Fun_People Archive
16 Sep
Microsoft is the Beatles.

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 97 11:22:44 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Microsoft is the Beatles.

Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <nev@bostic.com>
Forwarded-by: Rob Mayoff <mayoff@tkg.com>
Forwarded-by: Edupage Editors <educom@educom.unc.edu>

MICROSOFT'S SIMONYI ON JAVA -- "IT'S THE MONKEES ALL OVER AGAIN"
Microsoft applications creator Charles Simonyi says Sun Microsystems' Java
language falls in the same category as Lisp, Smalltalk, Ada and all the
other "revolutionary" languages that claim to boost programmer productivity:
"It's the Monkees.  They had a few hits and then disappeared.  Java will be
the same.  It will be totally forgotten.  Microsoft is the Beatles."
Simonyi says Sun's claims to have solved the problem of programming
component software are suspect:  "These problems have not even been solved
at Microsoft, in one company.  How could anyone solve it across the Net?"
(Forbes ASAP 25 Aug 97)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Subject: Well, that's one way to solve the problem.

Forwarded-by: glen@substance.abuse.blackdown.org
Forwarded-by: Derek Fountain <derek@fortstar.demon.co.uk>

All the thirty users interviewed complained of NT availability concerns,
stating the system often crashed for no apparent reason and required a
reboot.  When Standish asked Microsoft why NT had these availability
problems, they responded stating they recently completed a new feature:
the system will now reboot 50% faster.

Quoted from the Standish group press release: see

	http://www.sun.com/realitycheck/standish.html
and
	http://www.standishgroup.com/syst.html

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Subject: What users need is not ActiveXYZ ...

Forwarded-by: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@Kithrup.COM>
Forwarded-by: pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co ("Pedro Giffuni S,")

Here is an alternative view to the M$ problem seen by the former
Autodesk president:

	http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/msapogee.html

When I look at Microsoft's current product line (which I avoid doing as
much as possible, I must confess), the problem is not that it lacks
features -- God, most of it has way too many features for its own good,
and I suspect 90% of the users never discover nor use a majority of them
-- but that it is bug-infested junk. What users need is not ActiveXYZ,
the NanoGenetic TransSpecies API, etc., etc., endless etc.  but software
which works properly and does not crash. Jamming 1.5 megabytes of
roach-motel USER and GDI code into the kernel of NT 4.0 to "improve
performance" shows Microsoft lack the basic competence and/or willingness
to provide a reliable operating system. And that has been a solved problem
since the 1960's.  Now they're going to sell us a global distributed
component model secure multi-platform multi-media object-oriented
operating system. Right.

© 1997 Peter Langston