue?

Here's me specifically saying that government action made MS's monopolistic actions worse:



Here's me emphasizing that point:



Here's me answering Joph when he missed what I was talking about:



Here's me emphasizing that point:



I could go on and quote a dozen more paragraphs from me all repeating over and over that my point is that government regulation tends to do more harm than good. Can you please accept that this *is* my point and maybe stop tossing strawman arguments around so you can stomp on them?



No. I said that government does regulate those companies, but that it's regulation rarely actually prevents the monopolistic actions and usually makes them worse.



Two people said MS. And my response was then and is now that MS became more of a monopoly *after* the government stepped in to regulate it than it was before. Which still fits with my broader argument that government regulation isn't the solution to our market problems.

I've also freely stated that government *should* regulate to prevent monopolies. But the problem is that it doesn't seem to actually do this. What it does is take the monopoly (or potential monopoly) and turn it into some kind of public/private partnership which gives the government a piece of the action more or less in return for looking the other way. In return for lobbying cash, the politicians provide political cover for the company.

That's exactly what happened with Microsoft. And I still say you'd be hard pressed to provide examples (in the last half century or so at least), where the US government has actually stepped in to prevent monopolistic abuse by a company and in which the market became more free (less bound to corruption and abuse) as a result. Feel free to find examples. Like I said, folks tossed out MS, but it doesn't violate the argument I'm making at all. If anything, it's a perfect example of exactly what I'm saying. We can argue that MS was building a monopoly (and might even have been one) at the time the government did step in, but that government regulation didn't really do anything about MS's monopoly. It didn't break the company up. It didn't force them to stop bundling software (like browsers) into it's OS. All it did was toss some relatively toothless requirements at it. Saying "You get to keep the control of the industry, but you have to make it a bit easier for other software developers to write stuff to work with your software" is hardly an act to prevent monopoly.



Ok. But you're mixing markets. How many times do I have to explain that those are not the same market?


Question is why are you so adamant about refusing to acknowledge that MS presence in modern computing is virtually non existant. Desk Tops are not the only computing devices, focusing solely on one aspect of the market to prove your point is retarded. Sure MS is doing great in desk tops (and laptops) but it has no presence in the new mobile/handheld markets. The only reason MS is relevant in Desk Tops is because it made itself available for all manufacturers just like Android has done in the mobile/handheld market.

Because those are two different markets. Microsoft isn't a leader in operating systems running the computer in your car either. Nor do they control the software systems which run your DVR, Blueray, and Television. I'm not sure what your point is. You seem to be attempting to argue that MS does not have more of a monopoly in the computer market today than it did 15 years ago because if we add in a bunch of new handheld devices which didn't exist 15 years ago, it doesn't have a large a hold in that market. That's beside the point though. Those are appliances, not servers. You don't generally download things *from* your handheld device. You download *to* them. You usually are downloading *from* some sort of actual computer server somewhere. And today, the odds of that server running on MS (or MS somehow getting a licensing piece of the pie) is much higher today than it was 15 years ago (or even 10 years ago).

MS doesn't need to compete more than a small amount in that handheld market, because as that market grows, it automatically makes more money on the backend server side of the business. Don't you see that? All they care about is that the devices use a model that continues to provide that cash flow.

If MS was the big scary monopoly you are trying to make it out to be then they would be at the forefront of the new market. They are not.

Lol! If you knew how deeply involved MS is in manipulating the standards used by mobile devices today, you'd realize just how hysterical that statement is. They aren't at the front because they learned that it's easier to make money from the back. Less public perception that they're running things that way. They don't need to be at the forefront to make money. In fact, it's better for them not to.

I could probably spend a dozen paragraphs explaining the complex licensing arrangement involved in the mobile device market to you, but you likely would not understand it, and it's entirely possible I'd be violating some kind of NDA or something. You'll just have to take my word for it that MS is far far more involved in that market than Joe average public thinks. They don't control the individual devices, but they absolutely have a finger in the software written on them and how it interacts with other software. It's not "magic" that allows you to browse online stores and download stuff to those devices. It's a hell of a lot of standards and license agreements which make it happen. Lots of companies get pieces of that pie.

Edited, Dec 6th 2011 6:49pm by gbaji

Yes. But that's only half of it. The other half is to examine the degree to which the government was/is involved in creating/maintaining said monopoly. My point was that government regulations don't help us so much as hurt us in this area. This is sorta important when were asking whether the solution to public/private corruption is *more* government regulation or *less*.


The point with Microsoft is that to whatever degree you think it was a monopoly back in the mid 90s, it is *more* of one today. It absolutely has more market share and deeper control over the market areas it was competing in back then today than it had back then. No amount of pointing to other new markets in which it doesn't have as much control changes that fact. The browser-war monopoly thing didn't have to do with wireless handheld devices used to control appliances in your home either, did it? If you look only at the market MS was competing in back then and ask if it has more or less control of that market today, the answer absolutely is: yes.

So the best we can say is that the government's actions in the late 90s didn't prevent MS from gaining more control over that market. And it can be easily argued (as I have) that MS's lobbying (which began as a direct result of that 1998 DoJ lawsuit) is what has allowed it to gain significant market power in that same area. So the government's intervention in this case seems to have hurt the situation, not helped.


Which is precisely the argument I'm making. I'm arguing *against* "more regulation" as a solution to the problem. Because if history is any indicator, that regulation rarely helps and usually just makes things worse. It changes a free market issue into a public/private corruption issue. And those are usually worse. The free market has an amazing ability to correct for imbalances. What's funny is all the stuff you bring up *are* free market responses to MS's actions. Linux didn't appear because of government regulation. The introduction of opensource code didn't come from government regulation. The creation of smaller appliance based computing devices didn't happen because of government regulation. That was all the free market looking for other ways to make money with computers than just desktops and servers.


The free market parts worked. It's the government regulatory parts which haven't. So why on earth would anyone argue for more government regulation of these industries?

Didn't you say that the government hasn't stepped in and regulated companies?



What's your point againabout now?



Edited, Dec 7th 2011 7:55pm by rdmcandie

I dunno, I'm presently cheering on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger block. Seems like the government is doing a dandy job of preventing a monopoly there.

hey I quoted what you wrote word for word its not a claim. It is what you wrote. Ergo what the **** is the point you arguing. Its changed 3-4 times in the last two pages. At least try and keep your argument straight.