On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 22:30:41 GMT, Tim Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote or quoted :
> >>Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more powerful >>than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb >>mainframe terminals. > >Utter hogwash. Computer hardware would still have followed the path it >did. I suspect we'd all be using WordPerfect or AbiWord on some kind of >Unix clone, and I also suspect application integration wouldn't be as >commonplace as it now is, but it's silly to credit Microsoft with the >ubiquity of powerful computers. Granted MS did figure out all kinds of ways to waste RAM and CPU power thus forcing people to upgrade to more powerful computers. What might have happened with someone else leading the charge it we would be using less powerful computers but getting more spritely response. That is like saying you credit SUV owners for any advances in alternative energy because they helped burn up the oil faster. MS has held BACK computer evolution by tying their OS so heavily to the Pentium architecture. The chip architecture has nowhere near enough registers. MS refused to believe the Internet was more than a passing fad. They are still frantically patching security holes in their OS over a decade later. -- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list