Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:37:48 -0800 From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Terry Lambert" <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" Message-ID: <000801bf3531$d1e41a80$021d85d1@youwant.to> In-Reply-To: <199911222124.OAA27873@usr01.primenet.com>
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I apologize for leaving out one clarification -- the lock in must not be directly attributable to government intervention. Obviously, the government can pass legislation to lock out superior technologies (as it did with halogen headlights, for example). But even the government can't lock us in forever, as political climates will eventually change. >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. I don't know enough about this particular claim to comment. If you'd like, I'd be happy to do some research on it. I think a significant factor here is going to be that, for that time, the advantages of AC were not that particularly great. >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). How did they "lobby"? To the government? If so, it's government lock in. If not, then the problem was simply that people aren't omniscient and didn't realize it was superior. In that case, no lock in is involved. And if this is lock in, it's inexplicable by economic theory, since it's not clear why there are compatability advantages or network effects of any kind. (So this example can't be used to validate the theory of lock in) > 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. This is government lock in. > 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. This is not lock in. Nobody was locked into anything. This was just a case of a company bungling a product. Plenty of possibly superior technologies don't see the light of day at all, that doesn't lock anybody in to anything. > o IBM PCs are Intel based instead of Motorolla based. > Enough said, I think (other than "segments are for worms"). This is a case where the advantages of compatability outweight the costs of lock in. Considering the costs of adopting the new technology, it is no longer superior. Had Intel _not_ been able to come up with more and more powerful x86-based processors, this would be a perfect example. But since Intel has kept their technology competitive, it's not. > 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. Government lock in. > o The Japanese HDTV market is currently locked into an > analog broadcast standard. Government lock in. > 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. This is just an example of people not having clear crystal balls. It's not lock in. > I've got thousands of examples of this, since I've made rather > a study of human stupidity... Which are the ones that are lock in? If the economic theory of lock in is correct, there should be many clear examples. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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