From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,92c39a3be0a7f17d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-12-21 08:28:05 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!freenix!enst!enst.fr!not-for-mail From: "Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: RE: RE: Portable GUI (was Re: Future with Ada) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 08:26:53 -0800 Organization: ENST, France Sender: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org Message-ID: Reply-To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.enst.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: avanie.enst.fr 1008952082 10052 137.194.161.2 (21 Dec 2001 16:28:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@enst.fr NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 16:28:02 +0000 (UTC) To: Return-Path: X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Importance: Normal Errors-To: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.6 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: comp.lang.ada mail<->news gateway List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:18210 Date: 2001-12-21T08:26:53-08:00 From: Bob Leif To: Ted Dennison et al. >From my experience in business, managerial incompetence and stupidity are the cause of many disasters. This is one of the main reasons Dilbert is very successful. IBM did not understand the PC revolution and tried to use OS/2 as a means to sell their proprietary hardware, the microchannel. This killed O/S2 and greatly helped Microsoft. WordPerfect switched to Windows, abandoned their very successful look and feel, and did a poor job implementing their code. That helped make Word. Lotus junked Improv and never incorporated any of its functionality into 123. That greatly helped Excel. It took literally years to rewrite Dbase in C++ for Windows. That helped Access. I do not know of any well designed reliable Office type products. No one has tried to market a well engineered office suite base on an international standard. An XML security blanket should provide sufficient risk reduction to permit the adoption of a new technology. Even Microsoft provides XML output for Excel and other products. -----Original Message----- From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Ted Dennison Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 12:54 PM To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Subject: Re: RE: Portable GUI (was Re: Future with Ada) In article , Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. says... >One of the major reasons for Microsoft's success is the technical >incompetence of its competitors. First they were dumb enough to try to beat Microsoft certainly likes to spread this story (check their anti-trust arguments sometimes). But I'm not really enamored of any theory that depends on there being some kind of mass incompetence between large amounts of diverse organizations and individuals who have no connection to each other (according to the theory) but coincidental ones. For one thing, it doesn't make a very good theory, scientificly, as there are no predictions one can make from it to test it. For instance, lets take the alternative theory that everyone is equally (in)compentent, but that everything's basicly a crap shoot. Whenever you talk about gambling, in the long run the odds favor the party with the most money. This theory would predict that if any software company were to get in a dominant financial position, it could just outlast anyone it competes with because it will have the resources to survive blunders that will take down the lesser companies. This theory may not be fully correct, but at least it explains *why* the winners and losers are who they are, and gives you something you can draw testable conculsions from. --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.