Yes, that’s an attempt at a pun.
In the past twenty-odd years, Microsoft has proven exceedingly good at dispatching business rivals. They’ve been unstoppable spider-killers.
Even Google’s search dominance is a limited direct threat — Google has captured a new market, they aren’t “eating Microsoft’s lunch”. And open-source alternatives (Linux, OpenOffice) have been the business equivalent of blackflies, as opposed to, say, Viking raiders.
Until now.
I’ve encountered a major fallacy in two fields, relating to the incorrect application of a steady-state assumption. So I’m making it a category.
I’m going to say arguments suffer from a steady-state fallacy when they improperly assume that a present-day circumstance will carry over unchanged into the future. Because over time, most circumstances do change. People get older. New technologies emerge. Empires fall, and new ones rise. And so forth.
A few examples below the fold…
This semi-recent New York Times post is about DVD’s being unreadable four years after they were recorded. It ties into one of my musings over the years — whether a medium’s information density is inverse to durability or recoverability. Or phrased differently, is the high storage density of electronic media a crippling strength, because the data becomes too “fragile”?
- - - - - -
The sturdy clay tablets of Sumeria have lasted thousands of years.
Paper and animal hide can store far more information per kilogram, but rarely last as long - if the Nag Hammadi Library or the Dead Sea Scrolls were stored in an area with any appreciable moisture (say, Vancouver, BC, Canada) they probably wouldn’t've survived the nearly two thousand years until rediscovery! Fortunately, copies are easier to make.
And electronic storage is the densest — but least durable — of all. (Four years?!) __(’Read the rest of this entry »’)
Some ex-colleagues have started a building-integrated solar PV company, MSR Innovations. Cool stuff. The cooler thing, though, is that I found out about them through John Robb’s blog. The web: a highly circuitous way of keeping up with friends. 
Again via Rob Cottingham, an intriguing article that pre-workforce Millenials (aka Gen Y, aka the Net Generation) use e-mail less than their workforce Millenial counterparts — a lot less.
Continuing Casino Royale, I burst out laughing to read the following:
“…On the straight stretches the Amherst Villiers supercharger dug spurs into the Bentley’s twenty-five horses and the engine sent a high-pitched scream of pain into the night.”
James Bond’s first car was a twenty-five horsepower Bentley! Suddenly, the 110 horses of my first (and thus far, only) car, doesn’t seem so shabby.
A Scottish group announced a hydraulic hybrid system (instead of an magnetic/electric one) for capturing vehicles’ braking-energy. Crucially, they’ve got third-party data to vet their idea.
Still years away, no doubt, but promising. I’ve come across the idea of hydraulic hybrids before, but Artemis seems the most promising. Given that they named a Scottish company after a Greek goddess, you know they’re not primarily a marketing outfit. 
- - - - -
This story about laundry machines which could eliminate most of the water consumed in the washing cycle, also interested me. Given the intensifying water stresses we’re likely to face in the coming decades, it’s coming not a moment too soon. If it successfully commercializes, that is.
At least, they caught the interest of a major appliance-maker; I look forward to seeing the first models on sale in Japan years before they arrive in Canada. I never cease to be amazed at the flourishing variety in appliances there, compared to the relative paucity of designs offered here. And indeed, every time I go back, I make a point to visit a Yodobashi Camera (a “Best Buy” equivalent) to check out the latest models — which amuses my wife to no end.
And though we’ll have to wait until we buy our “dream condo” before I get to buy my steam-cleaning laundry machine (no soap needed!), or the one that dispenses silver ions to dispatch odoriferous bacteria, it’s always fun to dream.