[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[John Wallace]

On Nov 9, 1:20 pm, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <d75d3d4b-acf8-4b92-a8ba-1d1c21386... at v36g2000yqv.googlegroups.com>, John Wallace <johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> {...snip...}
>
> >"Until Microsoft, I though DEC had the greatest engineering
> >organization, but Microsoft is substantially better."
>
> What blaspheming fuckwit authored that statement?  Albeit non-actionable,
> it is absolutely reprehensible to make libelous and defamatory statements
> about the dead.  
>
> --
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
>
>  http://www.quirkfactory.com/popart/asskey/eqn2.png
>
>   "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"

Apologies for the unintended effects on anybody's blood pressure.

The author of that particular statement is a name that will be
somewhat known round here: Gordon Bell. I sort of assumed it would
have been obvious from NSR's context, but obviously I assumed wrong,
sorry.

Mr Bell joined Microsoft's Bay Area Research Centre in 1995:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/gbell/

Personally I can't see any basis for the claim unless perhaps he's
talking about quality of buildings and facilities and other such staff-
only stuff. From a customer/user/developer point of view there was
absolutely no comparison in terms of quality of people and quality of
end product, neither then (1995, when I was using both NT for my stuff
and Windows for Playgroups for the corporate stuff) nor at any time
since when I've been looking (which is most of the time).