Reactions are mixed. One computer industry analyst said, "Wow! This kind of innovative decision making is precisely why Microsoft is so successful. The fact that IBM hasn't purchased a major scientific standard is exactly why OS/2 is failing in the market. Excuse me, I have to be at a meeting in three MS Minutes®." However, scientists are not so thrilled about this development. One said, "WHAT?!?!?! Microsoft 'owning' a scientific standard?!?!?!?! This is preposterous! I know for sure that I'm going to switch to Metrix, the free measurement system developed by Linus Torvalds."
Ironically, last month Microsoft announced plans to develop it's own measurement system, code-named ActiveMetric. However, the Microsoft engineers ran into trouble. An anonymous Microsoft engineer said, "We just couldn't do it. We were trained to code programs like Windows 95 and Bob. Scientific standards were way out of our league." However, the engineers did make some progress, some of which will be incorporated into MS Metric 97®. Some of these changes include:
The next few months will be a testing period for MS Metric 97. If any bugs are discovered, they will be fixed in the MS Metric 98 upgrade, to be released sometime in 1999. Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0 will feature a module that will upgrade the system from the British System to MS Metric 97® (or MS Metric 2005®, depending on when NT 5.0 is released).
In conjunction with this purchase, Microsoft has changed its slogan to "What do you want to measure today?"TM Microsoft's stock, MSFT, closed up 5 points today in heavy trading. For more information, consult Microsoft's new website, www.ms-metric-97(R).com.
Credit: James S. Baughn of the Support Group for People Used by Microsoft
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