Re: In Japan: Microsoft Licensing Plan Denounced By User Group

["Kendall G. Clark" <kclark@superfly.ntlug.org>]

  All,
  
  I hate to be overly pessimistic, as I think there are still glimmers of hope
  to be found, but this whole licensing debate is just ONE, and a visible one
  at that, reason why MONOPOLIES, whether de facto or de jure, are bad, bad
  things for consumers.
  
  Microsoft would never have the temerity to do something as stupid as this if
  they had one real competitor who could capitalize on this mistake. Since
  they don't have even one real, robust competitor, they can get away with
  almost anything.
  
  The fear I have is that if they survive this DoJ crisis mostly unscathed, it
  will only empower them for more monopolistic power grabs in the future. I
  feel like we need a cyber-version of Jean-Luc Picard telling the Borg (i.e.,
  MS):
  
         the line in the sand must be drawn HERE!
       
  What angers me the most is that I can so easily say, as I did above, that MS
  has no real competitors for something like Office '9x. Of course there
  \\are\\ plenty of competitors but, somehow, ``knowing how to use a
  computer'' or ``being computer literate'' has come to mean ``knowing how to
  use Office '9x.''
  
  People think, because it's what the media tells them to think, that if you
  can use Office, you are compute literate.
  
  Bad for people. Good for Microsoft.
  
  Ugh...
  
  Best,
  
  Kendall Clark