The Once and Future King |PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: "The final stage I call 'missing the boat,' which involves a significant advance in non-Microsoft technology that Redmond chooses to address by not addressing -- they just dictate that it shall not be so, thinking that as always their word is law. Maybe this last stage has to do with Open Source but probably not. This stage has to be something beyond Netscape's browser or Sun's Java, because Microsoft was willing to embrace those and destroy them. Missing the boat means a zig that threatens the heart of Windows, probably associated with a hardware platform shift. Only this time, Microsoft will be too slow and customers, feeling abused and tired of the treadmill, won't be so afraid. Bill Gates (it will still be Bill, because this will happen in the next decade I am sure) will again turn his corporate supertanker and add full power, but this time the competing ship will not only have a head start, it will be able to accelerate faster than Microsoft." ??? Talk about missing the boat. I think the boat that has been missed here is by the pundits who think that Open Source just showed up yesterday and now they are disapointed that everything isn't going to be Open Source tomorrow. I'm not sure I like this "boating" metaphore either. If we ahve to work with it I'd point out that many big companies are smart enough to not base their future on one gigantic boat at all, but instead start building a fleet of smaller, more manouverable craft. Nothing stops Microsoft from doing that. It just hasn't.