News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 10/24/97 | |
I didn't know this ... it demonstrates how much the world has changed in the last 10 years .... At that time this was very much in MS' interest - they dominated the mac apps business and it was clearly in their interest to get a lot of Macs out there ... I doubt billg would have written this memo after they succeeded with Windows.
From: PradeepS@aditi.com (Pradeep Singh);
Sent at 10/24/97; 4:35:45 PM;
Re:Gates to SculleyBriefly: (1) I continue to enjoy DaveNet. (2) This letter is, beyond doubt, a critical document in American business history. It's truly amazing to be able to read it. Thank you.
From: kwhemr@umich.edu (Kurt Wm. Hemr);
Sent at 10/24/97; 6:48:43 PM;
Re:Gates to SculleyHey Dave, I'm more interested in seeing Apple's response to Bill's letter... this looks like a plan to sell Windows ;-)
From: varshney@pacbell.net (S. Varshney);
Sent at 10/24/97; 3:35:38 PM;
Re:Gates to SculleyI'll admit I didn't figure out what Apple should do with licensing as early as Bill Gates did.
From: jjens@primenet.com (John Jensen);
Sent at 10/24/97; 3:31:43 PM;
Java and Smoke aside, Congrats on the scoop!The Gates memo contains nothing but good advice, it's a pity it wasn't followed in '85.
I read with interest the article you linked to the other day concerning the arrest of two individuals who imported aluminum beverage cans into Michigan in order to refund them for $.10 each, the highest deposit refund available in the U.S.
From: wjjones@rocketmail.com (William J Jones);
Sent at 10/24/97; 11:45:58 AM;
Michigan's Bottle Return LawAccording to the article, the "perps" were charged with larceny by false pretenses. Having looked at the Michigan statute involved, I am hard pressed to see what the false pretense was.
In general, the statute requires the sellers of beverages in containers to collect a deposit when they sell them, and also to redeem "empty returnable container[s] of any kind, size and brand sold by the dealer" . . . ëwhether or not the [particular container redeemed] was sold by the dealer." 18 Michigan Statutes Annotated ß12.1206(12).
Containers sold in Michigan have to be marked with their refund value and the name of the state of Michigan, and dealers can refuse to redeem containers that are not so marked, although they can redeem unmarked cans if they want. This rather clearly suggest to me, and I can find nothing in the statute to the contrary, that there is no requirement in the statute that the redeemed container had to have been sold initially in Michigan. (The dealerísí protection against customer abuse is a provision that they need not accept more than $25 worth of containers per person per day. Presumably this limitation, not applied in the reported instance, would make large-scale out of state redemption unattractive.)
In any event, even as to marked containers, many containers, particularly those of smaller vendors, are marked with the redemption values of several states. Nothing in the statute seems to preclude someone who acquired a Michigan-marked container somewhere else from returning it in Michigan. Indeed, under some sort of parallel to Greshamís Law, one would expect marked containers acquired elsewhere for less than the dime deposit to flow to Michigan as a matter of course.
Iíd be glad to have you post this. Perhaps someone else can shed light on the nature of the fraud asserted.
There used to be an expression in the record business; to wit "All it takes is $300 bucks and an opinion and your in it." Well today the stakes are much higher, something like $3m. I assume the same is true of your business. Because of these rising costs and attendant risks, what's happened to the entertainment business ,is accountants & MBA's have taken over and most believe that the CREATIVES can't count. It's no longer a game therefore just for creative movie/tv/theater/record producers. Actually it never was, but my father's comment that "Everyone has two businesses, his own and show business," has come true and competition has reached enormous proportions. The software game will probably follow this unintentional model......all of this is in the guise of progress, but then again, most of us are living better. The key is to start a new industry that few want to enter and where you can make your own rules. Remember though, if sucessful, all of the above will happen.
From: Mickapp@aol.com;
Sent at 10/24/97; 2:17:38 PM;
Re:Hope That Clears It UpGood piece. But did you really expect that this was a question of morality, not power?
From: markman@batnet.com (Markman);
Sent at 10/24/97; 10:36:01 AM;
Moral issues? How optimistic!Don't confuse consistency with ethics.
Microsoft's position is very consistent: "we define what the user gets with a Windows-branded experience. We define file management, Internet access, and Java."
It's also very ethical. Bear in mind that the king's morals are not the same as the subject's morals. Among subjects, symmetrical and reciprocal obligations hold sway. (The golden rule and all that).
But a king is not immoral for excercising the power to conscript soldiers, seize lands by eminent domain, and sign death warrants. It's in the job description.
Sun's Java and Netscape's Navigator/Communicator threaten Microsoft's sovereignty. Do you Microsoft to lie down and roll over? Gates as Lincoln: fighting to preserve the Union.
The fact that MSIE appears as a product on Mac doesn't mean that it's not integral to the environment on Windows. QuickTime is integral to Mac OS, and also a product that runs under Windows. Think of MSIE on Mac as an embassy on foreign soil. Could you argue that because the French Embassy in Washington doesn't make laws for the United States, that, therefore the French Government can't make laws for France?
This is Microsoft's biz strategy, expand and conquer. They go to far, wait for the waves of reaction to die down, then do it again. Too many people fall for that "after microsoft again thinking". M'soft _never_ fulfilled the letter of their anti-trust settlement with DOJ.
From: jonathan@webware-inc.com (Jonathan);
Sent at 10/24/97; 10:39:20 AM;
Re:Moral ArgumentsPerhaps you didn't know that most manufacturers win95 licenses do not allow them to replace the startup screen, desktop colors or background image. Some put a "customize your PC" shortcut on the desktop, but Microsoft OWNS that desktop from day one and the know how unlikely a consumer is to change anything. What about default search pages and home pages in the I.E. browser? Now that channels are pushing information to the desktop, Microsoft gets to decide the default information sources on the desktop of every consumer. If you're Bill Gates do you make the CNN channel the default? Or MSNBC?
Microsoft extends and controls, it won't stop... ever. Once they lock up one marketplace tightly enough that no competitor can ever regain control (say 80% of the market) they move to the next battleground. They've done it with OS, Word-processing, spreadsheets, digital video, IP stacks, hard disk compression, memory managers and are well on their way with e-mail, web browsing and development tools.
The DOJ may not understand, or care; but the list of companies that extended microsoft products only to be made useless in the next software release looks like the highway into Baghdad. As I said before, the only safe place to develop software for windows is as a vertical market integrator.
And now Microsoft is pushing into the enterprise market. As NT gains on Unix and other platforms, Microsoft will lock up the enterprise top to bottom. At the same time they are quietly increasing their presence in key vertical segments (banking, telecom) and building a large consulting organization.
Dave, there the only markets that microsoft will not enter in time are commodities (hardware, network infrastructure). They have to grow to survive and they can only grow by creating new markets on the low end (winCE, webTV) and expanding into new businesses.
Bill Gates spoke at a national newspaper convention, reassuring the publishers that he did not want their core biz, he only wanted to create the tools to allow them to create interactive products, meanwhile sidewalk is eating up local content one market at a time. Why people aren't more reactive to the threat of a competitor with $10Billion in cash reserves and a willingness to buy or build until it owns a market is a mystery.
Jonathan Peterson
Technical Director
IBM Interactive Media
http://www.interactive.ibm.com/
From: gnu@toad.com (John Gilmore);
Sent at 10/23/97; 11:21:10 PM;
Re:Challenging HTML> The HTML tools situation is dire. For a reason. Read on...
>
> Wizzy is short-hand for WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You
> See Is What You Get. Designers have been clamoring for wizzy HTML
> tools. The software industry tried to create them, PageMill,
> HomePage, FrontPage, but most professionally designed sites are
> done with text tools, BBEdit or Notepad.
>
> We could have saved a lot of time because it's not possible to do a wizzy
> tool for HTML because HTML is not wizzy. It's not what you see is what
> you get. It's what you see has little to do with what they see.
Exactly. It's designed to be able to display your information everywhere. Not just on machines that have the same number of pixels as the one you edited it on. Not just on machines that have the same number of colors. Not just on machines that do graphics!
HTML is designed so the *USER* is in control of their viewing experience. All the artsy-fartsy web designers hate this. They want to exactly define the user's experience. They wish they could reach into the user's screen and RESIZE their window to fit the designer's idea of how much screen space their page should take. (And they all think it should take a lot.)
Wrong.
For interactive WYSIWIG graphics over the net, the X Window System protocol works fine. For non-interactive WYSIWIG "fake paper" pages, Adobe has this abortion called .PDF. For real live WorldWideWeb, start thinking not of how you can control the user's experience, but how you can present information in a way that the user can find what they're looking for. Regardless of how many or few pixels or colors the user chooses to give you.
Here is a very simple example of the power of Microsoft.
From: bfrankel@ix.netcom.com (Barry Frankel);
Sent at 10/24/97; 8:10:27 AM;
A Graphic Example Of The Power of MicrosoftThis link will take you to Quote.Com and display a weekly chart of the price of a little software company called Citrix Systems.
When you look at the chart you will see that on one day the stock lost 60% of its value. What happened? On that day the company announced that rather than license its technology, Microsoft intended to develop an extension to the operating system that performed the same function. Bam! 60% of the company's valuation is gone.
Since then the company's stock has gained $175 million in market value. Why? Microsoft changed its mind and decided to license the technology.
A lot of people are missing the biggest threat of them all from Microsoft. I feel the DOJ has it right and it's a good thing for the to go after Microsoft.
From: webshelf@webshelf.com (Cameron Barrett);
Sent at 10/24/97; 9:13:28 AM;
A Message to WashingtonI worked for an ISP for almost two years doing tech support and system installation, configuration and troubleshooting. If there was one constant that ran throughout each and every experience, it was that the vast majority of computer users were absolutely clueless about their systems and had no idea how to fix anything. So how can you expect the average clueless computer owner to be able to install different software if they wanted to?
So Microsoft is essentially making the consumer's decisions for them as to what software is installed. This is bad and wrong. Consumerism is about choice.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue to "choose for the majority" then we may certainly have a strange time ahead of us.
The cliche phrase is completely correct when speaking of Microsoft: "You can have any color you want, so log as it's black."