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I agree with you.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream. Discover.
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I disagree with most of what you are saying. However there is one clear truth:
MehGerbil wrote: If Microsoft won't force the world to play it's game we'll all end up playing Google's game.
and I agree that this is bad.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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I don't think Google running things would be bad.
I'm willing to code in any IDE offered by a company that isn't constantly apologizing for winning.
It's beyond me why Microsoft is afraid of setting the course.
If they don't do it then some other innovator will gladly take the job.
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MehGerbil wrote: It's beyond me why Microsoft is afraid of setting the course.
If they don't
do it then some other innovator will gladly take the job.
You're assuming MSFT is still an innovator... 
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IndifferentDisdain wrote: You're assuming MSFT is still an innovator...
Agreed, Microsoft doesn't have anyone to copy from for this.
MS-DOS, copied from CP/M
Windows, copied from Macintosh and Xerox Star
Office, copied from AppleWorks and Ashton-Tate's Frameworks, although broken into interoperable pieces to maximize sales
MSIE, copied from Netscape
Surface, copied from iPad
WinPhone Mango/Metro, their first innovation, but hey, accidents happen
It's no wonder why they seem to have lost their way, they never had one to begin with.
Even Billy's BASIC was copied from Dartmouth's design.
Maybe I've been in the industry too long and watched it develop instead of being dropped into the middle and buying all the PR (although I have another compound word in mind).
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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BrainiacV wrote: It's no wonder why they seem to have lost their way, they never had one to begin with.
True, that. I remember when "folders" was the way of the future, but Mac was beating the @#$p out of them. Then they swooped up some former Mac developers and WOW! windows came into being. I will admit that they are really good at hiring good lawyers who can pass @#$p to the bench and it is swallowed as the truth.
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Yeah, it always amazes me to hear people sing the praises of Microsoft.
I guess I just remember a snot nosed Billg calling us all pirates because we thought $400.00 for $0.40 of papertape was too much to spend on a computer that cost $400.00.
I wasn't one to make copies, I just refused to buy the product, but I was offended that Bill tarred us all with the same brush. It showed his priority was money first, product a distant second.
Microsoft made us suffer with the one line editor, EDLIN, and didn't improve the product until DR-DOS came out with a full screen editor.
I just had to shake my head at the FUD when Windows would pop out with a "This product may be unstable" error message when it detected it was not running on top of MS-DOS, as though it was the operating system's fault that Windows wasn't working right. But it scared enough people into dropping DR-DOS so they could still watch Windows crash, but on top of MS-DOS. But that was better because they didn't get that upfront warning. 
My spousal-unit would defend Microsoft by saying their product works. Yeah, like IBM computers just worked, The phrased used to be "You can buy better than IBM, but you can't pay more." Everyone in the know knew that their computers were middle of the road. They just had a massive sales and support organization. Microsoft has been the same, but with software. But all the dirty tricks Bill did to build Microsoft into what it is today seems to have been lost to history.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I had to look up FUD. First thing that came up directly matched the context of what you were saying, but then I hit the urban dictionary which also came up with that definition as the second meaning. I'd never have guessed the first meaning they had for it. Then I remembered another term I'd heard when I was quite a bit younger: fuddy duddy, a slightly pejorative term for someone too straight laced to be comfortable with. Then wondered if it came from the very pejorative first meaning of fud.
I've worked with machines that booted with papertape in college, but never bought any tape for it, I do remember the teacher getting mad when the boot tape got a rip in it and got the impression it was expensive. Never knew Billy had anything to do with the tape. (I was too busy working with REAL computers by the time Bill showed up to have any interest in toy computers.)
Man, those toy computers grew up fast.
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In high school we were lucky enough to have ASR-33 teletypes connected via acoustic coupler to a DEC PDP-8/I running TSS-8/I (Timesharing System). I was further lucky that I attended a high school in the district with a dedicated computer room with TWO(!) teletypes. I heard most of the other high schools kept their teletypes locked in the closet and were only used for special occasions. Fine by me, more CPU for us.
All our storage was papertape. Even the site with the hardware, they didn't pop for the DECtape drives so we had to load the OS from papertape via a highspeed reader (200 cps), OK, highspeed compared to the 10 cps on the teletypes. Took at least an hour, maybe two as I recall.
When the Altair and such came out, it was a mad scramble to come up with converters between RS-232 and the 20 milliamp current loop that the ASR-33's used. They were few and far between.
One of the kids in the class managed to score some mylar tape, which was hard to tear, but discouraged because it was hard on the punch unit.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Nothing is good without competition. We can't have everyone following one company/power. There needs to be diversity, challenge, or whatever you want to call it.
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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loctrice wrote: Nothing is good without competition. We can't have everyone following one company/power. There needs to be diversity, challenge, or whatever you want to call it.
That's the bloody point.
Everyone throwing up their hands and declaring the W3C the winner means no actual standard for another 8 years.
I think Google or Microsoft or Apple (or both) could make HTML 5 irrelevant in that time.
I hope they do.
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Anyone remember Bill Gates being hauled into court for the crime of having lots and lots of customers? Anti-trust is wrong. Anti-trust punishes companies for winning.
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Anti-trust is not wrong - it is the guard that keeps us from being bullied too much.
And Microsoft was hit by anti-trust not because they won, but because they won unfairly.
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And we wouldn't like you when you're angry?
“I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck.” Bill Hicks
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I always feel silly being angry.
I don't take myself seriously enough to believe it matters.
Oh look, MehGerbil is angry - and there is a squirrel running up a tree...
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I've got to cogitate a bit about the rant to form an opinion. But on the surface your reasoning seems sound.
And when you phrase it as "MehGerbil is angry" then yeah, it DOES lose a little bit of punch 
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MehGerbil wrote: and there is a squirrel running up a tree...
That makes me think of the movie "UP"
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I like Russ Meyer films, too.
Don't really see the connection here, though.
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GenJerDan wrote: I like Russ Meyer films, too.
I don't really see the connection either. I quoted Mehgerbil saying "and there is a squirrel running up a tree..." I think of the movie UP: http://movies.disney.com/up[^]
Oh... just looked up Russ because I was clueless, I may have watched his movies when I was in my 20's but at that time I didn't care who created the movie. I could see him creating a movie called UP, but there wouldn't be any connection with the movie I was thinking of. There's quite a difference between what he and Pixar would cook "up" (See, multiple meanings for the word) for a movie. For a fan of Russ, I could see why you wouldn't have watched a Pixar film and therefore miss the connection I had made.
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On the other hand, maybe I was just yanking someone's chain.
Which, as far as I know, was not a Russ Meyer movie.
Hmm. Feel like watching Beneath The Valley of the Ultra-Vixens now. Sigh.
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GenJerDan wrote: On the other hand, maybe I was just yanking someone's chain.
Which I suspected at the beginning, but started the reply like you weren't. As soon as I saw Russ's profile, I was pretty certain that was happening.
Well, may as well yank back. 
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Do we like him when he's not?
I think we should be told.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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That would probably make me angry.
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 Like
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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