by
: After working with NT for a while, I've decided that the name NT must
: have been coined considering its functionality:
: - caN'T
: - doesN'T
: - woN'T
Very true, but most unfortunately the unbelievably vast sums and steamroller
market momentum that M$ now has make it virtually impossible for it to fail
to take over all meaningful commercial and home computing. The antitrust
actions waited far too long; the consent decree of 1995 was never enforced
and M$ consolidated its hold.
In the Unix arena, even the analysts sympathetic to Unix see the
handwriting on the wall; and it has nothing to do with the current
state of the art where Unix is better. M$ has the money, many times
many times over, to eventually make its product equal and even
better. And it has all the sources of revenue to make it happen, while
the revenue for Unix is drying up. NT is mentioned and trumpeted many
thousands of times more often in the media and advertising than Unix,
and it is being purchased accordingly. And the rich just keep on
getting richer.
Unix will shrink as M$ improves, and improve it will, unfortunately.
In the legal arena, it doesn't much matter. Whichever way the decision goes,
M$ will have proceeded as it says it is going to by the time the decision
comes down years from now. M$ has absolutely vast revenues and assets to pay
for armies of the very best legal minds for sale. So at the end, even if it
loses, the others will no longer be viable in the market. Their heirs may
receive damages and their technology will be bought out by M$. M$ will have
to pay something substantial of course, but by then the market will have
wiped out all other viable players. M$ may be broken up into smaller M$
players, but they will not be the competitors that exist today, they will be
the divisions of M$ competing against each other.
At worst, all the young Turks at M$ will have their own baby M$ fiefdoms. M$
will be a regulated monopoly. But the wealth flow will still be in exactly
the same direction.
It won't make a damned bit of difference in the short term to anyone
outside M$ whatever happens.
How do I know? It is getting harder and harder to sell anything
outside the M$ solution. I hate the M$ solution, but it is no longer
about the best current solution, but MIS departments fear that
anything else is likely to be an orphan and unsupportable. Nothing
seems to convince them otherwise. As soon as NT can offer everything
that Unix can, even if somewhat less performance, NT will be the
choice. Only where it cannot perform at all can anything else be
deployed, in the meantime. For now. Because M$ fully intends to
change networking in such a way to exclude these systems though M$
only standards.
Outside of Unix, places that sell both Wintel (how I despise that name)
and Apple are selling almost *no Apple at all* anymore. Consumers
think there will no longer be software or hardware available
very shortly. M$ did not invest in Apple to save it, but to acquire
and merge its technology into M$.
The shakeout is here; those who M$ has almost overwhelmed have the illusory
hope of being saved by the US government. Unfortunately we are in the
position of the South Vietnamese government in the early seventies - they
could no longer defend themselves, and watched what advantage they once held
disappear as the U.S and North Viet Nam lawyers negotiated in Paris. While
the negotiations continued, the North continued to press its advantage
without letup.
That is what's happening. And like South Vietnam, we're going to have to
accept the unfortunate reality of M$ hegemony no matter how unscrupulously
achieved and live under that domineering influence. Maybe a few "boat
people" can make it to Silicon Valley.
Maybe not. SGI just announced they are going to transform themselves from
makers of Unix workstations into a Wintel clone assembler. That is
certainly capitulation.
NT is poised to get the whole market because that is what the market
now wants, even though it was achieved through what appears to most
observers to have been illegal means. Unfortunately, as everywhere,
possession is going to be 9/10 of the law.
I'll never forget how they did it, though, and like the dissidents
that protested against the Soviet regime, will wait for the time
when Microsoft, too, will pass.