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Russell Jones starts with the same tired arguments that choice is bad and that free software developers can't make an easy to use interface. You can change out "easy to use interface" with "operating system", "kernel" or "quality software" to realize that this is a very old argument. It's been BS before and it's BS today. Someone makes a choice for the neophyte, and there are free intefaces just as easy to migrate to as the next crappy M$ interface.

Bob's twist on this is aimed at stemming the flood of developers asway from M$ junk by turning reality on it's head. He tells us that developing applications for multiple window managers is just too hard. That's silly. Why would anyone continue to pay Micrsoft licenses when there's many free GUI deveopment kits of equal or better quality available? He complains, "Supporting many GUIs isn't just a simple process of including one set of libraries or another; it's often a frustrating and error-prone exercise in writing GUI-specific code," as if Microsoft's interface were any better or less frustrating. He admits that programs written for one window manager run on others, can he say that for Win32 crap? No, he can't. In fact, you are lucky if your MFC program will continue to run from one version of Windoze to the next and even low level API calls are known to change. The whole "including libraries" FUD is a baseless projection from Microsoft DLL hell. When you open your eyes, what you see it that the more you rely on Microsoft the more painful your world is. When you get away from M$, you see how inadequate their tools really were.

Keep on comming, windoze developers, the water is fine. Freedom does have it's drawbacks, but they are nothing like those encountered in the Windoze world. You will never know just how easy and rational things are in the free software world unless you try it out. The fact is that Marketing morons can not and do not make software that's easy for their users of their developers, they make software that screws both.

A very superficial examination is enough to raise suspision. Microsoft is funding them and they are saying all the same things Microsoft used to. There's always more when you are dealing with liars, but the superficial details should be enough. If it stinks, don't put it in your mouth.

Microsoft is the only member of the technical community to pay SCO's Linux extortion. This comes despite the fact that Microsoft has no Linux software and publically states that they have no plans for any either. Microsoft has used BSD code forever and that was sufficient, until recently, for their Unix products. SCO has one other corporate custormer that they refuse to identify. I imagine that they have suffered a devistating DLoP (Distributed Lack of Purchasing) attack that makes their former poor sales look great. Without Micfosoft's money, SCO would be bankrupt by now. They will go that way, a great tragedy for all those employed there who made the great Caldera Linux packages and other good software.

All the things that SCO is now saying sound exactly like the FUD that M$ used to put out about the GPL and free software. They insinuate that free software is dishonest and stollen as if only commercial software writers ever have a novel idea or are able to read computer science texts. They claim irresposisble tracking of contributions because free software developers can't look at the code comercial software vendors keep hidden, and claim this creates liabilities for users of free software. All of this, of course, is the kind of double talk that's been comming out of Bill Gates mouth from the beninning of his career, pay up you thieves, or you will have no quality software. The treat was bullshit then and it is bullshit now. People can and did co-operate to build software that's both superior to comercial software and honestly free. People realize that, and Microsoft understood that thier anti-GPL campaign, calling the GPL a cancer, unAmerican hippy ware and all that, had backfired. SCO is now saying all the same things under Microsoft's pay.

Microsoft thinks it's getting their money's worth out of SCO investment, but they are wrong. Their scheeming is transparent, easy to explain and will blow up in their faces. Thier other missdeeds and poor performance proved they were an evil company. Security problems convinced me not to use their software for networking. Their anti-GPL campaign convinced me to avoid their software and vocally oppose them. This SCO shit makes me want to throw rocks at them. Here, I am, Microsoft free, and still I have to worry about their nonsense. It should convince everyone that there is no escaping Microsoft's influence and misdeeds until they are out of business.

Oh sure you have. In 1976 Bill Gates put it better. It's "Sharing is bad and if you don't pay me money, there will be no software." It's shifted to "free software will never make a working kernel" and "free software will never make easy to use software." and finally, "free software must be stollen to work." Get with the program, you are way out of date. Free software has produced many working kernels, losts of software that's easier to use than comercial software and shows no signs of slowing down.

A few snake oil salesmen have gotting rich does not disprove doctors earn a living or even that you can make a living selling snake oil. People earn a living making things work, not writing one size fits all, must be replaced every two years, standards ignoring, buggy, software. These people will continue to earn a living when Microsoft and friends are just a bad and seemingly unbelievable memory, like national news anchors talking about blow jobs in the White House.

Your question should be reversed and asked elsewhere. "Given the colapse of so many closed source shops, like Netscape, Lotus or SCO, how stable is your firm? Are you going to be here in five years? How can you keep your market when your users are co-operating to make software that works better than the stuff you sell? What do I have to gain from developing software for your platform again?"

Free software terrifies them because they can't steal it, buy it out or otherwise break it. If stuff "just works" Microsoft's revenues would be drastically reduced. Hardware dongles are the only thing that can stop free software from taking over every funciton their poor quality software now performs. The things that makes free software work, trust co-operation and sharing are all the things that wreck Microsoft's revenues. Make no mistake, they are fighting for their lives.

We must fight harder for something more important, our values. They are using billions of dollars to convince us all to be paranoid jerks. Their latest advertisments promise us all our dreams come true, higher learning, business sucess, love and happiness, all if we simply "submit" to their hard working M$'s IP. It's part of the same song they have always sung. The message of free software is that you can do it yourself and that people will help you the same way you help others.

"What people tend to forget is that there are gatekeepers in the open-source community, too," he said. "It's not a free-for-all. On every one of the open-source projects, there are two or three people who are the gatekeepers. And you have to make a pretty good case, accurate and technically astute, to get them to allow changes. That's how it should be."

Here, he confuses the way that people are free to chose what software they would run with what Microsoft choses to give their customers. Anyone who thinks for more than an instant will realize that Microsoft choices are made for completely different reasons free software projects make their decisions and even more different from the reasons free software users might modify code themselves a thing the Microsoft user can not do, yet.

Face it, no one is going to learn about free software from rags like InfromationWeek, Byte, ComputerShopper or anything that makes it's money advertising M$ on pulp. You learn about free software by getting Red Hat, Debian, Suse or what have you and running it.

Microsoft will never go free because it's run on the priciples outlined here. The same threats are repeated again and again, but it does not work.

Give the guy a little break, he's a gek that made it big and let the money get to him.

no he wasn't. have you not read the infamous Open Letter to Hobbiests .

at the risk of sounding redundant, billg is a savy businessman and profiteer. nothing more. he is not for community, openess, or sharing in any way that would threaten his empire. he is about profits, nothing more. and anything that threatens profits must be expunged.

i also disagree about "a million billion dollars" changing one's core values. i believe "core values" are a constant, but money makes forcing them on others a real possibility. this is what lobbiests do, and with great success i might add.

"...in 1978, back when a "hand-held" was a transistor radio, computers were immobile mainframes..."

The Apple II came out in 1977. If you can't call that a computer then this publication must be written at people who are pretty out of the loop. But it's a Silicon Valley publication; apparently they need new writers.

If they were talking about 1976 (Apple I) or 1975 (Altair) it might be excusable. Heck some people say we had PCs back in 1950. But 1978? The revolution was on.

The IBM PC may have been introduced in 1981, but it was by no means the first personal computer. It's not exactly clear what the first personal computer was, but the Apple II (1977), Apple I (1976), Altair (1975), Alto (1973), and Honeywell Kitchen Computer (1966) all predate it.

For that same $1K you also have all you need to to permenantly disenfrancise legions of employment

You're argument that we will become too productive to support our own society is ridiculous. If such a thing were to happen it would be due to our economic system, not technology. Certainly society can use its newly freed resources to do something else (i.e. space travel, constructing subways in major cities, advancing medical science, constructing better homes, or just plain leisure).

Supposedly, when we become more productive, it means wealth. Not necessarily in dollars and cents, but rather in tangible goods, better health, education, public services, etc. Our problem right now is that our economy is based on consumption (if you can't sell it at a profit, it's not worth doing. If you don't do it, people are unemployed and broke. If people are broke you can't sell it at a profit).

Pop Quiz: What was the first personal computer?
Be careful before you answer! The question is highly ambiguous. Are you sure you know what first means? How about personal? Even computer is an ambiguous term!

We'll make it easy for you. Let's define personal computer as a computer having the following attributes:
It must be a digital computer.
It must be largely automatic.
It must be programmable by the end-user.
It must be accessible, either as a commercially manufactured product, as a commercially available kit, or as widely published kit plans.
It must be small enough to be transportable by an average person.
It must be inexpensive enough to be affordable by the average professional.
It must be simple enough to use that it requires no special training beyond an instruction manual.

Ready?

Was it the IBM 5100?
Good answer! But no, the IBM 5100, introduced in September 1975, was IBM's first personal computer, but it was priced too high for most people to have considered. Pricing was as follows:
Memory BASIC APL Both
16K $8,975 $9,975 $10,975
32K $11,975 $12,975 $13,975
48K $14,975 $15,975 $16,975
64K $17,975 $18,975 $19,975

The 5100 was just one of several personal computers IBM made before the PC. It was followed by the 5110, the 5120, the Datamaster, and then finally the 5150 PC.

Make Model Introduced Price Technology Form
IBM 5100 portable Computer September 1975 $9000-$20,000 LSI portable all-in-one
IBM 5110 1978 ? LSI? portable all-in-one
IBM 5120 1980 ? LSI? all-in-one with build-in 8" floppies
IBM Datamaster 1981 ? LSI/8085 all-in-one with build-in 8" floppies
Was it the MITS Altair?
You're way off! The Altair, introduced in January 1975, was the first computer to be produced in fairly high quantity, and it was the first computer to run Microsoft software, but we're not sure that's a good thing.

Unfortunately for computer history buffs, the Altair is often mistakenly called the first personal computer by Microsoft-loving journalists who don't know any better.

Make Model Introduced Price Technology Form
MITS Altair 8800 January 1975 $439 for kit, $621 assembled 8080/LSI S-100 desktop box
Was it the Mark-8?
Nope, but the Mark-8 (1974) was the first microcomputer kit with plans published in a popular magazine. The Mark-8 provided the first big spark that catalyzed the hobbyist movement.

Before the Mark-8 appeared, there was at least one hobbyist newsletter, the ACS Newsletter, published by the Amateur Computer Society, which focused primiarily on the PDP-8, the machine which inspired the Mark-8. The Mark-8 spawned a few more hobbyist newsletters, such as Hal Singer's Micro-8 and Hal Chamberlin's The Computer Hobbyist.

The machine was designed by Jon Titus.

* Jon Titus on the Mark-8

Make Model Introduced Price Technology Form
Radio Electronics Mark-8 July 1974 $5 for assembly plans 8008/LSI desktop kit
Was is the Scelbi-8H?
No, but the Scelbi-8H (1973) was another microcomputer that preceded the Altair. Like the Altair, it was available from the manufacturer both as a kit and as a pre-assembled computer.

The machine was designed by Nat Wadsworth.

Make Model Introduced Price Technology Form
Scelbi 8H 1973 $565 8008/LSI desktop

I hardly think you can say that the software industry is 50 years old. That covers a period where software was typically included along with hardware, as well as a long period where consumers couldn't buy anything remotely resembling software, mainly because they had no access to machines which could run it. The law described by Phronesis arose from concerns about interaction with "the public". The first time "the public", beyond programmers and hobbyists, was able to buy software as an independent product would have been in the early '80s, making the consumer software industry a mere 20 years old.

One way to date the beginning of the consumer software market would be Bill Gates' famous whine of 1976, in which he anticipated the RIAA and MPAA by a couple of decades and complained about potential customers making digital copies of his intellectual property. However, at that time, Bill's product was BASIC, hardly a product sold to "the public".

Bill Gates Rants about Users Stealing Software

Bill Gates Rants about Software Copyrights

What the hell? Do we need analysts to tell us ideology has no value in business?

It's usually instructive in situations like this to consider the historical context of the issues. Here's the original 'Open Letter' from Bill Gates to the hobbyist community

The background here is that a lot of people pirated Bill's Altair BASIC program, and Bill wanted to know where good software was going to come from if people didn't get paid for it.

It may not have been legal or ethical for hobbyists to pirate Altair BASIC back in 1976, but very soon thereafter, Free Software gave us an answer and an alternative: share the source, and the software grows even in the absence of monetary incentive. It is immune to the type of 'theft' that Bill was whining about. 26 years later, we have seen that Free Software isn't just surviving, it's thriving.

Now, along comes GotDotNet, which looks suspiciously like an emulation of Open Source practices... except that the AUP includes a few serious distinctions. One is the assignment of certain important rights to Microsoft that basically let them do whatever the hell they please with the sweat of your brow. Here's a quote of (what looks like) the original license from the discussion at Activewin.com: (Link to the full thread)

By posting Your Stuff, You grant to Microsoft, under all of Your intellectual property and proprietary rights the following worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up rights: (1) to make, use, copy, modify and create derivative works of Your Stuff; (2) to publicly perform or display, import, broadcast, transmit, distribute, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease, and lend copies of Your Stuff (and derivative works thereof); (3) to sublicense to third parties, including the right to sublicense to further third parties; and (ii) You agree You won't commence any legal action against Microsoft or any Participant or Visitor for exercising any of these rights.

Second, You also agree that You will not use the Workspace for any commercial purposes whatsoever. And last but not least, You agree that Microsoft may remove at any time, without notice, the Workspace or any posting to it.

Note the specific lack of compensation for the original programmer (unless you consider the use of GDN itself to be sufficient recompense, but I'm pretty damn sure that GDN isn't going to be buying your groceries and paying the rent). One must ask - if nobody pays the users of GDN, where will the good software come from? Nothing about GDN sounds like hiring programmers to 'flood the hobby market with good software'. It sounds ripping off the community to serve MS's shareholders (eg, Bill).

So what's the point?

I propose that the fundamental corporate culture of Microsoft embodies Gate's attitude as reflected in the 1976 'Open Letter'. This culture is allergic to piracy, because a consumerist revenue cycle is necessary to improve the software.

The Free Software movement has thoroughly refuted Gate's thesis, by making itself independant of the revenue cycle (and therefore is not harmed by 'piracy' as it is usually understood).

Microsoft's obsolete culture cannot change to adopt Free Software practices - the assumptions that Free Software threaten are the very core of their business. If the company were rebuilt from the ground up on Free principles, the entire culture would have to change - essentially resulting in a totally different company that happens to have the same name.

Since Microsoft cannot adopt free software practices, Microsoft can only regard Free Software as a competing producer of software, taking market share away from them, and therefore, a deadly threat.

Since Microsoft itself regards Free Software as a threat, it seems to follow that nobody else who depends on revenue streams to survive, would ever want to use a system that resembles a Free Software ecology (like GDN), as they would deprive the producer of that stream.

Producers of free software should similarly be suspicious of a system governed by a legal agreement written by someone who considers them to be a deadly enemy.

Therefore, Microsoft's own pseudo-Free intiatives (such as GotDotNet, the Shared Source license, and the Software Choice initiative) are probably (a) Shams that will perpetuate Microsoft's revenue stream at the expense of the rights of members of the community, and/or (b) exceedingly stupid mistakes on Microsoft's part.

In the absence of further evidence (especially since GDN is slashdotted and I can't read the text of the new license), it is impossible to tell to which degree GDN (or any other pseudo-Free effort by Microsoft) will be (a) or (b). In either case, it seems imprudent for users or programmers - whether they produce in open or closed software - to place their trust in these intiatives.

I wonder, as an aside, if Bill himself ever paid anything to the original inventors of BASIC, a pair of researchers at Dartmouth University. So I wonder if Bill's logic reflexively implies that he stole BASIC from Kemeny and Kurtz. Gee. Where will the good ideas come from? Oh, wait academia has been going as a not-for-profit institution for centuries. You may have heard of some of their other 'products' - the theory of universal gravitation, electricty, the rabies vaccine...

I don't think Intel's official position is any better, just that they don't actually manufacture any software or "content" so they probably don't worry about losing any of their "intellectual property"... but you can bet your last dollar they'd love to be first to market with a chip that required special loving from software before it would play your CDs, DVDs, mp3s, etc. One simple patent is all it would take and all your favorite media players might not even work on any other manufacturer's chips. Guess where that would put Intel in terms of market share.

Unfortunately, a whole generation is being brainwashed into believing that copying bits is stealing. I suppose the *AA have enough money to make them believe the sky is made of cotton candy, too. But those who have been around any length of time remember that the earliest misuses of this terminology were by greedy "rights" holders. And they pretend to tow the line around the ignorant, while doing what they please among themselves. As it was and always shall be.

RedHat clearly isn't aiming for a Monopoly...
The analogies with Microsoft don't hold much at all. It is a real joke.
Can the average IT person even name one of the executives of RedHat? Can anyone outside the computer industry?
Look at it another way. Bill Gate Wrote an Open Letter saying ::Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?:: Did Redhat start from such roots?

"A man may write at anytime, if he will set himself doggedly to it...No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." - Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1776

"Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?" - Bill Gates, 1976

There must be a lot of blockheads out there. If the above quotes were true, then only blockheads would ever write music that they know will never get signed to a major label. Only blockheads would ever write books or essays that they didn't expect to get paid for publishing. And only blockheads would ever write software that they never intend to sell.

What Samuel Johnson, Bill Gates, and you don't seem to understand is that money is not what motivates authors, musicians, and other artists to perform their art. Many of the greatest music composers of all time were literally compulsive about their writing. I vaguely remember a story from my music appreciation classes (yes, I'm too lazy to look up the details ;) about one composer who was fired from his (non-music-related) job because he used work time and materials to write several hundred variations on a theme given to him by his music instructor (the tutor told him that quantity was as important as quality). Another story was about a child prodigy (who later became a great composer) whose parents restricted him from writing or playing; they removed the restriction when he shattered a window - he was banging his fingers against it, pretending that it was a piano, and he was playing a piece that he had composed.

I won't argue that you have to have OCD to be an artist; I will, however, argue that artists are compelled to express their art because it is part of their nature. Lack of government sponsorship may have kept Mozart from creating as many works as he did, but it would not have stopped him from composing. Many of the greatest painters of all time were unrecognized and penniless their entire lives, yet their works are considered masterpieces. If they didn't do it for the money, then why did they?

I could go on now about how artists through time have lamented the moral dilemma of needing to be true to their art and also please their patrons, but I think I've jabbered enough. I assert that true artists take money for their work because they need money to be able to perform their art, and thier art is all that they have to sell. If they perform their art in order to become rich, then they truly are blockheads: they would have better luck as bankers.

Anyone who wants to understand RMS should read Free as In Freedom first. It's free as in beer and free as in speech.

The most chilling part of the whole book is a reference to Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists. It's chilling really, to think of young Bill, writing this letter, unaware of where he will be in 25 some-odd years.

Two quotes from this letter are very interesting:

Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

I think he succeeded in the hiring and deluging, but some might want to qualify "good".

But ultimately, he got one thing terribly wrong...

What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?

It turns out that the Internet makes that thing possible. A math whiz at MIT, a graduate student in Finland, a couple hundred thousand computer hobbyists all over the world can do this.

Before you attack RMS for his wacky views, remember that he has committed his life to his views. He's committed his life to proving Gates' letter wrong.

Of course, you can buy tools from someone, and IMHO, that's okay. I can't grow bananas in my back yard, so I pay money for them. I suppose RMS would do without bananas.

But the GNU project is all about making the quality tools for free. The GPL enforces that notion with our own crazy copyright law. To extend my analogy, I do grow basil in a window box. You're welcome to some of my basil, but if you want to a whole lot of it, please give me some of your fine pesto sauce. You don't want to share, OK, then get your mitts off my plants.

More than many other modern occupations, programming is a craft: like gardening, or woodworking. Many people do it for fun. Some are lucky enough to get paid. The freedom RMS is fighting for is the freedom to share your code openly. You get my basil, I get your pesto, and everyone can get bananas. The conventional rules of scarcity don't apply with code. As we share, our tools get better, we become better craftsmen and perhaps we get our $208 back.

And how is a rip-off of the 20th anniversary macintosh a ripoff of the iMac? :p The entire point the poster was trying to make was that Apple comes out with a flat panel computer and everyone automatically copies them. Not so. Perhaps they're copying the 20th anniversary Mac, but... Then wouldn't every LCD "all in one" computer be doing that?

Look! Apple made a computer. They're copying Simon

In the world of personal computers it's not about who's copying who. It's about whose copy is better. Right now the iMac is definitely better than the Gateway.

-Sara

Perhaps you mean " Blinkenlights! "?

and of course there's always blinkenlights.com

and the jargon file's entry

look at me, I'm +5 Informative!

IIRC, Xerox originally came up with the concepts of the personal computer, the graphical user interface, the mouse, and several other substantial breakthroughs in computer science.

According to this page, the personal computer was invented in 1949. Xerox was a chemical company called Haloid at the time, and was just getting into the photocopy business.

This very good primer describes how various pieces of the GUI were invented throughout the 50s and 60s by people such as Ivan Sutherland and Alan Kay.

The mouse was invented by Douglas Englebart in the mid-1960s.

Xerox did invent at PARC in the 1970s and beyond: several other substantial breakthroughs in computer science, such as Ethernet and Object-oriented programming.

I programmed an Imlac and used to get audible sound out of the monitor when my lines got redrawn too fast. I always thought it was going to blow up.

According to this site, the first personal computer was Simon, c. 1950, a relay and paper-tape affair. You can argue with their definitions, but it has a lot of interesting historical machines.

Arguably, the preponderance of users loaning each other copies of MS's stuff has benefitted them: most of the users I know don't buy their own copies of windows, and yet their systems are still controlled by Redmond's decision makers.

It seems likely that given their complete market saturation, the rapid development of multiple free competitor products in many services, and a need to keep traditional non-free software sales as sources of revenue, they need to be getting medieval on consumers.

According to http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml, the first personal computer was the Berkeley Enterprises Simon, which shipped in 1950.

>I'm trying to imagine how long it would take to print out on the teletype.

Yes. This is the future. Forget the past. It is wrong to know of the past. It is wrong to support the past. The future is always.

renumeration? Isn't that what we used to do to our BASIC programs? Is this a subtle reference to Bill Gates's flame that asked, "Why won't you pay for BASIC?".

Why did i think of Bill Gates when i read that? Maybe because he argues so much like UGGTHUG.

Now, with Windows and Office XP, it looks as though Microsoft is finally going to make it difficult for the home user to copy the software. Do you really think home user piracy is damaging to Microsofts' business? In reality, it has done more to estabish Microsoft as a standard than it has to reduce revenue. Why the change?

If anyone is interested, I happened across a pretty enjoyable site regarding old-school computers and computing. Perhaps there is no practical application for this stuff, but since when did that matter so much?
If we weren't just "scratching an itch", would open-source exist?
Oh, and does anyone have any links to interesting HP3000/MPE stuff? I used to work with one, and I want to know more... Cheers!

Linus released Linux in 1991. Berkeley had BSD code out there before 1980. Linus is a late starter to all this. comp.sources.unix was vibrant at that time, ipso facto, Linus was jumping on the bandwagon. ESR's little manifesto came out in mid-1997, 21 years after Bill Gates accused hobbyists of stealing and demanding a new distribution model for software: paying for it.

Open source is not new. And it predates Linux by a long shot.

Get with the program.

The history of computers is an interesting topic isn't there a project cataloging all the different parts of computer history going on?

There most certainly is! Perhaps you missed the story on the Vintage Computer Festival the other day? There are a lot of people involved in preserving the quickly disappearing history of the computer industry, including myself. Check out some of the others, such as:

• Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute
• The Computer Museum of America
• Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island
• The San Francisco Computer Museum
• and even the Microsoft Museum

or, for a more international view, try:

• Ullrich von Bassewitz's Collection of Old Computers (Germany)
• Silicium: Le musee de l'informatique (France)
• National Archive for the History of Computing (England)
• Bletchley Park (England)
• Australian Computer Museum Society
• The First Computer Museum of Nova Scotia
• Belgian Microcomputer Museum

For tons more, check out the links page at the Vintage Computer Festival, or better yet, come to the VCF at the end of September and experience history in person!

With the availability of TONS of historical data on computing at the click of a mouse, the job of a Computer Historian is pretty much obsolete.

Oh sure, and then you find a page like this one which is factually wrong on several levels. (The Gavilan was preceded by the GRiD Compass, and possibly the Sharp PC-5000.) So you can leave such misinformation alone, or you can rely on a computer historian to correct it.

Meanwhile, can you find out what the first PC was? If your lucky, you might come across this page which will test your knowledge and probably surprise you -- it was put together by a computer historian. That same historian has done quite a bit of research into the first pen-based portable, but it's not on the web (yet).

So don't knock computer historians, unless you don't care whether or not your history is correct.

Someone may knock this down as overrated, since I'm taking advantage of my default-setting here, but I'll take that risk in the interest of interest :)

Anyhow, I followed the link helpfully inserted in this message's parent to blinkenlights and was amused, impressed, informed, delighted. I recommend that you go there for some interesting, thought-provoking trivia. I like the fact that in answering the question posed on this page ("What was the first personal computer?"), the underlying assumptions about what each of those words means are parsed, and the ambiguity inherent in the question is addressed forthrightly. I cannot guarantee that the answer given on this page is the absolute best one, but it seems well-justified. (And surprising, to me, since I'd never heard of their winner before.)

Hope someone else enjoys reading it like I did!

timothy

They heavily relied on usability testing to gauge how well the target audience would use the product. Aside from the research done by Englebart etc. al. at Xeros, I suspect this is the first real usability sone on the computer industry. I find it hard to believe that a lot of the early PC stuff was usability tested at all.

I don't recall Englebart as being at Xerox; he's best known for his work 10-15 years prior at Stanford. Of course, I know that members of his team definitely did go on to work at Xerox Parc and worked on the Alto and such, which of course led to the Lisa, Macintosh, Windows, and a host of other things we take for granted today.

However, please remember that the computer industry was around for at least 30 years before the Lisa (take a look at this page for a bit of PC history.) It might have been the first such testing for the Personal Computer industry, but certainly not for the computer industry in general.

Their tests showed what people have claimed all along... that multi-button mice are more productive than single button mice. But, since single-button mice made the initial learning experience for the naive user easier

And therein lies one of the fundamental differences between GUI's and CLI's -- The former is much easier to figure out which the latter is far more efficient.

Maybe I'm just a female who could care less about playboy . . .

But maybe you should care a little bit more about your history.

The point is, if you don't know where you come from, you don't know where you're going. Do you know when and where computer-based video-conferencing was first demonstrated? (Try 30 years ago, Stanford and SF.) How about what the first personal computer was? (Guess again.) Can you identify the first clamshell-style laptop? (Or the second?)

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. If you want to learn more, check out the Vintage Computer Festival. (You can also check out my collection.)

It's a nice read. He states how angry he is that people are "stealing" his software. Remember that this was a time of people helping people learn and build their own home computers. Gates has been in it for the money from the very begining. He doesn't care about innovating anything, except ways to part you with your money!

I found this old tidbit again, out of sheer luck looking for something else.. (today).. and forgot about it. Its a bit interesting, pretty old. Not sure what else to say.. just that anyone bothering to read the forum....

It's a weird thing that computers, in this age when we record every darn thing ever done and collect cereal boxes or Band-Aid boxes, would have an unclear ancestry. Of course, I blame it on military secrecy.

Actually, there are a lot of people who do collect computers/A> and are working to preserve the history of the computer industry. For example, see if you know what the first personal computer was!

Coming up soon is the Vintage Computer Festival where collectors, historians, and enthusiasts will gather for a week-end full of speakers, exhibits, and trading. Don't miss it if you possibly can!

Well, long before there was a paperclip in Office, there was the Paperclip Computer ....

Click on PC milestones & search

Shepard's old Altair, considered to be the world's first PCs,

As to trading a working Altair for $15K worth of Dell crap; I wouldn't even think of it. It's easily worth that much on eBay -- and you could buy a bunch of really good stuff for a lot less and pocket the change.

Shepard's old Altair, considered to be the world's first PCs,

As to trading a working Altair for $15K worth of Dell crap; I wouldn't even think of it. It's easily worth that much on eBay -- and you could buy a bunch of really good stuff for a lot less and pocket the change.

btw, the Altair was not even close to being the first personal computer.

btw, the Altair was not even close to being the first personal computer.

Lots of fun to be had at:

Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute: lots of really old (60s/70s and earlier) tech - I learned a lot.
Obsolete Computer Museum: Broken down by system - everything from the Sinclair ZX80 to the MicroVAX.

/plug

This is a museum piece...
...And it should be placed in a museum.

Actually, the former does not necessarily imply the latter. There is a never-ending debate about the value of museums. On the one hand, they are excellent for making artifacts accessible to the general public.

On the other hand, however, they are often under-funded and lacking adequate space. It is not unusual to find incredibly important items locked in a back room, or even worse -- left out in a storage yard, due to lack of display space and lack of knowledge on the part of the curators.

As an alternative, private collectors do it because they care about the items personally. They spend their own money to rescue artifacts and restore them lovingly.

Of course, none of these are always the case, but my own personal feeling is that I'd rather see something like this go to a collector who knows what they are doing rather than a museum that will stick it in a plexiglass box so the public can watch it decay.

I know that when I die, my collection will go to another collector rather than a museum.

No, really, this should probably be donated to the Smithsonian.

Well, if you have to donate it, I would recommend the Vintage Technology Cooperative (which puts on the Vintage Computer Festival mentioned in the article.)

Of course, it's a moot point as it belongs to a private citizen who is free to do with it what he wants. But you're welcome to bid on it, purchase it, and donate it yourself.

Anyway, here's a few more British historical computing links for those who like nostaligia. If anyone would like to add some links to sites about other historical computers- of any nation- I'd be most interested.

• The Vintage Computer Festival (version 3.0 coming in October!)
• The Blinkenlights Institute
• The Computer History Association of California (Currently inactive, but still lotsa links)
• My own Classic Computer Collection (plug, plug)

There are plenty more, but those should give you enough to get started, and each has lots of links to explore.

"What's the chronology of Altairs, Z-80s, Apples, Macs, XTs, ATs?"

And don't forget the Vintage Computer Festival.

In the last day or so, I've received inquiries from someone using a Canon Cat (Early work processor) and from someone still using an Epson HC-40 (early portable CP/M machine.)

They contacted me because of my classic computer collection.

There are, however, still plenty of people out there using Altairs and Model 100's and GRiD's and all the other well-known and not-so-well-known personal computers, probably going all the way back to the very first.

Not everyone has succombed to the idea that if it isn't the latest and greatest computer hardware and software, it doesn't work. I drive a 1959 Land Rover; it still gets me where I want to go. Likewise, a lot of people still use computers that do what they need to do without the cost, complexity, and learning curve that newer machines represent.

Unfortunately, Dell is ignoring the fact that the IBM PC and its successors more than anything else to destroy the innovation, creativity, and variety that had existed previously in the computer industry. Very few desktop "PC's" are collectible; virtually none would be of interest to a museum of any quality or reputation.

If you really want to see older computers, come to the Vintage Computer Festival this fall.