Monday, December 13, 2004

The Wonders of the Oligopolistic Market

Someone needs to tell Carleton that they can't do this to us anymore.

My network drive at school has a maximum quota of 30mb. Now, in a previous age, this would be plenty of space. But most of my research at school involves downloading multi-megabyte pdfs of journal articles. So 30mb can run out really quickly.
Ah, but I've finally found a virtue to Microsoft. My hotmail account was recently upgraded to 250mb, and the maximum size of an email is 20mb. This means that one email can hold 66% of my entire Carleton drive, and I could store six times my Carleton drive with room to spare on my hotmail account. Still, given that it's Microsoft, I can't help but be leery. It feels kind of like when you find your Visa limit has been raised.
Cost of my Carleton account: "Free" with $5,000/year tuition
Cost of my Hotmail Account: Free.
I'm rapidly being forced to reconsider my suspicion of the free market. Because if Microsoft isn't a paragon of free enterprise, who is?

Note to my more crotchety readers - and I know you're out there: Yes, I could read those journal articles in "books" with "paper", and I will be entirely willing to do so when you give up your cellphones, computers, and television. Nyahh.

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