Tom Watson wrote:
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:18:11 GMT, TWS wrote:



Until then keep your
shallow viewpoint to yourself.


If everyone around here did that, the Wreck wouldn't last a week.



I think of Billy Gates as the Otto von Bismarck of consumer/small
business technology.

He took a polyglot group of self directed principalities and made them
speak a common language - essentially by using the brute force of the
marketplace.

Still, it amounts to a federated form of government v. the monarchical
style of Apple. And we know from history which form is thought to be
the most efficient.

The result is that we have a lingua franca that enables us to do
business with each other as transparently as possible. So, I will
continue to pass around my Excel spreadsheets and Word docs and
happily go about my business without fear of being misunderstood.


tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1 (webpage)


I hesitate to disagree with someone whose illustrious namesake was my
boss for many years, but Microsoft's attitude to standards was (and
probably still is) quite simple : attend the meeting and if everyone
agrees to do it MS's way then fine, it becomes a standard. If not MS
goes away and does things its own way and to hell with the rest of the
world. More often than not, MS's way was NOT the best way.