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I can't imagine using Photoshop without a keyboard and mouse, or not being able to access my files from my file server. Video rendering on the iPad will probably suck donkey balls.

You should. Ascii video works well enough, and forget the mouse and keyboard. CLI is over-specced, toggle switches are all you need. In my day we did quantum computing with sand. Sand it was! I tell you youngling.

That quote is apocryphal. Gates denies ever having said the bit about 640K of memory.

But if he had said that, and had said it in 1981, look where the computer industry went from `76 to `86. From hobby to sixteen million units sold in a year. At $300 or more each. I don't think Gates's idea is so far-fetched. And, you know, I'll take a guess and say Gates has more experience, maybe knows trends a little better than you. I don't know if you made any predictions about the Xbox, but it's been very successful for the company (in terms of units sold, at least).

Altair obviously is not named after some star in Aquila. It is named after the MITS Altair 8800 which was an instant, overwhelming success and its bus became the de facto standard.. and the 8800 was in turn named after a star in Star Trek and not in Aquila. See the emulator. Though these guys think the 8800 was named after the movie Forbidden Planet, but it could also have been Altair sf magazine, which probably was named after a star in Aquila. Of course Altair also means "the flyer" in Arabic which is better than considering it an ill-starred lover. Though any of the above would provide for great mission logos too. Anyway it is difficult to work out who named what since the 8800 was named after the star Altair that the Starship Enterprise was heading for, but the Space Shuttle Enterprise was obviously named after the Star Trek Starship, or maybe after a balloon, or a seafaring ship, and probably not Branson's suborbital.

omg, and here I thought all slashdotters were geeks to some extent.

The *nix operating system was developed when the input/output device was a teletype. ( http://www.virtualaltair.com/virtualaltair.com/vac _88-tty.asp)

There was no backspace key, and you didn't see what command you typed in until AFTER you hit the enter key. So to keep things easy, you end up with 2 to 4 letter commands. ls, ed, df, dd, etc...

Yeah... a simple Google into "gates PARC" gives me this:

http://www.virtualaltair.com/virtualaltair.com/mit s0028.asp

"In 1980, Microsoft's Bill Gates also had an opportunity to see what was inside the magical kingdom."

In fact, Intel introduced the 8088 in 1979, not 1978. A distinction without difference. The "QDOS" that MS bought to sell to IBM for its 8088 PC was named as an acronym for "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Which has been the design principle that MS has been stuck with ever since. At the time, I used CP/M on Z80 uPs, later ported to 6502s; CP/M-86 showed it could have been IBM's first OS. But not as quick as the MS-repackged QDOS, so it didn't matter that it also wasn't as dirty. What the alternatives lacked was Gates and his "deal of the century", not any real technical advantage. That legacy, in marketing priorities, and largely consequent product quality, has continued to define Microsoft since its beginning. Because it's been a winning formula - for Microsoft, if not for competitors, or for users.

The only blatant rip off is you repeating ideas that have no factual basis. If you're going to spout bullshit, please come up with original bullshit.

It's not even funny how much MacOS resembles the desktop interface at Xerox PARC, right down to the colors, look, and feel. There's even a mouse!

It's not a blatant rip off when you pay to use a technology.

Real history of the GUI

A walk in the Parc

Please try to gain a bit more knowledge instead of repeating nonsense that you've heard. There's this thing called the internet that you can use to check facts. Look into it.