Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:59:31 -0800 From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Giorgos Keramidas" <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" Message-ID: <001001bf3534$db023630$021d85d1@youwant.to> In-Reply-To: <86iu2v9rfv.fsf@localhost.hell.gr>
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> "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> writes: > > > > At 12:59 PM 11/21/1999 -0800, David Schwartz wrote: > > > > > > > Windows 98's disk compression is better than Stac's. > > > > > > Stac doesn't do disk compression for Windows 98, so the above > > > is absurd. > > > > Err, right. That's why Stac is out of the market. If they provided a > > superior product for the operating systems that people wanted to use, > > they'd still be here. > > Remember that 'closed' API thing? Now apply this to memory management > software, and it call becomes crystal clear. Of course MS-DOG did not > actually have disk compression in the OS, but then again it did not have > memory management and you had to roll your own... it was after all only > a 'disk operating system' (without disk compression or a descent > filesystem, one could note), so why bother about mem-management? Right, as the operating system matured, its features increased. Clearly, memory management that's integrated into an operating system is superior to memory management that's not. (Especially for Windows, because of its I/O model.) > > > >Windows 98's memory management is better than Quaterdeck's. > > > > > > Again, a disingenuous comparison. QEMM did not do the same sort of > > > memory management as Windows 98. > > > > Right. That's exactly my point. > > I have to agree than apples were never really similar to oranges. The point is, having third-party memory management is not really practical for a modern operating system. Developers have to be intimitely familiar with what their code is making the operating system do. This is particularly the case in WIN32 because of the way the operating system does its I/O. There are cases where you need to know what pool your memory came from or how it's aligned. It would not have been possible for Quarterdeck to maintain a superior product to Microsoft's, and in fact, they did not do so. For as long as their product was superior (relative to its cost), it continued to be used. Even '95 had defects in its memory management, so QEMM remained useful. Microsoft, however, kept improving their memory management to the point that it exceeded what QEMM could do. Note that consumers got all the benefits of QEMM, and still do to this day. > > > >IE is a better browser than Netscape's > > > > > > Not so, especially from a security standpoint. IE is riddled with > > > DANGEROUS security problems. > > > > You are the only one who thinks this. Pretty much everybrowser > > shootout since the respective 4.0 products were released has been won > > by IE. If you don't like ActiveX (which I personally don't), you can > > turn it off (which I don't either, *sigh). > > You are probably one of the few users unaware of the semi-regular > IE-based windows-exploit-of-the-week and that sure is at least > interesting. Unless of course, you have some personal reason to > re-baptize exploits to 'features'. I hope this has nothing to do with > the pretty obvious fact that you are in a way 'employed' in M$. I am completely aware. It's strange, but people don't seem to care. I don't know why, but they don't. IE continues to win browser shootouts over Netscape despite these security problems. I'm sorry that people don't have the preferences that you may think they should have. I know how you feel. I'm very paranoid about security, having grown up in New York. My wife laughs at me for locking the car to run into the house to get something. She'd leave the car running with the keys in it -- that would be unthinkable to me. There's no accounting for taste. Most people care more about how nice the pages look and how fast they seem to load. Microsoft knows this. Yes, I wish they had put some real work into ActiveX. It's a shame they didn't. And, again, I am in no way employed by Microsoft. I own no stock in the company. I have never been paid by them for any reason. I have made a standing offer to sign and notorize a statement to this effect. I'd appreciate if you'd refrain from baseless slander. > > > Alas, Netscape was shut down by Microsoft's predatory tactics. The > > > shell of the company was bought by AOL, primarily for its portal > > > and peripherally so that AOL could avoid total dependence on > > > Microsoft's browser by keeping Navigator barely alive. > > > > Umm, it had nothing to do with any predatory tactics. It had > > everything to do with IE being a better browser. > > > And as I explained, using predatory tactics to replace a superior > > product with an inferior one gains nothing. > > With the exception of a few extra bucks and a larger market share (at > least for a while). How do you get extra bucks? Please explain that to me. The additional value that a bundled product adds to the product it's bundled with is equivalent to the value of the product alone, unless the bundling itself adds value. If the bundling itself adds value, it's not predatory (under US law). As for larger market share, while that's true numerically, it's an entirely meaningless number. Consider for example the markets of x86 PC operating systems and browsers designed to run on x86 PC operating systems. If we assume that Microsoft has a monopoly in the first market, and every single potential customer in the second market has already bought a product from the first market, and the ratios are fixed (you don't need more browsers for your OS, and you don't need more OSes from your browser) there is no benefit to the monopolist in cornering the second market. Suppose, for example, that Netscape for Windows was a superior browser. This would make Windows itself more valuable, and Microsoft could extract 100% of this value from the market by increasing the price of Windows. No predation would be necessary. In fact, Windows owes a lot of its value to the existence of third-party software. Microsoft extracts the value from these third-party products precisely by increasing the cost of Windows due to this value. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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