From: rwh@moose.cccs.umn.edu (RICHARD HOFFBECK)
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! :)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: rwh@moose.cccs.umn.edu
Organization: Colon Cancer Control Study, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 16:51:00 GMT

In article <Bzu31K.522@csulb.edu>, sichermn@csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes:
> In article <1992Dec24.160351.2557@tc.cornell.edu> bai@msiadmin.cit.cornell.edu (Dov Bai-MSI Visitor) writes:
> >From a previous post by Jeff Sicherman:
> >
> >>  Oh, I think there will still be plenty of opportunities for Billy boy if
> >>he works at it. However, it may put a crimp in his megalomania. And I fail
> >>to see why we have to tailor the marketplace for the most extreme desires
> >>of entreprenuers if that results in being to corruption of the market and
> >>the detriment of consumers.
> >
> >You asked what may happen as a result of FTC actions and I gave
> >you my answer. Read some books about successful entrepeneurs if you
> >don't believe me.
>  
>   Charles Keating was a very successful entrepeneur until they caught up with
> his business practices. 

Nonsense!  Keating got caught because he went broke, NOT because what he
was doing was illegal.  In fact most of the charges against him were for
actions he took to hide the fact that he had driven Lincoln into the ground.

>   And again I ask, just where has MS been an innovator ?

You want to measure MS against an engineering scale rather than a business
scale.  In the overall history of business you'll be hard pressed to find
another example of a company that was able to grow as quickly as MS and
still remain solvent.  In the last decade, they've gone from being nothing
to being in the Fortune 50 and they've shown almost no public symptoms of
growing pains.  In the religion of business that is a task that is nothing
short of being a miracle.  How many of the old CP/M crowd was able to handle
even a small piece of success?  Osborne? DR? Software Arts?  The only company
that I can think of that comes close is Compaq, and they seem to be suffering
the consequences of a certain amount of detachment from the end-user.  

A recent New York Times article profiled the MS employees with the astonishing
statistic that everyone who has worked at MS for more than 3 years is worth
more than $1,000,000 based on their stock options.  If I was worth more than
1M, I sure wouldn't be working, so they must like it at MS.

Two weeks ago the NYT reviewed the user laboratory implimented by MS to study
how people actually use their software.  The article pointed out that among
Lotus, Borland, WP Corp, etc., MS was the only organization to have a 
noticable in-house product evaluation group.  Quite correctly, I think, they
compared it to the broadbased human engineering effort pioneered at Bell
Labs.  Studying how people use your software may not seem particularly
innovative, but it seems to have escaped the most of the competition. 

How long before we start hearing cries that Word or Excel is too easy to
use and should be crippled so that Borland or Lotus can compete?

--rick

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Richard Hoffbeck               INTERNET: rwh@moose.cccs.umn.edu |
| Colon Cancer Control Study     ATT     : (612) 627-4151         |
| University of Minnesota        CIS     : 72406,521              |
| Minneapolis, MN 55455                                           |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy