On Saturday, May 14, 2011 8:25:48 PM UTC-4, Jack Stein wrote:
On 5/15/2011 9:28 AM, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
On 5/14/2011 5:32 PM, Jack Stein wrote:

It doesn't take genius to take a market bestowed
on you by IBM, use that market to force retailers to carry only your
product, or die. Judge Sporkin is/was clean as it gets, unbribable and
unafraid of the Billions and Billions of ill-gotten gains of Microsoft.

Personally, I have used BSD Unix for many years, but Microsoft has been
*good* for the industry notwithstanding I am unenthusiastic about their
products ...

Personally, I used UNIX system 7 for years, OS/2 for years, and
Dos/Win for years. DosWin is a PERFECT example of how anti-competitive
practices can result in the worlds worst product dominating a market.
Judge Sporkin was made keenly aware of this when the DOJ brought
charges against MS. Unfortunately, imo, the DOJ was more interested in
bilking MS of $ than fixing/addressing the problem. This was made
clear when the DOJ appealed their own court VICTORY.

Your understanding of 'forced' is, um, bogus. No one forces you to use
Windows, or for that matter a computer *at all*. It's absurd to complain that you cannot
buy what you want at the store.

Not absurd at all. If I go to any large retail store, and can buy only
the worlds worst os because of illegal, anti-trust marketing practices,
and most all home software products are professionally developed ONLY
for the worlds worst OS because of past illegal, immoral, anti-trust
marketing practices, then I, and particularly the average user, is
'forced' to run the worlds worst OS on their home PC.

Hardware vendors voluntarily entered into a deal
with Microsoft to get preferential pricing.

Bear in mind, that NO hardware
vendor had to agree to Microsoft's terms. They could simply have sold bare metal
and let the consumer decide what to put on it. They didn't because they (rightly)
understood that consumers wanted a turnkey system.

Wrong. Any vendor that decided to increase their market by installing
say, OS/2, and allowing the consumer a choice of OS's was met with
threats of losing the ability to sell DOS/WIN.

You mean like IBM?

The OS cost them a few
dollars, but if they sold say, OS/2 installed, they either would not get
to sell DOS/WIN at all or would no longer get the "discount" price and
would pay hundreds for the OS.

Would IBM sell them OS/2 for "a few dollars"? IBM saw OS/2 and the Microchannel as a way to regain control of the market. They weren't particularly interested in having it run on non-IBM hardware.

This would spell the death knell to any
retailer dependent on the home PC market. The result of these anti
competitive tactic's was the retailer and the consumer (and the software
developers) had NO CHOICE, they would be using the worlds worst OS. Why
do YOU think most of the home market is using the worlds worst OS?
Everyone is just too ****ing dumb to buy something better, right?

Why would anyone "buy" something better when there is so much out there that is _free_ that people like you claim is "better"?

Grok the concept, FREE software can't compete with Windows. The competition can't _give_ their product away.

For about a decade now, there have been a dozen or so Linux
distributions, 3 or 4
major BSD variants, FreeDOS, WINE, and host of other lesser choices
available
for *free*... And the consumers still have consistently chosen Microsoft
over all the above.

Last time I was at best buy, I could not buy a PC with LINUX installed
on it. Last time I watched my wife and children on the PC, looked like
they would have no clue how to remove windows and install a shareware
version of UNIX that would not run any of their software.

What were you saying about "Everyone is just too ****ing dumb to buy something better"? Seems that you've shot down your own sarcasm.

This is not the behavior of a predatory monopoloy.

Yes, it is. Without illegal marketing practices, people would have
chosen to buy an OS that worked installed on their home PC, and
developers would have developed software for that market. MS would have
had to come out with a solid, smooth working, multitasking OS or go out
of business. The consumer would have been the winner.

Microsoft did come out with a solid, smooth working, multitasking OS.

It is the evidence of a satisfied customer base, nothing else.

Nope, it is evidence of the results of stifled competition. People do
not choose to use the worst product available when given a choice. When
choice is stifled, the consumer ALWAYS loses.

So why do so few people toss Windows and run Unix?

Microsoft makes "good
enough" technology. It's good enough for most people, most of the time.

Nothing is good enough if there is other stuff available that is better.

So one shouldn't buy a Volkswagen because Ferraris are available?

Windows sucks the big one, most everyone hates it but don't know why.
Mostly they blame it on their own "computer illiteracy" or on
non-existent viral attacks. It's the OS stupid!

It's
not "great" because consumers wouldn't pay for great ... or at least
they haven't been willing to thus far.

Consumers could have had great had they been able to purchase OS/2
installed on their PC's.

They could, if they bought IBM.

They could have had great in spite of MS
illegal anti-trust marketing had IBM not pulled the product the moment
it became clear OS/2 was about to explode on the market as it reached
critical mass of 1 million copies sold a month,

When did that happen?

despite the difficulty
of finding it for sale, and having to remove the worlds worst OS and
installing something that actually worked yourself.

Stick in a diskette, stick in the CD, flip the switch, hit enter a few times. How hard is that?

And it was always on the shelf at the Electronics Boutique in the local mall.

Had IBM provided it
to the retailers, and MS not threatened retailers, Win would either have
gone out of business, or developed something better than OS/2. Neither
happened.

Of course it did. NT 4.0.

You're grumbling because the Chevy dealer won't put Ford sales
literature in the showroom...

Wrong, I'm grumbling because most all retail outlets sold ONLY MS
operating systems. They did this because of illegal marketing practices
of MS.

EB was a retail outlet. EB had OS/2 on the shelf.

I'm grumbling because I'm using the worlds worst OS on my PC because of
these past illegal marketing practices.

What, you're running Plan 9? How is that Microsoft's fault?

I'm grumbling because most of
the software professionally developed is developed only for the worlds
worst OS. I'm grumbling because most of the hardware developed works
only with the worlds worst operating system. All because of the things
that horrified a great federal anti trust judge, Stanley Sporkin.

Hey, if you want more hardware support for Plan 9, take it up with the developers.

On 5/17/2011 3:19 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
On Saturday, May 14, 2011 8:25:48 PM UTC-4, Jack Stein wrote:
On 5/15/2011 9:28 AM, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
On 5/14/2011 5:32 PM, Jack Stein wrote:

Bear in mind, that NO hardware
vendor had to agree to Microsoft's terms. They could simply have sold bare metal
and let the consumer decide what to put on it. They didn't because they (rightly)
understood that consumers wanted a turnkey system.

Wrong. Any vendor that decided to increase their market by installing
say, OS/2, and allowing the consumer a choice of OS's was met with
threats of losing the ability to sell DOS/WIN.

You mean like IBM?

No, I mean like Gateway, Best Buy, and a thousand other vendors.

The OS cost them a few
dollars, but if they sold say, OS/2 installed, they either would not get
to sell DOS/WIN at all or would no longer get the "discount" price and
would pay hundreds for the OS.

Would IBM sell them OS/2 for "a few dollars"? IBM saw OS/2 and the Microchannel as a
way to regain control of the market.

IBM saw OS/2 as a way to make their ATM software work. IMO, they never
wanted to "regain control of the PC market, they never had control of
it, the bestowed it on Gates.

They weren't particularly interested in having it run
on non-IBM hardware.

Ran perfect on my NON IBM PC. As far as drivers go for specific
hardware, the hardware providers developed drivers to work with DOS/WIN,
not MicroSoft. Since MS controlled 99% of the OS market, driver
developers didn't much care about anything else. Still, OS/2 worked on
many machines out of the box.

This would spell the death knell to any
retailer dependent on the home PC market. The result of these anti
competitive tactic's was the retailer and the consumer (and the software
developers) had NO CHOICE, they would be using the worlds worst OS. Why
do YOU think most of the home market is using the worlds worst OS?
Everyone is just too ****ing dumb to buy something better, right?

Why would anyone "buy" something better when there is so much out there that is _free_
that people like you claim is "better"?

OS/2 was not free. Unix was super expensive and required someone like me
to install and set up.

Grok the concept, FREE software can't compete with Windows. The competition can't _give_
their product away.

Yeah, that is the point.

For about a decade now, there have been a dozen or so Linux
distributions, 3 or 4
major BSD variants, FreeDOS, WINE, and host of other lesser choices
available
for *free*... And the consumers still have consistently chosen Microsoft
over all the above.

Last time I was at best buy, I could not buy a PC with LINUX installed
on it. Last time I watched my wife and children on the PC, looked like
they would have no clue how to remove windows and install a shareware
version of UNIX that would not run any of their software.

What were you saying about "Everyone is just too ****ing dumb to buy something better"?
Seems that you've shot down your own sarcasm.

No, I said people generally are lost soon after flipping the on switch
on their PC. With vendors threatened to go out of business by MS, they
would not install anything but Windows on their PC's.

This is not the behavior of a predatory monopoloy.

Yes, it is. Without illegal marketing practices, people would have
chosen to buy an OS that worked installed on their home PC, and
developers would have developed software for that market. MS would have
had to come out with a solid, smooth working, multitasking OS or go out
of business. The consumer would have been the winner.

Microsoft did come out with a solid, smooth working, multitasking OS.

My latest experience is XP, and it is better than all previous versions,
but it is anything but solid, or smooth working, or good at multitasking.

It is the evidence of a satisfied customer base, nothing else.

Nope, it is evidence of the results of stifled competition. People do
not choose to use the worst product available when given a choice. When
choice is stifled, the consumer ALWAYS loses.

So why do so few people toss Windows and run Unix?

The only "UNIX" that is available to them is a MAC, and it is super
proprietary and somewhat expensive. Most PC users don't even know what
a MAC is.

Microsoft makes "good
enough" technology. It's good enough for most people, most of the time.
Nothing is good enough if there is other stuff available that is better.

So one shouldn't buy a Volkswagen because Ferraris are available?

Volkswagen made a good car at a good price. MS makes a piece of ****
that barely works, breaks routinely and for all practical purposes, is
the only thing available to the unknowing consumer.

Windows sucks the big one, most everyone hates it but don't know why.
Mostly they blame it on their own "computer illiteracy" or on
non-existent viral attacks. It's the OS stupid!

It's
not "great" because consumers wouldn't pay for great ... or at least
they haven't been willing to thus far.

They haven't had the opportunity, and there is absolutely no reason OS/2
could not have been sold for the same price as DOS/WIN, and at a 30%
profit margin, just like DOS/win. In fact, about anyone would gladly
sell OS/2 at half the price of DOS/WIN and make 15% profit.

Consumers could have had great had they been able to purchase OS/2
installed on their PC's.

They could, if they bought IBM.

That's silly. OS/2 ran fine on non IBM PC's.

They could have had great in spite of MS
illegal anti-trust marketing had IBM not pulled the product the moment
it became clear OS/2 was about to explode on the market as it reached
critical mass of 1 million copies sold a month,

When did that happen?

It happened the month before IBM pulled the plug on OS/2.

despite the difficulty
of finding it for sale, and having to remove the worlds worst OS and
installing something that actually worked yourself.

Stick in a diskette, stick in the CD, flip the switch, hit enter a few times. How hard is that?

Never that easy because you had WINDOWS already installed on the
machine, and most users get lost after switching on the PC.

And it was always on the shelf at the Electronics Boutique in the local mall.

Bull! Egghead was the only "boutique" at our local mall, and they
seldom to never had OS/2 available. I use to call them all the time,
just to check, and they either didn't have it, or were "sold out of it"
I confronted them and they said they could only get 5 copies, that's
why it was always sold out. They were either lying, or IBM didn't want
to sell OS/2. I suspect IBM didn't want to sell OS/2, and the suspicion
was enhanced when IBM killed OS/2 as it was reaching critical mass.

Wrong, I'm grumbling because most all retail outlets sold ONLY MS
operating systems. They did this because of illegal marketing practices
of MS.

EB was a retail outlet. EB had OS/2 on the shelf.

Whats EB?

I'm grumbling because I'm using the worlds worst OS on my PC because of
these past illegal marketing practices.

What, you're running Plan 9? How is that Microsoft's fault?

Why would I run an OS designed only for research purposes?

I'm grumbling because most of
the software professionally developed is developed only for the worlds
worst OS. I'm grumbling because most of the hardware developed works
only with the worlds worst operating system. All because of the things
that horrified a great federal anti trust judge, Stanley Sporkin.

Hey, if you want more hardware support for Plan 9, take it up with the developers.

Hey, you are an idiot!

--
Jack
You Can't Fix Stupid, but You Can Vote it Out!
http://jbstein.com