Phil Cook wrote:

>> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once 
>> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut 
>> down.
> 
> No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from 
> not installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company paying 
> total damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the widget. 
> If people die because of that, then people die.

M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in 
recorded human history. If they wanted to, they could turn out a quality 
product. It's not like it would cost too much to do it - it wouldn't. 
They have more than enough money to do it. They just have no motivation.

They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's "normal" 
for software to not work properly, and there's no real competition to 
illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother making a better 
product when you can just continue ripping people off?

>> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy 
>> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their 
>> strategy if that happened. But it won't.
> 
> At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it 
> comes to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a 
> better product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough to 
> encourage people to turn away from it.

Indeed. This is what M$ does best - they create software that is utterly 
awful, but not *quite* bad enough for mass migration to take place. 
[Part of this equation is obviously preventing the emergence of anything 
worth migrating to...]

>>>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded 
>>>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
>>>  Never seen any real competition for Windows.
>>
>> Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)
> 
> and yet prior to Windows 95 there were quite the number of competing OSs.

Really? That's news.

[Remember, until roughly Windows 98, I didn't even own an IBM PC.]

>> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software 
>> decision.
> 
> Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)

They make good stuff? ;-)

If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would like 
it. What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately 
over-priced crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all 
competition.

> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.

BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?

If you thought it was slow running from your HD then... you ain't seen 
nothing yet! B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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