Immoral foundation of monopolies explained

THE BASIC MORAL FOUNDATION of capitalism is that people make money by providing value to others. When it works correctly, it is a win/win system, and while those capable of providing the greatest value to others may win far more than others in return, no one truly loses.

Monopolistic and predatory business practices pervert that win/win nature of capitalism. They make money not by providing value, but by denying value. Companies profit not because the fair value of their own product is worth what they charge, but because they deliberately damage the value or availability of competing products in order to drive up what they can charge for their own.

Suppose the Acme OS Company and OS's R Us are in competition, and SoftWidget is a fairly important application that can run on both. If Acme would hold a gun to your head and say, "If you use SoftWidget with the OS's R Us operating system, we'll shoot you," there would be no doubt that it is committing extortion. Yet if Acme buys the SoftWidget company and cancels support for the OS's R Us operating system, it achieves essentially the same goal of forcing customers to buy its own operating system if they want to use SoftWidget. Acme OS benefits from the artificially increased product differentiation, and SoftWidget's former owners profit from Acme's paying them extra to become accomplices (whether witting or unwitting) in its denial scheme, but the customers clearly lose.

I would argue that laws need to draw a stronger distinction between business practices designed to create value and those designed to destroy value for competitors. Certain practices, such as signing exclusive contracts that significantly undercut competitors' distribution channels or buying a company and having it drop support for a competitor's products shortly after, should be regarded as inherently suspect, and should be permitted only when a clear case can be made that the goal is something other than to harm the value or availability of competing products.

As for the argument that customers will eventually catch on to a monopolist that abuses its power too much and switch over to a competitor, does that mechanism truly provide sufficient protection? At what stage of that process do customers get back the money unfairly taken from them in the meantime? And what happens if the monopolist is effective enough at undercutting competitors that its actions, coupled with the natural barriers of time and cost involved in trying to compete with a firmly entrenched incumbent, prevent a suitable alternative from becoming available for a very long time if at all?

Nathan Barclay

Re: Microsoft SPOTs way to get more money

Ha! They'll never take me alive! I haven't worn a watch since....1998! And if I were to get a watch of this mondo-computerized type, I would get a Palm OS watch instead of any SPOT watch. And another thing. They look dumb.

Michaela Stephens

Subject: Shock and Awe

I don't see any problem with SONY trying to profit off of the term "Shock and Awe", but they may want to contact Harlan Ullman et al first. The book Shock and Awe was published by the National Defense University Press in June of 1996 and contained the road map for using Shock and Awe on the modern battlefield. The methods by which one can achieve Shock and Awe, according to the book, are:

1) Decapitation Strike. Kill the leaders the rest of the military will fall.
2) Massive overwhelming force. Everyone takes less casualties in an unbalanced war.
3) Blitzkrieg. Get your armor in as quick as possible so the battle is over before the enemy is aware they are fighting.
4) Bomb the shite out of them. Break their columns with air power so they are less likely to want a fight.
5) Confuse them. This is achieved through deception, misinformation, and disinformation. An easy way to do this is to submit your line to the inquirer... wink wink, nod nod.
6) Convince them you're invincible. It helps to have their information ministers convincing the people that the current regime is looney as well :)
7) Attack from afar. Never send a man where you can send a bullet.
8) Signature management. Make them think your big guns are where your little guns are and vice versa.
9) Nuke them. The "I didn't know that many people could die in a minute" attack.

We should just be happy we held up before moving to option 9 ;)

William

Subject: floating point bug

Which floating-point bug ? The famous FDIV-Bug ? Only early Pentiums were flawed (P60,66, 75 ?). Competition is not responsible for this bug. They found the bug early, but kept it secret.

The P200mmx has no special floating-point bug. Maybe 50 erratumnotbug or so, but nothing special.

Regards
Horst

In reply to Vin Curigliano's earlier propagand I mean letter.

Not sure where Vin comes from but here in England it is pretty easy to pick up Bartons and has been since shortly after the first web reviews.

A quick check on Komplett shows that they have 100+ quantities of 2500, 2800 and 3000 Bartons. Perhaps next time before opening his mouth he should try opening his eyes first and taking off his Intel coloured spectacles.

I picked up a 2500+ Barton about a month ago with no problems and have it running at 2.25GHz 225MHz FSB perfectly stable using normal air cooling on an Epox NForce2 motherboard.

Kind regards,
Robert Thorneycroft

Subject: Intel's monopoly brittle and cracking

You know it would not bother me in the least bit if Intel not only fell of their throne but hit the dirt while they were at it. If they were lucky enough to be distracted while on their way to the ground, they might just learn to fly. Though I doubt it.

Intel has been a monopoly for way to long. As you pointed out about their mis-steps having a large impact, no company should have that sort of power. The only reason they have lasted this long is sort of by playing nice and having a home in Microsofts back pocket. I for one would like to see that change.

There are indeed much better designed processors out there.

Dennis

Re: Intel's monopoly brittle and cracking

'AMD had a 233mmx processor, Intel had a 200mmx processor. Intel's push to get the PII released on it's proprietary slot prevented them from finding the floating point bug'

What tosh

The Floating point bug was in the original P5 You know the 60 and 66mhz (super watt) I should know i have the Keyring :-)

Also AMD never had a 233mmx before Intel. Intel were far ahead of AMD around the time the 'Tillamook' core which the 233mmx was based on.

The reason Intel moved to slot 2 ? they could not fit the 512K cache on the same die, so they had to move it onto the Slot1 daughter board.

Not pro intel, im just a pleb, but facts are facts!!

Cheers..
Dave

Subject: In reply to Jason Pippin
I see you are using the "Advanced Hair Devices" dye this month. I don't have time to tell you everything thats wrong with your article, but heres a few major points. At least intel recall stuff when it doesn't work. I presume you have never encountered problems with via's stellar range of chipsets, such as the "great" KT133. Yes, I know that AMD != Via, but AMD have allowed Via to control their fate, and so Via are the dominant AMD Chipset provider. You'd think that AMD might give each Via chipset a bit of testing before it makes it to market. I don't recall AMD ever recalling their irongate chipset over the flawed agp implementation.

Here is my major bone of contention. You say "But Intel machines are much more stable than AMD machines right? Obviously not. The only good Intel chipset in recent memory is the E7501, which apparently only served to upset their previously exclusive partner, Serverworks."

Utter tripe. You have lost the run of yourself here. You at least tried to back up your previous assertions with evidence, but now you think you're on such a roll that you can just overturn millions of users experience, and say that intel chipsets are unstable? Can you find another example of an unstable intel chipset which made it to market? I certainly can't, but I can think of plenty of unstable amd machines, which had a perfectly working cpu, but a flawed chipset ( via or amd ). You can't just throw in lies like that, it doesn't work.

You then talk about running cooler. Obviously you are upset with the notion which is about that the p4 runs cooler. I'll agree that the intel chip technically produces more heat. But have you wondered why this notion about the p4 running cooler exists then? Could it be due to the lack of overheating p4's? Better standard coolers, with convenient attachment.

Compatibility with games? When did Intel ever claim that their onboard graphics solutions were "compatible with more games". Your twisted bullshit may fool some AMD zealots, who still want to "stick it to the man", root for "the little guy", forgetting that AMD is in fact a massive corporation, who are forced to sell chips cheaper than intel.

Kind Regards,
Philip Brennan

Subject: Intel's monopoly Brittle and Cracking

After reading all the Rehtoric about Itanium and how there is no way anyone can outdo chipzilla, your article on Intel's monopoly Brtt & Cracking was one of the most refreshing articles I have read of late. Most surely you have real insight I agree with you wholeheartedly; though I am for the underdog, part of my makeup, in no way would I want to see chipzilla really hurt, after all whats in the name chipzilla, one might find and amd in there somewhere. Thanks again

Robert

Thanks for covering the Robert X. Cringely article. This stuff has me worried, really worried. As it sits right now:

1) Unless the EU competition Bureau take action...
2) Unless Linux manages to hit 20% of the desktop market share by 2005
3) Unless the Paladium system is declared illegal in countries like Japan, China, etc. who don't trust Microsoft
4) Unless Microsoft goes bankrupt.
5) Unless there;s further action from the DOJ

They may get away with it.
Wayne

Subject: give the xbox a break

You should give the Xbox a break. It is selling good for a new system and you make it seem like it is the worst item ever. It is also more of a console than a pc....
If it were a pc clone then why can't I do word processing, search the net, and do video editing?

You take something fairly minor and make it seem huge. People like you are the reasons game systems don't do good.

The Xbox is a buildup for the second version. They don't expect to win the first war... They are meeting their own expectations and continuing as planned. Why don't you comment on the good instead of the bad....

Why don't you report on why the Gamecube is doing worse or why the PS2 is inferior in every aspect?

At least the gaming community has learned to accept the Xbox it looks like the news sources have not yet. I am never going to visit this worthless site again. I can't believe I even took the time to write this letter.

The rest of this email is a comment on the whole site and not the article...

I could report on why your site will not attract many visitors. It would include something about your horrible design, low quality articles, and bad content. Will I though? Nope.

"All your dirty secret are belong to us" Can't you come up with your own trademark, heading, or whatever you call it? Why do you copy game quotes??

Jordan

Mike replies
err... it doesn't do word processing because Microsoft stopped it doing that. We do report on how badly the Gamecube is doing. Is the Sony PS/2 doing badly? Think not...

I've recently come to appreciate your www.theinquirer.net commentary. In Jack Russell's (he's not really a terrier, is he?) article (15 Apr, Spam damaging Internet's health) he uses the sentence "Were you to do such a thing at a standard post office, it would not give Best Buy the right to stroll by and casually stuff it full of ads."

I can't speak for British POs, but sadly, US post offices accept the filthy lucre (from any junk mail advertiser with deep pockets) to stuff ALL local rented PO boxes with all the junk mail the advertiser will pay for. The PO clerks claim there's nothing us hapless PO box renters can do about it. This tells me that if there were some way to impose a $COST on each piece of spam e-mail, it would have to surpass the $cost that junk mail advertisers are ALREADY paying happily. AOL's recent approach to sue spammers for violating AOL's Terms of Service holds promise, but only for AOL.

A more interesting approach might be to use the junk telemarketer defense of charging for advertising on one's telephone. This has, in some cases, resulted in some decent court awards of "advertising fees", such as $500/call. Uner the law, it requires that notice be given before subsequent contacts, and practically it would require being able to trace and serve the e-mail spammer. Not likely with a .ru address, but it might still work with a lot of domestic suffix addresses.

The point is that if a spammer accepts your offer to receive his advertising message for $1,000 a pop by e-mailing to you for the 2nd, 3rd, and etc times, then you have legal grounds by private contract law (which your spammer has accepted) to enforce that contract. The fun part happens if the spammer has any real estate assets you can have a court place a lien upon, and a credit rating anywhere that your court judgment can threaten. Then the collection heat can be turned up. Heck, with that kind of strategy, I'd up the cost of my offer to read the spammer's ad material to whatever the maximum dollar amount my court of choice can handle. Why not?! This way, early successes could finance further efforts. Golly, that almost qualifies as a viral infection threatening the spammer community. Hmmmm....

Cordially,
Dee Graber

I can't believe you actually take the time to go through all these mails you must be getting. And there are mails that are responses to mails you published, etc, etc..

Why not intoduce a "feedback" feature below every article ? That way people can really discuss the article without having to mail you, and without you having to read all the mails. If you like you could still select a view interesting posts/comments and either group them in a seperate article, or highlight them one way or another in the thread. Or delete inappropriate posts if that is your concern. But this approach seems to work rather well on other sites. Its a bit weird to see articles from the INQ copy pasted and/or linked on other forums like Aces', and people discussing them there instead of here.

BTW, I am aware you have this "hermits cave" message board, but its a *mess*, and it isnt directed at discussing articles.

just my 2 cents,
Bob

Subject: Microsoft smooth talks AMD processor performance

FWIW I was looking at a copy of Ubi Soft's flight sim "IL2 Forgotten Battles..." and under the system requirements heading it calls for at least a "PIII 800 MHz or an Athlon 700 MHz". Now, if you go to the website they don't include the Athlon stuff, so maybe they have an AMD junkie at the printers.

This was before the story so I didn't check other Ubi titles. Perhaps tomorrow; I am getting curious as I type....

David

Subject: AMD Opteron workstation chipset nears

In reference to how to market the Opteron systems ... How about a Jekal & Hyde. Business by day, Games by night. A page spread with a split down the middle (or maybe some lightning for extra). Workstation multimedia, database, webserver, corporate advantage. And what everyone dreams of doing ... using a server class system as a high end games machine to be the quickest gun in the west.

Please pass this on to the PR girls&boys at AMD. Why can't the use of AMD in homes and offices be mutally beneficial. Intel have been trying/doing it for years (eg. Xeon upmarket PIV etc.)

My 5c worth :)

Regards,
Tim Chambers

RE: Death of Windows will push PC sales

I think someone is dreaming up a onther reason to replace PC's that still do there job. Supported, or unsupported if they still do their job I am not upgrading OS's, or replacing PC's to go new OS's at my company. For what it costs verses what you will gain it's simply not worth it for most businesses to replace all there PC's any longer.

I have people employs coming into my office saying their computer is old and thus needs to be replaced, and I always answer them with the same questions. What is it that you need to do that your old computer can't do? It's really fun to watch them try and come up with a plausible excuse, and all have failed so far.

The closest any one got was a person how sheepishly admitted they couldn't play some video game they bought on the company computer. I told them thank you for at least being honest, but you know you aren't supposed to be playing games at work, and that happens to be precisely one of the reasons I don't want to buy new computers. And is why until they actually do wear out, or become too slow, they are stuck with what they got.

Jay Namon

Subject: Counter Spammer's letter

This is a problem:
"3. Always extract sender ids from the spam and register them at hack, porn, etc sites. Example, false sender 12345@hotmail.com."

I've begun to receive false 'returned mails' for spam mail which of course I didn't send - which leads me to believe that the spammers aren't just sending me spam, but also faking my address when sending spam to others! By doing the above, you could in fact be subscribing another user to more spam, and nobody wants that.

I do, however, particularly like the idea of forwarding every spam to my MP (or congressman in the U.S., etc.)... I'll have to spread that idea around... =)

Tom

Reply to Mike "X11 Alternatives"
First of all i belive Mike is not a programer so he dose not realise both MS Windos and MacOS X use a server/client model!

The difrenc is that X uses sockets and they use IPC (type "man ipc" in the console)

Mike wrote "the client/server system is confusing,complicated,insecure,and unnecissary." so lets se if this is true.

1, Confusing Well maybe if you dont know why it must be there. (call MS support on why program X cant write to same memory as program Y)

2, Complicated How is it more complicated than MacOS X's GUI ? Do you know how that works Mike ? Dose Mike know what "Display PDF" is ?

3, insecure Now Mike is just plain stupid!! How is it insecure?? The only security related seminew bug i can find is for XFS "X Font Server". Please Mike insecure! Have you read the X11R6 protocol spec and found some insecure design in it ?

4, unnecissary True! When in linux use the CLI!

PS.This is a rant I and cant speel (dyslexia)

BR Bjorn

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