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To: Larry Sullivan who wrote (14280)	11/19/1997 7:04:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Larry, These innovations you claim MSFT has made in some of their applications programs. Just how influential have they been to the industry in general. Who else uses them? Just how important are they as innovations. Virtual Memory, invented by An Wang when he worked for IBM, is used in every general-purpose, multi-user operating system I can think of, from GCOS to VM to Solaris. It represents a MAJOR achievment in software technology. If you think Java is "just a programming language, like C" you need to visit the sun website and read up on it. It is easily the biggest innovation in software since the internet browser and html. cheers, cherylw

To: Larry Sullivan who wrote (14280)	11/19/1997 7:47:00 PM
From: Columbo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

for instance Java - is a language very much like C/C++ with ideas borrowed from other technologies like GC and bytecodes. I think Java is very interesting but by your own definition not very innovative. work.ucsd.edu:5141/cgi-bin/http_webster?innovative The syntax is C/C++ like. Thank God. All we geeks need is another syntax to learn like Perl. The language IMO is the most innovative, quality improvement invention since the seat belt. They probably did take the best of C++, Smalltalk, and Objective C. They designed it with no baggage. Do over half of the programmers in this industry really use Visual Basic? I read that somewhere and couldn't believe it. MH #0

To: Larry Sullivan who wrote (14280)	11/20/1997 2:44:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 24154

>>>I actually condsider engineering a science. Not pure science but science non the less. Then we arren't going to make a distinction, so throw out one term or the other. But I think there is a fundamental problem saying it is a science. In science you first of all experiment or theorize without always having an idea of where you are going. In fact a lot of good science comes from accidents. In engineering, we have very definite goals in mind, and at those companies where engineers start to act like they are scientists, doing things just to explore and without concrete goals, they often as not damage the company. There is a grey area, to be sure. 'Applied Science', experimental engineering, 'Computer Science'. The term computer science was basically invented to get the computer guys out from under the engineering departments at universities. It's useful to have a distinction between experimental, theoretical, and product-directed work. Engineering is the term for the latter. I think it's best for the setting of goals and procedures if the people involved have that idea. Or you end up with an Apple or an IBM, where good new fundamental ideas hardly ever become product. BTW, at least Xerox got paid enough for all this stuff by MS, et al, to pay for the research and then some. As for MS 'innovation', well I just think it is symptomatic of the problem that most of the real creative types are attracted to other fields these days instead of computers. 30 years ago in computing you could find a real genius or two in every shop you went to: eclectic, visionary people, polymaths with competence in half a dozen subjects. I think now they all go to genetics or nano or somewhere else. Most of the young ones can't even recognize the pathetic nature of what we now call innovation in this rapidly maturing area of engineering, because they don't have that high caliber of people around doing a major innovation or invention every year to show them how it's done and what it looks like. IMNSHO ;-) Chaz

To: Larry Sullivan who wrote (14280)	11/23/1997 8:06:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Respond to of 24154

Your list is very accurate and I am always stunned that PARC could never get the rest of Xerox off there respective duffs and roll some cool technology out, but I don't think that that takes away from the premise which is >>> Microsoft does a very good job of bringing technology to the masses and innovating - especially within product categories. I will use this example - OLE (the old original crusty OLE from Win3.1, it wasn't the most elegent solution but it worked and allowed apps on the Windows platform to create compound documents with live links before the competition. Maybe SOM or OpenDoc were better theorectically but they did not produce in the marketplace. Probably the only reason that MSFT's solutions such as OLE produced in the marketplace was because it was produced by MSFT and had nothing to do with anything MSFT did in itself. The only way any alternative has a chance is to develop such a technology for MSFT OSes. But doing this is like cooking the lion's dinner in its mouth -- it puts you at an extreme disadvantage and risk.