Re: If APL Is So Wonderful, How Come APL Programmers Aren't Rich

Doug White wrote:

> Keywords:
> In article <db3tkv118c4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "J. Clarke"
> <jclarke.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>Bob Cain wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> phil chastney wrote:
>>>> If Bill Gates is rich, how come Windows isn't so wonderful?
>>>
>>> A more pertinant question is - if it isn't so wonderful, why
>>> is he rich.
>>>
>>> Might have something to do with what he's charged for it and
>>> its predecessors from the gitgo.
>>
>>More to do with recognizing an opportunity when he saw it and then never
>>losing the momentum.
>
> Mostly he used his "momentum" (i.e. money) to squash his competition. If
> he couldn't beat them by undercutting them or browbeating PC makers into
> only loading his stuff, he'd buy them out.

You're talking recent history. Microsoft did not have that kind of power
until they were firmly established, and they got firmly established by
recognizing a single opportunity--when IBM came knocking Microsoft agreed
to their terms, Digital Research didn't. And once PC-DOS was the IBM
standard they became difficult to stop.

Now, what operating system has been available that PC makers could load
other than Windows? Linux? That's very recent. OS/2? IBM never marketed
it very well and gave up on it instead of providing Win32 support.
Concurrent? DR priced it higher than NT, it never had any kind of GUI, and
even the virtual-mode x86 version never worked particularly well.

As for "buying out the competition", what OS vendor that had any kind of
credible product has Microsoft "bought out"? They certainly did not "buy
out" IBM, which produced OS/2. Novell, not Microsoft, bought out Digital
Research and USL. Palm bought out Be.

How about desktop software? IBM, not Microsoft, bought out Lotus. Novell
bought out WPCorp. Smart was bought out by Informix. The remains of
Micropro last I heard belonged to Mattel, with the Windows source for
Wordstar belonging to Corel. Supercalc ended up with CA. I have no idea
what became of MultiMate but it's reason for existence died with Wang and
good riddance. So what competitor did Microsoft buy there?

As for undercutting, yeah, Microsoft has often had the lowest priced
software in a particular category. That's how they got the IBM deal. This
is a bad thing how?

> The sad part is that most of the planet things software is some magical
> thing that is inherently buggy & prone to crashing. Because the only
> example thy have to go on is Microsoft, they don't even know that they
> should be complaining bitterly about the garbage they sell.

Lemme guess, you haven't used a Microsoft product since Windows 2.0. I
haven't had a crash traceable to a Microsoft product in a very long time.

> My company has switched first us from Netscape to IE (supposedly because
> the time *** software wouldn't work with Netscape, which isn't true),
> and now they are forcing us to use Outlook instead of Eudora for email.
> Each step has made my computer less stable, less useful, and more prone
> to viruses.

If your computer is "less stable" because you are using IE and Outlook then
the problem is between keyboard and chair. If you check my headers you
will find that I am using a Linux box at the moment. I also use Microsoft
boxen and find that they are every bit as stable as my Novell and Linux
boxen. As for being "less useful", find me something else that has the
capabilities of Outlook/Exchange that can sync with a wide range of
auxiliary hardware. Ximian used to work but it doesn't have that third
party support--you could sync some popular PDAs with it but not the other
stuff--but the last time I tried it Novell had managed to break it so that
it didn't work with Exchange anymore. As for virii, while there is malware
that can be transferred via Outlook or IE, it is not in general in the
category of "viruses" and every virus I have ever personally encountered
came off of a diskette that a child had used in a computer in a school, not
via the Internet. Further, if your company is running an Exchange server
it should be filtering any executable attachments.

> Doug White

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
.

Loading