
Meet Microsoft, the world's best kept R&D secret - matan_a
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2020268/meet-microsoft-the-worlds-best-kept-randd-secret.html
======
ChuckMcM
"Redmond spends more on R&D than Google and Apple combined. Think about that
the next time someone tells you Microsoft doesn’t have a future."

Two words, Xerox PARC.

At Sun there was a weird joke that Sun Labs was where good ideas went to die.
It was frustrating.

The point here is that good R&D is a necessary but not sufficient component of
innovation, the second is a willingness to productize your work. Strangely the
hardest thing about that is _not_ making a product out of it, the hardest
thing is making a product you can ship.

Good R&D isn't constrained, which is to say that you don't tell the folks
doing the research you are only researching things we can sell for a profit,
but that is a constraint on products. What happens is the 'Apple effect' where
you have a bunch of researchers who can't make a profitable product (Xerox
Star) and then a product guy comes along (Steve Jobs) who sees the essence of
the innovation, and can strip away the parts where it goes too far and ships
that.

Its really challenging to build something close to your vision and not ship
it, it seems like it is impossible to build something that is close to your
vision and then ship something only half as close as that. But that is where
the success can be. "Fumbling the Future" [1] is a fascinating read for that
reason.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Fumbling-Future-Invented-Personal-
Comp...](http://www.amazon.com/Fumbling-Future-Invented-Personal-
Computer/dp/1583482660)

~~~
pron
AFAIK, Microsoft Research and IBM Research, unlike Google Labs, do not operate
with the clear intent of ever productizing their work. What they do there is
much more similar to the work done in universities.

And if Microsoft Research is like IBM, then it's also only partly funded by
the corporation, and regarded as a semi-separate entity. I think they see it
more as a contribution to science and as a long-term investment rather than
product research.

~~~
dude_abides
You are right about Microsoft Research (MSR) but not about IBM Research. In
fact, MSR is the only true academic-style research lab left in the world; all
others either disbanded or became more product-focused. It will be interesting
to see how long the MSR model survives. Will be great to hear the views of an
MSRian on this.

~~~
jjcm
I'm not on MSR directly, but I am part of a future research team at Microsoft.
Internally things are interesting - you have the freedom to do pretty much
whatever you want, but you have to justify it's usefulness one way or another.
Microsoft is made up of thousands of tiny little teams that are mostly
autonomous - each team has to prove that there's a reason for it to exist
though. With research, especially things that will only come to fruition ten
or twenty years out, it's very hard to directly measure it's impact. One of
the things we end up doing is alternating between future and near reaching
projects so that we can justify our existence with projects that are tangible
in the present, but also contribute to future goals as well.

In a sense we are product focused as well, except our target market isn't
consumers, but rather people up on high within microsoft. We have to sell our
research to them one way or another, and it's often the research teams that
have the best advertising sense about them that end up doing the best.

------
aresant
In this article I see a MSFT strategy unfolding of skipping the current smart-
phone mobile battlefield, and leaping directly into full-bore cyborg
computing.

Bear with me, they've effectively laid out all the pieces:

\- A "omni touch" interface that allows for interaction without physical input
devices.

\- A variety of leaps forward for Kinect to map and translate your physical
environment to a data stream.

\- A "holodeck" and other tools that overlay interface design onto physical
objects.

\- Foveated 3d graphics and other leaps forward that would drastically reduce
hardware costs for graphic rendering.

Nearly every one of these projects are directly applicable to the "wearable
computer" concept.

I wonder if, looking back in 10 years, we'll see that MSFT's currnet weak
smart-phone entries were ultimately not that important to their overall
strategy.

~~~
JPKab
I agree with you here, but I don't think the "weak smart phone strategy" is
necessarily by design. Honestly, I think they have a solid smart phone
product, but were so late that they won't get the solid ecosystem of apps they
need.

My issue with this article is that it forgets about the ugly side of
Microsoft: delaying the sale of innovative new things to protect old profit
centers in the enterprise market. Does anyone really believe that Microsoft
CAN'T make editing hosted documents in Sharepoint as seamless and smooth as
Google Docs? I truly believe that they have chosen to neuter a lot of their
collaborative, web app based software to keep their old trusy desktop software
(Office) profit center alive and kicking. They benefit from this, in the short
term, in two ways: If the latest version of Office has new features, they sell
the upgrades and make bank. Because it's desktop, they can say "you need
Windows 8 (or whatever is latest and greatest) to run it Mrs. CIO." So then
they make the OS sale too.

------
TwistedWeasel
Spending money on research is always good, Microsoft Research has always had a
lot of good ideas and generated some truly amazing prototypes and research
papers. It's a good thing for the community in general the have people working
on this stuff but it's not necessarily a good business investment for MS if
they can't leverage the work into viable products.

Many companies like to fund R&D divisions as a means to attract the best minds
from the academic community in the hopes that they will benefit from their
talent in some way. It's often not directed work but more of a recruitment
tool. The best professors bring with them the best students and many of those
students end up working on products not just research.

However, in my time at Microsoft I worked with the research team on a couple
of occasions trying leverage their ideas into real products with little
success. We would send them some interesting problems (in one case we asked
them to spend some time on snow accumulation algorithms for a snowboarding
game) and they would disappear for months and return with a cool demo that was
impressive but usually failed to meet the given criteria that allowed it to be
used in a shipping product. e.g. speed, memory efficiency, data size
requirements etc.

~~~
zaidf
Curious:

What precise things were problematic? Their disappearing for months? Their not
communicating enough? Them royally ignoring practical guidelines from you re:
speed, memory etc?

~~~
TwistedWeasel
All of the above, but most of all not keeping within the required parameters
that would have made their solution usable.

------
mtgx
> "Redmond spends more on R&D than Google and Apple combined. Think about that
> the next time someone tells you Microsoft doesn’t have a future."

More like Microsoft _wastes_ more money on R&D that doesn't convert in
revolutionary products more than both Apple and Google combined.

We've always known Microsoft spends a lot on R&D and they like to make those
"20 years from now" videos, but I haven't seen much come out of it. Last year
they even bragged about how they had the idea for the iPhone 20 years ago. But
so what? How did that help them? At best it helped them create Windows Mobile
and the PDA's 10 years later, but that was a niche market, and Microsoft never
had much market share with Windows Mobile in the smartphone market, which was
a lot smaller than the current smartphone market back then.

So I guess the moral of the story is that "lab inventions" don't mean much,
and you could waste a lot of money on them, and with very little to show for
it in the market. I'm pretty sure the $2 billion dollar Kin project was part
of that R&D spending, too.

~~~
DanBC
> More like Microsoft wastes more money on R&D that doesn't convert in
> revolutionary products [...]

This sentence is weird to read here.

We have a big company spending money on science that is not tied to what they
can sell. That is a good thing. I am disappointed that anyone on HN can say
anything different.

Of course, we could have a discussion about the difficulties of running pure
research alongside a commercial arm. But that's not what your comment is
doing.

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't think research whose results do not see the light of day is valuable
in any shape or form. This is especially true for corporate-sponsored
research, where the results are either kept as trade secrets or patented by
the corporate lawyers, which means scientists elsewhere cannot build on top of
that research later.

~~~
liftthatback
You are very, very mistaken.

Microsoft sponsors many top people in computer science and allows them to
spend time on pure research and to publish academic papers. Ever heard of
Simon Peyton Jones or Sir Tony Hoare?

How can that be bad?

For example, Microsoft pays most of the top Haskell developers to research and
develop Haskell. There's no patents on that, and the source code and papers
are all freely available. Microsoft isn't turning it into a product, it's just
doing it to better computer science, to increase their standing, and to inform
their other products such as C#.

And you say that's bad? Fuck you.

~~~
enraged_camel
I see that you're new here. Please remain civil. This is not Reddit.

It is true that a portion of the research sponsored by Microsoft is published
as academic papers, but I'd suspect that, in relation to the vast amount of
money Microsoft is spending on R&D, those papers represent less than 1% of the
results. We never hear about the hundreds of millions spent where the results
never saw the light of day.

~~~
liftthatback
My problem with what you've said is that you've accused Microsoft of placing
patents on their research, and of not publishing their results.

These accusations are false. MSR does not generally patent their work. I'm in
language research and have not encountered any of their work that they've
patented. Also, MSR's researchers and evaluated and appraised based on their
publication record, so the only incentive is to publish. Microsoft's people
publish a huge amount. Most university researchers are envious of how much
they manage to publish, which they achieve through very high quality people,
properly compensated, with lots of resources and being left alone.

Why do you "suspect" that only 1% is published? Where do you get that number
from? Have you worked there? Have you collaborated with them? If they're only
publishing 1%, the research would be superhuman.

You have put a false accusation to a group of people, and that pisses me off.
It's not even like it's a difference of opinion - you've clearly not worked
with these people or studied their publications, and are just making
assumptions.

~~~
enraged_camel
I went to UW for my undergrad. I know people who work in MSR and talk to them
on a regular basis. You're definitely right about them being high quality
people and being very properly compensated, but wrong about everything else
you said. Language research, for example, constitutes a tiny minority of MSR's
total budget. Most of it goes to graphics and multimedia, hardware and
devices, and human-computer interaction, with smaller portions going to
software development and security/anti-piracy research. Everything else is
breadcrumbs.

>>If they're only publishing 1%, the research would be superhuman.

Well yes, they spend over $10 billion on research. Of course it is superhuman.
Perhaps you are lacking this context, which is why you find it hard to believe
my suspicion that they publish a tiny percentage of all research findings.

~~~
rossjudson
When I look through MSR's papers, I see a pretty massive level of output,
across many of the domains you say get most of the money. Of course there's
going to be information that isn't published. There's lots of information not
worth publishing.

As a matter of defense against patents, though, MSFT has a strong interest in
insuring that its basic research is thoroughly documented in public,
establishing prior art.

------
mav3r1ck
This should come as no surprise to those that are familiar with MSR (Microsoft
Research). I've had the fortune of visiting the place a few times and it is
amazing, especially the people they get to come in for research (even the
interns are geniuses).

Even if you don't know of MSR, this should be of no surprise if you have any
recall of the news you read over the years. A lot of the work they do has
appeared in the NYTimes and such. For example, I remember very clearly that
about 6 years ago, Bill Gates basically said that robots are the future. It
didn't take me long to find articles and website to remind myself of what he
said (see link below). Although Bill Gates is no longer CEO, he is still
chairman and you can certainly bet that MSR will be leading the way in this
research.

[http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/01/07/bill-
gates-r...](http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/01/07/bill-gates-robots-
microsoft-robotics-studio/)

------
asimjalis
Microsoft’s 9B R&D budget is mostly an accounting convenience. They include
all product development in R&D.

~~~
sek
Also the video at the end is just a marketing video from the Office
department.

At least it's not just a marketing vehicle like IBM Research and they build
real products like Kinect. But that was also a bought company afaik and didn't
come out of MS R&D.

------
joezydeco
My irony sensor gets kind of pegged when I see all these interesting Microsoft
research projects using the Kinect and Kinect-related sensing technologies,
but Microsoft had to go and _buy_ the original tech from PrimeSense.

[http://www.cultofmac.com/67951/how-apple-almost-got-
microsof...](http://www.cultofmac.com/67951/how-apple-almost-got-microsofts-
kinect-game-controller/)

~~~
mousetraps
PrimeSense provided a low cost chip, but Microsoft:

\- did the product design and put it into a friendly package (take apart a
Kinect some day, they did some neat stuff in there)

\- developed the body tracking algorithm
([http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/145347/BodyPartRecognitio...](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/145347/BodyPartRecognition.pdf)).

\- developed the microphone array, speech recognition algorithms

\- provided developers the resources they needed to take advantage of the
device

\- applied it well to gaming and quickly brought it to market

\- put the technology in the hands of millions, triggering even more
innovation

~~~
joezydeco
So what was in the SDK that PrimeSense was packaging with their reference
design before the launch of the Kinect?

<http://pr.cs.cornell.edu/humanactivities/data/NITE.pdf>

~~~
mousetraps
They had skeletal tracking, but it wasn't reliable enough for consumer
applications:

\- OpenNI requires a calibration pose, while the technique Microsoft uses
allows players to walk in and out of the frame. Kinect would not have
succeeded if people had to calibrate it all the time.

\- Microsoft does predictive analysis so it's much better in non-optimal
environments (e.g. a living room) or in cases where it loses track of a body
part because it's behind something.

\- Also. To train it. Microsoft generated and processed millions of depth
images from mocap data taken of people of all sorts of different shapes in
sizes in all sorts of environments. It's insane. And of course they needed new
algorithms to manage that...

\- Lastly - no audio/speech or 3D facial expression tracking in NITE

------
brisance
Microsoft is this generation's Xerox PARC if they can't ship whatever is in
their R&D labs.

------
manojlds
"As far as 99.9 percent of the world population is concerned"

I bet a large percentage of the population in the world doesn't even know
about Microsoft.

------
sytelus
You can see Microsoft Research's contribution to shipping products at
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/about/techtransfer/produ...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/about/techtransfer/product-development-contributions-2011.aspx). You will
be surprised how much stuff has came out of MSR.

------
robomartin
If the tech world has proven anything at all it is that:

    
    
        huge budget != disruptive innovation
    

At least not as a rule.

Think about how most (all?) of the top tech companies you know about started:
garages, dorms and kitchen tables. HP, Apple, Microsoft, Google, eBay,
Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Sure, some needed huge money to scale, but the genesis of the idea-turned-
product did not require millions or billions to generate.

Sometimes you have to wonder if hunger is far more valuable than money to spur
innovation. I happen to think so. And, while I do not diminish the work being
done at companies like MS, sometimes I feel that they are just throwing money
at PhD's who are having a great time playing with interesting tech but simply
don't have the drive, hunger and urgency to make something more than a great
research gig out of it.

~~~
tellarin
Research != innovation

Research != R&D

Not trying to antagonize you, just pointing an issue that seems pretty common
in this article discussion.

------
bediger4000
I'll grant you that my personal anecdote is a few years old, but...

Maybe 8 or 9 years ago, I talked to the Dean of the University of Colorado
Comp Sci department. I could only remember Benjamin Zorn as a faculty member,
so I dropped the name. By then, Zorn had gotten hired away to Microsoft R&D.
The Dean of the Comp Sci department made a number of references to Microsoft
R&D as a "research roach hotel" - researcher's go in, but no papers ever come
out.

If Microsoft R&D is a secret, then it's Microsoft's own problem, I assume.

~~~
brudgers
Here you will find 10,000 publications from Microsoft Research:

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?t=pu...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?t=publications)

That appears to be about four orders of magnitude more research than that used
to fact check your story.

~~~
marshray
I look forward to reading
[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1795...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=179572)
this one about Halo combat skill development:

 _Using these ratings from 7 months of games from over 3 million players, we
look at how play intensity, breaks in play, skill change over time, and other
titles affect skill._

------
sbuccini
As a current student, these are the types of projects that made me want to
study this field. Does anyone know if it's even possible to get a job at one
of these R&D centers with just an undergrad degree? What sort of things can I
do to make myself a more viable candidate for one of these research labs?

~~~
munchbunny
No, not really. I've heard of a few exceptions in the past, and in all cases
these were people with highly successful careers spanning at least a decade.

That said, if you ever become a PhD candidate in CS, you should apply to MSR
for a summer. It's an amazing place to expand your network as a researcher.

------
at-fates-hands
"The point here is that good R&D is a necessary but not sufficient component
of innovation, the second is a willingness to productize your work"

This is my biggest beef with MS. They consistently wait for other companies to
innovate, then wait to see if the market will support it.

Only when they see an advantage to developing their own version of a product
will they enter a market. You can look at their MP3 player the Zune, you can
also look at how long it took them to get into the smartphone and tablet
markets.

I'm wondering if there are any concrete examples of them releasing a product
which has utilized their arm of R&D for a specific product and pointed to it
as a reason why it's available to the public. Similar to how Google always
touts their R&D teams for developing a myriad of their products.

~~~
kapnobatairza
I am not quite sure if I buy this argument.

Microsoft certainly attempts to "productize", they simply fail on execution:

When the iPod was still "only" an MP3 player, Microsoft was pushing video
capable PMPs through their PMC software.

Microsoft was betting on the tablet long before Apple.

Windows CE based Wizard style PDAs predate the Apple Newton, and Pocket PC was
largely successful and shows Microsoft have been trying to get a Mobile OS
into your pocket for nearly 20 years. It was largely Palm and Microsoft that
built out this space.

The PocketPC iPaq even had a GSM jacket that allowed it to be used as a phone,
making it a smartphone that predates even the earliest Ericsson/Nokia
smartphones. Not to mention Windows Mobile which predates iOS and Android by
many years.

Microsoft has been working on WebTV, Media Center and Xbox to get into your
living room long before AppleTV or Google TV.

Microsoft has certainly attempted to productize on the ideas that come out of
Microsoft Research and is almost always on the cutting edge of technology, and
in many cases years ahead. The problem is that they don't have the same
unified vision many other companies do, so when they execute they do so
poorly: With incomplete products in an incoherent package.

Microsoft's problem isn't that they aren't making enough products, it is that
they are sometimes too big and disorganized to make them good enough that
people can see the underlying value.

~~~
mikestew
> Windows CE based Wizard style PDAs predate the Apple Newton

Newton came out in '93 and WinCE came out in '96. But that nitpick doesn't
take away from your general point. MSFT seems to be good at coming out with
things that have potential, but then let's them languish. Their mobile
products were a prime example. On the last WinMo phone I had (2006-ish), the
OS had dialogs that were (I assume) user-drawn and going on ten years old.
Those dialogs looked like it, too. Apple comes along with a platform they were
willing to pour the company into, and MSFT has been playing catch-up since.

You say they don't make their products "good enough", I'd argue that Microsoft
doesn't stick with their products long enough to make them good enough. Their
wireless home phone system (can't find a link) was an example. V1.0 was rough
around the edges, but useable and forward-thinking for the late 90's. v2.0 was
going to be great, except there never was a 2.0.

~~~
kapnobatairza
Good catch, somehow I thought the Newton was released later, thanks for the
correction. Upon further research, Microsoft seems to have begun their
handheld efforts with WinPad and the Pegasus project in 1994, which finally
materialized as WindowsCE by 1996 in real consumer products. Apple Newton
development seems to go back as far as 1987, with a consumer product out by
1993.

I also think what you say about them failing to support their products in the
long term is very true. Until recently, Microsoft has been willing to let a
lot of its products languish both aesthetically and in terms of functionality.

I think this ultimately still comes down to Microsoft's large disjointed
nature and stubborn commitment to support legacy hardware/software, which made
it less dynamic than a company like Apple that had a strong top-down unified
decision making process that allowed it to push out cutting-edge products and
aesthetics.

------
gjmveloso
If this P&D budget was splitted on long-term-10-years-go-to-market products
and really useful and fast increments on current Microsoft products, maybe
Microsoft could be the current Google. Or Apple ;)

It's weird a company have the funniest R&D labs and its main product - Windows
- still sucks with 80' Windows Registry structure or a file system which
fragments a lot.

------
rbanffy
People have to realize it's not how much money you spend, but how well you
spend it, that matters.

------
Nano2rad
Microsoft is part of US military and weapon manufacturers like Boeing, and
doing projects for them. Most of MS research is related to military if you
look close. Also now it is protected from any acquisition.

------
__abc
Awesome, now bring it to market. Until then, as a consumer, I could care less
about Microsoft.

All their amazing R&D didn't make W8, their phones, or their tablets any more
enjoyable or purchasable.

------
ilaksh
Interesting to see such an amazingly positive article on the front page at the
same time as the scathing Forbes piece. I wonder if that's really a
coincidence.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2013/01/02/microsoft-
is...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2013/01/02/microsoft-is-fast-
turning-into-a-sideshow/)

Since most of these revolutionary systems aren't available as actual products,
I have to assume that Microsoft buys people and ideas mainly to keep them from
interfering with their monopolies.

------
ndbos
Whats even more clever is that the 9.6 Billion only actually "cost" 4.8
Billion (R&D Classified Work is a 50% tax deduction)

------
ianstallings
I love their R&D department. If only they could mutate Ballmer into a human
being using bio-engineering..

------
ucee054
What academics (eg Microsoft Research) mean by "innovation" is "what lets us
publish papers".

What ordinary people mean by "innovation" is "what cool new things can be made
available that noticeably change Grandma's life".

Most academic work is _USELESS_ for this because it ignores too many
constraints, making the market hostile to it. Richard Gabriel did a piece on
this, called "Money through innovation reconsidered".

Don't buy academic hype.

~~~
stinos
So what is your actual point here? Research is useless? Academics are only
about publishing and nothing more? Doesn't make sense.

How do you expect eg low-level brain research to be useful for your grandma?
It can't, but that does not mean at all it cannot be innovative or that the
researchers only care about the next paper.

~~~
ucee054
I have two points.

Point1: Nothing that Microsoft _ever_ does will blaze a new trail of products,
they are not an original sort of company. They will always be playing catchup.

EG Kinect to WiiMote

Point2: Nothing that CS conferences or journals _ever_ publish will blaze a
new trail. They too will always be playing catchup.

EG first came Facebook, and only afterwards the whole social networking
research craze in academia.

I exaggerate Point2 _a little_. There are 1 or 2 Academics who actually make
stuff, like Michael Stonebraker. But overall the record is pathetic.

Don't buy the hype.

~~~
pm90
_> Point2: Nothing that CS conferences or journals ever publish will blaze a
new trail. They too will always be playing catchup._

Actually, it was a lot of this published work that resulted in: Internet,
Networks, Filesystems, OS(Unix), Compilers(LLVM) etcetc.

Granted, a lot of research does not result in any useful product, but that
isn't what research is all about. Its about exploring the boundaries of our
knowledge. Trying wild ideas that you couldn't do within the time and budget
limits of a company... because some of those wild ideas do work spectacularly
in the end

~~~
ucee054
Please get your facts straight. If the papers had never existed we would still
have the Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS and Compilers.

Those things are not exactly difficult to do at a basic level (the 0to1 level)
although at an advanced level (1toN) they might be.

So you will find that how those things got onto the market was by some
engineer figuring out how to do it and hacking it together, not the work of
some professor.

The two examples I am familiar with are filesystems and OS. Our filesystems
today are the result of descent from FAT12, which came from discussion between
Marc McDonald and Bill Gates.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table>

Our operating systems are the result of descent from CPM, which came from Gray
Kildall deciding to write a RAM tester.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M>

And that applies to 90% of the market. "Look ma no research!"

I can find you similar examples for compilers and networks as well, though in
those fields the examples will not be so outright embarrassing to academia.

What research is about is mostly chasing trends in conferences and funding
bodies.

Don't buy academic hype.

~~~
pm90
_> Please get your facts straight. If the papers had never existed we would
still have the Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS and Compilers._

That is a question without an answer. Probably, they would have been invented,
probably not. The ideas themselves were played around and worked on by
academics though. You can't deny that they helped to usher in the technologies
much quicker than otherwise.

 _> So you will find that how those things got onto the market was by some
engineer figuring out how to do it and hacking it together, not the work of
some professor_

Professors don't (usually) sit down and write code, they hire others to do it
for them. As I said before, the point of research isn't to produce a product,
ready for use. It is to try out ideas that wouldn't be tried by the industry.
Its good that Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina were hired to code what later
turned out to be the Mosaic web browser.

 _> Our operating systems are the result of descent from CPM, which came from
Gray Kildall deciding to write a RAM tester.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M> _

MSDOS, true. Unix, false. Unix descended from MULTICS[0] which started much
before CP/M[1]

 _> I can find you similar examples for compilers and networks as well, though
in those fields the examples will not be so outright embarrassing to
academia._

I wince at your choice of words. "Embarrassing"? Why? If the industry produces
an idea or technique that solves a research problem, academics have no trouble
accepting it. See for instance: how quickly AWS, CUDA etc are being adopted by
academics for their research.

So, in total, you have given one "fact" which turns out to be untrue. And you
say you can give more examples in networks and compilers. Please do. I am
genuinely interested to see what it is that has so tarnished your views on the
work of academia.

 _> And that applies to 90% of the market. "Look ma no research!"_

Clearly.

Here, take another famous example: relational databases originated in a paper
by an academic, E.F. Codd[2].

I see that you are hell-bent on showing that academic research has made no
contribution at all to the development of modern computer science. I haven't
got the time or inclination to argue, so this will be my last comment on this
matter

[0]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics>
[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M>
[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database>

~~~
ucee054
I gave you 2 facts, referring to CPM and FAT, which apply to the Windows 90%
of the PC market.

Unix is irrelevant; nobody used Unix until Android came along. Unix is in fact
the other 10%.

Furthermore, relational databases are the work by Professor Stonebraker, that
I already conceded in my original post.

 _I haven't got the time or inclination to argue_

No, what you lack is the time and inclination to apply reading comprehension
to my posts.

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chayesfss
They should throw some money at making adfs a better product

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lionspaw
This is silly. Microsoft doesn't have the culture for any kind of innovation
at this point.

-ex-microsoftie

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BobWarfield
Microsoft Research was founded by Nathan Myhrvold. Maybe it's just a patent
trolling scam?

Cheers,

BW

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orionblastar
Microsoft should have spent some of that money improving the quality control
of their software.

To learn that changing the GUI of Windows 8 was not that good of an idea.

Microsoft should have used R&D to make products more affordable.

