On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, James A. Donald wrote:
-- Hollywood and the government, would like the internet to be like television, a few big businesses steadily churning out content, and everyone else passively consuming it.
Microsoft really would not like that, since, despite all their faults, they are in the computer business.
lots of good stuff and analogies snipped
Why not? For the purpose of this argument, lets accept as fact this Hollywood/gubbmint alliance. So, why wouldn't Bill & Co want to play? As long as they get a software subscription license fee from every "consumer" of the product, that can be added to everytime a new ground-breaking, earth-shattering, fancy super multimedia immersion technology "standard" is introduced? It *seems* to me that Microsoft wants out of even the software license model they currently have and want to just plug into the consumers "line of credit" and withdraw as they see fit without having to do much more than create easily obsolete-able software techniques that they can consistantly reinvent so that they can continue to siphon credit from their milkcows much in the same way that the gubbmint collects taxes, only with much better "ease of use." I don't see Stalin/Hitler, I see; Standard Oil/ Department of Transporation/ Interstate Commerce Commission) General Motors/ Ford/ and so forth.