Problems installing FC4 on Dell Optiplex GX620

[Christofer C. Bell]

Yeah, I'm breaking a cardinal rule by top posting, but what
Christopher Williams has to say here are the wisest words spoken in
this thread.  I think they bear repeating, and re-reading.

On 3/19/06, Christopher A. Williams <chrisw01 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> In reality, when any company dominates in a market (because of the
> Standard Oil suits from the early 1900's, the threshold is usually set
> at around 60% market share), they are considered to have monopoly power
> in that market. Such companies are then referred to as de-facto
> monopolies or just monopolies. See Wikipedia's definition
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) for more info. Quoting directly
> from it (for those who prefer to read it here):
>
> "Industries which are dominated by a single firm may allow the firm to
> act as a near-monopoly or "de facto monopoly", a practice known in
> economics as monopolistic competition. Common historical examples
> arguably include corporations such as Microsoft and Standard Oil
> (Standard's market share of refining was 64% in competition with over
> 100 other refiners at the time of the trial that resulted in the
> government-forced breakup)."
>
> With 90% plus market share in the desktop OS market, Microsoft most
> certainly qualifies, and was legally defined as a monopoly as a finding
> of fact in the DOJ case. They also exhibit the behaviors typical of
> monopolies of this type. In addition, Microsoft was found liable under
> US anti-trust laws of abusing their monopoly power (again, another
> finding of fact in the case).
>
> To be clear, it's not illegal to have monopoly power in a market, but
> anti-trust laws are very specific in that, if you have such power in a
> market, you are not allowed to engage in certain practices that you
> otherwise might be able to do. This includes things like selling your
> product below its marginal cost to keep competitors from entering the
> market, raising the barriers to entry into the market through things
> like predatory pricing (ex. Microsoft's per system licensing scheme for
> HW vendors that essentially raised the price of competing operating
> systems by the price of the Windows license) and leveraging monopoly
> power in one defined market to gain control in a second market.
> Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows to kill off Netscape is a
> classic example here. In plain US English, even the trade magazines use
> the vernacular that Microsoft was "convicted" of being an abusive
> monopoly. You are indeed splitting hairs, and when confronted with this
> in a question, prefer to answer the question with other questions. This
> is a clear sign that you are unable to support your notion fully and
> your tactics would cause you to lose in debate class.

--
Chris

"I trust the Democrats to take away my money, which I can afford.  I
trust the Republicans to take away my freedom, which I cannot."