Couldn't resist, had to add a reply.
The guy who praised Bill for Windows : in a way you're right, Windows made the PC an easy-to-use machine, sure. But what on earth gives you the idea that we wouldn't have, say, 3D cards without Windows? Ever used a Macintosh? You also put a PC with DOS in the same sentence with Amigas... Did you know that we had nice, TRULY MULTITASKING graphical user interfaces on Amigas in the mid eighties.
Technologically the competitors to PC were lightyears ahead, the main reason PC won the race over Amiga for example wasn't Windows, but the freely clonable architecture, aka. every little taiwanese firm could make IBM PC clones. Windows didn't create the demand, instead demand created Windows. Bill just copied the right stuff from competitors (aka. Apple and Amiga) and did it at the right time.
Ironically, today it is M$ (with a couple of other giant bloodsuckers) that's trying to "close" the PC again, with its hardware copy protection schemes and stuff. Some say they're using the Xbox as a test bench, which quite frankly wouldn't surprise me at all.
To be frank, I think the PC is more of a curse! I like just about every other computer setup more than the PC. Amiga, Macintosh, you name it! The PC is a technological relic from the early eighties.
M$ certainly isn't a nice firm.
I love the hardware they give me in the form of Xbox, but I hate the way they do it. If you look at Nintendo, for example, there's a notable difference : Nintendo is a LOT smaller company, living and breathing of the games business. They exist because of games, and all they do is for games. You don't get bad games off Nintendo's in-house team! Nintendo also sells their machines with their games, so they HAVE to be good, because otherwise they'd be out of the biz, or turn to a software-only company, like Sega for instance.
M$, instead, is relying on other options. First of all, they're relatively new to the business, so they start with somewhat weird hardware choices (economically weird that is, though CISC processors still don't belong in consoles IMHO). They approach the games business as an area to be conquered, but not to be respected, at least so it would seem.
For instance, they launched with a killer app, Halo - which they bought with big bucks and made a lot of people who waited it for Macs and PCs sad, which generally isn't considered a good thing, at least where I live. We like to make people happy here.
Then they rush their machine to people. You could call it brute forcing the installed base (and the industry itself for that matter) with constant price drops. They don't seem to view the games business as being based on the quality of games, but rather a sort of commodity market. This is bad, as you may realise.
As for MS being a good American company - well that might be. If you define "American" as being traditionally sleazy, in the Enron / slaughter Iraqis for oil / etc etc kind of way
Ok, I might be overstating here a bit, and yes it's a bit messy post, but I'm sorry, I just can't relate to the "Nice Big MS" thought. I don't hate them, but to gain my liking they'd need to stop trying to be the ultimate IT business ruler and accept their place among the others. Bit like dubya you could say...
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Topic: How Many M$ Spys Hang Out With Us Here @ X-s (Read 381 times)