Capitalism and monopolism

[Sunder]

Unfortunately MSFT has enough clout with hardware manufacturers to
dictacte what future PC's will be and attempt to keep them closed.

i.e. MSFT's Athens:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134689749_winhec06.html

And tablet PC's.

It's not as if they can fully push other designs out of the market, but if
there are few places that linux, *bsd, and other OS's can run, they have
vast control.  This design is closer and closer to the Mac - and for good
reason.

There is hope and precedent in that when IBM attempted to lock the market
into Microchannel they failed miserably - but only because the other hw
manufacturers decided to not pay the IBM tax.  If the few remaining PC
makers decide to go the MSFT way, the industry is Bill's.   IBM probably
won't, but who knows what HP, Dell, etc. will be willing to put up with.

There will probably always be generic x86, ppc boards, and possibly
Macintoshes and Sun workstations... but... :(

The thing that would allow MSFT to gain this sort of monopoly is the
DMCA.  It needs to be repealed.

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
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 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sun, 4 May 2003, Andy Lopata wrote:

> Fortunately there is Linux as an alternative to MS and Apple, but if the
> hardware has built-in copy controls, this may not be enough.