You pretty much got it - the core of Microsoft's argument was 100% vindicated by history. It's one of the little quirks of nature:

1. Bundling DOES help the consumer. Apple is the proving point. The users crave a unified bundled approach. Even to the level MS never envisioned, hardware, service and software.

2. An upstart competition could arrive at anytime and take MS's market share, because unlike natural monopolies on resources, the human capital needed to fight MS was readily available to competitors. Google, Apple, Blackberry, all came from nowhere to drink MS's milkshake.

3. The browser is a natural part of the operating system and it's unfair to force MS to accommodate competitors who someday would be more profitable or powerful than MS.

4. MS doesn't have the ability to set prices which is a critical part of the monopoly power. This is so obviously true. MS exerts almost no price pressure on the market these days.

Your politics are backwards. Nationally, the car dealers are associated strongly with the conservatives in the GOP. Many, many, many car dealers are owned by Republicans.

Nate Silver correlated the data nicely back when the major makers were on the verge of bankruptcy.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com...

It's better than 8-to-1 correlation (i.e., a fairly strong correlation).

The problem is that, adjusting for inflation, it should be dramatically less. That's the trend. The major outlier is for raw materials which are more costly to extract and process for use.

In the 1950's a decent Westinghouse consolve TV cost about $1000. Inflation adjusted to today, that's about $9000. You'd be hard pressed to spend $9000 on a TV today unless it was a big theater setup or was quite exotic. That's because technology has replaced the need for many expensive raw materials, improved production (including moving it overseas), and driven out the excess.

Auto manufacturers have a problem, and they are the ones driving cost inflation, trying to convince Americans to spend more and more of their income each year on automobiles. For the last two generations this has been through fictionalization of automobiles - you are buying a payment, not a product. That has started to lessen, but record low interest rates have prevented a major crash in sales, and actually led to some good years against a trend of decline.

There is a large untapped market for a car marker who builds the same model of car, with no changes other than manufacturing refinements, for 7-15 years, direct to consumers. From a manufacturing theory perspective, there are something like 7,000-10,000 drivers in an auto production line. 10 years is about what you could expect to optimize the supply chain for each driver, maybe half that if you are very good at managing supply chain. This type of company is stymied by three things:

a. cheap credit money which makes it cheaper to buy a new car than to maintain and run older cars,
b. regulatory creep which increases requirements continually and
c. consumers willing to spend a large slice of their income on flashy cars and status symbols.

And in the end, car dealerships do deserve to undergo a radical change in their structure. They are inherently bad for customers.

For one - they make money in ways that customers are not aware of. The most insidious being "point spread". You walk in, buy a car, and they make money selling the car (fair), future service either under warranty or direct to the consumer (fair), and more importantly, on the financing. You might qualify for a certain rate, but they get a big chunk of the difference between your best qualifying rate and what they convince you to pay. So you qualify for a 3.5% rate, but they get you sign on the line for 9.9%, and they get roughly 50% of the point spread between 3.5% and 9.9%, which on many financing arrangements, is far more than the profit involved in selling the car to begin with.

Second, they do an only okay job with service. They do not typically do as a good job as independent shops, and for warranty work, face little competitive price pressure.

Finally, they are effective local monopolies and do not always respond to market pressure. Because of brand monopolies, there is not as much competition as they would have you believe. The car market is deeply segmented, and so there are not as many brand choices in a price/demographic band as you might think. On paper there are 15 manufacturers selling through dealerships in a market. But for a single random consumer, there are likely 3 or 4 options that meet the basic criteria of type and price range.

In many small towns or areas, the local car dealer is the wealthiest person in town. There is a lot of profit standing between the car maker and the consumer. And in the end, this excess is needs to be wrung out of the system. Manufacturer's should not be able to prevent car dealers from selling and servicing cars, but long-term, the concept of a franchised car dealership needs to be scaled back. Channel conflict is inevitable.

If you are not a member of one of various elites, you have no expectation of privacy, protection under the law, or economic security.

I feel quite dirty even thinking about defending Senator Feinstein... but she has a point... though I don't know if she's making it as she could.

In the US we are taught that we have three co-equal branches (it's really two with a lessor third, but I digress)... so one branch secretly spying on/impeding a second... is not quite kosher... at least with the FBI raid on the congressional offices of William "Cold Cash" Jefferson... a claim could at least be made that it was two branches acting together to target a member of the third and through normal legal practices ( ie checks and balances)... even that was attacked by virtually all in congress.

if you want to see tyranny, nothing beats homeowners' associations.

You went in knowing you'd be part of an HOA (unless you were rather ignorant and didn't read through the covenants of the property you moved to/purchased (alas, I cannot erect an oil derrick on my property which was the major takeaway of reading through all of the paperwork when closing on my house (an no HOA!!! (which I already knew))... in the end you agreed to live under that tyranny... I on the other hand did not vote for a single person who voted for and ultimately forced Obamacare down the thought of the American people... so I'd argue that my tyranny beats your tyranny.

That assumes you put much trust in Google vs your ISP... I do not trust either.

If the point is to look for pathogens in other peoples fluids...

well, I'm not real excited about holding the thing mm from my eye :)

(somehow having a giant metal/glass column as a buffer seems less creepy)

haha.

Oops :)

Ok, Feynman ridiculed NASA about the _other_ shuttle disaster :)

My apologies :)

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...

I've read the booklet and I found it persuasive.

Tufte (and iirc, Feynman) also cited reliance on Powerpoint on the Columbia disaster

I think it's important to understand what powerpoint is good for. It is good for helping an average presenter guide the delivery of low-bandwidth information into a low-attention span audience who are not subject matter experts.

In other words, it's good for 90% of the people, 90% of the time.

If you are trying to send people to space, or create controlled black holes on the European mainland, do not use it.

Another situation where PP can be used effectively is to present visual information - photos, charts, etc.

Ironically enough, I borrowed the Tufte powerpoint rant from the Microsoft Library here at work :)

These sorts of announcements have the effect of freezing developers and keeping them from moving to superior technology.

Which developers are you talking about? I'd wager that the biggest money makers and users of these APIs (AAA game developers) already have good enough relationships with Microsoft, Sony, etc where under NDA they are able to offer feedback on existing and proposed API/platform directions and allow themselves to be in sync with where it is going.

Politicians get voted out of office **all the time** in America.

People loose races yes... but on average an incumbent is far more likely to hold onto their seat then lose it to a non-incumbent.

Governments have more accountability than private companies in a democracy...no matter what the economic system.

For the most part I can (and do) choose which companies I do business with... I don't have the same degree of choice when it comes to government.

It's scary and black.

Racist!

I guess this means that my wife's pink AR-15 variant with Hello Kitty stickers isn't an assault weapon... wheew!

Ok, so your premise, from one email altercation, is that Theo's attitude is so intense, so "he can never be wrong", that openbsd has no security advantages. Never mind that the premise is ridiculous.

But the actual evidence suggests that internet arguing aside, openbsd eventually adopts valuable security practices and technologies that Theo initially disagrees with.

So, what was the point of your first post, exactly?

Are you going to modify your position on openBSD, now that you know the project incorporates outside feedback, even when they publicly disavow it at first? I mean, you're a rational guy, right?