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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 07:52:32 -0000 (UTC)
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On 30 Sep 2024 07:40:58 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> Why does Religion X survive while Religion Y,
> which is equally as plausible/implausible become an also ran?

If you manage to convert the ruler of an empire to your religion, then he 
can make his subjects follow suit. Or sometimes the religious ideology 
itself serves as a unifying force to mobilize the people to dominate their 
less organized neighbours.

Astute politics can work in many ways. When the Catholic missionaries went 
into Ireland and encountered the panoply of local deities, they renamed 
various of them into “saints”. And suddenly the local believers in those 
deities were no longer “pagans”, it turned out they were Christians all 
along.

> Others like the i86 architecture seem more like accidents at a point in
> time.

I guess it came down to: Intel’s CPU chips had fewer pins on them, 
compared to Motorola’s. That was a major factor in the cost. And when the 
marketing behemoth of the time, IBM, made its decision, that clinched it.