Coffeehouse - Martin Taylor Interview Tomorrow

Balclutha — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 14:16:10 GMT

1. How can students find out more about the internals of Windows, and how the system is really implemented, without Microsoft giving away its competitive advantage? The fact that many excellent students are not interested in Windows or .Net development should be worrying Microsoft because students are the future innovators. Even when CS departments run Windows, they tend to use it in connection with Java technology. Surely students are important to Microsoft's competetive strategy?

(Incedently, when Microsoft came to my university, just as Windows 2000 was released, they just made alot of cheap wisecracks about Linux and gave away lots of freebies. That's not the way to impress people.)

2. Can Martin see how the marketing that exists around Microsoft products can be off-putting to some people? Although everything from languages to OSes have active and vocal communities, you know, for example, that smalltalk.org is run by people trying to communicate and cultivate knowledge and technology they consider beautiful, interesting, and worth conserving whilst MSDN exists ultimately (arguably exclusively) to extract money from someone's wallet. Step into Microsoft’s world and it can feel like a bland world of products, step into other communities and it’s a world of colour and diversity. The open source world feels more like a library, whilst Microsoft world feels more like a travel agent full of holliday brochures.

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Coffeehouse - Martin Taylor Interview Tomorrow