Everybody likes Microsoft.
-------- Original Message --------
From: david mankins <dm@bbn.com>
Subject: best commentary yet on the Microsoft vs. open software fracas
To: silent-tristero@world.std.com
>From NTKnow:
(K) 2001 Special Projects.
Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/
>> HARD NEWS <<
grae bampots exspoosed
You can't stick a postfix next to a variable these days
without causing the imminent collapse of society. The day
after US assistant attorney Daniel Alter told a New York court
that DeCSS was like "software programs that shut down
navigational programs in airplanes or smoke detectors in
hotels" (you know, *those* programs), Microsoft's CRAIG MUNDIE
was across town, declaiming that the GPL was a virus that
would shut down intellectual property inside people's heads.
Craig's speech is all about the nightmarish future of an open
source world, and is rather heavy on predictions. But then
Craig's job at Microsoft is to make gambles on the future of
technology. According Marlin Eller's account in "Barbarians
Led By Bill Gates", one of Mundie's first acts at Microsoft was
killing the company's 1993 low-bandwidth Net project in favour
of the *real* future - broadband interactive TV. That said,
once Gates caught on to this Interweb thing, Mundie was first
to catch on. "We'll tune it for all the platforms, then get
hardware companies to build accelerators for it", he
predicted, of the Net's most guaranteed success - VRML. Oh,
then he masterminded that whole WebTV deal, spending $425m MS
mad money on the sure-fire Internet/TV convergence. "We view
the Internet as one of the 'features' of digital TV services",
he eerily prophesised in 1998. "PC this year, PC-TV's next
year", he again predicted - in 1997. Going further back,
Mundie features in "Soul of a New Machine" as the nameless guy
who loses the race to build a supercomputer. His own
supercomputer company went bust in 1992. Should anyone believe
his observations about the future of Open Source? As Mundie
himself once said "We persist. We're driven by some innate
belief about how these things are going to unfold." Even, it
seems, when they unfold in completely the opposite
direction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56874-2001Feb26.html
- not sure about Eller's objectivity
http://www.s-t.com/daily/05-98/05-10-98/f07bu241.htm
- but you know, WSJ
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q276/3/04.ASP
- Microsoft's future doesn't get more "secure" than that
- david mankins (dm@bbn.com, dm@world.std.com)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:02 MDT