On dumb terminals with software handshaking (which most were) a CONTROL-S is stop trasmission. A CONTROL-Q is start transmission.

Many professional office staff in those days had young, female secretaries with long nails. Guess how many time a day support staff would get a call like this: "My computer is frozen!"

When my dad got his first computer, he called and asked me: "What's a cursor?" I suggested that he invite the 13 year neighbor of their's over for lunch!

My first CompSci class was computer math. The teacher insisted that twos compliment (used exclusively by IBM) was binary!

In 1984 I tried selling a PC with the best available video card and monitor to an engineering firm. They laughed me out of the building and bought TekTronix.

My first portable computer weighed about 35 pounds. I did a presentation of our software to a law firm in Dallas. During the presentation, I wrote on their new whiteboard with permanent marker. To make matters worse, when I lifted my computer off the very elegant leather table-top, two large divots came up with my computer! We did, however, get the contract!

Enough for now!

It was MS Word incompatibility that caused it to become the de facto standard when MS convinced PC manufacturers to pre-load Windows. There were many UNIX based and proprietary OS based word and document processing, and plublishing tools that were (only a few still exist) far superior to Word.

Prior to those days, MS used to rant about compatibility until it became a power buzzword.

It is a sad truth that the world of IT and computing in general would be better off tomorrow if MS disappeared from the face of the earth.

The dearth of computing platforms is already frightening. No one should be pushing future business towards the existing 'standards' of MS compatibility.

Linus is oft quoted as saying that he has no wish to make Linux compete with MS.

He is wise.

He is not alone. Thankfully, there are companies like Apache, and projects like perl and php, that defy the corporate doctrine of market share, in favor of innovation and common sense.