When you consider the years and years of research, planning, development, testing, documentation, and support that comes along with that pricetag, it seems very fair to me.
Hate to beat a dead horse, but sometimes its necessary.. exactly how much "research" did Microsoft do when almost everything in the Windows UI was lifted at one stage or another from the Mac? (who "borrowed" from Xerox yadda yadda) If you'd ever used an early Mac, which predated Windows 3.1 by some years, you'd realise that it was almost entirely a lousy rip-off of it. Even today, Windows XP still shows evidence of this (e.g. strong echoes of the early (1984-86) MacPaint/MacWrite in windows paintbrush and notepad.
Every other more modern product/technology that Microsoft has has been bought from someone else (and often NOT from an American company, incidentally). DirectX, for example, was bought from a London company). And when they're not buying other peoples technologies, they're copying from them.
If you don't wish to use the best product of its type on the market, that's your prerogative
Uh.. when you have a monopoly, of course your product is going to be the "best of its type", even if its crap, BECAUSE ITS THE ONLY ONE. A resounding "duh".
Oh wait, I see, you want to try compare a "Microsoft OS in 2002" with a "competing OS in 1994". So Windows, for example, by your logic, must have won against OS/2 because "Windows XP in 2002 is obviously a better product than OS/2 was in 1994". ("Microsoft stabbing IBM in the back had nothing to do with it").
Its hardly a valid comparison to compare a $200 OS with "decades of research, planning, development, testing, documentation and support" from a company with a $5billion/year R&D budget alone, to a UNIX-alike system hacked together by a bunch of programmers in their free time and distributed for free on the Internet. If thats Microsoft's only competition, then our industry really is in a very sorry state. MSs only competition is essentially a freebie. The implication of this is that the only way to even have a hope of trying to compete with MS is to give away your product for free, with source code. Not much of a business model.
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When you consider the years and years of research, planning, development, testing, documentation, and support that comes along with that pricetag, it seems very fair to me.
Hate to beat a dead horse, but sometimes its necessary .. exactly how much "research" did Microsoft do when almost everything in the Windows UI was lifted at one stage or another from the Mac? (who "borrowed" from Xerox yadda yadda) If you'd ever used an early Mac, which predated Windows 3.1 by some years, you'd realise that it was almost entirely a lousy rip-off of it. Even today, Windows XP still shows evidence of this (e.g. strong echoes of the early (1984-86) MacPaint/MacWrite in windows paintbrush and notepad.
Every other more modern product/technology that Microsoft has has been bought from someone else (and often NOT from an American company, incidentally). DirectX, for example, was bought from a London company). And when they're not buying other peoples technologies, they're copying from them.
If you don't wish to use the best product of its type on the market, that's your prerogative
Uh .. when you have a monopoly, of course your product is going to be the "best of its type", even if its crap, BECAUSE ITS THE ONLY ONE. A resounding "duh".
Oh wait, I see, you want to try compare a "Microsoft OS in 2002" with a "competing OS in 1994". So Windows, for example, by your logic, must have won against OS/2 because "Windows XP in 2002 is obviously a better product than OS/2 was in 1994". ("Microsoft stabbing IBM in the back had nothing to do with it").
Its hardly a valid comparison to compare a $200 OS with "decades of research, planning, development, testing, documentation and support" from a company with a $5billion/year R&D budget alone, to a UNIX-alike system hacked together by a bunch of programmers in their free time and distributed for free on the Internet. If thats Microsoft's only competition, then our industry really is in a very sorry state. MSs only competition is essentially a freebie. The implication of this is that the only way to even have a hope of trying to compete with MS is to give away your product for free, with source code. Not much of a business model.
these evil pirates who stifle good ol' American ingenuity and innovation
Thats like, Windows, right?
NULLify the condition
Programmer! Hehe.