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Date:      Mon, 22 Nov 1999 21:24:08 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        davids@webmaster.com (David Schwartz)
Cc:        jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org, tlambert@primenet.com, crh@outpost.co.nz, chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit"
Message-ID:  <199911222124.OAA27873@usr01.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <000001bf31f5$62ce77b0$021d85d1@youwant.to> from "David Schwartz" at Nov 18, 99 10:47:38 am

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> > >> > Is it possible for company to cause the adoption of lesser
> > >> > technology purely by business/marketing tactics?
> > >>
> > >> Yes.  It required the ability to wield what is called "monopolistic
> > >> power" in the marketplace.  If you can wield this power, you can
> > >> subvert normal free-market pressures, and by subverting, ignore them.
> > >
> > >	Then why is it that not one single clear example of this
> > has ever been
> > >found? This must be some extreme usage of the word "possible".
> >
> > Then what would you call M$ requiring all machines sold by OEMs to have
> > Windows pre-installed, when OS/2 and DOS were viable alternatives, and
> > OS/2 may have been superior?
> 
> 	It's not an example of the adoption of a lesser technology unless OS/2
> actually _is_ superior. Since it only "may have been", this is not a clear
> example. Read over the full thread of what I said (cited above).

With this clarification by example, I can cite a number of cases
where a clearly superior technology was locked out of the market,
since that is what is being asked for:

o	Thomas Edison, for a long time, locked out Alternating
	Current, the invention of Nikola Tesla, on the basis of
	untrue accusations.  Edison went so far as to invent the
	electric chair to "prove" the dangers of AC.

o	When Honda introduced the CRX/HF, a 72 MPG carbuerated
	car into the US in the early 90s, US automakers tested
	one to destruction and then lobbied to change the safety
	standards to pos-facto render the car "unsafe" (the car
	I currently drive gets ~64 MPG freeway; no it is not a
	CRX/HF).

o	DAT was effectively lobbied out of existance as a music
	recording standard by the record industry, for fear of
	perfect digital reproduction of CDs.  It was first sentenced
	into recording at a beat frequency relative to the CD data
	rate, and then further banished by other ridiculous
	restrictions having nothing to do with the technology.

o	DIV/X would have been a superior vehicle for Internet
	based rental of videos; it was effectively driven out
	of existance by greedy attempts to apply the technology
	to the inappropriate target of retail sales-as-rentals.

o	IBM PCs are Intel based instead of Motorolla based.
	Enough said, I think (other than "segments are for worms").

o	The US television system was well established as being
	NTSC based, when the superior PAL technology for color
	representation was released.  The US did not adopt it.

o	The Japanese HDTV market is currently locked into an
	analog broadcast standard.

o	Due to the "space race" for the moon, the US scrapped
	plans for a space station and shuttle-like system, with
	a ground-to-orbit, orbit-to-moon, moon-to-orbit plan,
	for the "big-ass-rocket-approach" (Apollo), with the
	result that it's taken us over 30 years to approach the
	ability to maintain a permanent manned space presence,
	and it will be a decade or more before we colonize the
	moon.

I've got thousands of examples of this, since I've made rather
a study of human stupidity...


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.


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