Ah, boundary conditions on the dates. Makes sense.

I had read that Excel had preview copies out in 1984 (which is fairly quick, considering the Mac itself launched in 1984), but didn't launch officially until 1985. And I suppose, since Windows was still deridingly referred to as "Wintendo" in some circles and generally not widely adopted on PCs, it makes sense that Microsoft would go with an "Excel for MS-DOS 3" marketing stance, even though it really was a Windows app.

FWIW, WordPerfect, my favorite word processor of the early-to-mid-90s (replacing AppleWorks and ///EasyPieces on the Apple //e and Apple ///) got subsumed in the same way as Lotus 1-2-3 did by Excel. While Word for DOS was nothing special, Word for Windows actually was a proper Windows application by the time Word 6 came out. WordPerfect 5.1 on DOS was great, but WordPerfect 6 lost it somehow. The DOS version overreached, trying to bring WYSIWYG into the character-oriented DOS world. The Windows version clung too strongly to their DOS traditions and never really embraced the GUI properly. It was a messy disaster. Microsoft Word 6, for all its faults, was at least largely consistent with itself and the Windows environment around it. (I still miss Reveal Codes though, to this day.)

No, Mod GP -1 inaccurate. Lotus 1-2-3 never ran on the Apple ][ family. It ran on the PC from the get-go. It was launched in 1983, not 1982.

Lotus bought VisiCalc in 1985, not 1986.

Excel didn't come out until 1985 (not 1984), and it was never ported to DOS. Its first appearance on a PC was as a Windows version in 1987. It came with a run-time version of Windows if you didn't already have Windows. Excel managed to kill Lotus 1-2-3 primarily because it was born as a GUI app and was native GUI all the way through. Lotus 1-2-3 stumbled on its way to the GUI, which allowed Excel to eventually overtake it.

Well, just because the missed advertising didn't affect sales yet, there's no guarantee that would continue to hold. Eventually someone would fill the advertising vacuum and they'd have a turf war on their hands.

Wow, that's some comedy gold right there!

We do something similar with our tool releases at work. The release notes indicate bugs that were filed on a previous release and closed with the current release, and if there are open issues what the open issues are. (Usually, it's something very obscure, otherwise it would be fixed.) We do something similar with chip errata. The errata document states which chip revisions are affected, and thus implicitly what chip revision fixes the issue.

Thus, we actually have a two tiered approach. There's the internal system(s) that tracks bugs against the actual development. So, if a bug shows up in a development version, developers and internal testers can file bugs on each other. All that noise has absolutely no business going outside the development team, as it's really just developer-to-developer communication. Then there's the customer issue tracking system. Customer-reported bugs get filed in that system, and they get their own ticket number, and it gets tied to a bug filed in the internal system. The customer bug reports are the ones we comment on in the release notes, along with any notable bugs we discovered in internal testing that customers may not have hit yet.

Disclaimer: My description above is a loose description of the processes we employ at work, and there is variation across teams and business units. It isn't intended to be rigorous. I'm only commenting on my team and teams I've worked closely with. The principle is the same, though. Our dirty laundry (the internal bug tracking system) stays internal. Externally reported bugs get tracked somewhat more opaquely, simply connecting the bug report to the release it's fixed in. It seems quite reasonable to me.

Are you dense or are you intentionally conflating the concept of mean time to failure with guaranteed (minimum) lifetime.

How is 'pride' anything more than a word we give to this emotional drive to maintain status?

It appears to me that you're nitpicking on the word GPP used for being overly broad, for not digging deep enough, though you dismiss it with a quite broad wave.

Hardly.

How is pride anything else than a costly signal that you're virile enough?

From an evolutionary perspective that would be very meaningful.

War is mate competition carried out by other means. There is no other rational for it (war is always economically irrational, although this is not generally understood because it "just makes sense" to so many people that war is somehow a good idea.)

You speak in bold assertive tones about studies and ideas (including kin selection) as if they were established truths.

You claim there is no other rational reason for war, while there is an entire rich field of study on the possible motivations for war amongst humans.

For example it was Ernest Becker who (if not developed at least) popularized the (widely held today) believe that humans war for reasons chimpanzees can't. That (and I'm going to grossly oversimplify here) our death-denial systems rely on an outsider, rely on an enemy, and if one looks past the economic value of many wars (and yes war is often economically rational too) what one will find is a clash of death-denial stories.

And, yea, let's get onto that untruth - that war is somehow always economically irrational. Seizing buffer lands, trade routes, ports, or natural resources is hardly irrational.

Wow, you kids with your high uids.

This kettle is calling your pot out. I'm a noob.

For me, both coffee and beer took a certain amount of acclimation. For coffee, I started out 'candying it up' with a ton of sugar and cream/creamer. And then one day I said "the heck with it" and started drinking it black. Within about a week or two of drinking it every day, I found I actually really liked it. Now you can't keep me away from it. I drink half a pot to a pot of coffee a day, and don't shy away from espresso.

It was a similar story with beer. I started out with really smooth beers (Red Dog was the choice for a fairly smooth, inoffensive beer at the time), and then one day I decided I was going to try all sorts of varieties whether I liked them or not. I started with the beer I had tried and liked least (Guinness Extra Stout—this was before they had the widget cans), and made that my exclusive beer for awhile. After a couple six-packs, I found I really appreciated it, and my palate was now open to a much wider range of beers. I've tried a few hundred different beers since then, and found it quite an enjoyable journey.

I think with both, there's the 'bitter' aspect to get over. Once you get past 'bitter', you can taste the rest of the beverage and enjoy it.