Hello Jack,
> Hello Scott, hope you are doing well.
I'm doing well! Things are good and I'm rested from a good vacation ... if the market were up more I would be even happier! ;-)
> A couple of things from your most recent post to me -
Ok ... I'll try to reply briefly ... ;-)
> I believe in survival of the fittest too, but MSFT is not the
> fittest.
I'm not sure how to address this. By definition, they sure seemt o be the fittest to me ... or they would not be where they are. Now if we are talking about opinions of "nice" or "legal" this is a different issue. But if they were not the "fittest" then someone else would be the "fittest" and we would be having this conversation about them. ;-)
> We don't even know what computing power opportunity cost we have
> paid because of their monopoly. And their monopoly was enabled
> because they signed IBM, and by default the clone makers, to
> one of the most restrictive licensing agreements in history. It was
> anti-competitive then, before anyone had an inkling what PCs would
> mean. Not only was there not a level playing field, no one had a
> chance to get on the playing field.
I'll agree with you ... but mainly in one respect. If we use straight logic, then your statement of "We don't even know what computing power opportunity cost we have paid" also means that "We don't even know what computing power opportunity cost we have *NOT* paid". You see, if we do not know one, then we can not know the other. If we new the other, then we would know the first.
At this time, there is no way that we can claim that "things would have been so much better" ... it sounds great, and I'm sure we'd all like to believe it ... but the world of Chaos Theory just doesn't work that way. I guess that we could say that "things would be so much different if not for World War II" ... but then we wouldn't be where we are ...
> If we follow your logic regarding "survival of the fittest", AT&T
> would still be the only phone company, and my business would still
> be paying 25 cents per minute for long distance even though I bill
> 1,000,000 minutes a month. T-1 access fees would be $30,000
> per month, and it would take me months to get another one if I
> needed it.
But AT&T isn't these things ... and these things aren't the prices you talk about. So although at one epoch in time, AT&T seemed to be the "fittest" and was ruling the world of telecommunications ... things changed.
This is exactly what I see with Microsoft ... the natural systems that are stirred up by the actions of others will turn the situation. We seem to think that "if no one does anything" ... but just that realization alone is far more powerful than we think. It is that spark of an idea that starts the tide turning ... and the situation is corrected. But I also do not believe it will be corrected by "defensive" measures ... some people at these companies need to get off their butts and do something.
I've heard the lipservice given to "think out of the box", "customer driven", and "cannablize your own markets" ... but often I watch the lame corporate attempts at these goals. People are chicken to stick their necks out ...
> Where would we be now in terms of PC computing power, both in
> operating systems and applications, if there had been some
> semblance of competition in the business? Imagine, no competition
> in the last 10 years, a guaranteed pre-load revenue stream, so the
> big sloth lumbers along and keeps outputting marginal product. They
> are not the "fittest" because we made a choice and voted for them
> with our dollars, WE HAVE NO CHOICE.
As you know these questions can never be known ... they are immeasurable. Are you trying to say "Where would we be if Intel didn't have to create a processor powerful enough to boot the pig-like operating system created by Microsoft?" I guess that we might have some pretty lame computing power ...
As for fittest, again although I might not like it either, they obviously *were* the fittest if they were able to create the situation that you define above.
> Its not even close to the same scenario. Novell can't obtain a
> restrictive licensing agreement for the Internet. There are
> multiple players, all developing around LDAP, and people are voting
> with their dollars. Novell actually has to make a better product to
> succeed. They can't shove NDS down the throat of someone buying a
> server, and tell them to F*** off if they don't like it.
But my question was:
>> ... if (or when?) Novell comes to dominate the access to networked
>> resources through distributed name spaces in NDS directories ...
>> and no one anywhere on earth can get to a resource unless it's
>> through a Novell directory ... what will you be saying then?
>> Will you be one of the people who starts the early efforts to say
>> to Novell "Hey guys ... that's enough ... we have a {x}%
>> marketshare and are making enough money."?
There are two questions in the scenario above that I would like to hear you address ... not by saying that it won't can't happen (there were a lot of people that said that about Microsoft in the 80's and early 90's) but let's assume that Novell is successful at building the partnerships, getting NDS onto a wide range of platforms and tying digitalme into all this. What if it happened ... then what would you say?
> It's good that we can agree to disagree.......agreeably.
I agree ... it's a cool discussion ... I understand the various viewpoints ... but I have another set of them that people don't like to talk about. It's cool to get other opinions and perspectives ...
Scott C. Lemon |
