Microsoft Hatred FAQ 5182
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:49:27 -0700, "David Schwartz" said :
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:06:16 -0700, "David Schwartz" said : I am going to summarise this then drop out. My blood pressure is at a boil...
They were demanding I sell a copy of windows with every machine I constructed, whether the customer wanted or not, even if the customer had us install some other OS.
Roedy Green Right I understand that. You could have complied simply by only selling computers with Windows preinstalled. In other words...
The threat was that I did not comply, they would put me out of business by arranging that my wholesalers would stop selling any MS product to me, with veiled threat of even worse strangulation.
What I don't think you understand this threat would was just as effective in putting he out of business as threatening to sending in goons every week to smash my shop to pieces.
I could at least have a chance of legal recourse with the vandals.
It will be very hard to prosecute MS for their crimes because they commit them much the way the Mafia does.
No one has any paper. Everyone was terrified of MS and would never dream of going public. I have talked about this publicly many times because it always looked as if I were going to die in a few years anyway.
To put this in perspective, IBM's salespeople made much nastier threats in their heyday. privates Toewes, head of Inland Natural Gas, was in charge of a tender for a new mainframe to do billing. I was working on the Univac bid at the time. He said that the IBM salesman said to him, "We know you have an eight year old little girl. We know she walks along X street every day on her way to school. It would be a terrible thing if somebody hurt her."
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 04:06:16 -0700, "David Schwartz" said : It is obvious to everyone WHY MS did this, to maintain monopoly. But ignore motive...
I wrote a tender for about $1 million in computer equipment for BC Hydro gas. There were many bidders hoping to get a foothold in a solidly IBM shop. IBM sent a weird chap to see me, dressed as a gangster, talking in a gangster accent, with a strange tic like Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in midnight cowboy. He made no specific threats, but his act was straight out of Hollywood,"you knows what I means" warning me about the "consequences" of picking anything but IBM, how I might get the reputation as unreliable..."
There were the standard tactics on $1 million contracts. Imagine the dirty tricks for the big ones. Mind you, back then $1 million was serious money, especially when you considered the no-bid followons over the years.
-- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
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