Re: Microsoft not taking advantage

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

On Wed, 17 May 2006 00:20:12 -0700, Mistoffolees

And I am sure that there are plenty of people who remember
how Microsoft got to its present position

By breaking the stranglehold of "big iron" and opening up application
software availability to generic computers. The latter is something
that Apple still lacks the courage or decency to do.

and how it became the robber baron that it currently is.

By being buffered against the immediate consequences of market anger,
they were able to pull moves that consolidated their position and
extend into new markets. Those tactics are successful, but they only
work if you have already earned your success in other ways; in other
words, they are decadence rather than good ways forward.

Interestingly, Bill Gates never could program

False, I suspect. I remember reading an article that looked at the
original DOS code, including that done by Bill Gates, and commenting
on how efficient and well-coded it was.

By now, it's as impossible to know anything about "Bill Gates" as it
is about, say, Michael Jackson or George Bush. There are far too many
salaried layers betwen them and the observer, but we do know he
started out as a coder and geek, in the same sense that I am a geek; a
fascination and love of the technology for its own sake.

By now, neither of us are pure geeks, but that's where we're from :-)

I often wonder if Bill still codes, and if he misses it if not.

or finished Harvard

Well, would you finish training to be the world's nth lawyer if
something you really believed in and loved doing took off to make a
fortune but to demand all your time?

Windows may be the only program

<nit-pick> Operating System </nit-pick>

that is available for dumbed-down users

There's what the user wants to do, and there's what has to happen to
make it so. The value of software is to bridge the two.

Software that barely lifts you above the system (e.g. "you don't have
to write a device driver to use your new HD, just add this command
string when re-compiling the OS") is less useful or valuable than
software that abstracts the task right up to your intention ("new HD
detected, do you want to use it?").

The trouble often is that Windows goes too far, i.e. it second-guesses
your intention rather than facilitating its execution ("Windows found
a new hard drive and is already writing to it").



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