🚀 go-pugleaf

<hamei@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:c1.2c.2Tp5Hk$08f@hamei.pacbell.net...
> In <3891a604_4@news3.prserv.net>, "J. Clarke" <nospam@nospam.nospam>
writes:
> >"Pete Tisserand" <NoSpamMan@byproduct.org> wrote in message
> >news:ydhuvIyNtV5F-pn2-2deo8Z7dWvrd@ppp11.blackbox1-mfs.netaxs.com...
> >
> >> One only has to look at the netscape/explorer debacle to see where MS
> >> is going. Do they think MS will happily leave them alone?
> >
> >Depends on what they are doing.  If Microsoft percieves something as a
> >mainstream market, something that the majority of computers are going to
> >have installed in one form or another, then they'll go after it.  If it's
a
> >niche market, they tend to leave it alone.  That's why they have a word
> >processor but not a page composition program (don't say Publisher--it's a
> >toy) or a font generator or a video editor or a Modula compiler or an APL
> >interpreter or a CAD program.  Microsoft can't do everything at
once--they
> >go after what they percieve as the high-profit targets.  If someone
uncovers
> >a new major market then Microsoft will likely try to tap it, but they
won't
> >know it's a major market until whoever discovered it has sold enough into
it
> >to identify it as such, at which point that company has made a good pile
for
> >its investors.
> >
>
> interesting that you would point out the CAD market . . . MS certainly
> has all the players in the midrange CAD market fairly well locked in.

The issue I was addressing was the contention that any vendor selling into
the Windows market will be torpedoed by Microsoft in the same manner that
they attempted to torpedo Netscape.  Microsoft has clearly not done this in
the CAD market--they certainly have the resources to develop or buy a CAD
program if they want to, but they have chosen not to.

> Varimetrix is the only professional-level lower-priced CAD program
> available on anything but NT . . . the good part is that M$ is making
> pretty serious efforts to get into the machine controller business, but
> as usual their products are so poor they're liable to come a cropper.
> A blue screen of death is one thing on your desktop, quite another
> hooked to 60 hp shoving several hundred pounds of steel around at
> 1200 inches per minute.

Well, now, I seem to recall that they already screwed up shoving several
thousands of tons of steel around, plus God knows how much high explosive.

> After they kill a few people they may decide
> that wasn't such a great market after all. Software engineers outside
> the industry are notoriously ignorant of what the consequences of
> poor programming can be.

You've got that right, and also the limits of software.  Never will forget
the software weenie who wanted to safe/arm a 300,000 pound thrust rocket
engine using software only.  I was the only programmer in the meeting other
than the weenie, and I had a lot of trouble getting it through to the
managers that that was not a wise course of action.  Finally settled it by
reminding him that software can't protect against hardware failure and
suggesting that he ride in the airplane with it.  "Ride in the airplane with
it" the managers understood.  At that point he started backpedalling.

--

---

--- John

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