How are any of them 'successes'?

Xbox has still lost money over its lifetime.
Office? People would happily be using whatever version of Office Microsoft churned out, there was no demand to switch to a new version.
Windows 7? If Microsoft were still pumping out upgraded versions of Windows XP, they'd be selling more than they are of Windows 8.

Microsoft should have called Windows and Office done years ago, and moved most of the developers off to new products. Then they might still be relevant.

So how did they end up with a tablet interface on desktop PCs? Which businesses 'wanted and needed' that?

Of course they do. They only exist to support DRM-ed epub.

Besides, do you really want to tell Adobe every book you read?

Or Windows, or Linux (through Wine), or an Android tablet or phone, or an iPad or iPhone, or, I believe, a web interface. If it's DRM-free, of course, you can convert it to any other format.

I presume someone is planning offensive capabilities to get the fuunding?

Vik :v)

I had to give myself a crash course when a large number of trans* people suddenly landed in my online life. Human gender identity turns out to be at least as complicated as anything else in biology and the details are fascinating.

Many trans people use the word "tranny" among themselves, and many experience it as a vicious slur if it comes from a stranger. It's best avoided in general.

Gender dysphoria can start in early childhood.

All our interactions with Manning will be with Manning's brain, not with Manning's chromosomes.

If the brain setting is "female", then "she" makes sense logically.

People trying to live according to their below-the-neck settings and override their brain settings often try the discipline and fixed roles of a military career.

Zhou et. al. (1997) found brain areas that differ in size between men and women, and which had the typical female size in trans women.

Rational questions remain, but add that to the experiences of trans people who know their mismatched gender all the way down and can't change it, and it's a coherent theory.

Suicide rates among gender dysphorics are horrifying.

Yes, but the Xenix machines I saw were still a joke when put alongside a real Unix workstation. Did it even have a GUI?

Could hardly be worse than what Lucas did to it.

Uh, no.

Us Unix workstation folks laughed at Windows users when it was first released. It was a cheap, crap, toy windowing system compared to Sun workstations and the like.

It was only with Windows 95 and NT that it started to look comparable to the Unix alternatives, at a much lower price.