Thanks a lot. I get all excited, as they do look awful good, and then realize that they're only sold as complete systems with Windows MCE. And they start at 700 Euro, with most systems being well over 1200. Such disappointment! Oh well.
New employees don't get new machines. If they stick around, then they're slotted into the priority list as appropriate to their capability to really push the machine. Autocad licenses are network managed, so we don't need a 1:1 ratio of licenses to staff, though new hires are likely to require some amount of new licensing. The biggest cost of new employees is really on the HR side.
Plotters are expensive as hell, particulary if you ditch the slow inkjet world dominated by HP. But we can't operate without the ability to do lots of check plots; it's just part of the design process. We only bill back drawings that actually get published, which is probably 20%.
$7k / staff is awfully damn high. You must use REALLY expensive software...Architectural Desktop runs $4800/license, and I manage to keep our costs ~ $2k, with good hardware, servers, plotter with multi-roll and wide format scanning, etc.
We've looked at leases but decided that they aren't for us for a couple of reasons:
* Dell's prices for memory upgrades suck. Our stations need memory. Thus Dell wants twice what it costs me to build a system. (Building versus buying isn't for most businesses, but for us, I've lowered hardware failure rates, gotten better equipment for lower prices, and I have the time to build a few machines a couple times each year.)
* Dell's service has undergone a long drawn out slide to uselessness. It's been so long since I called them and spoke with someone who knew even close to what I know (not that I'm some uber tech god, but these folks...), that it's a waste of my time. I have to troubleshoot it myself anyway, and no component is expensive enough that I get anything out of waiting on hold, convincing them of the source of the problem, and then waiting for a replacement. I can go buy a new part and have staff back in business in an hour if I just forgo the whole thing. (Laptops are a different matter, of course.)
* Taxes. The benefit of leasing is that you can deduct the full cost of the lease, including what you're paying for financing, as opposed to purchasing, where you can deduct the cost over five years, and don't get to include the financing costs. But hey, if you can make your purchases without financing them, leasing no longer carries the finacial benefit. Think of it this way: take you lease payment times the term and compare that with what it would cost to just purchase the thing. You're paying more. Of course there's a benefit to your overall tax situation, but you're starting from further in the hole, and so the benefit doesn't justify the expense.
* Predicatability. For you the main goal seems to be to stabilize hardware expenditures. Well, leases will do that, but at the expense of flexibility. Have a bad year, well, too bad, you still have to make those payments. Architecture is very cyclical, especially for smaller firms, and flexibility is worth a LOT (which is also why we don't do Autodesk's software subscription, which would stabilize the other large chunk of the budget). What I do is budget to get a certain number of systems per year. This total cost is a little less than what the total cost of lease payments for the year would be if we did it that way. If business dries up, we don't get all (or any, sometimes), and if business booms, so does our cash flow, and we can get more if need be.
All this is to say that I can look at any given year in the next five years and give the bosses an excellent idea of what the budget will be, without leasing, and justify every dollar, all while maximizing our expenditures. So far it's working out pretty well for us.
I'm the sysadmin at a ~25 person architecture firm, and an architect, too.
What I do for budgetting is to start with an inventory of every piece of equipment we own. Then I assign an approximate lifespan to each thing, based on experience. Couple that with when each item was purchased, and replacement times and potential budgetting scenarios start to emerge. There are a couple of policies I try to wedge in there to steer purchases, such as I like to put the new machines in front of the heaviest, most demanding users, which for us is the more billable staff. I'm forunate in that I have management's backing, so that there's never any whining from project managers when an intern gets a kick ass machine, and the PM gets the hand-me-down. By keeping the machines coming in, I can keep everyone pretty happy. In addition, whenever possible, I try to upgrade our software versions either every two or three years, on everything except the Microsoft hegemony, which I only upgrade through churn of new workstations.
Around the fairly regular annual purchases, I then stategize the big ticket items: new plotter, Autocad updates, expanding licenses of Photoshop/InDesign, implementation of a new accoutning system, or what-have-you. This helps even out the costs from year to year. None of it's rocket science; you just have to put your head into it and figure out what it would cost to maintain your company's current level of technical prowess (x machines per year, etc), and that what it would cost to further develop the skillsets (by getting new software, and doing more training).
FWIW, we spend ~$45k per year, which works out to be ~2.5 - 3.5 % of revenue. My bosses have never gone for a straight percentage method, but it's my preference, since it automatically adjusts itself for good times and bad. Instead, I develop a budget, they either say yes to the whole thing, or specifically exclude one or more items. Then I establish the priorities and give them an idea of at what points in the year I'd like to spend money. They coordinate that with the company's cash flow, and if the year turns sour, I just get reigned in on my spending.
Sorry if I'm rambling too much. OTOH, if you want more, post a response, and I'll give you my email address.
Bush has NEVER said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.
You're splitting hairs. Bush and his administration have repeatedly claimed that Saddam Hussein had links to al quaeda. No it's not literally the same thing, but come on! He was playing on people's emotional reaction to the magic words "al qaeda" to drum up support for invasion. The Whitehouse is the only governmental body still not admitting that that information was bogus; everyone else from the CIA to Colin Powell has said that al qaeda had no connections to Iraq.
We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
Here's CNN covering the Bush administration steadfastly hanging onto that vision: link
And the Washington Post covers the backpedaling here, including this:
While not explicitly declaring Iraqi culpability in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, administration officials did, at various times, imply a link. In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official. Later, Cheney called Iraq the "geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Bush, in 2003, said "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001."
Beyond the Sept. 11 attacks, administration officials have also suggested that there had been cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda that went beyond contacts. Bush last year called Hussein "an ally of al Qaeda." Just this Monday, Cheney said Hussein "had long-established ties with al Qaeda."
Those are just the top four hits that Google gives. There are, of course, more.
This Agreement grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to use one copy of the Software for your own personal use on a single computer and/or workstation. SIPphone reserves all rights in the Software not expressly granted herein, including without limitation ownership and proprietary rights.
Among other items is this:
EMERGENCY/911 CALLS
YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT EMERGENCY 9-1-1 CALLS ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE CARRIED/SUPPORTED BY THE SOFTWARE OR SERVICES AND THAT NEITHER SIPphone NOR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, SUBSIDIARIES, PARENT COMPANIES, AGENTS, NETWORK SERVICE PROVIDERS, PARTNERS, OR EMPLOYEES ARE OR WILL BE LIABLE FOR SUCH CALLS.
'I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content,' Cerf said.
I think he mis-heard those movie producers. What they said was that BitTorrent is a "disturbing method for distributing content."
Well, yes, the market might be very small. But it might be large. People speaking up merely demonstrates that there is market; the point of a petition is to quantify the dissent. My point was twofold: speaking up is not whining, nor is it either whining or lazy to wish to be able to reuse existing code rather than rewrite/redevelop just because your vendor thinks it's the best way to go. Which was my bigger point: that one should have some measure of control over one's own destiny.
Whether or not these people can learn a new language is irrelevant. I might think that they're totally nuts to actually want to stay with VB6, (and I do), but I think that they ought to have the choice. And if they do migrate to something else, I hope they learn something from this experience nad migrate to a development platform that doesn't lead them around by the ear.
Also why should Microsoft continue to support a language that they are no longer developing, or using, or plan on using. They have moved into a new area of development, over 3 years ago. The developers that use VB6 had plenty of time to learn.Net or move into PHP, Java, Pyton, etc.
They should continue to sell and support VB6 because there's a market for it. They should also develop new things that they think are better, and if there's a market for them, then they will sell. Maybe both can sell well enough to justify their existence, or maybe one would be a clear winner.
What this really does is clearly illustrate the folly of relying on closed source development tools. They have you by the balls, and can force you to redevelop essentially at will. You are not the mster of your own destiny. A single provider of basic infrastructure undermines the free market; I only hope that the lesson can be learned rather than eternally repeating the failure.
Stop whining... -- Free Mac Mini: http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14654890 I recommend the efax free trial offer, easy to join and cancel
This is choice: you chastise people for "whining" and then beg for a free Mac Mini. I guess you're exempt from your own criticism.
And now to blather on to satisfy the lameness filter, and get/. to stop bitching about too much whitespace in this freakin' comment. Such as it is, of course.
Most of the electoral votes are in the heartland of the US
This is bogus. Most electoral votes are on the coasts, along with most of the population. The only states with more than twenty electoral votes that has no coastline are Illinois and Ohio (I'm counting Pennsylvania as having coast, here, since it's so freakin' close).
I won't say that the heartland doesn't have a lot of clout; many of the pivotal battleground states are there.
Even so, Windows Firewall's intrusion prevention and outbound monitoring are not as robust as those of some other firewalls. In RC2, Windows Firewall also has a tendency to turn itself on after system updates, system restores, or in conjunction with the Windows Security Center
(emphasis added)
What kind of bullshit is that? I can't wait tp have to manage thirty users of THAT!
Public money has to serve EVERYONE equally; not doing so is discrimination (subject to interpretation by the courts). Hence the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which makes government and private commercial buildings provide access to everyone, not just the overwhelming majority of people (those that are ambulatory, sighted, and can hear). And that's primary access, not secondary such as through back doors, or using freight elevators.
Shortsightedness like this exposes government to lawsuits that can force changes. But then, government has a spotty record on planning ahead...there is not now, and perhaps there never will be, a realistic plan to elimiante the national debt, much less the follow through to actually do so.
I'd love to find just such a resource. All the partisan rhetoric is exhausting, and in the absence of objectivity, most people go with what feels right to them. IOW whatever explanation blames the people that they already don't like, that's the one they latch onto and defend fervently.
If you ever find that scholary, objective report of US income tax history, please post!
I found that stat to be astounding so I took a quick look at the link you provided. While the numbers appear to be factually correct, they are only one piece of the taxation pie: income tax.
Another chart on that site concludes that "Average Effective Income Tax Rates on Households with the Highest Incomes Have Risen Disproportionately Since 1983".
And this chart leads with " In 1999, the Top 10% of Households by Income Paid 66% of the Federal Income Tax".
So your presentation of one pieces of a larger, more complex puzzle as being *the answer* either shows your biases or a desire for easy answers.
Are you kidding? Why do I have to buy a more recent version to fix gross negligence in a product I've already paid for?
And then when I do buy the upgrade, I'm still vulnerable to all those IE exploits that only require one to even preview an evil html message. Sure, if I slavishly keep Windows updated, I can sort of stay ahead of that curve, but Christ! it's never ending! If I do buy the upgrade, I could turn off html rendering completely, but can I convince my boss to do likewise? Why should I have to? There is absolutely *no reason* why html email can't be safe to just view, but MS is apparently unable to make it so.
The real solution would involve Outlook only executing 3rd party code in a sandbox, but MS sees this as a loss of functionality rather than a benefit.
The other real solution might involve re-writing IE, or allowing user specified 3rd party html rendering engines to perform any given Windows required html rendering! Hey imagine that, if you could plug gecko or Opera in there, the problem would vanish. Competition would help keep everyone sharp./end pipe dream
Microsoft was never competing with UNIX. Microsoft is primarily an office desktop system and workgroup networking environment.
Not quite. MS has been trying to break into the server room since forever. Waaaaayyy back in the late '80s they even developed a version of Unix, which they called Xenix. They later sold that to the Santa Cruz Operation. There are stories of how MS' internal email system ran under Xenix for years after it's development stopped, and developers had a second machine in their offices just for company email.
So MS has been competing with Unix for a long time. The fact that their OS' didn't run on serious hardware until NT 3.1 (running on Alphas and Mips chips), and even then still generally got toasted by Sun, just means that they weren't competing very well. But average hardware got fast enough to do basic server functions, and that got their foot in the door....and they're still trying to push that door open a little wider each year. Successfully, so far.
I gotta chime in here....there are so many errors in that link that I couldn't even get past the first (albeit enormous) first paragraph. It reads like a half-assed middle school report on the history of Microsoft. The teacher wouldn't know any of the factual errors, but I'd give it a D on understanding, organizing, and conveying information, and formulating arguments. Or not as the case may be...
There are plenty of good sources for a history of Microsoft, and personal computing in general. My favorite, mostly because it's also entertaining, is here.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks a lot. I get all excited, as they do look awful good, and then realize that they're only sold as complete systems with Windows MCE. And they start at 700 Euro, with most systems being well over 1200. Such disappointment! Oh well.
New employees don't get new machines. If they stick around, then they're slotted into the priority list as appropriate to their capability to really push the machine. Autocad licenses are network managed, so we don't need a 1:1 ratio of licenses to staff, though new hires are likely to require some amount of new licensing. The biggest cost of new employees is really on the HR side.
Plotters are expensive as hell, particulary if you ditch the slow inkjet world dominated by HP. But we can't operate without the ability to do lots of check plots; it's just part of the design process. We only bill back drawings that actually get published, which is probably 20%.
$7k / staff is awfully damn high. You must use REALLY expensive software...Architectural Desktop runs $4800/license, and I manage to keep our costs ~ $2k, with good hardware, servers, plotter with multi-roll and wide format scanning, etc.
Joel
We've looked at leases but decided that they aren't for us for a couple of reasons:
* Dell's prices for memory upgrades suck. Our stations need memory. Thus Dell wants twice what it costs me to build a system. (Building versus buying isn't for most businesses, but for us, I've lowered hardware failure rates, gotten better equipment for lower prices, and I have the time to build a few machines a couple times each year.)
* Dell's service has undergone a long drawn out slide to uselessness. It's been so long since I called them and spoke with someone who knew even close to what I know (not that I'm some uber tech god, but these folks...), that it's a waste of my time. I have to troubleshoot it myself anyway, and no component is expensive enough that I get anything out of waiting on hold, convincing them of the source of the problem, and then waiting for a replacement. I can go buy a new part and have staff back in business in an hour if I just forgo the whole thing. (Laptops are a different matter, of course.)
* Taxes. The benefit of leasing is that you can deduct the full cost of the lease, including what you're paying for financing, as opposed to purchasing, where you can deduct the cost over five years, and don't get to include the financing costs. But hey, if you can make your purchases without financing them, leasing no longer carries the finacial benefit. Think of it this way: take you lease payment times the term and compare that with what it would cost to just purchase the thing. You're paying more. Of course there's a benefit to your overall tax situation, but you're starting from further in the hole, and so the benefit doesn't justify the expense.
* Predicatability. For you the main goal seems to be to stabilize hardware expenditures. Well, leases will do that, but at the expense of flexibility. Have a bad year, well, too bad, you still have to make those payments. Architecture is very cyclical, especially for smaller firms, and flexibility is worth a LOT (which is also why we don't do Autodesk's software subscription, which would stabilize the other large chunk of the budget). What I do is budget to get a certain number of systems per year. This total cost is a little less than what the total cost of lease payments for the year would be if we did it that way. If business dries up, we don't get all (or any, sometimes), and if business booms, so does our cash flow, and we can get more if need be.
All this is to say that I can look at any given year in the next five years and give the bosses an excellent idea of what the budget will be, without leasing, and justify every dollar, all while maximizing our expenditures. So far it's working out pretty well for us.
Joel
Hi-
I'm the sysadmin at a ~25 person architecture firm, and an architect, too.
What I do for budgetting is to start with an inventory of every piece of equipment we own. Then I assign an approximate lifespan to each thing, based on experience. Couple that with when each item was purchased, and replacement times and potential budgetting scenarios start to emerge. There are a couple of policies I try to wedge in there to steer purchases, such as I like to put the new machines in front of the heaviest, most demanding users, which for us is the more billable staff. I'm forunate in that I have management's backing, so that there's never any whining from project managers when an intern gets a kick ass machine, and the PM gets the hand-me-down. By keeping the machines coming in, I can keep everyone pretty happy. In addition, whenever possible, I try to upgrade our software versions either every two or three years, on everything except the Microsoft hegemony, which I only upgrade through churn of new workstations.
Around the fairly regular annual purchases, I then stategize the big ticket items: new plotter, Autocad updates, expanding licenses of Photoshop/InDesign, implementation of a new accoutning system, or what-have-you. This helps even out the costs from year to year. None of it's rocket science; you just have to put your head into it and figure out what it would cost to maintain your company's current level of technical prowess (x machines per year, etc), and that what it would cost to further develop the skillsets (by getting new software, and doing more training).
FWIW, we spend ~$45k per year, which works out to be ~2.5 - 3.5 % of revenue. My bosses have never gone for a straight percentage method, but it's my preference, since it automatically adjusts itself for good times and bad. Instead, I develop a budget, they either say yes to the whole thing, or specifically exclude one or more items. Then I establish the priorities and give them an idea of at what points in the year I'd like to spend money. They coordinate that with the company's cash flow, and if the year turns sour, I just get reigned in on my spending.
Sorry if I'm rambling too much. OTOH, if you want more, post a response, and I'll give you my email address.
Joel
You're splitting hairs. Bush and his administration have repeatedly claimed that Saddam Hussein had links to al quaeda. No it's not literally the same thing, but come on! He was playing on people's emotional reaction to the magic words "al qaeda" to drum up support for invasion. The Whitehouse is the only governmental body still not admitting that that information was bogus; everyone else from the CIA to Colin Powell has said that al qaeda had no connections to Iraq.
See Bush's speech here, which includes this:
Here's CNN covering the Bush administration steadfastly hanging onto that vision: link
And the Washington Post covers the backpedaling here, including this:
Those are just the top four hits that Google gives. There are, of course, more.
Free speech, no. There's a EULA (http://www.gizmoproject.com/gizmo-end-user.html) which grants:
Among other items is this:
'I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content,' Cerf said.
I think he mis-heard those movie producers. What they said was that BitTorrent is a "disturbing method for distributing content."
Not just Google, but Akamai. If Linux isn't scalable, why does Microsoft have to pay Akamai to distribute their content?
Well, yes, the market might be very small. But it might be large. People speaking up merely demonstrates that there is market; the point of a petition is to quantify the dissent. My point was twofold: speaking up is not whining, nor is it either whining or lazy to wish to be able to reuse existing code rather than rewrite/redevelop just because your vendor thinks it's the best way to go. Which was my bigger point: that one should have some measure of control over one's own destiny.
Whether or not these people can learn a new language is irrelevant. I might think that they're totally nuts to actually want to stay with VB6, (and I do), but I think that they ought to have the choice. And if they do migrate to something else, I hope they learn something from this experience nad migrate to a development platform that doesn't lead them around by the ear.
Also why should Microsoft continue to support a language that they are no longer developing, or using, or plan on using. They have moved into a new area of development, over 3 years ago. The developers that use VB6 had plenty of time to learn .Net or move into PHP, Java, Pyton, etc.
They should continue to sell and support VB6 because there's a market for it. They should also develop new things that they think are better, and if there's a market for them, then they will sell. Maybe both can sell well enough to justify their existence, or maybe one would be a clear winner.
What this really does is clearly illustrate the folly of relying on closed source development tools. They have you by the balls, and can force you to redevelop essentially at will. You are not the mster of your own destiny. A single provider of basic infrastructure undermines the free market; I only hope that the lesson can be learned rather than eternally repeating the failure.
Stop whining...
--
Free Mac Mini: http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14654890 I recommend the efax free trial offer, easy to join and cancel
This is choice: you chastise people for "whining" and then beg for a free Mac Mini. I guess you're exempt from your own criticism.
Bill Gate's rationale for DRM:
/. to stop bitching about too much whitespace in this freakin' comment. Such as it is, of course.
\$$$$$$$$$$/
\$$$$$$$$/
\$$$$$$/
\$$$$/
\$$/
| |
MicroSoft
Can be summed with: Cha-Ching!
And now to blather on to satisfy the lameness filter, and get
Most of the electoral votes are in the heartland of the US
This is bogus. Most electoral votes are on the coasts, along with most of the population. The only states with more than twenty electoral votes that has no coastline are Illinois and Ohio (I'm counting Pennsylvania as having coast, here, since it's so freakin' close).
I won't say that the heartland doesn't have a lot of clout; many of the pivotal battleground states are there.
Slashdot
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Poster children for attention deficit disorder!
You can still drill them out and insert your favorite dumb bolts. Hooray for power drills.
Power drills: the next DRM circumvention device!
No, thank YOU, DMCA!
In this case, the apostrophe replaces a letter in the following form:
Do you whine when the compiler objects to incorrect sytax?
smartass==0
Do you think that that's what Loreena Bobbit told the police?
To add to this, quoting from TFA:
Even so, Windows Firewall's intrusion prevention and outbound monitoring are not as robust as those of some other firewalls. In RC2, Windows Firewall also has a tendency to turn itself on after system updates, system restores, or in conjunction with the Windows Security Center
(emphasis added)
What kind of bullshit is that? I can't wait tp have to manage thirty users of THAT!
Public money has to serve EVERYONE equally; not doing so is discrimination (subject to interpretation by the courts). Hence the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which makes government and private commercial buildings provide access to everyone, not just the overwhelming majority of people (those that are ambulatory, sighted, and can hear). And that's primary access, not secondary such as through back doors, or using freight elevators.
Shortsightedness like this exposes government to lawsuits that can force changes. But then, government has a spotty record on planning ahead...there is not now, and perhaps there never will be, a realistic plan to elimiante the national debt, much less the follow through to actually do so.
I'd love to find just such a resource. All the partisan rhetoric is exhausting, and in the absence of objectivity, most people go with what feels right to them. IOW whatever explanation blames the people that they already don't like, that's the one they latch onto and defend fervently.
If you ever find that scholary, objective report of US income tax history, please post!
Woah there!
what claims did I make? Other than that you overstated one item of data, I made NO CLAIMS.
I'm no apolgist for the right, just looking for facts.
Take a DEEP BREATH and RELAX!
Given that their site & publication is called The Linux Weekly News, I doubt they give a flying fuck about terminal emulators for Windows.
I found that stat to be astounding so I took a quick look at the link you provided. While the numbers appear to be factually correct, they are only one piece of the taxation pie: income tax.
Another chart on that site concludes that "Average Effective Income Tax Rates on Households with the Highest Incomes Have Risen Disproportionately Since 1983".
And this chart leads with " In 1999, the Top 10% of Households by Income Paid 66% of the Federal Income Tax".
So your presentation of one pieces of a larger, more complex puzzle as being *the answer* either shows your biases or a desire for easy answers.
Are you kidding? Why do I have to buy a more recent version to fix gross negligence in a product I've already paid for?
/end pipe dream
And then when I do buy the upgrade, I'm still vulnerable to all those IE exploits that only require one to even preview an evil html message. Sure, if I slavishly keep Windows updated, I can sort of stay ahead of that curve, but Christ! it's never ending! If I do buy the upgrade, I could turn off html rendering completely, but can I convince my boss to do likewise? Why should I have to? There is absolutely *no reason* why html email can't be safe to just view, but MS is apparently unable to make it so.
The real solution would involve Outlook only executing 3rd party code in a sandbox, but MS sees this as a loss of functionality rather than a benefit.
The other real solution might involve re-writing IE, or allowing user specified 3rd party html rendering engines to perform any given Windows required html rendering! Hey imagine that, if you could plug gecko or Opera in there, the problem would vanish. Competition would help keep everyone sharp.
Oh well.
Microsoft was never competing with UNIX. Microsoft is primarily an office desktop system and workgroup networking environment.
Not quite. MS has been trying to break into the server room since forever. Waaaaayyy back in the late '80s they even developed a version of Unix, which they called Xenix. They later sold that to the Santa Cruz Operation. There are stories of how MS' internal email system ran under Xenix for years after it's development stopped, and developers had a second machine in their offices just for company email.
So MS has been competing with Unix for a long time. The fact that their OS' didn't run on serious hardware until NT 3.1 (running on Alphas and Mips chips), and even then still generally got toasted by Sun, just means that they weren't competing very well. But average hardware got fast enough to do basic server functions, and that got their foot in the door....and they're still trying to push that door open a little wider each year. Successfully, so far.
I gotta chime in here....there are so many errors in that link that I couldn't even get past the first (albeit enormous) first paragraph. It reads like a half-assed middle school report on the history of Microsoft. The teacher wouldn't know any of the factual errors, but I'd give it a D on understanding, organizing, and conveying information, and formulating arguments. Or not as the case may be...
There are plenty of good sources for a history of Microsoft, and personal computing in general. My favorite, mostly because it's also entertaining, is here.