F. Leon Wilson wrote:

[...]

>The benefits of a Micro$oft breakup will be seen in the innovations of
>hardware and software item reaching the market place.  A reduction the
>total cost of software ownership and computing in general.  Many of
>corporation, organizations and end users held hostage to the Micro$oft
>secretes standards will be freed to advance their development and the
>development of the industry in general.

True, but again not the whole truth.
>
>There are too many people/corporation and/or organizations that have
>decided to solely concentrate on Micro$oft's psedo standards and products.
>They ignore better implementations of products and services which create
>barriers to innovations and progress.

"Pseudo standards"? I take it you mean standards which are designed largely
to prevent competition. But I'm not sure there are any other kind of
standards, or that competitive standards would be in anyone's interests. In
high technology competitive standards are a positive menace, as the Mars
explorer fiasco, involving a mix of Imperial and Metric components,
demonstrated.

Standards are always designed to shut out those who do not use them. The
problem is when standards are privately-owned. If the problem is the
standard windows operating system being privately owned and being used to
stymie competition, then surely the solution is to remove the system from
private ownership?

Standards are, by their nature, a monopoly. Eliminating non-standard items
is an important part of creating a standard. Standards are an
acknowledgement that monopoly is not only useful, but essential in many
many circumstances. Such monopolies are simply the most efficient way to
operate.

Bill Gates clearly understands that it is much more efficient for there to
be one standard operating system, to produce one standard browser, one
standard word processor, etc. And you have to admit that he does it
cheaply.

There is something of a problem with the fact that the Microsoft "standard"
products are very often far from the best possible standard. But the vast
wealth of Microsoft was created from the success of inferior standards,
because the consumers would clearly rather have a crappy standard than no
standard at all.

Monopoly is an irresistable trend in capitalism, for both commercial and
technical reasons. It is simply more efficient. Resistance is futile, don't
you think Tresy? ;-)

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell tas