Module 2 in Review

1. The announcer said that people can work "...any 80 hours a week" they wanted in the software industry, but this flies in the face of Demarco's Peopleware, where he states that overtime is a myth, and productivity plummets after 40 hours.
2. People took years and waited patiently for such large breakthroughs when the computer industry was young. Does society have the patience for such things now? As a people, we are so geared towards immediate gratification now.
3. It's interesting the hype around early computers, even before they did anything.
4. Most of the early innovaters weren't chasing money, they just had an idea that they wanted to see come to life.

1. IBM's dress code seems kind of stuffy in hindsight.
2. Once again, software (the first OS) was written for personal use, not as a market goal.
3. People say that Microsoft ripped the guy off at $50k for his OS, but that seems like pretty good money for four months of work.
4. KLocks is a horrible metric for measuring code progress.

1. How could Xerox not see that a GUI based computer would be what everyone wanted?
1. Steve Jobs got it. Sorry, Xerox.
2. Steve Jobs readily admitted they they stole ideas, but seemed so put-off when other people would take from his ideas or steal their things.
3. People would justify a multi-thousand dollar purchase for a single piece of software. I cannot think of anything like that anymore. People spending a thousand dollars on a nice computer that does almost everything is a hard sell at times.
4. Microsoft really played both sides of the OS war for a while, which seemed really financially smart.

1. Why would you password-protect a closed-house computer? I don't think that people had accounts yet, so wasn't it essentially like a glorified screensaver password?
2. Bill Gates had every right to want payment for his company's work. People aren't just entitled to the capacity of others at no charge.
3. With Linux, the writers of the software are almost never those who offer support. There's no obligation to help you with it, which can make Linux a really unsettling OS for people.

1. Nothing in life seems to function under the "Free Software" principle; people don't generally dedicate their lives and time to giving away everything they think of for free.
2. If hardware was standardized, would it create a monopoly-based vacuum or free companies up to pursue newer ideas?
3. With people trying to limit or throttle the capacity of others in order to give the "little guys" a chance, are we moving towards a society like that depicted in Atlas Shrugged?