MediaOne dns problems

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

David Kramer writes:
| On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Ron Peterson wrote:
| > Seth Gordon wrote:
| > > Shapiro and Varian, in _Information Rules_, mention how one
| > > manufacturer of laser printers (HP? IBM?) used the same motherboard in
| > > both the Foobar 1000 and Foobar 2000 printers -- except that on the
| > > Foobar 1000, one jumper on the motherboard was cut, so that it would
| > > only print half as fast.  Thus, they could sell Foobar 1000s to folks
| > > on a tight budget who were satisfied with the slower print speed, and
| > > make extra profits off the people willing to pay more for the Foobar
| > > 2000s.
| > >
| > > That's capitalism.
| >
| > That's disgusting.
|
| That's capitalism.

Wait ... You're both right! (As the old ad says.)

| Do you know what the main difference is between NT Workstation and NT
| Server?  Registry entries that trigger the right behavior, "cutting the
| jumper".

You left out one of the best cases: In the fight to destroy Netscape,
one  of  Microsoft's  more effective techniques was to set up NT's IP
stack so that it was limited to a handful of open connections at  any
one time. This made it effectively useless to run a web server on NT.
How could you increase the limit? Simple, you install a Microsoft web
server, and the limit was removed.  You could then install a Netscape
server if you wished, and it  would  work  just  fine.   But  somehow
customers usually didn't do that.

There's a similar battle going on now over  high-quality  "component"
audio and video software.  A lot of reviewers have reported that when
they install Microsoft's Media Player and test it, all their other AV
software  stops working.  They can re-install the other software, but
if they do  anything  that  triggers  Media  Player,  the  non-MS  AV
software  again dies.  The message is getting out to people trying to
market such software that the only way  is  to  sell  the  rights  to
Microsoft,  and  they'll add it to their list of approved software so
it won't be killed.

It doesn't work to not install Media Player.  As with IE,  deals  are
being  made  to  include  an  "upgrade" to MP with all sorts of other
software.  So if you install a game or financial package or whatever,
it  may silently install the latest release of MP, which disables any
non-approved AV software. If you insists on using non-MS AV software,
you will have to reinstall it frequently to keep it working.

Yup; it's capitalism, all right.  "We control the distribution, so if
you want to sell anything, you have to give us our share."

In the long run, this may help linux.  If you  want  high-quality  AV
software,  you'll  have to run it on a non-Windoze system.  Apple and
linux are the most obvious beneficiaries of this.  Microsoft probably
doesn't  much care, because historically the high-quality "component"
market has always been several orders of magnitude smaller  than  the
mass-market "package" market, especially for audio equipment. If they
can control the mass market,  who  cares  about  marginals  like  the
audiophile market?

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