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Re: [ontolog-forum] How not to write specifications (VISTA costs)

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Gary Berg-Cross" <gary.berg-cross@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 14:55:41 -0400
Message-id: <330E3C69AFABAE45BD91B28F80BE32C901907893@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
The Cost of project Apollo (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget> )     (01)



NASA's budget peaked in 1966, during the height of construction efforts leading 
up to the first moon landing under Project Apollo 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Apollo> . At its peak, the Apollo program 
involved more than 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry>  and university 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University>  contractors 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractors> . ...    (02)



In March of 1966, NASA told Congress the "run-out cost" of the Apollo program 
to put men on the moon would be an estimated $22.718 billion for the 13 year 
program which eventually did accomplished six successful missions between July 
1969 and December 1972. According to Steve Garber, the NASA History website 
curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 billion in 
1969 Dollars (or approximately $135-billion in 2005 Dollars).     (03)



Gates has said (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13812973/ 
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13812973/> ) Microsoft was investing $8 billion to 
$9 billion in developing Vista and the company's next version of Office, its 
key cash-generator.     (04)



So the cost in current dollars while large is quite a bit less than the entire 
Apollo Program....    (05)



Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.     (06)

http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBerg_Cross    (07)

Principle for Semantic Technology    (08)

EM&I    (09)

SOCoP Executive Secretary     (010)

http://semanticommunity.wik.is/Spatial_Ontology_Community_of_Practice 
<http://semanticommunity.wik.is/Spatial_Ontology_Community_of_Practice>     (011)




________________________________    (012)

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of John F. Sowa
Sent: Tue 7/1/2008 12:45 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] How not to write specifications    (013)



Frank,    (014)

The person who made that claim was none other than Bill Gates himself.    (015)

FMc> I would like to know the evidence that you have for:    (016)

JFS>> This complexity explains how Microsoft managed to spend more money
 >> on developing Vista than NASA spent on the Apollo mission to the
 >> moon.    (017)

I tried to use Google to recover the original quotation, but the
words "gates apollo vista moon" got 801,000 hits.  Most of them
were irrelevant, but many of them referred to the original claim,
but without citing an exact quotation.    (018)

I also substituted the code name "Longhorn", which MSFT used during
the development stage.  The words "gates longhorn apollo" produced
137,000 hits.  The closest I found was an article dated 15 October 2003:    (019)

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/10/15/microsoft-longhorn-to-cost--as-much-as-man-on-moon-project-gates-says    (020)

    Microsoft Longhorn to cost as much as man on moon project, Gates says    (021)

    But surely one of his more remarkable claims here at the Etre
    conference in Old Berlin was the following bite.  Bill said that
    developing its next generation of Windows operating system software
    will cost as much as it cost the United States government to put a
    man on the Moon. That'd be Neil Armstrong...    (022)

    We checked our notes again. Bill definitely said that the next
    version of Windows costs as much as the US spent putting a man on
    the Moon.    (023)

But it's not clear whether the dollar amount Bill intended was
adjusted for the inflation since 1969.    (024)

Can anyone with good Googling skills find more data on this point?    (025)

John    (026)

PS:  This is a good example of the need for more sophisticated search
engines.    (027)


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