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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (108730)	5/1/2000 12:57:00 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571929

Re: Just look at what is happening to Intel...by AMD, without government intervention... Hi Jim, If Intel hadn't been blocked from telling Compaq and IBM and HP "If you sell computers with AMD processors, we won't sell you any CPUs" would AMD been able to do it? Would MSI and FIC have dared to build motherboards? Do you doubt that Intel wouldn't have done just that if it could have gotten away with it? It's so appealing to just say "keep the government out of it". But the government is the one monopoly we can't get away from having, and look how screwed up it always is. Historically, societies are usually made up of a handful of wasteful, inefficient monopolies. The notion that a monopoly is more efficient than a bunch of competing companies is the basis of communism - and it just doesn't seem to have worked out that way. Regards, Dan

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (108730)	5/1/2000 8:18:00 AM
From: Amy J	Respond to of 1571929

RE: "They incorporated the math coprosser into the 486 and put Weitek and a couple others right out of the business. " The difference is how it is handled. Look at history: VCs and entrepreneurs don't get mad when their competitor is bought out by MS or Intel for integration/absorption into the OS or chip. They'll take 'em on and try to beat them. But, everyone in the industry gets mad if no one gets bought out or doesn't IPO because the "monopoly" has "absorbed the technology" into their OS or chip and thumbed their nose at the collective industry, because this means there was no winner. Creates a lot of enemies. Everyone complains to DOJ. But, absorption of technology and functions into the OS & chip is necessary for the advancement of technology. Look at Cisco's acqn strategy. Not a soul complains. In fact, VCs run to the sandy hills quite happy. Of course, there are a lot of VCs and companies that don't win (statistically about 8 out of 10), but if there are one or two winners, then no one complains. However, if no one wins, then everyone gets very vocal and everyone complains about it, to the DOJ, to the press, to everyone. Innovation stalls when VCs don't want to fund an area where they go up against MS and keep losing their investments because no one wins. That's bad for innovation too - and that's how the FOFs ended -- it ended with a poignant discussion of how folks don't invest in areas that compete with MS. Of course, with the Internet & ASP market, that's no longer true anymore. VCs don't even consider MS anymore, whereas about a year ago I think they still did. Amy J

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (108730)	5/1/2000 2:48:00 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571929

Dear Jim: For all the software you mentioned, I use "Freeware" or "Shareware". In some cases, the software supplied by the board manufacturers. Very infrequently, I pay for that software that is specialized to the task. I do pay for PC Games for relaxation. I, however, have been forced to buy Microsoft's software because others want me to "Fix It", when they had problems with it. I have used software through all the generations and find Microsoft's current generation to be buggy, takes too many mouse clicks or keys to get something done, and uses too many resources. THis is part of their "Design Philosophy". Just throw it together, patch it till it works, and force you to buy it, by adding it to the OS or Office. This leads to the problems and causes their release dates to slip. Too much time is spent on fixing problems than on designing software that can be easily fixed or extended. "Get it out the door, we will fix it later" is the mentality. Only on subsequent versions, do they try to test the bugs out. This causes the 2 to 3 years between releases. This causes the long time to fix bugs. The deliberate screwing with the APIs to stop competing software from working. The tying of the OS to all shipping PCs. These are all actions that cause the users no end of grief. This has been cited again and again but, their marketing has many brainwashed to what is going on. They used to not do this when they were a small company. The problems started one to two years after the agreement with IBM. Microsoft has enough marketing and monopoly power to stop most of the paradymn shifts so far. It has gotten to the point that only a Huge Paradymn Shift, collusion among all users, or the government can stop them. I am glad, that the government is finally acting. They should have not waited so long. I think that the rules to stopping the actions of a monopoly should start at somewhere around 10 to 20 percent of any given market. Ideally, they should be banned at all times but, I understand why they are not. Pete