Re: Microsoft as regulator [Was Re: Government utility style regulation]

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

--- From a message sent by Stuart Hysom on 7/16/98 7:12 AM ---

>Suppose we were to have the kind of control over automobiles that it
>seems some people advocate as important in computers: Some folks want to
>have steering wheels on the right, some want 'em on the left.  Some
>people want to drive on the left side of the street.  When they crash,
>is it the EMTs fault when the driver dies in an accident?
>
>With freedom to choose we should expect responsibility.  If my job is to
>write, I should be willing to give up "control" when that control leads
>to 30% of my time spent fixing a product.  Alternatively, if I want
>freedom, I need to accept responsibility; if that means that I spend
>more time working on "managing" my workstation and tweaking the desktop
>than working on whatever my "work" is, a problem exists.
>
>I would argue that we need to encourage balance between end user ability
>to control their environment and an administrator's, manager's,
>employer's ability to control his or her own workplace.  There seems to
>be an inherent conflict here.  Simply advocating freedom of end user
>control seems remarkably American to me.

Ah, but isn't this simply a restatement of the fundamental fallacy? 
Nobody OWNS the underlying technology of automobiles, so it isn't a 
matter of individuals chaotically overturning the auto design conventions 
willy-nilly. This does not occur because WITHIN those conventions are 
ample room for producing competing, proprietary auto designs. 

The first problem within the computing marketplace is Microsoft's 
ownership of the underlying conventions. The second problem is the 
media's complicity in reinforcing the notion that this situation somehow 
works to the benefit of consumers.

   Mitch Stone
   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
 +---
   He who lets the world ... choose his plan of life for him, 
   has no need of any other faculties than the ... one of imitation.
   He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. 
                                      --- John Stewart Mill