Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 02:29:18 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <davids@webmaster.com>, <soralx@cydem.org>, <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org> Cc: des@des.no, bitabyss@gmail.com, af300wsm@gmail.com Subject: RE: Suggestions please for what POP or IMAP servers to use Message-ID: <BMEDLGAENEKCJFGODFOCIEDNCFAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <MDEHLPKNGKAHNMBLJOLKKEHGIPAC.davids@webmaster.com>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: David Schwartz [mailto:davids@webmaster.com] > Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:04 PM > To: soralx@cydem.org; freebsd-chat@freebsd.org > Cc: tedm@toybox.placo.com; des@des.no; bitabyss@gmail.com; > af300wsm@gmail.com > Subject: RE: Suggestions please for what POP or IMAP servers to use > > > > > I will act as an arbiter for a minute here, can I? > > The support for your position comes in bulk from "historical" data. Ted > > holds that the whole Netscape ordeal was manipulated to intentionally > > put Microsoft into vulnerable position in that respect, so as to divert > > attention of the court from other, far more important issues. I cannot > > judge how right this statement is, but I would thus say you are relying > > too much on those records being TRUE (a keyword here, means the kind of > > scientific truthfulness Feynman was lecturing about). > > This is a better statement of what's wrong with Ted's position > than I could > ever make, and I thank you. > Except that I said nothing about some vast mythical "conspiracy" But, continue. It's facinating. > Like any other conspiracy theory, you must interpret all the > historical data > according to the rules of the conspiracy. When some off-hand > remark supports > the conspiracy, it supports the conspiracy. When clear, documented > statements conflict with the conspiracy, it is evidence of the > conspiracy's > effectiveness. > > If recourse to the historical record is off-limits, all that is left is > speculation. > The historical record, like any record, is a mixture of truth and falsehood. > If we accept, as Ted does, that we can't trust any documentation > to reflect > any truth at all, I never said that. > we will end up concluding whatever position we started > with. Anything that conflicts is just evidence of how well the truth we > search for was covered up. > > Ted can point to *no* historical evidence or evidence of any kind > to support > his claim that this revenue stream was a recognized at the time > he claims it > was Except I don't do that. > or that it ever motivated anyone to do anything. He can argue that it > should have and that it would be reasonable for it to have. > > The biggest counter-argument -- if Microsoft had a legitimate claim like > this, they surely would have raised it in court when they faced the > equivalent of a corporate death penalty. Microsoft never faced the equivalent of a corporate death penalty. How much do you know about anti-trust law? Apparently nothing. Anti-trust trials are not designed to "kill" the offending corporation. Even the most famous recent one - the breakup of the Bell system - did not have as it's goal the "killing" of Bell Telephone. The trials are intended to correct an abnormal market. An abnormal market is one in which a monopoly has gotten all market share worth getting. Note that it isn't important if that happened as a result of all customers choosing the company's products voluntarly or if the company engineered it. The fundamental assumption is that a monopoly hurts consumers because the lack of competition means that according to the capitalist system, consumers will be overcharged without competition in a market. Overcharging hurts consumers. The anti-trust remedy is to break the monopoly up or cause it to divest. It is not to put it out of business. "killing" Microsoft was never a goal of the anti-trust trial. The problem though is when it came to brass-tacks: the construction of a remedy - the judge realized that making Microsoft divest the applications division - ie: Microsoft Office - would not correct the operating system monopoly. Conversely, divesting the operating system division would not correct the office applications monopoly. In other words, divestiture did not appear to be any kind of a usable remedy. As a result the judgement was to force MS to "open" it's standards, ie: make it more transparent how the Windows internals work. That goal was largely accomplished. However, what wasn't forseen by the judge (understandable since the judge was an idiot) was that MS would go ahead and open the standards, then start waving the banner of "intellectual property infringement" about. That is why today the SAMBA project won't let anyone work on the samba code who has seen the Microsoft networking code. The MS networking code is freely available from Microsoft - you just sign a form with them and you get it. Then you will know all about how the SMB implementation on Windows works. If your a commercial software vendor this works fine since your distributing binaries - and Microsoft cannot show those compiled binaries to a judge and claim copyright or patent infringement. But if your distributing an open source implementation of the SMB networking your screwed because Microsoft can see your code, and they can take your code and their code to a judge, show the judge the signed form you signed to get their code, and claim that your infringing on their intellectual property. So in short, the remedy of the antitrust trial was defeated after the fact. It is pretty obvious that Microsoft figured out all of this before the trial, and took pains to divert attention from it so that the judges rulings would not cover the intellectual property aspect. Otherwise the judge would have ruled that interfaces and standards that were opened could NOT be patented or licensed. > Ted has no response to this > argument except the importance of keeping things secret. Well you never made this arguement before. Now that you have, I answered it. Ted
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