If the U.S. really wants to get Bolivian farmers to stop growing coca, then we’ll have to make growing lettuce in the Continental U.S. illegal (thus pricing up something you can grow in Bolivia’s thin air and chill temps), or we’ll have to outbid the Cali cartel for the crop in full. Ditto Redmond; MSFT can’t keep the exploit writers from doing what they do except by making them an offer they can’t refuse.Dan didn’t say Microsoft is the Cali Cartel, merely that what they’re dealing with in terms of a criminal exploit culture is the equivalent.With $5B in underutilized cash laying around, it is almost criminal that MSFT hasn’t just cornered the market. Of course, the longer they wait the more the price to buy out the opposition rises and, in fact, that $5B may no longer be enough though there’s no doubt a creative pricing structure would have real effects, such as to pay informants 2X what they pay code jocks.
— Punditry: Will Microsoft buy flaws? Ryan Naraine, Zero Day, March 19th, 2007
Well, then he adds that MSFT basically enables the existence of that culture:
If I’d been the judge in the monopoly trial, I’d given them the choice between backing out of 50% of their market or betting their entire free cash pool on ending the monoculture risk that their monopoly is and always will be. “You can have it all, but it’s all your fault, or not.”Personally, I don’t think the U.S. govt. could buy out the Cali Cartel, since that would just provoke other locations to want to be bought out, too. Pricing up lettuce isn’t a solution, either. The U.S., last time I looked, is the biggest market for cocaine. So the solution would be to decrease the price in that market. For cocaine, that would mean legalizing it. For Windows, that would mean either busting up the Microsoft monopoly legally or somehow getting enough people to stop using Windows so that it stopped being a monopoly. Software vendor liability would help, too.
-jsq