Why I Support Microsoft

[Tim May]

Over the years I've sometimes joined in on the jokes about Microsoft and
Bill Gates...the jokes about the Borg, assimilation, and the habits of
Gates. And I've lately really enjoyed the "Saturday Night Live" skits
involving Bill Gates interrupting the Pope to announce that Microsoft has
merged with Christmas, and so on.

As a longtime Macintosh user, and only occasional user of MS products, it's
mostly of entertainment value to me to see what MS is doing.

(Caveat: I used Microsoft Basic on Intel MDS systems (8080-based), circa
1977-78, bought a PC in the early 80s, bought "Microsoft Word" Version 1.00
when most people were buying Samna Word, Wordstar, and other such vanished
products, and even bought the execrable, terrible, crufty, horrible
"Windows 1.0" when it first came out, circa 1984. And for my Macintosh, I
bought Microsoft Word 1.05 and used it for many years in various versions.
I currently use no Microsoft products on a daily basis.)

Anyway, the recent government actions against Microsoft are reprehensible
to any person who values liberty. Microsoft is being punished for its
success.

The appearance of Ralph Nader, Jamie Love, and executives of Netscape (who
are miffed that _their_ attempted monopoly is being threatened by MS!), in
the (ironic) "Microsoft Bash," along with opportunistic actions by various
states' attorney generals, and with judges imposing million dollar a day
fines.....

Well, it's all a familiar pattern. I hate to say it, but read parts of
"Atlas Shrugged" to see this piling on, this "taking down the successful a
few notches" behavior.

Attila T. Hun is, for some reason, bashing MS a lot. I'll use one of his
posts to make some specific points:


At 10:15 AM -0700 12/21/97, Attila T. Hun wrote:

>> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge Friday told Microsoft
>> Corp.  he easily uninstalled the company's Web browser
>> without breaking Windows 95 and ordered company officials to
>> explain why they could not do the same.  "Windows 95
>> functioned flawlessly" with Internet Explorer uninstalled,
>> U.S.  District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson told Microsoft.
>>
>    mistake #1: dont piss off a federal judge --let alone
>    try to show that he is ignorant.

PC makers like Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc., are in fact perfectly free to
bundle Netscape Navigator (or whatever the Do Everything version is called)
with their systems. Microsoft is then perfectly free, in a free society, to
say "Fine, then don't put Windows on your machines."

Right?

Customers can then make their choices. Or can buy Windows in the nearest
software store. The way it used to be done.

Yielding to pressure from the court, MS is now allowing PC makers to also
include Netscape Navigator. Well, none have yet elected to do so...quite
probably because Netscape is _charging_ for this, and MS is not.

(To Ralph Nader, and perhaps even to Attila, that MS is _giving_ away its
browser, free for the download and free to the PC vendors, is itself a
crime.)

...
>    this is my one big fear: the DOJ will accept a plea
>    bargain like they did last time and it will be back
>    to business as usual for M$ --and they will be back in
>    court within a year having gained even more horizontal
>    and vertical control of the entire communications
>    and information industries --and claiming again that
>    they are misunderstood --and complying with the order,
>    etc.

Customers are voting with their pocketbooks. They like the MS offerings
more than they like the competing offerings...of which there are still many.

(Macintosh, Unix in several flavors (incl Linux), and loyal followings for
older OSes. Sun and Oracle and others are pushing for Java-based systems to
obsolete the MS products. This is a major struggle which analyses about
Microsoft's "domination" seem to ignore.)

>
>    there is only one solution to organizations like M$
>    which are operated without ethics: treat them to the
>    pleasures of not only the antitrust laws but the
>    exquisite delights of RICO.

I cannot understand how Attila can so enthusiastically support this. His
"exquisite delights" even recalls Torquemada and the Inquistion. A suitable
term for what is being to MS, in my view.

>    M$ is a cancer; it has fully metasticized and is gorging
>    itself at the banquet of the vanquished.

Ralph Nader would probably be interested in hiring ATH as a speech writer.

....
>    anyway, just think where M$ would be with Royce today!
>    Gate$ and Ballmer might be down at the local MCC for a
>    few free 3 hots and a cot, all expenses paid, "enjoying"
>    a well earned vacation from screwing all of us.

I take it that ATH means that because something like 20 or 30 million
Americans chose to buy Windows 95 (and thus gain the benefits we Macintosh
users have had for many years :-}) that this means "we" were screwed?


>    Other than the usual ills of a monopoly, what really
>    irks anyone with a modicum of intelligence is that Gate$
>    intends to migrate the entire package for the benefit of
>    the couch potatoes; Gate$ intends to dictate not only
>    what we use to view his trash, but that only his trash
>    is splashed.

Why not pick on Intel? Intel is, if anything, even more of a "monopoly"
than MS is. While customers have some reasonable choices in OSes
(Windows/NT, Unix, Linux, Macintosh, AmigaOS, Inferno, Java-based
developments, etc.), the fact is that all of the surviving OSes are being
ported to the Intel platform (pace recent announcements by Sun that Solaris
will be on  Merced at its rollout in 1999, and earlier announcements by
H-P, DEC, and IBM along the same lines).

But neither MS nor Intel are "monopolies." They are just the People's
Choice. Which always tends to cluster...the big really do get bigger. For
awhile, at least, until the paradigm shifts and the big can't adapt quickly
enough.

Of the 10 biggest chip makers in 1970, all are distant seconds to Intel,
the world's largest producer of chips, in dollar amount. (And in total
square meters of silicon output.)


....
>> After the hearing Friday, Christine Varney, a former Federal
>> Trade Commissioner now representing Netscape, was jubilant.
>> "I think the judge has understood the seriousness of the
>> issue," she said.
>>
>    she had every reason to be jubilant --so far. even if
>    the judge did not fully understand the technological
>    bullshit M$ was trying to slide on by, the judge fully
>    understands that M$ was trying to blind pitch him --and
>    insulting him to boot.

Of _course_ she's jubilant! Netscape wants its "rightfully-earned monopoly"
back! Has anyone forgotten that in 1995 it was looking like Netscape would
be on 95% of all desktops, Windows, Mac, and Unix, and that it was turning
into the Big Bad Monopoly? Are memories really that short?

Netscape has been using its legal manouvers to attempt to stop Microsoft
from horning in on _its_ monopoly.

(I hate using the term "monopoly," but if critics of MS are going to use
it, hey, when in Rome....)


>> Microsoft stock closed at $128.69, down $2.19 on NASDAQ,
>> where it was among the most active issues.

>    yes, down almost 20 points since their fiasco with the
>    DOJ started. before it's over, I hope to see M$ listed
>    with the junk bonds and issues --in the penny stocks.
>

Yep, sort of the way Netscape stock went from its IPO price of around $25
(in today's shares) to $80 when it looked like Netscape Navigator and
related products were going to be the Next Big Monopoly....and then
plummeted down to the $30-40 range as it appeared this was not the way
things were going to turn out....

Netscape stock is currently at $27 3/4, just about where it began trading
in '95.

Even so, Navigator remains popular on many platforms. Microsoft Explorer is
by no means a monopoly.

And MS announced a long time ago, in '95 if I recall correctly, that the
Web was such a big deal (let us not forget that some were saying Gates had
missed the boat on the Web and MS would falter) that the URL addressing
scheme would be _built in_ to future versions of its OS so as to make Web
browsing and file browsing identical, and to facillitate intranets. "One
big file system."

Like this or not, it makes a certain amount of sense.

Ah, but now we face the spectacle of a judge or panel of Nader-pandering
bureaucrats telling Microsoft what features it will be allowed to include
in its operating system.

Perhaps the graphics chip companies facing extinction as Intel puts massive
graphics capabilities into new chips can sue on antitrust grounds and get a
"special master" to dictate to Intel what features it may put into chips?

(Certainly the long-departed Weitek might have survived a few more years
had Ralph Nader turned his unsafe at any speed attention to the floating
point processing market and gotten an injunction against Intel putting
onboard floating point instructions into the 486.)

I cannot understand how any Cypherpunk can be advocating interference in
the market the way Attila and a few others are doing.

Making jokes about Bill Gates is one thing, just harmless fun. But
advocating the Men with Guns (TM) seize control of the products he offers
to uncoerced customers is simply wrong.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."