"Just zis Guy, you know?" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 23:05:21 -0000, "Robert Peffers" <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >All very clever of you but Bill Gates is a very rich man so I would say MS must be doing
> >something right.
>
> Yes, he is very good at marketing. When competitors to Windows started to appear he had DOS
> tweaked so they didn't work properly. He uses FUD to deter competition, and where competition
> arises anyway he either steals or buys the market. He is a very shrewd man. So was Rockefeller,
> but he was still breaking the law. The robber barons were rich as well, you know.
You are missing something in your tirade against MS though and it is that very something that really
did put MS at the top.
>
> The biggest problem with Microsoft is that it is holding back innovation. Microsoft and Intel (in
> which Bill owns a substantial stake) together own most of the value in the PC market. Which is one
> reason why so many mobile phone makers have jumped ship and gone to Symbian; they don't want to
> end up as just another low-margin Microsoft franchise.
Yes but inovation can, in itself, hold back the whole industry and until MS took a hand that is
exactly what was happening.
>
> Open standards are anathema to Microsoft. They take an established standard and subvert it to give
> proprietary lock-in, or they simply ignore it and introduce their own. Or in some cases several
> subtly different versions of their own (e.g. SMB).
Sorry but NO, the fact is that it was because MS allowed others to use their source that the
standard became the standard. Back then it was a toss up between several systems and some of them
were, without doubt, better than MS and Big Blue. That is why Apple Mac almost died and they would
have gone under if they had not made their systems use windows.
>
> Mind you, I quite like the fact that Microsoft software sucks. It keeps me in a job. Just as long
> as I have something reliable to fall back on when the Blue Screen of Death intervenes - so I have
> a couple of Linux boxes and some Macs around the house as well. And all our production servers at
> work are now on Linux, with massive improvements in uptime and performance.
>
> Guy
> ===
> ** WARNING ** This posting may contain traces of irony.
http://www.chapmancentral.com (BT ADSL and
> dynamic DNS permitting)
> NOTE: BT Openworld have now blocked port 25 (without notice), so old mail addresses may no longer
> work. Apologies.
All very fine but what would the position have been if MS had not taken a grip on things and
standardised it. Would we not have still had a multitude of different systems. No system speaking to
another. No internet and no continuity.
What put MS and Big Blue in front was the very fact that their stuff remains backward compatible.
We all knew that there were better system around but the fact that big business did not have to
scrap all their equipment and adopt another new incompatible system for every step forward is the
very thing that made them give up their old machines and get new stuff in. They can still access
the records they have kept. The progression from MS-Dos to MS-DOS windows through Win 3.0 to
WidowsXP PRO is what carried the whole industry forward. If we had tried to jump from system to
system the overall progress would have been much less with companies sticking with their old well
tried systems.
--
Aefauldlie, (Scots for Sincerely),, frae Robert, (Auld Bob), Peffers, In Kelty, *Kingdom Of Fife*,
Scotland, (UK).
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*The Eck's Files*, Web Site is
http://www.peffers50.freeserve.co.uk/
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