too funny

Next time I read this column, I am going to close my office door. It is hard to pretend you are doing research when you are laughing out loud.

Nice job!

Its all true abot microsoft, but i didnt know that they bought everything!

Ahhh.... Just now I remembered some jokes about engineers :laugh:

In fact, Microsoft has made a stabile and good OS. It's called DOS. Has anyone else used it?

where I live Microsoft is calling people up, asking how many computers they have, and trying to find count their licenses. Sounds pretty desperate to me

One of the first operating systems for personal computers was DOS. This operating system was a cut-down implementation of the CP/M operating system designed for the 8088 family of computers. The original implementation, called QDOS (Quick-and-Dirty Operating System), was designed by Tim Patterson for Seattle Computer Products. This product was eventually licensed to Microsoft, and Microsoft then demonstrated the operating system to IBM.

If I remeber correctly, it was not licensed, but Sold to MS for a very small fee. One thing I will say, the products may not be great, but they have a superb marketing team!!! They could sell dung to a cow farmer......

Microsoft bought DOS for 50k if I remember correctly and the deal that made them an empire was when they talked IBM into buying a copy for every machine sold. At the time no one knew how may machine would be sold and IBM thought it would be faster and more cost effective to liscense Bill's nifty software than develop their own.

favorite quote of the time...
"640K ought to be enough for anybody..."
Bill Gates

which is how we got the extended memory "feature" back in the DOS days...

As I also recall, some of their more genius things they also bought, Like Direct X I beleive they bought of of some college students if I am remebering right.

Why does buying technology, packaging it, and marketing it make MS evil?

In the early days of desktop computers (80s and first half of the 90s), this was incredibly smart since the distribution channels for software were limited and not very accessible to the average joe user. An all-in-one package was what people needed in order to buy their first computers - probably still do for the most part. Obviously, as software distribution becomes easier and people become more educated about computers, this strategy makes less sense without some real innovation being added to the packaged products.

Because the bought technology (in this case Windows) crashes too often.

Each day I bring my PowerBook G4 into my tech support/web design cubicle which houses an XP/2000 box with a few hard drives.

Guess which one is a Really Big paperweight

Meg

THe powerbook, because it is easier to move around than a computer's tower

it is evil, because in the last 25 years, m$ bought over 500+ companies with great ideas, only because they had competing products.

they used and republished products from about 50 companies, and dismantled all the other 450, fired all the employees, sold out their assets...

now, that companies where probably very innovative, since m$ feared them. now imagine what new ideas could become programs if m$ didn't do that with them?

Companies aren't innovative, people are. Having your company bought by MS doesn't stop you from innovating - unless of course you decide you have enough money and some combination of golfing and fishing is what you'd really like to do instead.

How many of these 500+ companies were owned by the same people? Do you have any references for these numbers?

It isn't really evil, its business. Bill Gates was never a innovator, he was a business man. Its a good business plan to buy companies, and their ideas, then sell them out for more than you nought them, its all profit, you can't say that no other company ever does that.