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Biotech / Medical : Dean Kamen and Ginger ??? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (201)	12/3/2001 3:58:51 AM
From: MSI	Respond to of 377

Hi MW, yes, you're right, I have to disagree about Gates continued benefit to the world of software. At one time it was a breakthru to finally get some respect for software development, which I thought would change the world, and it did. I was his biggest fan. Until I found out about their intentions to "cut off the air supply" of any competitive innovation, as their standard operating procedure. A few years ago it got to the point where new development started being smothered, net value of MSFT is trending negative, with lock-step development of increasingly inefficient products and processes. Probably billions of hours are lost each year fighting that system, compared to end-user results from the comparable versions of bullet-proof operating systems that have been eliminated or prevented by predatory marketing practices. When MSFT purchased DEC, I had hopes a new scientifically rigorous o/s might emerge, since they acquired some true computer scientists. It didn't and hasn't. It was decided to keep throwing millions of lines of mediocre code on top of the already bloated core to get to market faster, instead of with a better product. It was beneficial to Intel as well, who therby stayed out of the O/S business, so everyone has to continually upgrade everything, all the time. Good for Intel and MSFT, bad for people and business productivity, and bad for anyone wanting to add incremental improvements to the o/s, or, as it turns out, even those wanting to create Applications... MSFT kept keys that would let them kill anyone with popular applications. I'm a "survival of the fittest" type, and have seen many superior products fail to superior marketing with "oh well" reaction, but the massive occupation of computing by the hairball that is "Windows" is causing an alarming amount of innovation to be neutralized. By now we should have had the equivilant to windows in a bullet-proof intuitive, modular o/s, with rigorous and crystal clearly defined interfaces, and thousands more programmers much more easily able to create small and large products and services. All of which exponentially increases the utility factor to users. We're about 10 years and a trillion or two in GDP behind where we'd be if MSFT had done something as conceptually simple as publishing the interfaces, instead of keeping that as one more lever so their own applications could kill anyone else who tried to produce one. Having a patent isn't the same as being a predatory monopolist - a patent is a time-limited monopoly, clearly published so that the intellectual property benefits the public good, in exchange for that monopoly. MSFT doesn't publish their IP, just maintains it secretly to protect their market share, not for the public good, but to control the public buying habits, deny funding of competitive innovation, etc. etc. That said, they're doing some good things and have some smart people. I just don't think they are a net positive any longer, and that better things will come from increasing competition, not decreasing it.