> > I merely found the concept offered, that a processor architecture isn't a
> > business decision, to be, shall we say, quaint.  From the people who
> > conceive it, thru the people who implement it, thru the people who code for
> > it, to the people who use it, processor architecture is an amalgam of ideas
> > and compromises driven by business purposes, ultimately to serve business
> > purposes.  When business decisions go against our concepts of what is the
> > "right" decision, that can be vexing, and it's easy to loose perspective.
> > The reality of the marketplace, however, is still there.
>
>   I agree that this is the way the popular industry sees it.  My point
> was that it's not supposed to be this way.
>
>   ...In the same way that hospitals are often highly profitable
> businesses, and cancer research is done primarily in the hopes of
> making some pharmaceuticals company rich instead of saving lives.

There is a big problem with capitalism - monopolistic practises. After a
certain size it is no longer desireable for a company to have the best
product - they must have a product that becomes detrimental to the sale of
other products or justifies further purchase. Microsoft would never
willingly make their Office software interoperate with other office
software; Intel would never give us processor and motherboard sets that
are compatible with marginally improved processors.

It's almost unbelievable to imagine that a 933 MHz Pentium III with 64
megs of memory takes as long to load a word processor as an old Kaypro.
It's just as unimaginable to think that a few pages of typed text ends up
taking hundreds of kilobytes of disk space and can embed viruses.

If, in 1980, someone would have described a 2001 Windows PC to you, would
you have believed it, or would you have laughed?

John Klos