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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Phil Melemed who wrote (10671)	9/10/1998 1:32:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 74651

Oh, I wouldn't want to get into the definition business, Phil. Tried that once, long ago, on the dreaded term "open". Now that the "war is peace, ignorance is strength, Windows is Open" neologistic meaning is in the air, I'm outgunned. The word came up, and the association that always comes to mind in, er, some other broader context is "Microsoft must be free to innovate". As you may have noticed, the phrase has ironic overtones, but Bill seems to be the world champion in irony impairment. Oxymoronic may be a bit of a stretch, but it's funny. Even on Bill's long standing holy grail of speech recognition, Microsoft couldn't cut it. All the research billions, all the best minds in software, but when push comes to shove, Lernout & Hauspie gets the proverbial offer they can't refuse, and Microsoft gets another company's code base. That's innovation for you. Cheers, Dan.

To: Phil Melemed who wrote (10671)	9/10/1998 1:43:00 PM
From: mrknowitall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Phil, ed, paul, et al.: I don't believe MSFT's role is to innovate. MSFT is an enabling technology developer. Step back from the technobabble forest for a minute. The ultimate question is: "What is it that we would like our computers to do for us?" The answers to those questions are the seeds of innovations - IMO, MSFT is more like the topsoil in which the seeding takes place. Yes, the soil itself seems to produce some weeds on its own, but trying to rid the world of the soil at this date to get rid of the weeds is not only impractical, but would create marketplace failure for many of the farmers (i.e., applications developers) out there. (Whew, lots of agrarian analogies there!) Mr. K.