You are correct. I was being a bit glossy, the point being as you detailed that the lack of common rules and standards meant things could be made to "only work with our stuff". Apple is a good example as well, they could only run their OS on specific chip designs, it wasn't until Core 2 Duo that they relented and ported for X86 officially. I have seen some really bizarre incantations and spells used to run previous stuff in a VM setting, but Core 2 was what got them out in the open.

Mephesdus, Rozar,

Good exchange.

I have been reading this thread with some interest also. One thing that I think is also important to keep in mind is that the market works eventually and restrains even these moguls unless the government interferes with or hampers the cycle (and always has to varying degree). For instance: Rockefeller's oil and pipelines hurt Vanderbilt's rail business. Edison's electric light-bulb was what beat down Rockefeller's virtual kerosene monopoly for lighting, after his kerosene production destroyed the whale oil market and probably saved several species from extinction. After that Edison was knocked down a few rungs by Westinghouse and Tesla... Creative destruction works. Rozar said “We just need to remember that we fight things of this nature by limiting the governments ability to act on behalf of a business." Well, yes, but we don't always need the government to step in and make it hard on businesses because we fear a monopoly either. In fact government should stay out of businesses business, unless a case can be brought of criminal activity (collusion, bribery, injury, etc.). It should act to protect start-ups and foster competition for those large companies but it doesn't (I don't mean offering seed money [Solyndra!]). More often than not the unintended consequences of government action end up making/picking winners and losers and almost always the consumers are among the losers. The cronyism, patronage, and buying of politicians is an example of the wrong way to run a government or a market economy. There will always be unscrupulous men who want to get ahead not by competing, but by government assistance, though it may be brought about as easily by punishing the competition as by rewarding the crony for his donations with contracts or favorable laws. Naturally, there will always be some unscrupulous men in office all too happy to take a kickback and interfere in the market using any artifice they can imagine and package for the "greater good", (often with taxpayer money) when in fact they mean their own good. We should expect more from our politicians since we get to screen them and hire them than we do from the businessman, however the slant always seems to favor and excuse the politician while blaming the businessman. The politician has the advantage; he has the power and the means to use the force of law, and often the ear of the media. The greatest threat is not the robber baron but the politician who facilitates him. This in no way is an excuse for the excesses or unscrupulous tactics of some of the so called “robber barons”.
Respectfully,
O.A.

I do not agree. The problem in politics is not the money given to politicians. It's the money politicians steal from private citizens and give to their cronies. That is not the fault of the donor, even if that's the donor's intention. The amount of money donated is always proportional to the amount of money the government spends.
I have a post on this in here-but I can't find it. Here is a link to my husband's blogpost :
http://hallingblog.com/corporations-have...

agreed

anti-competitive is a loaded word-can you clarify your definition for us? If you are just talking about property rights to give an advantage-that is not anti-competitive that's good business. when they use govt to pass rules and regs to give them advantage that's anti-competitive. MS did probably commit fraud with some of their vendors, allowing them to come out with apps in advance of their vendors, giving them unfair advantage due to not living up to contractual obligations. Instead of a anti-trust lawsuit, it should have just been a fraud and breach of contract suits brought privately. Silicon Valley and app developers did not file for patents on their ideas in browser/OS debate. sooo-

We just need to remember that we fight things of this nature by limiting the governments ability to act on behalf of a business.

Oh man. Something running DOS 6.22 and the Microsoft QuickBasic compiler?

I was going to jump in this conversation, but you guys both covered what I was going to say.
The only thing I'd add is this wasn't exactly a one was bad the other good kind of thing. They both let their ego get in the way of both science and invention. for instance, many of Tesla's later inventions were based on dubious science. For example the harmonics stuff is dubious. Lighting at a distance. The idea he beat Marconi at wireless communication is dubious, although I am not sure he personally made that claim-but his supporters have.
I think that what causes the most harm is when the enterprise uses legislation to their advantage. Jobs was definitely guilty of this as was Gates in lobbying for laws that make it more difficult of the small inventor to succeed. . Carnegie and Rockefeller were guilty/hypocritical of manipulating tariffs to their advantage and the disadvantage of competitors. Those areas are where the most damage can be done.

Old.

You speak the truth. I think the Altair BASIC episode of his life soured him and established a belief that people would steal his work, so don't deal with them if you don't have to. A lot of how that company got run came out of this viewpoint. I totally side with Mr Gates on the BASIC matter. I think the man is quite competent and truly put out good work with Altair BASIC. He obviously didn't develop MS-DOS from the ground up - he acquired what was basically a CPM port and altered it to meet some IBM specifications. In other words, he sweat a lot developing Altair BASIC from the ground up and got paid basically nothing because people stole his product. He then borrowed on another existing technology and sold licensing agreements to companies, not end users, and was massively rewarded. That's the theme I see with him. Deny end-users choice in the matter and do your deals with companies that are more honorable when it comes to the matter of payment.

Hey - another Amiga user! I ran the A2000 for many years. That architecture was so ahead of its time - developed by smart engineers working for a mostly clueless management. The VIC-20 and C64 taught me BASIC and Assembler. The Amiga taught me C and showed me what a good OS architecture looked like.

These guys were the original circuit guys. :)

Thanks for the link.. I'm listening to the documentary on and off when I have a chance in the background at work. The beginning sounded like the intro to a pseudoscience show about UFOs, but the first 10 minutes was good-- not woo-woo.

I remember it a bit differently. I remember once upon a time there was a little browser called Mosaic, which was eventually renamed Netscape. This program, like any other program in Windows, could be downloaded, tried, and uninstalled if one didn't like it. Even today, one can download, try, and uninstall Opera, Firefox, Chrome, etc. Microsoft entered the market after Mosaic/Netscape, but there were two little differences between their browser and everyone else's: namely it was preloaded with the OS (IMO, nothing wrong with that), and the absolute INABILITY to uninstall it (evil!) because they hooked this app so deep it into the internals, it really became part of the OS. Then I remember them developing a little app called Frontpage to compete with all of the other web page development tools. This app had "extensions" so that you had to host your web site on Microsoft web servers, and often times the content could only be viewed on Microsoft browsers. Keep in mind this was at the beginning of the internet information age and we were trying to develop around standards so PCs and Macs and Unix systems could all share the same content. Microsoft saw it as an opportunity: get the world developing content with Frontpage as this forces them to host the site on Microsoft servers, and likely forces the clients to be running Microsoft browsers running Microsoft operating systems.

I agree. I am not a Microsoft fan. I was just saying it may not be purely anti-competitive. Your arguments are correct. I ran Linux in the 90s.

I agree with nickursis's comments too.

Exactly. is it any wonder the Supreme Court decided that Corporations have the same "rights" as individuals, and as such could contribute to them? That basically legalized pay for play. It may also be part of the reason we are where we are politically today, since the various corporations staked out their "players" and have pitted them against each other. I am not sure they are too happy with the result. It would be interesting to see if Meat packers support Democrats, and Firearms makers support Republicans etc.....

Absolutely. MS thought they had such a stranglehold on the PC OS world they thought they could dictate the terms of the engagement. Anyone remember when the only browser that would work was IE on a windows system? If you wanted something else you got Netscape. It was bundling that led to the creation of Firefox, Linux and a bunch of Open Source software. MS paid for it in the great antitrust trials of the late 90's in both the US and Europe.

Apparently you did not go look in the Economics section as I alluded to below, so here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424.... You should go read it before you get too excited here.... The point is that despite all the supposed heroics, what we see as :business icons: do not necessarily rise to the character of a totally unblemished, wonderful person. A lot of times there is a lot of baggage and less than honorable actions that they, or their companies, have done to progress forward. I think the original premise here was that the picture was of Ayn Rand sating that the business man does good, and the politician does bad. There are other examples of how that is not necessarily true. There are a lot of businessmen today who are as much a politician as a businessman and politicians that are as much businessmen as politicians. There is no distinct line. Bill Gates has done his share of lobbying, contributing, and special interesting to advance MS interests, as well as Steve Jobs did. It is part of the framework we live in today.