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Also to add: Allowing nVidia to become a monopoly would bite the US in the ass strategically, as nVidia loses incentive to innovate. That's how the US, effect
by romwell 5y ago
Also to add:
Allowing nVidia to become a monopoly would bite the US in the ass strategically, as nVidia loses incentive to innovate.
That's how the US, effectively, ended up having no viable aircraft when it entered WWI, after being the country that invented the thing. (Wright and Curtiss, IIRC, locked the market with patents).
Or, more closely, how the US telecom/Internet infrastructure is atrocious, despite — and because of — the Internet and the telephone being invented here. Go figure, Ma Bell wasn't the bees knees.
Strategically, the US needs someone to keep nVidia up on their toes. Innovation cuts into profit margins when you have a monopoly.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoMa Bell made some great innovations here and started a lot of the computers tech, after it was destroyed the baby bells combined again, Cingular has exclusive rights to iPhone at a time. Nvidia is reasltically already a monopoly with CUDA. They don’t need to innovate and they force universities to use their more expensive GPUs.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Cingular has exclusive rights to iPhone at a time But not the other baby bells, which is the point. Also, Apple went to Cingular after being rebuffed by Verizon. (Apple wanted no crapware. Verizon said no.) Competition working.
- romwell 5y agoIs your point that monopolies aren't bad, or that anti-monopoly laws are useless? Because both of these are provably false. As is that nVidia is already a monopoly.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoNatural monopolies aren’t bad, don’t last long and they fall when it’s leapfrogged, like Kodak when digital came. The USPS is an unnatural monopoly which stifles any carrier and serves mostly to distribute spam. Anti monopoly laws are useless, x86-64 is a duopoly, and any monopoly laws aren’t able to stop Amazon and their vertical intergration, because the argument is that eBay and other sites exist. Network oligarchs collaborate to fix prices.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"Natural monopolies aren’t bad, don’t last long and they fall when it’s leapfrogged" Natural monopolies are things like electric power grid and water supply and train and roads, they last forever precisely because they are natural and they were never leapfrogged in history. 'Natural" part stands for nessesary inveatment in infrastructure being redundant and causing zero-sum game. Kodak wasn't much of a monopoly and certainly wasn't a natural one Read up on how antitrust actually works, your assesment of USPS is equally inaccurate
- GhettoComputers 5y agoYou listed infrastructure, I’m referring to examples such as standard oil, which sold oil the cheapest.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoThat's not a natural monopoly
- d110af5ccf 5y ago> The USPS is an unnatural monopoly which stifles any carrier The USPS is required to deliver to everyone, even when it doesn't make monetary sense to do so. They are an important piece of US infrastructure. They are also incredibly constrained by legislation. They aren't allowed to just raise prices as needed.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoNo it’s not. You can do it digitally for official documents, and they mostly deliver spam, and the cost is in your taxes. I’d rather not have them.
- freemint 5y agoThere are places where it delivers where there is no internet.
- tomnipotent 5y ago> They don’t need to innovate They're constantly innovating, and have monthly software releases. Don't blame NVIDIA because AMD can't offer a solid enterprise offering that is attractive to customers.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoThey don’t need to for CUDA. I didn’t say they didn’t. I’d love more open ARM devices like Jetson.
- emodendroket 5y agoRealistically, with the cost of developing this stuff only going up, only monopolies or duopolies are really going to exist at the cutting edge. That's the trend and I don't really see a way of reversing it.
- pm90 5y agoCost of developing what? New ISAs? Chip Designs?
- p1necone 5y agoI wish we could run experiments on this sort of thing and compare. I want to know how an alternative "no IP law" USA would have developed. Or even one that just didn't grant patents as freely. My totally uninformed opinion is that basically the only IP law that's worth a damn is trademarks (which should absolutely be very strongly enforced. It's crucially important that consumers know who they're buying from for the market to work properly), and maybe copyright on /entertainment/ focused creative works for the life of the author and no longer.
- rswail 5y agoLook at the US during the 1800s freely "borrowing" stuff from the UK, which was then the world leader in IP development. All "developing" nations don't (and shouldn't) GAF about IPRs during that phase in their development. Notice that China didn't GAF for years, but does now, both from a control POV and from a competition POV. Countries only worry about IPRs when they have sufficient IP development to have something to sell.