> >Gates rattles on disingenuously about innovation, but he has, in fact,
> >innovated virtually nothing except very smart marketing. He _purchased_
> >DOS. He got IBM's contract for PC-DOS almost by accident (it was really
> >supposed to go to the CP/M folks, but that's another story for another
> >day). He cloned the Mac/Xerox/Amiga GUI ideas (Apple sued him and
> >lost, but that was a legal and not a technical matter).
>
> That's right.  In fact, the BASIC interpreter that started Meikro$oft was
> a ripoff of the Tiny BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, so Meikro$oft
> is a company with a LONG history of 0 creativity.  This is the reason M$
> is so powerful, because they steal other companies ideas, get sued, beat
> the company in court, accusing them of "being jealous," and then they
> destroy the other company.  It's not competition in the software market,
> it's plagairism (did I spell that correctly?).  And strangely, none of the
> M$ fans ever believe me when I tell them just how devious M$ can be...
>
>                                                         -Eric-

We are starting to get way off topic here, but BASIC for the Atair 8800 was
the start of Microsoft.

Daniel McDonough