Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Operating systems are irrelevant
Eric Armstrong wrote: (01)
> Good comments. I would only add that xeveryonex everytime
> someone uses "innovative" and "MS" in the same sentence, I gag.
>
> Thousands of innovative companies have gone out of business as
> a result of MS's negotating a purchase with one of the top
> contenters -- their primary means of "innovation".
>
> The real killer is:
> * They have used the existence of multiple competitors to
> extort outrageous acquisition terms -- because only the
> acquired will survive.
>
> * Generally, the acquired fail to survive, as well, after a time,
> because the terms were *that* good.
>
> blincoln wrote:
>
> > a less than brilliant David Gelernter wrote:
> >
> > >Some argue for Linux on economic and cultural grounds: Microsoft, people
> > >say, has driven up prices and suppressed innovation. But this is a ticklish
> > >argument at best: after all, over the decade of Microsoft's hegemony,
> > >computing power has grown cheaper and cheaper. Innovation has thrived. Our
> > >software is innovative; it has not been suppressed. On the contrary, more
> > >and more people get interested.
> >
> > Of course this completely ignores the fundamental problems of having
> > one's communications infrastructure dictate content decisions. Have the
> > phone company not only decide who you can call, but what you can say
> > after you connect.... "the music playing in the background during your
> > conversation has triggered a use fee and has caused the CD in your player
> > to self destruct"... If microsoft simply produced an OS that was simply
> > a platform on which technology could grow, then I think a much smaller
> > group of people would have problems.
> >
> > Palladium & hailstorm stand out as good examples of the types of controls
> > that monopoly power facilitates. The concept of a single, non democratic
> > trust authority for all commercial content certainly has the ring of
> > "I should care". Or perhaps the issue of granting root privileges on all
> > your hardware and software to an unsupervised, profit-based corporate
> > entity? Again, sure seems like I would care about things like that.
> >
> > While it may be true that we _should_ only care about OSes as much as we
> > care about the CPU, I think Gelertner should familiarize himself with
> > some of the extremely rudimentary arguments made in Code & Other
> > Laws of Cyberspace, by larry lessig. From that perspective, the rules
> > that govern the OS and the infrastructure are akin to laws of physics
> > in the less-virtual world.
> >
> > Your receipt of this email signifies your acceptance of and agreement
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> > terms specified elsewhere in The License Agreement and a large body
> > of case law which you are unlikely to understand even if you knew how
> > to find it.
> >
> > I hope everyone is reading their license agreements from their
> > OS manufacturer these days..
> >
> > bcl (02)