Robert said:
Yes, but more: you accused him of indulging it, of not
being able to see past it. In sort, of unprofessionalism.
I was not surprised to see him react.
My comment on the subject, which I have now posted twice, said
(exactly) that his knowledge of monopolies as the employee of a
monopolist was not a credential for discussing monopolies. You can
easily read into that the further thought that he has an odd point of
view, or is biased. Given the opportunity, I stated it as, he had an
odd point of view, not that he is biased. Pressed on the subject, I
have said that I do not Keith to be the kind of person who can see past
his own biases.
I will take your response as a strong statement that you
do NOT mean to provoke or insult Kieth.
No, I did not mean to provoke him. Nor was the purpose of my post to
insult him. It is very hard for me to disagree with Keith without his
acting insulted.
Oh dear. Do you really see yourself under attack? This must
feel very uncomfortable, and I assure you I intend no such
discomfort. I try to separate discussing ideas and actions
from judgements of core personality.
You're kidding, right? I'm tempted to turn this into a short story.
If I *were* in a bar, I'd have been out the door long ago, looking in
the rear view mirror to see if anyone was following me.
I assure you, I would be most interested in such a talk, and
take it extremely seriously. So would many others. There's
quite an industry of MS-entrail readers.
Excuses and justifications are often more interesting than a
simple repetition of known facts. There are so many different
ways to lie that the direction becomes interesting.
But would you take the explanations seriously as commentary on the
effect of monopolies on markets?
Someone who becomes emotional to the point of using unambiguously
offensive language in an argument doesn't strike me as someone
who can reliably factor out their own bias.
I believe that's an unjustifiable correlation [prejudice].
You are entitled to your opinion.
Only with respect to the verity of facts presented. I did
not see you disputing facts, only conclusions. The character
of the speaker is irrelevant to the logic of his arguments.
The character of the speaker is relevant to deciding whether the
speaker can factor out his own biases. You said that some speakers can
"transcend." I gave just one characteristic of Keith as evidence as to
why I don't expect him to "transcend."
??? no, I was suggesting that you question Keith while
he was still talking with you (in this thread?).
The original sentence to which you took offense was phrased as a
question.
I remember the 1970s quite clearly, and the large schism
between scientific and business computing, particularly on the
subject of IBM computing. There _were_ choices (even for biz),
but they were unpalatable because development costs that had
been credited as "saved" would have to be paid.
Yup. And businesses do *not* have to use Microsoft now, but it's
damned hard not to.
Not hardly. Far fewer users & apps. A DP dept to potentially
retrain vs 70+% of many corps.
Your engineer's perspective is deceiving you. The dusty decks of
technical applications are history. Mainframe apps of decades ago are
still in use for fear of bringing down a house of cards. The technical
equivalent is NASA in the market for 8086 processors because that's
what some test rig for the shuttle uses.
Agreed. Some jumped at the bait. How could they later
complain with any semblence of justice. Many were warned.
Should they be protected from their abject stupidity?
The issue, I thought, was my characterizing IBM as a monopoly, not
whether regulatory action would have been justified or helpful. One of
the surprises of this thread for me is to find myself agreeing with the
logic of commentators from places like the Cato Institute in that I
have a hard time imagining how regulation will help. I see the net
effect of regulation as adding uncertainty and cost--not a view that
arises from any kind of dogmatic belief in the inherent badness of
government.
I don't know. I presume people read here because they feel
that will learn something. I take them at their own judgment.
Personally, I don't think I fully know what is going on. I see
various actions that have multiple explanations. I don't see
everything, nor know all the possible explanations. But in time,
more things will happen and "what's going on" may become clearer.
I may not know everything that's going on, either, but it will be very
hard to surprise me.
If Intel really were keeping a stranglehold on a market through
marketing tactics, that would be interesting to understand, but it will
take decades to sort that out, if it ever is sorted out--and the answer
to that question is different from the likelihood of AMD getting
anything like what it wants out of its lawsuit against Intel.
My opinion is that AMD isn't going to get much out of this action, but
my single opinion is at least as useless as any other single opinion in
the matter.
RM
