>From: Martin Ling <martin@nodezero.org.uk>
>Subject: Re: what if microsoft disobeyed the breakup?
>Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 22:45:53 +0100
>
>On Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 03:56:48PM -0500, Billy Brown wrote:
> >
> > A dictatorship implies an organization capable of resorting to violence
>to
> > enforce its will. Corproations do not have this ability. There are no
>IBM
> > secret police arresting their rival's customers, no Microsoft assassins
> > eliminating key enemy personnel, and no armies of Dell and Compaq
> > infantrymen clashing to secure the buying public's dollars.
>
>Anyone read 'Mercenary' by Mack Reynolds?
>
>
>Martin
Just an afterthought. When Commodore introduced the Amiga 2000, which
easilly outclassed both the Mac and PC in almost every respect by a wide
margin, the computers sat on the U.S. docks for half a year because a
customs official decided that they were "cheap PC clones" being dumped on
the U.S. market, a conclusion that was patently ridiculous. Not merely a
totally and completely different OS, but a radically different hardware with
a completely different chipset. No one could make such a mistake
innocently.... Que bono?
Or, a point which the Mac people have brought up independently, Reagan's
decision to embargo cheap RAM, resulting in a more than doubling of RAM
prices, came at just the right time to stifle the Motorolla 68xxx machines -
Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, all of them far advanced over the PC - that craved and
could use the extra RAM effectively for the kind of applications that
demanded it - video, animation, graphics, music. The embargo was lifted at
just the time that the PCs finally got the capability to access large
amounts of RAM. Nice coincidence there...
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