rec.autos.simulators

Oh my Lord, the blue-*** capitalist sentiment rears it's ugly
head <g>.  John, Intel has a defacto monopoly here in certain
software segments... I hear that shareholder value B.S. everytime
my multi-billion dollar employer cuts my wages while the CEO (who
could not even _do_ my job) pulls down a million dollar bonus for
the year... which P.O.'s the front line grunts and results in the
customers getting grumpier service which decreases shareholder
value.. ad nauseum.  It sounds good on paper to the NYSE and the
FTSE, but in reality it's a gouge.  The instituional investors
may love it, but that is a case of the tail wagging the dog.

The right that the customer actually has in this particular
situation is to buy an inferior CPU (AMD/Cyrix) for the game/sim
he/she is going to run, due to the copyright laws which I have
absolutely no problem with... until the market gets cornered.  Of
course, MS has generally gotten away with *** in this arena,
and Andy Grove more-or-less gleefully rides along on Gate's
coattails (latest spates notwithstanding).  WinTel indeed...

Rgds,
Mark R.

In a free market system, a manufacturer or retailer absolutely has the right to charge
whatever they like for a product as long as they are not violating any anti-trust laws
or other regulations (regarding monopolies, etc.).

Likewise, a consumer has the complete freedom to buy or not to buy a given product;
most often this is based on a sense of "value".  Basic supply and demand economics
supposes that given identical products in every way but price, a consumer will choose
the lower cost item.

Where one starts to run into difficulty is anticipating the consumer's expectations
and perceptions regarding a product.  Two people might have very different notions of
value given the identical product: it's simple relativism.

If one consumer feels as though he or she is being overcharged for a given product
(i.e. the producer and or retailer is making too much profit in the consumer's
opinion) then he or she is likely to not buy the product and will search for another
one.  If not given any choice and the consumer is "forced" to buy the 'overpriced'
product to satisfy his or her needs that cannot be met in any other way, then we have
one disgruntled person!  If *enough* people get disgruntled then the manufacturer
faces a problem as consumer confidence wanes.

Consumers naturally search for alternatives and if none are available, some
enterprising person realizes this and develops a competative product to fill that
market demand.

Then the whole thing goes to pot when the government steps in and says:
1) this market is going to be regulated because it is an indispensable product;
2) this market is going to be de-regulated because the company we gave license to make
this product is behaving in a ***, monopolistic way and we want to bring prices
down  on this said, indispensable product by suddenly creating a glut of manufacturers
or suppliers in the industry by removing manufacturing and copyright restrictions.

Hmmmmm.... a long time since I took economics at university -- maybe I should have
paid more attention to those graphs!

Cheers,
Gian.

--
Hell bent for leather in GPL!

Warranties on semiconductor components are basically worthless.
If it works out of the box, it's gonna work for years, barring a
voltage spike.... the same as the digital clock radio on your
bedside.  Even overclocking a CPU, assuming you stay reasonably
within temperature limits, is not going to promote any permanent
ill effects until the warranty has expired.  I find it extremely
difficult to digest that Intel receives any significant number of
returned CPU's due to overclocking.  Or any at all, for that
matter.

Of course, Intel can do whatever it wants to with it's CPU's.
The market (savvy consumers and programmers) will take note of
that and adjust accordingly.  3D Now! is getting some game
ports... Intel should be smelling the coffee instead of wasting
intellectual resources on trying to lasso a cow already out of
the barn aand/or hampering a very small customer base that
willingly takes the risk of squeezing out a few more pints of
milk -- and the spilt bucket that might result.  As already
shown, motherboard manufactures will find a customer-desired way
to work around Intel's clumsy attempts to deny us a tweak or two.

Rgds,
Mark R.

Lol!  Are we in the right newsgroup!  I never see that here!  <vbg>

Yup, we are basically thinking of the same examples...

I am Canadian and recently Bell Canada was forced to give up a monopoly on long
distance telephone calls by the CRTC and suddenly AT&T, Sprint and a bunch of others
showed up.  The bottom fell out of the long distance market and everybody is basically
competing to *lose* money in the hopes that they can gain market share and then raise
prices once they have a secure foothold.

And yes regarding Microsoft, too.  The whole pc/software market is one that has grown
essentially overnight and has become a huge market.  Suddenly software has become so
vital to modern commerce and industry that the government has to step in.  It will be
interesting to see what happens.

Cheers,
Gian.

Rrevved, you're mixing the theoretical with the real world.  And
I don't need the original item posted back to me for
reconsideration (nor do others following the thread),  so no I
_don't_ care to try again --  the last line of my post was
patently clear (at least to me).  Try reading it again... it was
the key to the entire post.  If you don't get it, then I'll
accept that failing on my part and hope that others get the
point.

To reply to the one point (barb) you made (tossed)...
governmental regulation often hampers the maketplace more than it
helps -- after a period of time (that varies according to the
technology and the marketplace).

In the real world capitalism does work well... but it does go
thru cycles wherein one party or the other (the buyer or the
seller) gets abused.  This is often the result of third-party
(government) involvement.  It is more often the result of a
limited supply/demand scenario coupled with the former, or, in
other words  -- a cornered market.  Competition usually even
things out.  This brings us to...

Copyrights have a finite life.  Depending on market
distrubution/saturation, they could be in some instances shorter
IMHO.   The pharmaceutical industry has recently  been under some
scrutiny in this regard, with respect to consumer costs.   The
companies are making money just fine, and you often reach a point
wherein it becomes a public burden to continue paying a higher
cost for copyrighted R&D long since amortized.  It is most
definitely a fine line to walk... the age old question, how to
balance socialism against capitalism.    Both have their good
points and both can be brutal to the consumer in the pure form.

I do digress... ;-)

Rgds,
Mark R.

<< provided they have not
  : conspired with other manufacturers to fix prices?>>

  Who has proof that they havent?

Until they have a monopoly, which Intel very nearly does. What
"choice" can you have in a monopoly situation?

In fact without some protection against monopolies it does not work AT
ALL well. Anyone who studies even the smallest amount of corporate
history in the US alone can observe this obvious fact.

Joe

 I disagree. If I can sell 5000  333mhz chips for $225 ea. or sell
1000 450mhz chips for $550 ea. then it would make sense to me to rate
more of my chips at 333mhz. If Intel only considers the unit price and
not the price multiplied by the units sold, then with all due respect,
they are stupid.
 So you are saying that if I send a in a CPU for warranty replacement
and the speed label has been ground off, Intel will replace it? If
this is true, no one at Intel should get a bonus.
  The people in "rec.autos.simulators" are generally an intelligent
lot. You are going to have to try harder if you expect anyone to feel
guilty about over-clocking their CPUs.

Thanks. It was my first post here, and I was a little nervous, but I think
I'll be ok from now on.

David G Fisher

Hardware? Anyway, WHY do they have that monopoly? Look at their
investment versus anyone else in the industry, and how much better
they have managed their business than even the big DRAM players.

BS? Like you think you could do his job?

It's an attitude like that that ensures we are unlikely to ever see,
say, a cure for cancer. It costs billions to develop, and any company
that did do it would be fored to give it away by dint of massive
public opinion. Either that or it would be sold for unit variable cost
only, ignoring the massive investment in time, resource and money. If
Intel have the market cornered it's because they have a better product
- you either go with their product and pay the going rate or by an
"inferior" brand. All this whining that Intel rips people off is a
joke. If you feel there's no competition then blame A.M.D., I.B.M. and
National Semiconductor for doing a bad job, not Intel for doing what
they should be.

Cheers!
John

The monopoly is there in the _software_ segement because they
(Intel)  have the predominat market share in copyrighted FPU
instructions, which puts the third-party program writers in the
position of coding for Intel first and foremost.  This is not
necessarily bad in the present market condition until we get
posts from so-called Intel employees (the origination of this
particular thread) that they are in effect going to try and crush
the oh-so-small percentage of customers that try to take monetary
advantage of the Celeron's capabilities and/or production line
advances in soon-to-be secondary products.

Yup.  At least better than he could do mine, assuming no
additional training involved.  That point was made, again, in
reference to the original thread... a monetary squeeze -- the
folks on the low end of the totem pole (Intel customers) whom are
intended to be deprived of a low-cost performance solution
arrived at only by their technological savvy (in most cases).
Any effect on Intel's yearly EPS would almost assuredly be
immeasurable.  Simple spite comes to mind... look at the spates
Tom Pabst often incurs with the Intel legal beagles.

Uh huh... and how many taxpayer dollars go into university grants
and the like that often form the base of such pioneering medical
research.  The big corporate boys and girls have more than enuf
political clout to make sure their costs and a modicum of profit
are covered, to say the least.  The only whining I'm making here
-- other than the replys that are soon to exceed the
thread-managment of my reader <g> -- is that a highly profitiable
company is going for that extra 0.0000001% from paying -- and
probably repeat -- customers that know their way around a mobo
jumper pin.  Again, in response to the original thread.

Would love to hear your thots on the current MS case <g>.

Bottom line, I have absolutely no problem paying an extra 10% for
a comparable Intel chip vs an AMD chip.  Just stay the hell out
of my BIOS clock and multiplyer <g>.   I do have the monetary
resources to go for a true P-II, but a lot of people don't and
Intel is gonna lose some present customers if they continue to
try and maximize profits to the nth degree without accepting that
a small percentage of us (generally hobbyists) are willing to
push the tolerances to save a buck.  Either way it goes, their
stock price is not going to notice.

Rgds,
Mark

Lack of proof conveys innocence in the U.S.  No winks or grins,
that;s the way it is and that's the way it should be.

By dint of the U.S. copyright laws, Intel has a monopoly on x86
FPU instructions.  Wrong or right, for max perf programmers code
for this first and foremost.  Have I mentioned this before?  <g>

As with all patents, after a fixed period of time, as the law is
currently written, yes.  Varies as to the time period, based on
the technology.  As do copyrights.   Capitalist monopolies have a
long history of abuse, more often than not in collusion with the
politicians... shall we start wtih the U.S. railroads in the last
century?   Everybody has a right to make a buck.  Government's
responsibility is to make sure the consumer and/or the public
good do not get gouged by collusion or a cornered market in the
process.  Tough assignment?  You bet.

OIC.  Once again I am reminded that 222 years of societal
developement do not a sociologically-hip country make.  Pardon
the syntactical error on the latter.  We be da biggest, so we be
da bestest and da smartest, right?    No wonder the WWF draws SRO
crowds in this country.  History is best learned by reading, not
by listening to Ronald Regan and Dan Rather... or Hulk Hogan.

Wouldn't be a bad idea actually. They could still compete with better
PRODUCTS and their huge revnues for r&d and marketing. At least there
would be some *chance* of competition.

Straw man alert!

Joe

There your argument breaks down. If you think you could run a company
like Intel then you truly have no conception of what you are saying.

Intel can be seen to accept it, and thus open themselves up to all
kinds of warranty exceptions, or stick to the letter of what the
warranty said. Believe me, if they truly wanted to stop overclocking
they could have, and would have, done so by now. Oh, and it would be
substantially more lost revenue than 0.0000001%.

I'm not touching that one..!

Precisely, although I think their stock price will suffer if their
market share continues to fall. The Celeron is the only thing keeping
Intel in the game at the bottom end of the market, and that's where
all the action is right now. Until and unless Intel can come up with a
quantum leap that would allow them to pull the carpet from AMD as they
did with the 486-->Pentium shift in the past, I think we won't see any
change in the overclockability of the Celeron. That doesn't mean Intel
will "accept" overclocking, but if it allows the Celeron to outsell
the K6 then I reckon they'll take the sales anyway they can.

Cheers!
John