[Am-info] Re: FC: Charles Arthur's unaccustomed defense of Microsoft (re: Xbox)

[Gene Gaines]

Third of 3 emails from the Politech list.

Gene
gene.gaines@gainesgroup.com

> ---

> Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 11:21:17 +0000
> To: declan@well.com, Eric Cordian <emc@artifact.psychedelic.net>
> From: "Charles Arthur, The Independent" <carthur@independent.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: FC: Why did the Neo Project halt work on hacking Microsoft's
>   Xbox?

> Hi ...

> A point needing clarification about Microsoft, whose side I rarely find
> myself on.

> At 6:49 pm -0500 on 9/1/2003, Eric Cordian <emc@artifact.psychedelic.net>
> wrote:

>  >The Microsoft Xbox is internally an Windows 2000 box, with a 733 mhz 0.18
>  >micron Coppermine Mobile Celeron, 64 MB of DDR RAM on two high speed
>  >channels, a 10 GB disk, custom nVidia GPU, Ethernet, 4 USB ports, a 5x
>  >DVD-ROM drive, and a Dolby capable audio processor, all at a lovely price
>  >point of $199.
>  >
>  >It is said that Microsoft loses money on every one sold,

> You can't really believe that it doesn't lose money on them, can you? At
> that spec, pretty much any two of the components costs that much on the
> street.

>  >You can of course run anything on your Xbox if you modchip it, but this
>  >requires taking it apart, voiding the warranty, getting permanently
>  >blacklisted for Microsoft's online gaming services, and other bad things.

> Depends how badly you want a Web server/new PC for Linux.

>  >Microsoft, an illegal monopoly in the area of computer operating systems,
>  >is attempting to garner a share of the gaming market.

> Whoa there. Microsoft's monopoly of desktop operating systems is *not*
> illegal. It is perfectly entitled to it, else the courts would be trying to
> stop it. What was (is) illegal was its use of that monopoly on desktop
> operating systems to muscle in to areas such as (specifically) browsers,
> where it was found guilty of breaking the law by Judge Penfield Jackson,
> whose findings of fact were not overturned by the Appeals Court.

> There's no evidence that Microsoft is using anything but its vast cash pile
> garnered from years of not paying dividends to its shareholders to fund the
> Xbox. It's not using its Windows monopoly to sell the Xbox. You could even
> argue that it's taking business away - games sales for PCs dropped last
> year, and since many people buy a new PC partly for games, you could argue
> that MS is seeing fewer PC sales (where it rakes it in on Windows and
> Office etc) through its Xbox effort, for which all it gets is mounting
> losses.

>          best
>          Charles

>   -------------------------------------------------------------------
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