Xref: utzoo gnu.misc.discuss:682 alt.religion.computers:1251 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!zds-ux!gerry From: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,alt.religion.computers Subject: Re: The meaning of life, as it relates to hacking. Message-ID: <71@zds-ux.UUCP> Date: 28 Dec 89 19:17:04 GMT References: <4639@sugar.hackercorp.com> <4ZW1ijS00WBKE1qh5C@andrew.cmu.edu> <4804@sugar.hackercorp.com> Reply-To: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss Organization: Zenith Data Systems Lines: 23 In article rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) writes: >In article jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes: >>I can not say for your individual case, peter. However, i can say >>that Microsoft Corp. has not helped out the economy much, especially >>when they charge the prices that they charge. > Actually, a good argument could be made that Microsoft has helped >out the economy tremendously. The IBM PC, though it's not the most >powerful computer in the world, has been quite a boon to businesses >(the economy). Without MS-DOS, it wouldn't have been accepted nearly >so quickly, or been as easy to program.... You may be able to make such an argument, but I don't think it's likely to have a lot of validity. We don't know what would have happened if IBM had not blundered into the PC business the way they did. Micro-processor based desk-top computers were going to break into businesses anyway, IBM was not the only player at that time. Who knows, maybe the industry would have standardized around something more like a Sun, or a Mac. Or maybe growth would have been much slower with a fragmented market of incompatible machines. We just don't and can't know. Gerry Gleason