🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan DeClerck wrote in message <366D7988.A5B2EC9B@cig.mot.com>...
>Larry Elmore wrote:
>>
>> Pray tell, what technologies and innovations has Microsoft stifled?
>
>Intel's Native Signal Processing (NSP) which puts DSP like functions in
>the cores of CPU's.

You mean it wasn't killed just because it's a dopey idea that isn't needed
or even wanted? Fact is, if you need DSP capabilities, a dedicated DSP is a
much better solution than trying to make the CPU all things to everybody.
Offloading work from the CPU for specialized functions makes a lot more
sense loading the CPU down. Such capabilites may well be part of future
CPU's but only as another super-scalar execution unit on a chip with several
other execution units. If it's such a great idea that was killed only
because of pressure from M$, why hasn't Motorola, IBM or any of the Japanese
chip makers included such capabilities on their general-purpose CPUs? M$
can't have much influence on what the makers of the PowerPC, MIPS or SPARC
CPUs do...

>The question is not what have they stifled... The question is better
>put:
>
>"Where would the world be, user interface wise, had Microsoft no used
>it's OS market share
>as a hammer to control the applications realm?"

M$ doesn't _have_ to use anything as a "hammer" to control the applications
realm. Just the simple fact that Windows is dominant means that most apps
will be written for it. IF IBM hadn't been so stupid in how it marketed and
supported OS/2, and it had achieved dominant market share instead of
Windows, most apps would be written for OS/2 and PM, and you'd be asking
what would've happened without that. Or if Apple hadn't been greedy and had
licensed the Mac OS back in 1986, M$ would never have developed Windows in
the first place, and you'd be asking how the Mac OS's dominance had
restricted the applications realm. No matter _who_ came out on top in the
desktop OS wars, development would've been restricted in some manner. The
Mac OS interface is nice, but I _hate_ being restricted to one mouse button.
If Apple had come out on top, most computers and apps would use one mouse
button -- a real limitation in my view. You can bet, too, that we'd _still_
be waiting for Apple to introduce _real_ multi-tasking in their OS -- they
stagnated in the face of competition, how much more would they have
stagnated without it?

>How many startups have not gotten the requisite capital funding because
>they were
>competing against Microsoft??

And how many would've been denied funding if they were competing against a
dominant Apple or IBM? What would've been significantly different in this
sphere if M$ had lost the desktop OS wars? It'd merely be a different face
with the same dominant market share and all the "power" that goes with it...

>What good ideas have they bought?? most of what they buy is a business
>decision,
>not on technical merits.. You don't think Bill Gates got rich by writing
>checks,
>do you??

Duh... _Of course_ they base their decisions on business considerations!!!
Name me one corporation that has survived in the business world by basing
decisions solely on technical merits rather than also on business
realities... Let's see now, they licensed their first internet browser from
Spyglass, they bought MS-DOS from another company, they went into a
partnership with Stac for their drive compression technology (and abused the
relationship with Stac (partly Stac's fault for signing on to such a poor
deal for their side) and lost in court later on), and that's just a partial
list. Didn't they also recently buy Hotmail rather than developing their own
email division? (IIRC, they tried converting Hotmail's servers to NT, but NT
doesn't scale very well and couldn't handle the load, so back to some
version of Unix...) M$ has developed few, if any, innovations on their own.

Larry