[plug] horrors!

[Leon Brooks]

Christian wrote:
>> Microsoft are dead.

> Dead?

And falling. Won't hit the ground for many years, corporate Bandersnatch
that it is.

> [Microsoft] Nothing to do with Linux?  Some company is porting
> their apps to Linux.

Uh, some company is _rumoured_ to be porting their apps. Microsoft are
denying and co in question is not returning calls. An extremely
well-timed rumour, too, in the face of Eazel PR1, a few recent extremely
positive Mozilla reviews and much hoohaw about StarOffice and other
MS-Office competitors.

Failed to learn from history == doomed to repeat it. "And there is no
new thing under the sun" (King Solomon).

Microsoft are *always* rumoured (sometimes officially, sometimes not) to
be on the verge of producing something worth waiting for... or, more
pointedly, not buying a competing product to. How much do you think it
would be worth to Microsoft to keep the Linux office-suite market
suppressed even a little for a year or two?

> A lot of people set stock by what Microsoft does.

Or appears to be on the verge of doing.

"Office suite! Office suite" cried the little shepherd boy. And one day,
the villagers, having decided in council that the shepherd was in
constant breach of trust, did _not_ come running. Stocks fell, indeed,
were eaten up. The market was not so much bearish as wolfish.

-- 
If life is merely a joke, the question remains: for whose amusement?