The Biggest Engineering Project in History

<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003460386_btview04.html" >Why Vista might be the last of its kind</a><br />n<br />n<blockquote>Imagine this. One of the world's most powerful monopolies puts 10,000 people to work for five years to create one new product. And nobody is really sure if anyone wants it. How's that for a gamble?<br />n<br />nThat's what we have with Windows Vista, the new computer-operating system from Microsoft that debuted last week for businesses and, next month, for consumers. There has been so much buildup for this moment that you would expect Vista to cure cancer.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThe article estimates that it 10,000 engineers and around $10 billion dollars to develop Vista. Can you believe that? Bill Gates is really big into his Philanthropic adventures. I wonder how much good he could have done with that $10 billion dollars instead of pouring it into Vista? I will have to wait and see but I don't think Vista is worth it. That's a fan of Linux talking though. <br />n<br />n<strong>It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished. Norman Ralph Augustine</strong>