TCLUG Archive
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

re: Microsoft antitrust (fwd)



All,

Got this question from a reporter at the Strib. Here's my reply...

_____________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Reid Palmer : jaymz@acm.cs.umn.edu : innerFire on IRC (EFNet)

Free Software Special Interest Group : acm.cs.umn.edu/~jaymz/sigfs/
Digital Media Center : www.umn.edu/dmc/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 15:21:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: Christopher Reid Palmer <jaymz@acm.cs.umn.edu>
To: 425@startribune.com, Portland@startribune.com, Av.@startribune.com,
    AS.@startribune.com, Mpls.@startribune.com, MN@startribune.com,
    55488@startribune.com, Colin Covert <coverct@gw.startribune.com>
Cc: jaymz@acm.cs.umn.edu
Subject: re: Microsoft antitrust

Colin,

> Hello. I'm a reporter with the Star Tribune and I wonder if you could
> help me with a story I'm writing.

Glad to. :)

> The story concerns the antitrust investigation of Microsoft. I'm
> contacting a number of people around the state for their views on the
> issue.

As usual, I have an opinion...

> If you have a few minutes to share your thoughts on the following
> questions, I would be most interested to have them.
> 
> Are consumers harmed by the dominance of the Windows operating system?

Of course they are. Microsoft products are well-known for their
inferiority. Specifically:

(1) They are bloated. By design. MS software uses huge amounts of random
access memory (RAM, "memory") for not that much more in useful features
(see #3). They also take up shockingly huge amounts of disk space, again
for not much more useful functionality. A full install of MS Office, for
example, easily equals, in itself, the disk space required by all other
software on the system, including the OS itself! This is unacceptable.

(2) The interface of Windows and of MS applications is terrible, and
unoriginal to boot. Most "features" in Windows 95/NT, for example, were
stolen outright from other operating system interfaces (Apple MacOS, NeXT
NEXTSTEP) and then re-implemented badly. Case in point: consider the Start
Menu. It is clearly "inspired by" the MacOS Apple Menu, but to distinguish
itself, Microsoft put the Start Menu at the bottom left. The problem is
that the Apple Menu is at the top left for a good reason: right-handed
mouse users (the majority of the population) naturally pull down and to
the right to select an item from a menu, not up and to the right. Thus the
Start Menu is an un-ergonomic copy of the Apple Menu. Granted, the Task
Bar can be moved to the top of the screen, but the bottom is its
default placement, and most uses don't know that it can be changed.

This same trend runs through the entire OS. As another example, the icons
in the Task Bar representing open windows and applications is a borrowing
from NEXTSTEP, except that thse icons cannot tell the user anything about
the status of the application in question as NEXTSTEP icons can (via
changing the icon itself or its color).

I could go on..

(3) MS software, OSes included, are phenomenally buggy. Creeping featurism
and outright bloat (beloved by hardware manufacturers) cause the
applications to be intractable, and Bill Gates' fundamental
misunderstanding of software revision insure that bugs will not get fixed
(he is on record as saying something to the effect of, "New versions of 
software are to introduce new features, not bug fixes!"). (Sorry I don't
have a source on hand, but it can be found on one of the many anti-MS Web
sites I'm sure.)

(4) Other software vendors make superior products. No MS product, OSes
included, are even suitable for the niche for which they are marketed. No
matter for what purpose a consumer might need a computer, an MS product is
always the worst choice. MacOS' learnability, ease of use and
administration make it superior for schools, home users, students,
artists, designers and musicians. Unix (of whatever flavor) is still the
*only* reasonable choice for server or mainframe applications -- NT,
billed as a server OS, is not even multi-user, and doesn't allow remote
administration (without the addition of a costly "Service" Pack). To see
NT in action as a Web server, take a look at the slashdot article
<http://slashdot.org/articles/9806091327254.shtml>, in which trafffic that
*real* Web servers see every day trounced the poor NT machine.

(5) The hardware MS products run on is laughably inferior. But hey, it's
cheap...and cheap is good, right?

> Could Department of Justice intervention or government regulation
> interfere with product design and its natural evolution? If do, would
> this be beneficial or detrimental to consumers?

The natural trend of capitalism is toward monopolism -- that's the *goal*
of every commercial enterprise, isn't it? Microsoft is only doing what any
other business would do, including Apple, Adobe, or whoever.

MS should have been nailed long ago for blatantly illegal and unfair
business practices (like putting undocumented hooks in the Windows32 APIs,
thus giving MS applications an inherent advantage over 3rd-party software
vendors), but this thing of integrating the Web and the desktop is beans.
Netscape Navigator ships with many distributions of Linux; no worries
because both products are free and open. It's only natural. The Web
browser Lynx can browse the local filesystem in a limited manner -- no
problem, Lynx is free and open. Integrating local and remote filesystems
is a good idea, (which MS didn't come up with), and I'd like to see more
of it.

The problem is marketing. If the *truth* were known, instead of dancing
vacuum suit people touting Wintel as a "multimedia" platform (1984? MacOS?
Anyone? Hello?), no one would buy Windows. Windows sucks, and this is
patently obvious to anyone who researches the desktop computer market even
a little. What is needed is not a trust suit, but for consumers to do a
little research and work educating themselves before they drop $2000 at
Best Buy for a cheap piece of crap computer.

> Should a company's focus be on what consumers want in their software, or
> what government referees say it can and cannot contain?

The focus should be on what customers want, of course. The government has
no place banning MS Internet Exploder from being bundled with the OS. The
only "protection" the consumers need is a little self-education on the
issues. If they buy lousy products, they have only themselves to blame.
Anyone who says "I bought Windows because that's what everyone uses"
deserves what they get, and can blame themselves. Not the government, not
Microsoft. I have no sympathy for idiots, and no love for government
intervention. If consumers don't want trusts and monopolies running their
lives, they should get off their apathetic asses and install a free
operating system like Linux or one of the free BSDs. Things are the way
they are because people (un)consciously consent to them.

> Bottom line: Will government intervention in the market do consumers
> more harm or good?

It will do more harm than good. It reinforces the notion that the
government is a protector that can shield people from their own stupidity
and will-less-ness. The simple fact is that there *are* alternatives to
Microsoft -- lots of them, and they're *all* superior. By far.

> Thank you in advance for your help. My article will appear shortly
> before the retail release of Windows 98 on June 25.

Gald to rant...er, help. :) Could you please email me when the article
comes out? I'd love to read it. Thanks.

_____________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Reid Palmer : jaymz@acm.cs.umn.edu : innerFire on IRC (EFNet)

Free Software Special Interest Group : acm.cs.umn.edu/~jaymz/sigfs/
Digital Media Center : www.umn.edu/dmc/