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Comparing Microsoft and Apple to states... your thoughts.

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No2statism Posted: Thu, Oct 18 2012 3:25 PM

I've always thought apple was more monarchial than Microsoft while Microsoft has behaved like a Federal Republic (in that they constantly ask for user reports, then have the makers the of the software attempt to fix their own mess... they want to make it look like the consumer rules while they ultimately make the decisions that no one is conciously satisfied with).

Neither got what they wanted... Jobs seemed only half satisified and Microsoft screws itself over and its lower ranking employees over while screwing half their end user base over.

Isn't the state and in particular IP to blame for this?  Isn't opensource the best for most individuals?  Doesn't the govt hog Linux for itself because the state is the centralization of, for, and by aggression?  I don't like how everything has been cartelized and regulated so everything is uniform...

...I particularly don't like the electronics and monitor industry in which progress for even the foreseeable future sucks (OLEDs suck yet they're supposed to be the future when there was no sincere attempt at making LCDs better).  There isn't a single good monitor out there today and I don't think there ever was.  The state may be why people can't have displays totally custom made and the state is also the reason they aren't profitable.   The inherently inferior HDMI won over the superior DP 1.2 standard because of patents.  I believe VESA is so humble that they even say their standard (i.e., DP) compliments HDMI.  Maybe they do blame HDMI's success on the state, but I only read that VESA said that their standard was meant to compliment HDMI and I'm like... "WTF?  DVI and HDMI suck and the only reason DP 1.2 and in particular DDM (which turns off all monitor processing which is totally unnecessary since the source's display logic and its software can do processing much better than the crap in the display) haven't taken off is because of the state/IP"

Just as China-made products are about to get good, the US govt has pissed that oppurtunity away (by making them more expensive... even though people think there still isn't enough protection against China made imports) just like Reagan and Bush 41 pissed away the good Japan made products that beat the hell out of American products.

That said, these companies and the men at the top of the govts behind them make me worry about humanity and they make me want to die within the next year... honestly because the State is just being tyrannical and it is aiding the most intelligent criminals in power.  Think about AMD's new CEO ("we are going to be super aggressive" or something worse than that actually) and nvidia's CEO who won't step down until the market gets free enough to ruin nvidia.  They are too (re)cyclically wasteful and inefficient to serve society.  They serve themselves and the state instead.

 

 

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No2statism:
Isn't the state and in particular IP to blame for this?


IP does distort the software market, and does make it very tough to enter more mature markets.  The big players in a given market already hold massive patent portfolios, and create a patent thicket which makes it very hard for newer entrants.

This is a problem in any sector with IP, not just software.

No2statism:
Isn't opensource the best for most individuals?


No, not necessarily.  In some cases where the free is almost as good as the expensive closed, then yes, I would argue this is somewhat the case (LibreOffice/Microsoft Office, GIMP/Photoshop).

Open source software is mostly done in people's spare time, for fun, for research...  If there is a paid team of software engineers to keep improving/expanding the software, the teams in open source software do tend to be much smaller.  They are usually very limited in monies, and do not have much manpower, so they have to prioritize areas to improve much more narrowly (graphics is an area which usually does not get much love).

For example, in an open source program, it may be possible to add CUDA to speed up the speed of the program by a factor of X, but no one is willing, or has the expertise of this specific program/algorithm, to implement it and test it.

Closed source and for profit software brings a very large incentive towards making the product better, squashing any bugs (you will lose customers/money), and keeping certain sections of code up to date.

A quick example that pops into my head is the open source/closed source of Video Editing software.  For high end video editing, closed source programs are blowing open source out of the water.

In photo editing, compare Photoshop compared to GIMP.  Photoshop has many advantages for a professional editor, and they are constantly innovating and pushing the envelope (because they have lots of resources to put behind improving and implementing new ideas).

You then usually see closed source programs pushing the envelope, while open source software tries to follow in the wake by trying to emulate the new functionality.

No2statism:
There isn't a single good monitor out there today and I don't think there ever was.


Sure there is, but I do dislike the trend of the past many years to this crap "1080p" monitors.  Hopefully the trend starts going back towards having actual resolution increases.  I believe the push into higher resolution tablets will begin the push back into higher resolution monitors.

No2statism:
The state may be why people can't have displays totally custom made and the state is also the reason they aren't profitable.


Not necessarily.  There is nothing holding you back from getting a custom monitor built, it would just be very expensive to fabricate all the different parts for a very limited market.  The companies tend towards coming up with uniform standards/parts, which can then be used over a wide assortment of different products, and allow interchangability of parts between different companies.

No2statism:
The inherently inferior HDMI won over the superior DP 1.2 standard because of patents.  I believe VESA is so humble that they even say their standard (i.e., DP) compliments HDMI.  Maybe they do blame HDMI's success on the state, but I only read that VESA said that their standard was meant to compliment HDMI and I'm like... "WTF?  DVI and HDMI suck and the only reason DP 1.2 and in particular DDM (which turns off all monitor processing which is totally unnecessary since the source's display logic and its software can do processing much better than the crap in the display) haven't taken off is because of the state/IP"


You should read about Path Dependance.  Here is a few articles by Timothy Terrell:

https://mises.org/daily/329/Path-Dependence-and-Antitrust

https://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=271

Here was a topic on the forums about QWERTY vs DVORAK:

https://mises.org/community/forums/t/1238.aspx

I believe he also gave a few talks on the subject at some of the Mises conferences (maybe Mises University?).

My long term project to get every PDF into EPUB: Mises Books

EPUB requests/News: (Semi-)Official Mises.org EPUB Release Topic

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