AMD sues Intel (antitrust)

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Del Cecchi wrote:

> Actually IBM saved Intel's bacon long about the time they were "figuring
> it out". And Intel wants high margin business, that's why they allegedly
> abused their market power. And don't forget to cogitate on why Intel
> switched from x86 to Itanium (well, tried to), too many cross licenses
> laying around from back in the day.

Itanium was an attempt to capture high margin business and to free
Intel from the entanglements of cross-license agreements. No confusion
there.

> If Intel could get the same revenue
> with 1/3 the capital expenditure, don't you think they would? What
> prevents Intel from charging double the current price list?
>

They destroy their own market. Even without competition, there is a
selling price/profitability calculation that doesn't put the highest
profitability at the highest selling price. Making computers much less
expensive vastly expanded the market for computers and made many
wealthy, despite the fact that computers were being sold for a much
lower price.

> Clearly Intel has a dominant position and exercises its market power to
> preserve it. The question is are those actions a violation of US law?
> The Sherman Act?
>
> For example " Robinson-Patman Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1936 to
> supplement the Clayton Antitrust Act. The act, advanced by Congressman
> Wright Patman, forbade any person or firm engaged in interstate commerce
> to discriminate in price to different purchasers of the same commodity
> when the effect would be to lessen competition or to create a monopoly."
>
But now we're off into a completely different topic (from business
models to law), and not one that I'm very interested in arguing about.


RM

 

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YKhan wrote:

> Robert Myers wrote:
> > Computing is *not* inexpensive because of AMD. Computing is
> > inexpensive because absolute top-of-the-line microprocessors are a
> > commodity, and they are a commodity because that's the way Intel chose
> > to play it, and it succeeded in playing it that way.
>
> This is where your true colors come out -- Intel blue all the way. Only
> an ignorant fool

<snip>

If you expect a response to your posts, tone down your language.

RM

 

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Robert Myers wrote:
> Del Cecchi wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> > Clearly Intel has a dominant position and exercises its market power to
> > preserve it. The question is are those actions a violation of US law?
> > The Sherman Act?
> >
> > For example " Robinson-Patman Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1936 to
> > supplement the Clayton Antitrust Act. The act, advanced by Congressman
> > Wright Patman, forbade any person or firm engaged in interstate commerce
> > to discriminate in price to different purchasers of the same commodity
> > when the effect would be to lessen competition or to create a monopoly."
> >
> But now we're off into a completely different topic (from business
> models to law), and not one that I'm very interested in arguing about.
>

I can do just a little better than that. A case like this one is going
to hinge on technicalities. Since Intel has been doing much of this
stuff more or less in the plain light of day for a long time, I can't
believe that Intel thought it would never be challenged, especially
since AMD and Intel have been engaged in legal bickering since forever.
That means that Intel has had its high-priced lawyers decide what they
can defend and what they can't. Intel apparently thinks it can defend
its actions.

What I've seen of anti-trust actions that I've paid attention to
indicates to me that they are not very effective even when (as in the
case of Microsoft) there is what appears even to the layman to be a
pattern of predatory business practices that have had the effect of
creating a monopoly.

So how does a lawyer argue a case like this? The obvious strategy of
pricing with volume incentives so that an OEM/distributor has a strong
incentive to sell that last little bit has two interpretations: one
legal and one not.

The legal interpretation is that the best leverage is on those last few
sales. It's like the last few minutes of a basketball game. You have
to make all the rest of the points, but the game is frequently won or
lost in those last few minutes. So, too, with sales. The financial
markets put heavy emphasis on quarter over quarter performance, so you
want to make sure this quarter's sales are at least as good or better
than those of the previous year. You set the sales target so that
profitability comes from doing better than business as usual. In the
process, you discover an OEM as hungry and as aggressive as Dell.

The interpretation that makes it illegal is that the effect (intent?)
is to stifle competition. The exact same behavior does exactly what
AMD is whining about: those last sales often come at the expense of
AMD.

....But they don't have to, is what Intel would argue. If the easiest
path for OEM's to Intel discounts is to cut out AMD, that's not Intel's
fault. They should just grow their sales. I'm sure an Intel lawyer
can say that with a straight face.

But is that an adequate defense? That's the point at which I begin to
lose interest. I suspect that courts give broad latitude to businesses
in making prices and that there is a fairly heavy burden of proof to
establish that a pricing strategy is illegal, but these discussions
tend to slither into what look to me like arbitrary distinctions based
on endless and confusing precedent. I'm sure we're not going to sort
it out here.

RM

 

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On 30 Jun 2005 16:11:37 -0700, "Robert Myers" <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> wrote:

>Yousuf Khan wrote:
>> Robert Myers wrote:
>> > Here's how it works: Sales up to a certain point are at some price
>> > that is okay. At that price, Intel's customers can resell, but
>> > probably not make a profit. If they want to make a profit, they have
>> > to sell above the volume quota, where the price is *so* attractive that
>> > AMD simply cannot compete. As long as Intel hits its target average
>> > selling price, it is happy to have those low price sales above the
>> > volume quota.
>>
>> Great in theory, but ever since I can remember, ever since AMD was the
>> value-price seller, there wasn't a price that it couldn't match of
>> Intel's. The only difference was that Intel was able to front-end load
>> the price, while AMD back-end loads it (i.e. we'll give you the discount
>> *after* you've already sold that volume of product). Just because now
>> it's the high-performance seller doesn't mean that it doesn't know how
>> to maximize the volume discounts anymore.
>>
>Why are you arguing with me? AMD's complaint alleges exactly what I
>described.

C'mon that's dishonest! One paragraph, which you quoted from the complaint
and completely out of context, is no justification for your err, opinion.

>> >>Except for the fact that AMD could just as easily match those
>> >>discounts, and then those people who wanted Direct Connect Architecture
>> >>could still have it.
>> >>
>> >
>> > AMD can't match Intel on price, and it controls less of the product
>> > than does Intel, which sells everything but the case. For those
>> > *really* big sales, Intel can do things that no one else in the
>> > business can do because its margins are so high and because it controls
>> > so much of the product.
>>
>> Did you read the story where AMD offered to give HP /1 million/
>> processors for *free*, and HP was still not able to accept it? Can't see
>> how you can get much more "*really* big sales" than that.
>>
>No.

No to what? You only read the bit in the complaint -- one paragraph? --
which you umm, liked?

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

 

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chrisv wrote:

> Robert Myers wrote:
>
> >Del Cecchi wrote:
> >
> >> Actually IBM saved Intel's bacon long about the time they were "figuring
> >> it out". And Intel wants high margin business, that's why they allegedly
> >> abused their market power. And don't forget to cogitate on why Intel
> >> switched from x86 to Itanium (well, tried to), too many cross licenses
> >> laying around from back in the day.
> >
> >Itanium was an attempt to capture high margin business and to free
> >Intel from the entanglements of cross-license agreements. No confusion
> >there.
>
> In other words, to get out of the "commodity" pricing that AMD forced
> them into with x86.
>
AMD did not bring commodity pricing. AMD may well at times have
affected the pace of development and the rate at which prices have come
down, but commodity pricing was inevitable, as were disappearing
margins. See my constant references to the automobile industry.
Barring new technology, all industries go that way, sooner or later.
The only difference between AMD in the game and out of the game is
details. Nor, for that matter, is Intel's contribution in any way
unique.

> >> If Intel could get the same revenue
> >> with 1/3 the capital expenditure, don't you think they would? What
> >> prevents Intel from charging double the current price list?
> >>
> >
> >They destroy their own market.
>
> Wrong. They could easily, today, be charging twice the price per unit
> performance, and people would be paying it, if not for AMD.
>
What would actually happen with AMD out of the market is all
speculation. I suspect that you could take respectable modelling tools
and get just about any answer you wanted.

> >Even without competition, there is a
> >selling price/profitability calculation that doesn't put the highest
> >profitability at the highest selling price.
>
> Yeah, monopoly pricing, which is always higher than pricing in a
> competitive market.

I'll assume that you are being deliberately obtuse.

RM

 

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chrisv wrote:
> Robert Myers wrote:
>
> >chrisv wrote:
> >
> >> Robert Myers wrote:
> >>
> >> >Del Cecchi wrote:
> >> >
> >> >Itanium was an attempt to capture high margin business and to free
> >> >Intel from the entanglements of cross-license agreements. No confusion
> >> >there.
> >>
> >> In other words, to get out of the "commodity" pricing that AMD forced
> >> them into with x86.
> >>
> >AMD did not bring commodity pricing. AMD may well at times have
> >affected the pace of development and the rate at which prices have come
> >down, but commodity pricing was inevitable, as were disappearing
> >margins. See my constant references to the automobile industry.
>
> No one in the automobile industry is in Intel's position, with it's
> proprietary advantages. BTW, how far off-topic are you willing to go,
> here?
>
Off-topic means I don't think the way you think? I believe I
understand your model of history, but I'd take a fair bet you don't
understand mine. What I'm proposing about the history of
microprocessors is a kind of historical determinism: it was all more or
less inevitable; and I present the automobile industry (I've also
talked about commercial jet aircraft as an example) as an illustration
of where the computer business has been and where, barring dramatic
innovation, it is headed.

Whether or not anyone in the automobile industry is in Intel's position
is beside the point. Even those who dominate industries can't do
whatever they want because there are always other ways for human beings
to spend their money.

> I continue to be amazed at your objection to my rather simple point.
> The presence of AMD in the market has significantly reduced the cost
> of computing. I believe this to be a fact beyond dispute, so I can't
> understand your issue, here.
>
I think you'll have to live with your amazement. What you believe is
close to a religious belief with you, and it's not worth my time to try
to dislodge that belief.

> >Barring new technology, all industries go that way, sooner or later.
>
> Even if true, best to delay it, right?
>
I don't know whether your question is rhetorical or not. The *only*
way to avert the slide into commodity status is through dramatic
technological innovation.

Leaving aside the demagogery about "free" markets, one question is: how
does technology advance. Having an IBM or an Intel accumulate capital
so it can do risky research may not be the best way, but I *know* that
having AMD and Intel in a price/tweak war sends the industry down the
same road as the automobile industry. I loathe Microsoft not so much
because of its monopolistic behavior (although I do loathe that) as for
how badly it has used the resources it has accumulated through its
illegal monopoly.

> >> >Even without competition, there is a
> >> >selling price/profitability calculation that doesn't put the highest
> >> >profitability at the highest selling price.
> >>
> >> Yeah, monopoly pricing, which is always higher than pricing in a
> >> competitive market.
> >
> >I'll assume that you are being deliberately obtuse.
>
> Not that I'm aware of. Do you believe what I wrote to be incorrect?

*Even* if someone is a monopolist, the price that produces the best
return on investment almost certainly isn't the highest price that
someone will pay. There is always a trade between sales volume and
price. In a mythical management school world, that curve has a
maximum. The curves with or without competition may be different, but
there is (at least theoretically) a maximum in either case.

Your argument is that the curve with competition is always lower, which
is a different point (although it is your point, and you keep
reiterating it). I'll reiterate my point: If AMD changed the selling
price of x86 processors at any particular time, it is only a detail.
There is *always* competition. In the case of the microprocessor
business, there have always been other microprocessors and there are
always other ways for people to spend their money.

The way that IBM managed its customer pricing and monopoly status is
one way to do business. It wasn't an especially smart way to do
business, and IBM paid the price. You think that everyone, given the
choice, would be as self-destructive as IBM was. I disagree.

RM

 

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Robert Myers wrote:

>chrisv wrote:
>>
>> Nope. Intel is not playing it the way they would prefer, they way
>> they could if not for AMD. Not only would post-Athlon x86 performance
>> and price have been significantly worse, Intel would be moving the
>> market into Itanic right now, if they could. That's hardly choosing
>> the path of the "commodity" product, is it now?

Note: No response.

>> >Intel didn't play it the way it has out of the kindness of its
>> >corporate heart. Intel saw a way to turn into a money factory, and it
>> >has done so.
>>
>> Your point is they want to make money? That we can agree on.
>>
>No, Chris. There is more than one way to make lots of money.

True.

>You can
>sell modest numbers at very high prices: the IBM business model. Or
>you can sell huge numbers at much lower prices: the Intel business
>model.

Intel wants high volumes AND high margins.

>> Mind boggling.
>>
>There's a whole series of arguments I've had, and I just don't want to
>have them again. If you think the best of all worlds is a series of
>incremental improvements of x86 driven by competition between Intel and
>AMD, then AMD has been a good thing. If you don't think that's the
>best of all worlds, and I don't, you're not particularly admiring of
>AMD's contribution to civilization.

The "best of all worlds"? Nice straw man.

 

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Robert Myers wrote:

>Del Cecchi wrote:
>
>> Actually IBM saved Intel's bacon long about the time they were "figuring
>> it out". And Intel wants high margin business, that's why they allegedly
>> abused their market power. And don't forget to cogitate on why Intel
>> switched from x86 to Itanium (well, tried to), too many cross licenses
>> laying around from back in the day.
>
>Itanium was an attempt to capture high margin business and to free
>Intel from the entanglements of cross-license agreements. No confusion
>there.

In other words, to get out of the "commodity" pricing that AMD forced
them into with x86.

>> If Intel could get the same revenue
>> with 1/3 the capital expenditure, don't you think they would? What
>> prevents Intel from charging double the current price list?
>>
>
>They destroy their own market.

Wrong. They could easily, today, be charging twice the price per unit
performance, and people would be paying it, if not for AMD.

>Even without competition, there is a
>selling price/profitability calculation that doesn't put the highest
>profitability at the highest selling price.

Yeah, monopoly pricing, which is always higher than pricing in a
competitive market.

 

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Robert Myers wrote:

>chrisv wrote:
>
>> Robert Myers wrote:
>>
>> >Del Cecchi wrote:
>> >
>> >Itanium was an attempt to capture high margin business and to free
>> >Intel from the entanglements of cross-license agreements. No confusion
>> >there.
>>
>> In other words, to get out of the "commodity" pricing that AMD forced
>> them into with x86.
>>
>AMD did not bring commodity pricing. AMD may well at times have
>affected the pace of development and the rate at which prices have come
>down, but commodity pricing was inevitable, as were disappearing
>margins. See my constant references to the automobile industry.

No one in the automobile industry is in Intel's position, with it's
proprietary advantages. BTW, how far off-topic are you willing to go,
here?

I continue to be amazed at your objection to my rather simple point.
The presence of AMD in the market has significantly reduced the cost
of computing. I believe this to be a fact beyond dispute, so I can't
understand your issue, here.

>Barring new technology, all industries go that way, sooner or later.

Even if true, best to delay it, right?

>> >Even without competition, there is a
>> >selling price/profitability calculation that doesn't put the highest
>> >profitability at the highest selling price.
>>
>> Yeah, monopoly pricing, which is always higher than pricing in a
>> competitive market.
>
>I'll assume that you are being deliberately obtuse.

Not that I'm aware of. Do you believe what I wrote to be incorrect?

 

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chrisv wrote:

> Robert Myers wrote:
>
> >chrisv wrote:
> >> I continue to be amazed at your objection to my rather simple point.
> >> The presence of AMD in the market has significantly reduced the cost
> >> of computing. I believe this to be a fact beyond dispute, so I can't
> >> understand your issue, here.
> >>
> >I think you'll have to live with your amazement. What you believe is
> >close to a religious belief with you,
>
> Nope. It's a fact, pretty much beyond dispute.
>
> >and it's not worth my time to try to dislodge that belief.
>
> It would be absurd to try, yet here you are...
>

This is really tiresome.

<restored snip>
>> > >> >Even without competition, there is a
>> > >> >selling price/profitability calculation that doesn't put the highest
>> > >> >profitability at the highest selling price.
>> > >>
<end restored snip>

> >> >> Yeah, monopoly pricing, which is always higher than pricing in a
> >> >> competitive market.
> >> >

My point that you were being deliberately obtuse was that you simply
repeated what you had said about monopoly pricing as an inappropriate
response to my saying that the market creates its own price discipline,
even without competition.

> >> >I'll assume that you are being deliberately obtuse.

I assumed that you understood my point and simply chose to ignore it.
This time, just to be sure, you snipped the text you weren't responding
to so your perseveration would be even more obscure.

> >>
> >> Not that I'm aware of. Do you believe what I wrote to be incorrect?
> >
> >*Even* if someone is a monopolist, the price that produces the best
> >return on investment almost certainly isn't the highest price that
> >someone will pay.
>
> I didn't say that was. Please re-read what >I wrote.
>
> >Your argument is that the curve with competition is always lower, which
> >is a different point (although it is your point, and you keep
> >reiterating it).
>
> It's a fact of economics.
>
> >'ll reiterate my point: If AMD changed the selling
> >price of x86 processors at any particular time, it is only a detail.
> >There is *always* competition. In the case of the microprocessor
> >business, there have always been other microprocessors and there are
> >always other ways for people to spend their money.
>
> Not true, for the x86 industry standard. If AMD wasn't there, Intel
> would essentially have a monopoly.
>
Your original claim, which you are apparently no longer trying to
defend, was that what AMD does is to "significantly reduce the cost of
computing for everyone on the planet."

I let you slide out of "everyone on the planet" when I said that Via
was more likely to to do that than AMD when you haggled over whether
the accomplishment was past, present, or future.

Now you want the argument to be restricted not only to a particular
time, but to a particular ISA. Your original claim was the cost of
computing without qualification (although I won't hold you to times
when AMD wasn't in business). In the course of the argument, we've
moved to a particular bit of history and a particular ISA.

The reality is that AMD allowed *you* (and many who hang out here) to
buy a less expensive processor of a particular type, and you have
generalized your experience into a law of economics.

It's true: you can't always buy a clone of the exact product you want
when you want it. The ability to do that is not a definition of
competition. It's a defition of something you like for yourself and
are claiming a right to.

What would have happened if IBM had held the PC proprietary in the same
way that Apple held its boxes proprietary?

RM

 

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Robert Myers wrote:

>chrisv wrote:
>> I continue to be amazed at your objection to my rather simple point.
>> The presence of AMD in the market has significantly reduced the cost
>> of computing. I believe this to be a fact beyond dispute, so I can't
>> understand your issue, here.
>>
>I think you'll have to live with your amazement. What you believe is
>close to a religious belief with you,

Nope. It's a fact, pretty much beyond dispute.

>and it's not worth my time to try to dislodge that belief.

It would be absurd to try, yet here you are...

>> >> Yeah, monopoly pricing, which is always higher than pricing in a
>> >> competitive market.
>> >
>> >I'll assume that you are being deliberately obtuse.
>>
>> Not that I'm aware of. Do you believe what I wrote to be incorrect?
>
>*Even* if someone is a monopolist, the price that produces the best
>return on investment almost certainly isn't the highest price that
>someone will pay.

I didn't say that was. Please re-read what I wrote.

>Your argument is that the curve with competition is always lower, which
>is a different point (although it is your point, and you keep
>reiterating it).

It's a fact of economics.

>'ll reiterate my point: If AMD changed the selling
>price of x86 processors at any particular time, it is only a detail.
>There is *always* competition. In the case of the microprocessor
>business, there have always been other microprocessors and there are
>always other ways for people to spend their money.

Not true, for the x86 industry standard. If AMD wasn't there, Intel
would essentially have a monopoly.

>The way that IBM managed its customer pricing and monopoly status is
>one way to do business. It wasn't an especially smart way to do
>business, and IBM paid the price. You think that everyone, given the
>choice, would be as self-destructive as IBM was.

I think nothing of the kind.

>I disagree.

With your own straw man.

 

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Robert Myers wrote:
> Chipsets are not a product differentiator to save the industry from
> stagnation. They are a slightly different style of trim. AMD is doing
> nobody any good in terms of reviving interest in the industry. It's
> all insider talk.

The chipsets themselves aren't, but the features they bring can be. For
example, if you got an integrated graphics chipset, and you can get an
integrated graphics core in there that's almost as fast as a state of
the art graphics card, then that's a differentiating feature. I would
expect that these sorts of high-perf integrated chipsets will likely be
made by the two graphics behemoths themselves, ATI and Nvidia. You
might end up with a gamer's laptop that has as much battery life as a
thin'n'lite. You're not going to get a gamer's laptop out of Intel
integrated graphics.

Right now HP is marketing a Turion business notebook with a fingerprint
reader, which none of its Intel models have yet. Small feature
differences like these go a long way, until somebody catches up.

Various wireless manufacturers are working on ways of improving WiFi
antennas, some are coming out with greater ranges, while others are
trying to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth, and Cellular into a single radio
thus saving power over multiple independent ones. I'd expect the
telecom specialists like Broadcom, or Altera to develop these before
Intel.

>
> You almost made up for all your abusive language by flattering my
> imagination in an earlier post, because, frankly, imagination is what
> this industry doesn't have. It's just so lame-ass worn out on the same
> old ideas that nothing really matters any more. Call me anything you
> like. AMD is just more of the same.

You're perfectly free to take my comment about your imagination
flatteringly.

> Itanium is better for some of the problems I do, but it won't save the
> world any more than Opteron will. The problem with Itanium isn't that
> it's too much of a leap but that it's all ideas that were old before
> the first die was laid out.

But it turned out more of the world was looking for something like the
Opteron than they were for something like the Itanium.

> > Umm, I don't know if you've been paying attention here, but this is
> > exactly what is being challenged here: "if you want to stay in this
> > business you have to do business with Intel". For example, nobody says
> > any of the following things:
> >
> > -if you want to stay in this business, you have to deal with Seagate.
>
> <snip etc.>
>
> >
> But so what? AMD claims that's only because Intel is such a mean
> badass (which it probably is) and that it's all illegal (which remains
> to be shown).

Well to answer the "so what" part of it. No manufacturer wants to be
held hostage by its own suppliers.

> > I'm sure most people weren't pleased with having to testify against
> > John Gotti either, but it needed to be done.
> >
>
> I'm _seriously_disturbed_ by that comparison. Or should I call it
> "cheap?"

Should I have said Al Capone? A much more historically prominent
gangster? Would that be much more high-class?

> > Karl Rove was just a general in his war, his soldiers were these sorts
> > of PR firms. In this case, Thomas McCoy, AMD's internal corporate
> > lawyer, is his firm's Karl Rove.
> >
> If Thomas McCoy can pull this off the way Carl Rove pulls things off,
> he'll be a media star. Carl Rove, for all his vaunted smarts, didn't
> invent the strategy the Bush campaign used ex nihilo, not by a long
> shot. And they had (and still have) an endless supply of money.

Well yes, Karl Rove was not the pioneer of negative political
campaigning. At best he just improved it a bit. Negative campaigning
has been around much longer than him. McCoy might be the first to bring
this technique into the business world.

> > Pretty telling isn't it? A group of industry executives so completely
> > cowed and afraid for the existence of their firms due to one component
> > supplier?
> >
> But I thought they were all so _happy_ and so _eager_ to talk.

Not sure, are you reading the same articles that we are?

> Any lawsuit that isn't a candidate for summary judgment is a war of
> attrition.

Where do you get the idea it's not a candidate for summary judgement?
It seems like that's what AMD is aiming for.

> > As for out of court settlement, it's upto AMD if they want to accept an
> > out of court. However AMD chose to go with a jury trial for a reason,
> > which is that they feel that Intel won't be able to wiggle out on
> > technicalities; in jury trials, the spirit of the law has to be
> > followed as much as the letter of the law. This puts Intel at a
> > disadvantage and it knows it. So I don't think AMD will be so willing
> > to settle out of court here. They don't want these sweetheart deals
> > where Intel pays out money, and doesn't have to admit a thing.
> >
> Yada, yada, yada. They're so _mean_. I see that Gates/Ballmer is
> going to write a $775 million dollar consolation prize (plus $75
> million in software credits) to IBM. Microsoft keeps the monopoly.

Good for IBM. Good for Microsoft.

But any outcome of this will likely reach into the billions of dollars.
Even an out of court will reach into the billions too.

> > Also quite seperately, it looks like some consumer class-action
> > lawsuits have started against Intel. Seems to be a copycat of the AMD
> > anti-trust lawsuit.
> >
> Oh, I'm sure Intel will be heartbroken over a class action lawsuit.
> Those of us who were smart enough to buy Intel will be getting coupons
> so we can buy more... Intel. It will just be another marketing
> expense.

I'm sure Intel is a little concerned at having to fight so many wars on
so many fronts simultaneously. And I doubt that Intel's internal legal
staff is equipped to fight against the ambulance-chaser style courtroom
antics. It'll keep them busy unnecessarily.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Robert Myers wrote:

>>>>>You got time to be seriously disturbed by my rhetorical style? You
>>>>>ain't payin' attention to what's goin' on in the world.
>>>>
>>>>The fact that something is wrong is in no way diminished by the fact
>>>>that other things are worse.
>>>>
>>>>If I hit you with a baseball bat and crush your skull because I don't
>>>>like you, would it be an acceptable argument in my defense that "c'mon,
>>>>what is this tiny insignificant incident compared to ____________"
>>>>
>>>>(where you can replace the fill-in-the-blank with your preferred
>>>>choice of the atrocities that *are happening* around the world)
>>>
>>>My reference to Mugabe's actions wasn't a defense. I was ridiculing
>>>your use of "seriously disturbed" about a posting in a Usenet group
>>>referring to a civil action to which neither of us is a party.
>>>
>>>I had no reason to defend myself. I hadn't attacked you or anyone else
>>>in any way, and now you are making a simile to crushing someone's skull
>>>with a baseball bat.
>>[...]
>>
>>I'm having a really hard time understanding what you're trying to
>>say with that "you are making a smile to crushing someone's skull"...
>
> Since I don't know where the transformation from "simile" to "smile"
> happened, I don't know whether you read my original text correctly or
> not.

No, you got it right -- I skipped/overlooked the "i" in simile, and
since the phrase, with the word SMILE instead did make sense, my brain
read it and processed it that way -- a complete misinterpretation of
what you were saying.

> The word I used was simile:
>
> A figure of speech in which [...]

Yes, I actually did know the word (it is almost identical to the
equivalent word in Spanish), so I would have understood what you said,
had my brain not overlooked the "i".

> Maybe it would have been better if I had just said, "Don't you think
> describing yourself as 'seriously disturbed' about a comparison between
> two lawsuits a little over the top?"

Well, I would have taken it with less surprise 🙂

> What's happened here is that we have played one-upsmanship with
> language: you described yourself as "seriously disturbed" about a
> comparison I had made, I replied with an example of something I thought
> would warrant being "seriously disturbed" about, and you responded with
> an escalation of language that could conceivably be taken the wrong
> way.

Actually, again, I wouldn't say my example was an escalation of
language; I was just trying to come up with a drastic example to
illustrate my point: you were trying to argue that my choice of
words was a bit exaggerated (when saying "seriously disturbed"), and
I interpreted it as you were trying to dismiss the importance of
something, using something worse (but unrelated) as argument.

I simply tried to come up with an example of something drastic and
quite obviously very wrong (crushing someone's skull with a baseball
bat) to argue that just because something else is worse, you can not
dismiss the fact that this something *is* very wrong.

Ok, granted, when we look back at the origin of the discussion, it
is true that comparing a discussion on a company's lawsuit with
assaulting and murdering someone is perhaps a hyperbole a little
bit too "hyperbolized" 🙂

Anyway, I'm glad you took the time to analyze and realize what the
source of our misunderstanding was, and took the time to reply to
me explaining the situation.

We are still in disagreement (perhaps not as much as initially
assesed), but at least I'm glad that we are disagreeing in reasonable
terms.

Cheers,

Carlos
--

 

[mygarbage2000]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On 30 Jun 2005 12:07:59 -0700, "Robert Myers" <rbmyersusa@gmail.com>
wrote:


>> Robert Myers wrote:

>> >> >Companies like AMD don't do much more than to feed
>> >> >the enthusiasms of Usenet groups.
Like defining the future of 64-bit computing

....snip...
>You missed the point. The vast majority of people who still need
>computers aren't going to need and aren't going to be able to pay for
>the performance that AMD and Intel are jockeying over. That's the
>market Via is aiming for.
Surely rural 3rd world laborers don't need the performance of Athlon
FX or Pentium EE. But neither they need the cheapness of VIA C3.
They are not only computer illiterate, they are plain illiterate
period. They don't need the gift of computers, or even monetary
donations, that will be wasted/stolen anyway before they reach
intended recipients. No amount of overhyped concerts will help,
either. What they need is the regime change. But this will never
happen because any involvement of the powers capable of it would look
too much like colonialism, i.e. _politically incorrect_. So the
corrupt self-serving regimes will stay, or get replaced by just as
corrupt new homegrown ones. And I bet, if these
Presidents/Chiefs/Supreme Mullahs/Big Kahunas/Great Bozos or some of
their cronies have taste for computers, expect these to be top of the
line brand names, with Pentium EE and all the goodies, not the humble
C3.

....snip...
>RM

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Robert Myers wrote:
> I'm sure AMD's customers will be just tickled pink to have a fishing
> expedition through corporate e-mail.

Here's a list of the people being asked to testify so far:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24351
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24350

So far Michael Dell, Kevin Rollins named in AMD subpoena. Former HPers
Michael Capellas and Carly Fiorina too. A lot of them have said they'll
cooperate voluntarily, only Toshiba so far has refused.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Robert Myers wrote:

>The reality is that AMD allowed *you* (and many who hang out here) to
>buy a less expensive processor of a particular type, and you have
>generalized your experience into a law of economics.

Wrong, as was most of what you wrote. My point was simple and
correct. Read my first post to this thread again, if you've forgotten
what it was.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

chrisv <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Robert Myers wrote:
> >They destroy their own market.
>
> Wrong. They could easily, today, be charging twice the price per unit
> performance, and people would be paying it, if not for AMD.

Depends on for which part of the market.

For the moderate/high performance stuff, perhaps.

VIA is producing a decent lower-performing x86 chip, and plenty of other
people could. Might not be very competitive with the Duron/Sempron line or
the low end Celerons, but it would find a market niche where Intel would
have to compete even if it meant throwing a higher-performance chip in at
the same price point.

I'm also not convinced that someone else couldn't produce a competitive
higher-end x86 chip, or that the higher prices on Intels wouldn't push more
people to Mac/PowerPC.

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/

"I do have a cause, though. It is Obscenity. I'm for it." - Tom Lehrer

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
> Robert Myers wrote:
> > Computing is *not* inexpensive because of AMD. Computing is
> > inexpensive because absolute top-of-the-line microprocessors are a
> > commodity, and they are a commodity because that's the way Intel chose
> > to play it, and it succeeded in playing it that way.
>
> This is where your true colors come out -- Intel blue all the way. Only
> an ignorant fool would think Intel decided to reduce prices of its
> processors on its own. The fact of the matter is that AMD and Cyrix
> pushed down prices so drastically in the early 1990's that we wouldn't
> have ever gotten to a $500 PC without them. I remember being happy to
> pay /only/ $1500 for a PC-XT compatible back in 1988.

And that already had second-source Intel compatible chips from AMD (and
others, for all I remember.) Though there WERE PCs a lot cheaper around that
time... I can't successfully recall the exact year, but the single-5 1/4"
only Tandy 1000EX was close to that cheap, and around that time the Leading
Edge Model D got a CGA XT (w/ 20mb HD) for $800ish.

> Intel was already a money factory prior to the advent of competition from
> AMD & Cyrix. It was already comfortable being a high-price per unit
> medium-volume money factory, until these two came in and forced it to
> change to a medium-priced high-volume money factory.

To an extent; OTOH, it was already used to competition to some extent.

This was true as far back as Zilog, for compatible parts... dumping the DRAM
business in favor of just processors was sort of the opposite approach...
and it took most of the 80s for the PC/x86 architecture to become clearly
dominant over the 68000-series architectures - Mac first and foremost but
Amiga and Atari ST as well. Had there been an open 68k-based architecture,
things might have been very different. Ditto if IBM had successfully
prevented PC-based clones by Compaq and others.

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/

"I do have a cause, though. It is Obscenity. I'm for it." - Tom Lehrer

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
> -if you want to stay in this business, you have to deal with Seagate.
> -If you have to stay in this business, you have to do business with
> ATI.
> -if you want to stay in this business, you have to include Linksys.
> -if you gotta stay in this business, you have to buy from 3Com.
> -if in this business, you gotta buy from Belkin.
> -you can't be serious about this business and avoid Logitech.
> -being in this business, you can't avoid Samsung.
>
> Yet this is how the business talks about Intel -- yet another component
> supplier.

Well, a very big one. But it's a long way from "Nobody ever got fired for
buying big blue." (And indeed, my first full time gig was filling a vacancy
made by my new boss... who had been promoted in part because her then-boss
had spent way too much money buying PS/2s rather than inexpensive clones.)

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/

"I do have a cause, though. It is Obscenity. I'm for it." - Tom Lehrer

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Nate Edel wrote:
> To an extent; OTOH, it was already used to competition to some extent.

Yes, Intel had a lot of competition at one time. Now it's down to a few
very specialized competitors (AMD, of course, in processors; Broadcom
in communications; Nvidia and ATI in graphics and chipsets).

I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
competition ever again.

> This was true as far back as Zilog, for compatible parts... dumping the DRAM
> business in favor of just processors was sort of the opposite approach...
> and it took most of the 80s for the PC/x86 architecture to become clearly
> dominant over the 68000-series architectures - Mac first and foremost but
> Amiga and Atari ST as well. Had there been an open 68k-based architecture,
> things might have been very different. Ditto if IBM had successfully
> prevented PC-based clones by Compaq and others.

The Macintosh killed the 68K series. It was the biggest 68K user base,
and if they had opened up their architecture for cloning the 68K might
still be around today. IBM could've also easily killed the 8086
architecture if it had prevented its own clones.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

YKhan wrote:

> Nate Edel wrote:

> > To an extent; OTOH, it was already used to competition to some extent.
>
> Yes, Intel had a lot of competition at one time. Now it's down to a few
> very specialized competitors (AMD, of course, in processors; Broadcom
> in communications; Nvidia and ATI in graphics and chipsets).
>
> I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
> competition ever again.
>

This is all kind of funny, in a way. Intel has been pushed around by
events as much as anyone else.

The idea that Intel didn't want any competition at all just isn't
right. They *need* competition so that they don't operate under the
restrictions under which a monopoly operates.

What Intel wants is control over its own destiny. That's fairly
reasonable, except that companies never really get control over their
own destiny, because markets move in ways that no one can predict and
that no one can control.

Can anyone think of a company trying to move a market, as in the case
of Itanium, that actually succeeded? The closest I can think of is IBM
and System/360.

RM

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
> competition ever again.

I'm sure you're right; fortunately, so far their actions in doing so have
tended to invite more of it.

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/

"I do have a cause, though. It is Obscenity. I'm for it." - Tom Lehrer

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

What is kind of funny is that you still don't believe that Intel is
already a monopoly. US antitrust laws only require you to have 40%
marketshare to be considered a monopoly. Intel is well above the limit.


All of this talk about it wanting to control its own destiny is great
for psychoanalysis classes, but it's simply irrelevant. Intel is a
monopoly and it is going to be brought under control now.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

YKhan wrote:

> What is kind of funny is that you still don't believe that Intel is
> already a monopoly. US antitrust laws only require you to have 40%
> marketshare to be considered a monopoly. Intel is well above the limit.
>

Care to provide a citation for that assertion?

>
> All of this talk about it wanting to control its own destiny is great
> for psychoanalysis classes, but it's simply irrelevant.

Does that kind of attempt to devalue the opinions others work at a
place like IBM?

> Intel is a monopoly and it is going to be brought under control now.

If you move to the US and decide to run for public office, I'll be sure
to keep track of what you're up to. Until then...

RM

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Nate Edel wrote:
> YKhan <yjkhan@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
> > competition ever again.
>
> I'm svre yov're right; fortvnately, so far their actions in doing so have
> tended to invite more of it.

Competition never goes away. No matter how many companies Intel has
handily defeated in the past, it will eventvally come vp against one or
several that will be mvch more determined than all others that came
before to defeat it. Intel has brovght this vpon itself -- althovgh
it's been carefvl to avoid leaving a paper trail as mvch as possible,
it's been too greedy with preserving its marketshare: trying too hard
to keep AMD marketshare below 20% or 10% in some cases, the evidence
was too compelling, if it had tried to keep it at 30% or 40% in some
markets, then the evidence wovld be inconclvsive.

Today, the Evropean Union raided Intel's premises, jvst like the
Japanese before it. These things are happening now becavse it's now too
late to even deny wrong-doing anymore, there is too mvch evidence
that's accvmvlated.

ARNnet | EC raids Intel, PC makers in competition inqviry
http://www.arnnet.com.av/index.php/id%3B1980938111%3Bfp%3B8%3Bfpid%3B0

Yovsvf Khan