On the one hand we are told that China is becoming rich and powerful. On the other, that wealth seems to be due to having hundreds of millions of China’s citizens employed by mega-manufacturing firms that keep their employees on campus, housed and fed, so that they can be worked to death on 12 hour or longer shifts. Who, in China, is the beneficiary of the new wealth there?

If there are a bunch of really wealthy Bill Gates types getting all the money while the workers only hope for a successful suicide to get them off the job, I don’t think that their society will endure very long. On the other hand, if all that wealth flows to the general population, your scenario where they can easily afford to buy more and more Microsoft Windows licenses seems likely.

Let’s divide an (arbitrary) $300 PC into (an arbitrary) $250 hardware and (arbitrary) $50 Microsoft costs. Possibly not exact, but good enough for this comparison.

Now let’s assume rampant inflation in the US, such that it outstrips China.

All other things being equal, the Renmimbi will appreciate against the dollar (of course, things aren’t quite that simple).

Since the hardware cost to the Chinese is still, effectively, $250 (readjusted for American inflation), your Chinese consumer is looking at payment to Microsoft of something less than $50. If inflation is rampant enough, maybe $25. Maybe even $10.

If you’re correct about rampant US inflation, the logic is that the Chinese are going to be buying Windows licenses in their hundreds of millions.

How about someone who wants to have a real computer as opposed to the cheap piece of crap that you seem to think we all should be running.

Not everyone is as cheap as you apparently are Robert Pogson!

Does anyone believe M$’s monopoly would survive rampant inflation? M$ is clinging to life in the client division at $50-$100 per licence for the OS on a $300 box. Who in their right mind would buy those boxes for $600 when they could buy them for $250 with GNU/Linux?

Which was possibly why the real world had switched to Win98 a couple of years previous. Did you not get the news?

…glass houses…

They say it takes real money to play in the bigger games, Mr. Pogson, but don’t you worry, we’ll protect you.:-)

The deficit and resultant debt is something that a lot of tea party folk fuss and fume about, Mr. Pogson, but nothing ever seems to change. For one thing, it is unsecured debt entirely and China and other countries that have invested in those loans are not really able to collect on them unless we pay willingly. That has caused a slight dip in the credit rating down here, but it remains as the most favored investment vehicle for the world.

As long as there is enough ink to run the printing presses at the Federal Bureau of Engraving, the money will be there to pay those debts.

Hmmm. US deficit 8.5% of GDP. Fr deficit 5.8% of GDP.
US wastes 4.6% of GDP on the military. Fr wastes 2.6%
US has 24 maternal deaths per 100K births, Fr has 8…
US spends 16% of GDP on health, Fr spends 3.5%…

Perhaps people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

In 2000, M$ was not providing me and my students any reliable service. Lose ’95 was failing daily. In 2003, M$ threatened to cut off support for NT, forcing Munich to reevaluate their reliability. Munich and I decided to go with more reliable IT. It also happens to cost less.

Exactly. Aside from the negativity you impute by saying “locked in” rather than “dependent on”, a customer/vendor partnership is exactly what most people or businesses want to have. They want to have suppliers who can satisfy their needs at a fair price and who are likely to be around to take care of those needs year after year.

Trust and confidence are the watchwords here, Mr. Pogson. I am sure that you are not so miserly that you act this way in all things. How about your local gun dealer? Your grocer? Your doctor?

I personally pay an extra amount for medical insurance coverage to have PPO coverage which, in the US, basically allows you to pick a specific physician rather than the less expensive HMO coverage which basically gives you the “next available” doctor when you visit your assigned clinic. Maybe they don’t do that in Canada, I understand that you have a national health situation. But here, having that continuity is important to me and I will pay for it.

It is the same with other suppliers. I always take my cars to the same repair service organization, for example. I have a pest control and lawn service company that I like and expect to be able to call on whenever I need them.

Finding the absolute lowest price provider is something that you seem to be interested in yourself, but do not think that everyone is that way. Most people want consistency and continuity as well as comfort and service. Like it or not, Microsoft has provided more than a billion people with such service for 30 years now.

The French police can easily fall back on Debian GNU/Linux, for instance which has been around much longer than Ubuntu.

Terrible risk? How about the alternative, depending on M$ for IT?
“Our best interest is served by effectively eliminating the special browser and the special server altogether and making the Windows desktop the “client” and Windows NT the server…” see http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/exhibits/521.pdf

M$ actually conceived of eliminating the web as we know it and replacing it with their infrastructure. Would it serve the French police and France to have their IT run by M$? The longer they stayed with M$ the more enslaved they would be.

Let’s put this in perspective. France is a country of 63 million people, many of whom are extremely competent in IT. M$ is 92K people and most of them are salesmen. Making M$ in charge of IT is ludicrous.