| alephnull said: 1) Bill Gates is not Microsoft. 2) People using "charity" as a means of tax avoidance is an annoyance of mine separate from MS and I'm sorry people seem to be ignoring what I am saying because I stated them in this thread. I think it's a bit difficult for people to believe if they haven't experienced these events first had. 3) I am merely suggesting that any wealth management consultant would probably suggest to him to do exactly as he is doing in order to preserve his estate. In this light his actions may be viewed as slightly less saintly.
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Hmm...what is the max amount of deductable you can claim from charitable contributions?
I believe what he has done is basically set up a trust fund where the organization he created would use only the interest earned each year to provide charitable services. This is pretty much standard for anyone with an incredibly large amount of money who wants to give a large sum of their estate over to charitable actions. The only difference here is that he is the one heading up the organization.
alephnull said:
MS was blindsided by the internet. In Gate's "The Road Ahead" (1995) with his predictions of the future there was no mention of the internet. This is why the internet is so unixified. If you had been around then trying to surf the web, mud, or play nettreck in windows 3.1 w/ trumpet winsock you would know. I know NT 4 straight up stole the BSD TCP stack.
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I thing you misunderstand. The internet was possible only because so many people had computers due to the extremely cheap price they were being sold at. What is a PC without an OS? Whichever way you cut it, Windows was one of the easiest OSes out there to use with its meataphorical cabinet UI. What the monopoly did, whether you liek it or not, is also basically standardize all the software because there wass nothing to dedvelop for. If there were many different viable OSes presented, each with their own twists, how do you think software would have eveolved? Even now the Macs had to fall under an Intel structure to be viable at all, what if there was 2-4 different OSes each with their own weird build? It would have been a mess and only slowed progress.
So what they did is bassically give the OS to everyone, license it to any hardware maker, and then they effectivly stndardized the software. And you don't think those are the sole reasons why computers are the way they are? Cheap, and always compatible? If it wasnt for Microsoft we would have been stuck paying thousands for Apples which locked their OS on their own hardware effectively raisng the price a ridiculous amount. And surprisingly, it was Bill Gates' plan not Microsoft's so we do owe the state of the world to him. You said it yourself, in 1995 the internet was a mess, 14 years later here we are. If people didn't have their computers or if software was all full of OS incompatabilities do you hoenstly hink we'd be where we are in such a short period of time?
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alephnull said:
I agree completely. Sorry, I am slightly taken aback by someone thinking for themselves instead of parroting someone else's ideas on a non-econ blog. To make this argument (and I'm not saying it can't be made) you first need show why multiple producers would be less efficient. This is obvious with cable companies (you don't want 12 different companies constantly digging up your back yard laying cable) but less so with OS's. I will grant you that an OS is a natural monopoly, but in the particular case of this market there are obvious alternatives such as agreed upon, well documented standards (such as POSIX) which imho negate the usefulness of a monopoly OS. If you think those alternatives sub-optimal, then you need to present the case for not heavily regulating/establishing a national trust for windows much like is the case for utility companies.
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Microsoft didn't always have this magical monopoly... they created it by putting out a superior product... at least in the view of the mainstream user... Windows 95 blew open the PC market to a degree that I seriously doubt you would be on these forums... much less that these forums would exist as they do now. Microsoft accelerated things to the next level. They had a very totalitarian look on things for a long time after that, but if you really think about it that was really a very short span of time from 95's release till they started turning things around in 2001 and 2002. I think what really showed Microsoft how to win over customer loyalty was the Xbox side of the house... despite loosing tons of money they build up a very rabid fan base that they knew they could grow upon. As for natural monopolies there are very few in the US... but Utility companies and Hospital(for the most part) are generally natural monopolies. Eventually I think that Microsoft will make their IE browser open source... it's not like the hackers are slowing down trying to hack the damn thing as it is and I believe that eventually Windows will have open source... though I don't think it will be complete... I don't think they'll release the kernel, but it would be interesting to see what the Open Source community could do with free access to the UI and other functions.
vlad321 said:
I thing you misunderstand. The internet was possible only because so many people had computers due to the extremely cheap price they were being sold at. What is a PC without an OS? Whichever way you cut it, Windows was one of the easiest OSes out there to use with its meataphorical cabinet UI. What the monopoly did, whether you liek it or not, is also basically standardize all the software because there wass nothing to dedvelop for. If there were many different viable OSes presented, each with their own twists, how do you think software would have eveolved? Even now the Macs had to fall under an Intel structure to be viable at all, what if there was 2-4 different OSes each with their own weird build? It would have been a mess and only slowed progress. So what they did is bassically give the OS to everyone, license it to any hardware maker, and then they effectivly stndardized the software. And you don't think those are the sole reasons why computers are the way they are? Cheap, and always compatible? If it wasnt for Microsoft we would have been stuck paying thousands for Apples which locked their OS on their own hardware effectively raisng the price a ridiculous amount. And surprisingly, it was Bill Gates' plan not Microsoft's so we do owe the state of the world to him. You said it yourself, in 1995 the internet was a mess, 14 years later here we are. If people didn't have their computers or if software was all full of OS incompatabilities do you hoenstly hink we'd be where we are in such a short period of time? |
Nothing is ever really bad or good... just shades of grey... though we have seen some pretty dark grey times.
Why anyone even cares about whether or not IE is bundled with the OS is beyond me. I know MS doesn't care as there isn't any money being made from it. Its not like they charge anyone extra for Internet Explorer, and they have never blocked installation of other browsers like Netscape, Safari, FireFox, and Opera which are all also free by the way. Its not like they are apple and require you too use iTunes to load you iPod who have also blocked others like Real and Yahoo Music player from being able to load them.
People pick on MS because they are successful, the bottom line is they are always improving their products, and they learn from their unsuccessful products.
@Vlad321
Sorry, but most of what you said about UIs, OS costs, Macs, the story of Internet, coding standards is simply false.
- Windows had the worst WIMP UI of its time: Mac OS classic had a lot of technical problems with its architecture, but the UI was where it shone. AmigaOS, OS/2, BeOS were all better interfaces than Windows in the 90s.
- Windows was not cheaper than the alternative OSs that were also licensed for any PC. The IBM OS/2 could even run windows application and in its Warp incarnations had a much better foundation than any non-NT-based Windows ever had.
- Apple chose to go Intel because it offered a better CPU roadmap than the Power architecture, but coding for the Mac didn't change at all. Basically all it took was recompiling the sources. It did not make coding for the Mac any more "viable" than when it was on the Power architecture.
- Why would Windows be the saviour from an expensive Apple monopoly? The alternative is not between a MS monopoly and an Apple one. Ever heard of Linux or BeOS? Any monopoly will stifle real innovation: even when it promotes standards, it places the control of those standards into the hands of a single entity. Then that entity will let that standard go stale or force update cycles depending on its commercial needs. Not all standards are born equal: whatusers really gain from are open standards, if they are smartly designed and updated.
- Internet was not "a mess", it was simply in its infancy. There was no more mess than today's technologies (Web pages, eMail, RSS, FTP, newsgroups, Flash...)
- Actually MS have held back most interesting web technologies for all they could because they didn't want the spotlight to move from local to web development, where they can't control the environment. They have been forced into having a rich web mail client and a web office infrastructure, but they have been dragged kicking and screaming by the like of Google.
The advances in Internet happened despite MS and IE, not thanks to them. Whatever MS could not control and "standardize" in their own way actually evolved at a blistering pace. Just look at Apache vs IIS, at Postgres and MySQL vs MS SQL Server, at Gmail and Google Maps and all the Google AJAX services, at PHP vs ASP... they are the backbone of the small-medium sites and services that make the Internet that we know.
I suggest you read a bit about all these subjects. I suspect that you have a restricted point of view because you haven't had a wide enough first-hand experience both in timespan and variety of tools.
| Neoraf said: Microsoft is good. Every company is trying to eat the competition. And Microsoft is excellent doing that. Welcome in the real world. We do not live in a Teletubbies world. |
Basically this sums it up.
alephnull said:
I agree completely. Sorry, I am slightly taken aback by someone thinking for themselves instead of parroting someone else's ideas on a non-econ blog. To make this argument (and I'm not saying it can't be made) you first need show why multiple producers would be less efficient. This is obvious with cable companies (you don't want 12 different companies constantly digging up your back yard laying cable) but less so with OS's. I will grant you that an OS is a natural monopoly, but in the particular case of this market there are obvious alternatives such as agreed upon, well documented standards (such as POSIX) which imho negate the usefulness of a monopoly OS. If you think those alternatives sub-optimal, then you need to present the case for not heavily regulating/establishing a national trust for windows much like is the case for utility companies. |
Gotta go to bed, will reply tomorrow.
Tease.
This thread makes me laugh, it's as though it was created by a 5 year old asking why people are mean.
Welcome to the real world......fyi the easter bunny doesn't exist.
The only teeth strong enough to eat other teeth.
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