Microsoft's Birthday

As I'm sure you've read, it is Microsoft's thirtieth birthday today. My question to the other 9ers and to Microsoft employees is: What can we expect from Microsoft by the time it hits its sixtieth birthday?

Will Microsoft go out of business?
Will Microsoft buy google?
Will the C9 guy jump ship to google?
Will Microsoft add Office for Linux to its line-up?
-- What do you think?

How in the world can you even think of predicting what is going to happen in 30 years in this industry.
When Win95 shipped i had a 1g HD now i have a 200g HD and i can go on with the processing power, graphics and what not.
could you imagine Vista back then?

anyway most of those thngs you listed could happen in the next 5 years.

Shmuelpro wrote:

could you imagine Vista back then?

Frankly, yes I could. Windows has not advanced very far since Windows 95 with the exceptions of perhaps the speech technology and the tablet (handwriting) technology.

If the power existed at the time you could have just as easily added transparent windows and a search box on the start menu to Windows 98 and nobody would have been too shocked.

Power == Hardware you dolt.

Manip wrote:

Frankly, yes I could. Windows has not advanced very far since Windows 95 with the exceptions of perhaps the speech technology and the tablet (handwriting) technology.

If the power existed at the time you could have just as easily added transparent windows and a search box on the start menu to Windows 98 and nobody would have been too shocked.

Do you pay attention to what you write?
"If the power existed"
ofcourse if the power existed than it was possible to create this and that but things have a way of developing thats why GUI was needed to be researched in the first place to be figured out, now its just common sense.

like gravity, aristotle thought that the heavier the object the faster it will fall and today we know that that is rediculous.

if you are such a prophet go ahead tell us were technology is going to be 10 years from now

Microsoft will alert British Police and put an end to all your nefarious internet activity.

so basiclly you are saying that (besides the fact that i am an idiot)
if we had the hardware at the time and we would have win95 and its equivilant technology at the time we could do all those flipping windows and effects?

eagle wrote:

Microsoft will alert British Police and put an end to all your nefarious internet activity.

Our police force doesn't engage in civil issues, only criminal. Our courts outsource bailiffs to do stuff that instead thesedays.

W3bbo wrote:

Our police force doesn't engage in civil issues, only criminal. Our courts outsource bailiffs to do stuff that instead thesedays.

Bailiff? Did somebody say bailiff? As in, Rusty the Bailiff from the People's Court?



"Don't take the law into your own hands: you take 'em to court!"

Shmuelpro wrote:

so basiclly you are saying that if we had the hardware at the time and we would have win95 and its equivilant technology at the time we could do all those flipping windows and effects?

I am saying, that if todays hardware had existed in 1995, Microsoft could have updated Windows 95 with the Vista-like effects and released it as Windows 98.

Manip wrote:

I am saying, that if todays hardware had existed in 1995, Microsoft could have updated Windows 95 with the Vista-like effects and released it as Windows 98.

Well, yes, but Vista is a bit more than a few fancy effects. If todays hardware had been available in 1995 I'd sure as hell would've expected an OS that was more stable, secure and efficient than Windows 98 - with or without fancy graphical effects.

AndyC wrote:

Well, yes, but Vista is a bit more than a few fancy effects. If todays hardware had been available in 1995 I'd sure as hell would've expected an OS that was more stable, secure and efficient than Windows 98 - with or without fancy graphical effects.

What exactly is your point? He said you couldn't do all the stuff Vista *does* (functionality) in 1995. I said that I disagree and if the hardware had been in place then you could have done exactly what Vista can do in 1995 (except Speech and Tablet stuff).

All Vista really does is add useless junk to waste the new hardware. The more powerful the hardware gets the more ways Microsoft find to waste it. That is why Windows 95 can run faster on a high end machine from the time when compared to a new Windows XP machine today.  

we'll see flying cars

What you call "useless junk" I call evolution.

Manip wrote:

That is why Windows 95 can run faster on a high end machine from the time when compared to a new Windows XP machine today.  

...and blue screen a lot more often.

Stability, security and reliablity are features. They make the OS better to use. Do they impact performance? Yes, of course they do to some extent but the point is that the trade off on todays modern machines is small enough that it's worth doing.

As to the assertion that Vista wastes hardware, that's just plain wrong. Vista makes much better use of the hardware in your machine - right now your GPU is sat around doing nothing whilst the CPU is busy drawing things, that's a waste. It's one of the reasons that Vista is already faster than XP on most hardware.

Manip wrote:

What can we expect from Microsoft by the time it hits its sixtieth birthday?

Cairo, release 1.0

On its sixtieth birthday Microsoft will be the one true media and corporate congolmerate in existance.  Microsoft will get into the defense market and produce weapons and technologies that will help keep the United States and the planet safe from aggressors either domestic or interplanetary.  We will all be forced to read Bil Gates books and Scobles Blog will be the main source of news to the world.

Happy birthday MS