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Bill Gates On Linux
King-of-darkness writes "USA Today had an interview with Bill Gates on june the 30th. Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing thru competition just like OS/2., and That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies."
(-1) for Bill Gates for being a Troll
"passing through" technologies don't last as long as Linux has already.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Let's be serious. I mean, we've had to bet the company many times on big technological advances. We bet on the 16-bit PC. We bet on graphical user interface. We bet on the NT technology base. Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called .Net; Longhorn Web services go along with that.
And who had the guts to teach all of us about data loss, crashes, blue screens, and monopolies?
Thanks Microsoft!
...and That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies. This is obviously some use of the word 'new' with which I am not familiar.
This is the guy that managed to overlook the internet when he wrote The Road Ahead in 1995.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Lets see, chief shareholder of MS (which competes with Linux), in a PR interview claims that they are better, and linux will go away.
What do you expect people? Bill Gates annouces that Linux is pretty damn good and may give it a whirl, in other news MS stock drops 50%.
This is just bait to get you guys all riled up. Welcome to PR.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
They keep bring us new stuff like MS-Bob.... and Clippy... and...
Oh I don't want to have all the fun, you can come up with some...
What other new innovative things has Microsoft done that really were flops.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Silly Bill, did he forget that Microsoft and IBM partnered on OS/2?
Off to RTFA to find out....
BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let's be serious. That was IBM, a company 15 times our size. Name a bank that didn't use OS/2. OS/2 was IBM's product, and the IBM army marched behind that product.
Now replace IBM with Microsoft, and OS/2 with windows. Not so clever now Mr. Gates !
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
He is right. Windows is pusing the technologies. Pushing them in the way they desire. nevertheless, they are. Linux has a long way to go for smooth MultiMedia usage.
Nevertheless, he is only right for now. Linux is a locomotive, and its only picking up steam.
OS/2 was once a joint product between IBM and Microsoft. In fact, I have an old OS/2 book with a foreword by Bill Gates himself where he refers to OS/2 as "the future of computing". That is why NT originally had an OS/2 subsystem and supported the HPFS filesystem from OS/2.
With Linux, Microsoft has never had its hand in the pie. They have never had any control over its development. Linux bears no similarity to OS/2 as a competing technology. To suggest it is just wishful thinking on Bill Gates part.
The magazine with the widest readership in the nation. It probably has the lowest reader-IQ-average as a direct result. The last thing Mr. G wants to happen is for your PHB to read USA Today and think, "Huh. This Linux thing is a big deal."
So, here he says it isn't a big deal. I'm sure that in real life, he cares a great deal about it.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
it must've taken a lot of photoshop work to edit out the doobie and the smoke...
If "Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies," those new technologies sure seem to push back.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
-MDL
Happy meals fund terrorism
> Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing
> thru competition just like OS/2.
Well, what would you expect him to say? That Linux may (if people get their act together) start threatening Windows on the desktop, and that people are really not fond of Microsoft's draconian licensing schemes and forced inclusion of DRM in their products?
A newspaper interview with a businessman is nothing more than an opportunity for free advertising. You don't think Bill knows that?
I'm sure the IBM zealots said the same thing at the time. Probably even snickered, too.
Microsoft's secret weapon of mass destruction: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3
I gotta agree with Bill's reaction on that one. The interviewer lost all credibility when he said that. He's one of those people that thinks he knows the technology market because he uses technology, which at best only tells you about consumer technology.
None of his friends used OS/2 so nobody used it. I guess nobody uses mainframes either, and the Internet was invented 10 years ago.
Gates on Linux
.Net; Longhorn Web services go along with that. You always have to do something very dramatic to move things up to the next level. Who has the guts and the willingness to do risk-taking to get ink into the standard user interface? Who else is going to push that forward? Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface? We've chosen to do that. If we didn't believe in those things we wouldn't be increasing the R&D budget the way that we are.
USA TODAY:There seems to be some worry at Microsoft about Linux and some of these Web-based things like Sim Desk that have popped up. Houston, Munich, and Beijing have all been considering using Linux-based products rather than going through Microsoft. How much of this is a concern?
Linux is the current OS competition, but it's no more threatening than OS/2. Remember OS/2?
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
Bill Gates: Well those are our current competitors. I mean, it's no different than in the past people used [IBM's operating system] OS/2.
USA TODAY: Nobody used OS/2.
BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let's be serious. That was IBM, a company 15 times our size. Name a bank that didn't use OS/2. OS/2 was IBM's product, and the IBM army marched behind that product. People always think today's competition is somehow different and unique in some way. Let's be serious. I mean, we've had to bet the company many times on big technological advances. We bet on the 16-bit PC. We bet on graphical user interface. We bet on the NT technology base. Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called
USA TODAY: There has been some criticism of the way in which you're been competing against Linux, and in The New York Times, assuming it was accurate, reporting that the e-mails in Europe talked about undercutting Linux at any cost, per se. How do you react to that, and where do you cross the line of that going back to some of the behaviors that surfaced in the Justice Department case?
BG: Well I'm not sure what you mean by undercutting. We will never have a price lower than Linux, in terms of just what you charge for the software. We compete on the basis of, if you look at the value you get out of the system and the overall cost that the system has that apply in our software. For any project, if you look at communications costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that, software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project. And so the question is can that 3% [compensate], in terms of how quickly you get the system set up? How much value you get out of that system, can it justify itself in that way? And that's the business that we're in every day.
USA TODAY: On May 14th, Orlando Ayala [Microsoft's senior VP for the Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partner Group, which aims to introduce Microsoft products to smaller companies and purchasers] in his e-mails authorizing him to draw from a special fund to offer the software set discounts or even free if necessary, under no circumstances lose against Linux. Has Microsoft changed its behavior patterns?
BG: The idea is that we're in a competitive situation, that we're willing to provide a better price. This is not a general problem. This is about education situations, and educational bids are very, very price sensitive, and we've always provided super low pricing for education. We're actually providing even lower pricing now for education then we ever have, but it's been unique pricing for us, literally since the company was founded. And yeah, we, on educational bids, we will meet competition. That's considered healthy pro-competitive behavior.
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Neither has Linux. It's had, what, 3 years of being slightly important so far? OS/2 had many more.
In the article, he basically says that few companies have the guts to innovate, and that Microsoft does this constantly...
Surprise: Xerox did that way before Microsoft ever thought about it. And Bill himself only thought about it when he saw one of the first demo model of the Apple Lisa (if I remember well). And that's just one example among many.
Microsoft never innovated: it just latched on all the good ideas. GUIs, ACLs, www browsers, spreadsheet, heck, even the mouse was invented by somebody else.
So, what kind of "innovations" has been created by Microsoft? Maybe Clippy. But that's it, and we all know how helpful that is...
And for those who may believe that Microsoft improved on all of these, I have just four words for you: Blue... Screen... Of... Death.
Whew! Enough ranting. You can start modding me down, now.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I am using Linux. Send me 8 copies of 2003 Advanced Server (under the GPL of course) for the same price, and I will be happy to switch.
spack
Given that UNIX technology has been around for almost 40 years now and the Linux implementation of that standard in particular has been with us for 12 or 13 years, wouldn't it be fair to call Windows, the first 32 bit versions of which have only been with us for 8 years, the passing fad?
What a lightweight interview, the interviewer should have pushed Gates on his desire to leverage DRM as an anti piracy measure to lock down an open hardware platform.
In the OS2/Windows battle they were both retail packages, and one crashed much more than the other.
With the Linux/Windows battle you have an open source, cheap, stable, varied and fully customizeable system vs. a repeat of the same old win2k base... no matter what crappy name you throw on it. Also, Linux ditros don't have crappy software licences which i'm sure nobody likes.
Microsoft is blind to view this as the same battle as OS/2. They are underestimating their opponent and it will be their eventual downfall.
Now I haven't read Slashdot forever, but how many articles throughout /. history do you suppose were titled "Bill Gates On Linux"?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
The other interesting thing to note is that the first two cited "yay us!" entries are for types of technology, and the latter three, NT, .net, and Longhorn, are all marketing terms. So, rather than focus on saying things like 'improving video throughput', 'improving hardware abstraction', or 'developing more rhobust parallel computing', they are descending into marketing bull.
What's scariest is that since Bill is at the forefront (even if Ballmer is CEO) and has succumbed to this, it's further demonstrating Microsoft's continued rotting from the top; no signs of abetting it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The big difference between other Microsoft competitors and Linux is that the others have to be lucrative for the companies developing them. IBM had no reason to develop OS/2 if it was not going to be a profitable project.
The development of open source alternatives is typically not for the purpose of selling the software at a profit. Therefore, unlike commercial alternatives, they will not be cancelled if they cannot make a profit. I think that gives the open source competitors a huge advantage.
We bet on the 16-bit PC.
.Net
Yeah, that's IBM's thing...
We bet on graphical user interface.
Wasn't that from PARC, Xerox?...
We bet on the NT technology base.
That's VAX's thing, right?
Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called
Hold you bet cowboy! This time is different! That's YOURS thing to bet with!!
Think again!
BG has done this before ... a lot. The first thing you do when you are afraid of a competitor is admit their existence in a negative connotation.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
I don't think Linux, however, will fade into oblivion no matter how much MS wishes it would. It has been around long enough already, and just in the past few years has made so many advances into the commercial/business world.
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
Like a huge tank through the landscape. Dream on Gates. This is not the effort of a huge company that can simply be discounted. This is a grass roots efforts of people dedicated to forge a better way of computing for their own goals.
Sure, the IBM and the RedHat companies contribute a lot but the system like FreeBSD and others could and did survive before and will again if it has to.
His remarks are the flip bits of puking FUD.
ACK
Bill Gates: Well those are our current competitors. I mean, it's no different than in the past people used [IBM's operating system] OS/2.
USA TODAY: Nobody used OS/2.
I suspect Linux, in terms of developer/tester count, is larger than Microsoft. Think about it. Linux bugs are submitted by anyone who can find them. Microsoft only accepts bug reports from people who pay-per-incident to report them.
What's this Submit thingy do?
I mean, we've had to bet the company many times on big technological advances.
.NET, and they are essentially the company on that (well, that and the next version of Office) by making it the core of all their latest server offerings.
.NET, for all it's glory and marketing, is a hyperextension of what Java originally promised. Microsoft may have a lot of money in R&D, but they rarely push the envelope -- at least not before someone else has shown it can be pushed.
This is true enough; the latest big MS strategy is unquestionably
The fallacy is confusing "bet the company on" with "innovated the technology for".
"USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
/quote
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point."
Well, that's a relief.
Innovations for windows are created by other companies and Linux hackers seem to concentrate on making the innovations for windows work in Linux.
I'd love to see something NEW in Linux, like Apple's newly revealed Exposé but it never shows up. I'm probably hoping for Enlightenment to prove me wrong.
Ciryon
I don't know about you, but that interview told me a lot more than BG wanted to. In the first answer he seems to get really angered about the claim that "nobody used OS/2" and ends up sumarizing why Microsoft is the best company in town.
... USA Today is interviewing one of the richest and more powerful man on earth and the main topic is Linux.
Linux is here to stay, and they know it. This is _not_ like the OS/2 days. OS/2 was IBM's, GNU/Linux is a comunity, they can't sweep linux out of the market because most linux users uset it because they won't run anything from Microsoft. I know I do.
Even if RedHat, Mandrake and all commercial distros dissapear and SCO's FUD manages to kill Linux (highly unlikely) the mentality, press coverage and community that has gathered around GNU/Linux will live on in the *BSDs and even in OSX.
All the people and companies spreading FUD and satanizing Linux have, in some way or another, gained a lot from the GNU/Linux movement. SCO has lasted a little longer than it should have because of OpenLinux, OSX and Windows have incorporated software and ideas that were born in the GNU/Linux/*BSD world.
Even if Linux is to dissapear the "damage" is already done
Some would say that the "world domination" thingie has already started.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
There years in desktops, maybe, but it's been a important player in servers longer than that.
Anyone thing that Linux has gone from being a 'the main competetor' to 'another OS2' due to their confidece that the MS funded SCO FUD campaign seems to be doing pretty well at derailing Corporate Linux (TM)?
I suspect that he would love it if the same kind of breaks were applied to Linux that were applied to BSD after their legal troubles.
</>
Not that I care, Free operating systems will live on even if Linux itself dies - it'll be a real loss for sure, but not a total from-square-0 (lots of the driver code for example is probably reusable). There might be some corporate disinterest, but it can survive even that - it only needs a core of developers to keep at it for it to grow and prosper.
Beep beep.
In one answer...
...
We will never have a price lower than Linux
And in the immediate next answer
The idea is that we're in a competitive situation, that we're willing to provide a better price.
Umm.. What gives?
Bullshit I can smell it a mile away. The reason you can say that you can beat linux in this market is because linux isn't a corperation that can make an educational bid (at least not in the public school system). And since MS has the ability to bid both software only and software + support costs they can undercut because their client list is so much longer. Any 5-Guy Linux shop will contract at a yearly rate for what would be close to a salary. So yeah, MS can underbid in a public setting, but that's just because the bid process is messed up, not because linux sucks.
You can tell Bills scared, everytime some type of sensationalism is mentioned he plays it off like nothing happened. The fact that he's acknowledging it makes me think of a quote...
"First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." - Ghandi
Looks like it's only a matter of time. Did anyone else notice there was not a definante "no" from the old MS inceptor himself that MS will make products for the linux platform. They know of crossover, and other apps like it, they know it's possible. But they want to keep as much money tied in as they can, wait though, the only thing for sure in life, is change.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Now, turn around, pull your thumb out of your ass, and read something educational.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Linux betted on a secure, open source OS. I think the people will go with that over your bloaty OS X wannabe. Sorry Bill.
I love the bizarre way Microsofties speak.
Normal person: Hey, like your hair cut Bill!
Bill: Thanks. I'm super-serious about my hair. Before it was totally random but now I'm totally dedicated to getting serious about it. My hair has my 100% committment and I'm going to be super-concentrating on that from now on.
I want to see a shot of him at a formal event -- wearing a tux!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. (Mahatma Gandhi)
This gives me an idea how far along Linux is in competing with Windows. No, I wasn't expecting Gates to bow down to Llnux, but there's many ways of claiming you're better.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"People always think today's competition is somehow different and unique in some way."
And the roadside is littered with companies that believed they were "somehow different and unique" from everything that had gone before - where are they now?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
... but still didn't find it that gratifying. A couple of things that I would like to note though:
Windows does seem to be a platform that does a lot of innovation. I've seen the betas of Longhorn, they're really doing some awesome architectural change to the OS. I don't think Linux users can deny that the most popular window managers out there aim to imitate Windows' look-and-feel so as to be familiar with those users. What does this result in? A clone machine. Nothing risky and new is done very often and really pushed out (I'm talking about KDE or Gnome doing something major and pushing it out) for fear it'll push potential new users away due to its dissimilarity with Windows.
Don't get me wrong. Linux is very stable and the kernel is getting so rock-hard and that is very impressive, but until there's really a reason to make people's heads turn, people will remain on Windows. They need to see something that turns their head and they say "Wow, that's something that makes my computing life easier that's not available on Windows." Only then will desktop users really consider switching. But as long as the advertising scheme for Linux is "Just like Windows!", there won't be a super compelling reason for people to switch. Oh yeah, the lack of software hurts, but we've beat that catch 22 into the ground.
Of course, another problem is that once it's done on Linux, Windows will probably embrace-and-extend it. That's a slight downside of the cost arrangement of Linux. If someone was to get some new innovative thing into Linux, nobody can afford to get protection for it such as patents. Sure, most of you may not like software patents, but face it, it's the way it is and you have to protect yourself whether you like the system or not. I'm not saying MS will steal the code, but they have a whole slew of programmers that can tinker with something until they figure it out.
This is all stuff easier said than done. Since MS is the 900lb gorilla, they have a lot more freedom to do the pushing than the following. These are just my opinions, though.
-Shippy
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Yeah, just like no one will ever need more than 640k of RAM!
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
You know, the late Iraqi minister of information. That's who Bill Gates is starting to remind me of.
This sig no verb.
-
What's it like be the richest person in the world?
-
How big is your house?
-
Do you have a big gold vault like Scrooge McDuck, filled with cash?
I'm glad USA Today surprised me with decent questions, maybe there is hope for other media outlets (cough.. Fox News).Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface?
Gee, let's see: IBM ViaVoice for one, and Dragon Naturally Speaking for two. Microsoft didn't innovate that, they assimilated it.
I am MuchTall
Heh, this is so fsckn funny...
Bill Gates bringing up OS/2 and comparing it to Linux is basically his way of raising his middle finger in the face of IBM. Gates and IBM had their rancourous falling-out over OS/2, and now that IBM has put much of its still-considerable muscle behind Linux this is his way of talking smack about IBM.
Gates' arrogance is amazing. Read between the lines here. He's saying "we killed OS/2 and we're going to kill Linux...the SCO lawsuit is just the beginning."
Thing is, you can't kill something that has no leaders and is not backed by a rival corporation. Even if Linux was temporarily crushed by MS action or government fiat, it could be revived at any time because the code is free and open and anyone who understands it can build on it.
Read your Greek mythology, Mr. Gates. Hubris goeth before a fall.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
When Mr. Gates says Microsoft is the force pushing technology, is he refering to pushing around other tech companies? Restraining trade, or coping features directly from other systems. Or is he refering to pushing customers to a locked in microsoft system by implamenting propriitary standards such as .NET or breaking compatibility with other standards such as JAVA?
Oh yes, Microsoft definately "pushes" technology!
Talking about how Microsoft will do anything to undercut Linux in bidding situations and keep it from gaining ANY marketshare
"That's considered healthy pro-competitive behavior."
I'm sure that's the same thing the Mafia says about breaking kneecaps.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
passing thru competition?!?!? That's why(and not necesarely on this order) Almost every render farm used on movies uses linux... All major laboratories (phisycs (i work at one), medical, etc) uses it... Governments, regions and cities are moving to linux... Almost all big companies run at least a couple of servers with linux... Some even have taken linux to the desktop (worked on one of those also)... The open source community grows from day to day... Some of the biggest machines around (top 500) are linux cluster machines... (how many of those run windows?!?) Nasa uses linux... Defence agencies use linux... And the list goes on... Yet another marketing measure... but the reality is they are chicken scared of running out of theyr monopoly... And I can assure you they will as soon as desktop linux works well (overall and applications). Z
I'm trying to get modded "Interesting Flamebait Informative and Insightful Redundant Troll" *-* Please Help *-*
Innovate: Wait until someone develops something. Create inferior replication, use monopoly power and define as "part of the system" to crush original.
Feature: Bug
Compete: Use cash reserves/FUD/monopoly power to undercut superior products from other companies. When they are no longer viable, triple the price and then triple it again.
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
That would be like considering to sign his own death-warrant.
Reality has a notoriously liberal bias -- Stephen Colbert
I don't think he is really ignoring it. While he may appear to say it's just a passing fad, you can bet they are not ignoring it in the MS board room while Linux is slowing chipping away at their server, desktop, and office market. One PC at a time...
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
BeoWoof Clustar? When Gates don't understand GATES SMASH!
Huh? You bet on the 16-bit PC? 640k jokes aside, what other options were there at the time? GUI? Xerox/Mac beat you to it, and it was popular before you did it. NT tech? Hello, you stabbed 32-bit OS/2 in the back and used VMS as a model for the first NT, later making NT more like old Windows by incorporating more and more into the "microkernel".
Is it just me, or was he struggling? And I wonder if the reason MS licensing is such a low percentage due to the higher support costs for their buggy software. (Yeah, yeah, a flame.)
"At this point"? Very interesting that he seems to admit they might consider it at all. Or maybe I'm reading too much into a figure of speech.
Comparing OS/2 and Linux is a dangerous mistake.
People actually use Linux and like it too. And you'll never be able to beat free, especially in this economy.
Bill having some OS envy? Hmmmm.
You sure you're willing to take such a courageous, outspoken stance on slashdot?
I think Microsoft use the term innovation in a rather (semantically) different manner to everyone else. I don't mean to bash MS because that's been done to death, but it would seem that they use innovation to mean something along the lines of: Take existing ideas, streamline them, dumb them down and support them to the masses. Its rare that you see something new come from MS, although I'm sure it must of happened a couple of times (clippy anyone?). This isn't necessary a bad thing, but their not unique in doing such. They innovate by taking known idea's, and giving them to everyone. Of course this is how most things are done, it's just that MS have the audience to do it rather more dramatically than anyone else. Unfortunately that also means that the majority of the audience aren't CS graduates etc. And the innovation seems such that it's real innovation. Which is a shame.
Now, here's what he's saying:
"WTF! Linux? OMG, Linux is so owned... noone ever got fired for buying MSFT. Oh yeah, and we're innovators too."
Gates: Who has the guts and the willingness to do risk-taking to get ink into the standard user interface?
Me: Apple
Gates: Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface?
Me: Apple
t'nera semordnilap
USA TODAY: Nobody used OS/2.
BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let's be serious. That was IBM, a company 15 times our size.
BG Translation: We owned them. I cannot say this, less it appears as though we have been a monoply for a long time
USA TODAY: There has been some criticism of the way in which you're been competing against Linux,...about undercutting Linux at any cost, per se.
BG: Well I'm not sure what you mean by undercutting.
BG Translation:I know exactly what you mean by undercutting. (How the h3ll did this come out?)
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
USA TODAY Translation: I am a moron.
BG: There's no [need for] consideration of that at this point.
It has to realize that "most" win32-Software already runs under wine - somehow.
When Microsoft starts to support this already running software, no one can call Bill a lier. Well, no problem with that.
" The magazine with the widest readership in the nation. It probably has the lowest reader-IQ-average as a direct result."
Would you have rather that the interview had been in the New York Times, written by Jayson Blaire as he sat in his Manhattan den, performing in his mind a visit to Gate's office in Redmond?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
USA TODAY: There has been some criticism of the way in which you're been competing against Linux, and in The New York Times, assuming it was accurate, reporting that the e-mails in Europe...
[bolding mine] Zing! Ouch for the New York Times. Here I thought USA Today and NYT were 0wnzerd by the same parent company Gannett. I guess not.
Speak truth to power.
He's alive and well (he surrendered to US forces and was released last week) and would be the perfect spokesman for Microsoft.
"There is no Blue Screen of Death, never! All Linux infidels' stomachs will roast in hell! We shall defeat them with Trustworthy Computing and shoes!"
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
OK, before you mod me to -1000, think about this for a second. This is precisely the way the mainstream users look at the PC market. (Actually, they're an even tougher crowd than this, and I could have added a few more requirements to the list above. But that will suffice for a first approximation.)
> or thought that a real breakthru would be an algorithm to factor large PRIME numbers.
I've been seeing that quote for years, and never once snapped to why everyone was quoting it!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
1. It was a very short "interview".
2. Some of the questions had the tone of "devil's advocate", giving Gates the perfect opportunity to look like the good guy. (OS/2 question in particular)
3. There was no follow-up to anything, it was just question-answer, question-answer. So if this interview ever took place, it seems like it wasn't an interactive interview. (no big deal, just wanted to point it out)
My non-expert opinion? This was a canned PR interview that MS sent USA Today.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It's nice to hear from Bill himself that Linux isn't such a threat now that the lawsuit is over...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
When he said "640k will be enough for anyone" :-)
Karma whorin' since 1999
A *lot* of us missed that one, regrettably.. Cant blame him for that oversight.. ..
.so his belief that they will prevail due to a 'war of attrition' is sound..
Given their track record, they have either outlasted the competition or bought them for the most part.
He's wrong, but there is logic behind his statement.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
and Here I thought I rember Gates pushing OS/2!
Do not be fooled MS internal docs and benchmarks indidcate that even OpenSource JBoss J2EE spp server on Linux is the biggest competitor to beat with their MS.NET..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Have you ever heard about Dreamworks using OS/2?
I haven't
IMHO Gates haven't learned with others errors in the past.
Probably he's still in the first level of passive resistence (see also Ghandi).
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
BG: We bet on the 16-bit PC.
.Net
So did many other companies. M$ was not first. Plus, there was not much "company" to bet, at that time. Microsoft's only innovation, at this time, was in getting PC manufacturers to agree to an illegal licensing scheme.
BG: We bet on graphical user interface.
After Apple showed the way, and proved the market.
BG: We bet on the NT technology base.
Just adding features long present in Unix and other operating systems.
BG: Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called
Following Java's lead.
Microsoft: we innovate by marketing technologies invented by others.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. (Mahatma Gandhi)
It's the GhandiCon!!!! THE GHANDICON!!! Everybody knows the GHADICON!!! So, where are we in the GHANDICON? Uh? Uh? Why didn't you said the GhandiCon? It would have beem simpler AND EVERYBODY USES IT NOW!!!
Ph4t Pr0ps to the GhandiCon!
(cf ESR Recasts Jargon File in Own Image)
That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies.
Yes, and that's the problem: Microsoft keeps pushing technologies, whether customers want them or not. But because of Microsoft's dominant market position, customers don't have a say in the matter.
Ink, speech, virtual machines, database-like file systems, etc., are all old ideas. Gates apparently doesn't understand either the history or the the problems with those technologies, otherwise he wouldn't make large bets on them.
Microsoft has become an old, lazy, gigantic corporation with way too much disposable money, and their market power means there are few competitive pressures to keep them in check. In short, Microsoft has become what IBM used to be. In fact, the projects Gates likes so much are just the same kinds of projects IBM used to invest in heavily, and that's no coincidence.
The Anaheim Angels general manager uttered this statement: "This is a dynasty that cannot, and will not ever lose. We've won the Series once, and our destiny is to continue winning it every single year from now until baseball as we know it ceases to exist."
Lawrence "Bull in a China Shop" Ellison has declared, "Only Oracle had the foresight to retain market share in the face of determined opposition. Our share of the market continues to rise. In fact, it now stands at just over 107%."
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Bill Gates On Linux"
Is he running as an emulation or natively coded?
Segmentation fault(core dumped)
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
Not sure about server market share. I ran OS/2 Server on my support box when I was a L2 TCP/IP tech at IBM Austin. I liked it a lot more than NT4, but I'm weird. I like the underdog simply because they're at a disadvantage.
Mod me down if you want, but if Linux commands were a lot more like DOS (which I already know) I'd be running some sort of Linux on my PCs at home. Frankly, I haven't the time to try to remember all of the equivalent Linux commands for those I already know in DOS.
Not to mention - does Linux have plug & play support? I dunno.
I *can* tell you that a lot (all?) ATMs ran OS/2 (showing a DOS window to the user) and that large companies (Traveler's for one) and even the FBI were OS/2 users. Why? More secure.
Ever seen a virus for OS/2? Nope. Ever see a rootkit or other exploit for OS/2? Nope. True, market share was a lot less than Windows, but this doesn't mean that since it had a smaller userbase that it was any less secure. I realize it doesn't mean it was more secure, but since Windows and the Linux flavors are built off of common files (that is, common between the versions) this means that they are less secure.
Microsoft even stole from IBM - NTFS is a modification of OS/2's HPFS (High-Performance File System).
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Linux suffers from some of these problems, but incompetency and bad marketing are hopefully not amongst them. The one thing Linux absolutely has to do however is start loading up with consumer features. This means making stuff easy, be it installing new drivers, supporting graphics and sound properly, playing games. At the moment Linux sucks unless you're prepared to put a lot of effort into it or never intend to change your hardware ever. At present I'd say that the big boys have just about mastered producing a reasonable desktop, but there is a long way to go yet.
Since it was a short, horribly done interview, it *must* be that the horrible evil corporation fixed this up and sent it off, right? It couldn't be that the interviewer just didn't know his a** from a hole in the ground? It couldn't actually be someone elses fault that something is messed up could it? Nope, must be Microsofts fault. Come on man.
In response to your second question, if I had interviewed the richest man in the world in such a poor fashion, I wouldn't want my name on it either.
I wonder how long it took Billy G to find a journalist that didn't know how to ask questions about the answers. seriously though, I'd like to see a real interview with someone objective (someone who doesn't hate one side completely) and who has a full awareness about the subjects of the questions so that we can hear more than just media hype layer.
my sig --(GPLed, use it, but make the source available)
I think Billy uses "I mean" and "Lets be serious" just a little too much...and as for "He is not considering porting any MS Apps to Linux" I am not sure he would know how.
Damn! They done ported Bill Gates to Linux!
Ahh, he probably needs a P4 4.4GHz to run though....
Fellowship 9/11
By definition, CEOs are cheerleaders to the general masses. The article was written for USA Today, bought mostly for its 4 colour weather map.
Of course his answers are going to be biased. Of course they are going to be "MS NUMBER ONE!" in tone. It would be irresponsible if he didn't.
A CEO is a part sales person. He is selling MS. He and all sales people will streach the truth.
Move along, nothing to see here.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Sounds an awful lot like the Iraqi Minister of Information: "Linux has been beat, destroyed, and will never compete! Ever! It is passing on..."
Say you have two PCs today. It's a huge pain that your Favorites on this machine are different than on this machine. Moving your files from this machine to this machine, getting your e-mail, your calendar -- it's painful. Say you have a work calendar and a family calendar. Is it really easy to coordinate your family's schedule and see which events should be on both ones?
Jesus, talk about as backwards as 1995!! I can't help thinking time and time again that this is exactly what the web empowers. I never have to worry about which machine I check my Yahoo mail (or the like). Since there's pretty much a browser everywhere, that's all I need. Calendaring/scheduling, email, document management - all the 'killer app' for the enterprise web.
I'm actually a huge fan of the 'web office' - something that seemed to have a real future years ago. Dunno why it's not used more nowadays. It's like, something that simple is still too good to be true. Nope, we'll create an OS for it instead because that's what people really want.
Actually I do know what killed it(to some extent); Internet Explorer. Control the client, kill the server. It's too bad because it would have been good for so many businesses and people alike. But, that's history I guess.
(From the article)
> For any project, if you look at communications
> costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that,
> software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd
> ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project.
Wow. Not my experience, to say the least.
To me, this is indicative of exactly where Linux does and will continue to shine. The above statement is probably true for Chase Manhattan, and I doubt we'll see Chase switching to Linux anytime soon (although I don't doubt that their big iron is still a commercial UNIX).
Most of the people I deal with, though, are either small research groups or small businesses: Five guys with three computers and a world to conquer. This is where Linux is already excelling, and I think this is where it will excel for the immediate future.
That is why Gates is wrong. OS/2 had some advantages over Windows (such as the 'IBM army' as he puts it), but it was competing with Windows for the same goal. Where I see Linux being really successful is in places where the Microsoft Barrier-to-Entry(tm) is just too high. Unlike OS/2, Linux isn't going to be driven from these places. Linux is not going away, although it may not be going to the foreground, either.
And as more and more small businesses and contractors and researchers use Linux to do cool and interesting things on the cheap, bigger businesses will start to notice.
The dynamic menus are a great idea, but has anybody else had unpredictable experiences with them. Certain program groups that I never go into "Accessories" never go away, and certain others that I use seem to be gone on Monday mornings. Are built in groups less susceptible to being hidden and are user made ones time sensitive? Also, I have one group that I created myself that always displays, but every sub group is initially hidden. (This is XP, BTW, I didn't notice any problems in Win2k. I really need to downgrade.)
I use WindowMaker on Linux just because I'm so used to getting my "Start"-like menu whenever I right click right next to my mouse.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
I've heard that the next major desktop Windows release, Longhorn, will ship in 2005. How many Linux kernel patches, new distros, and releases in general will come out in that time? A lot, and not all will be bugfixes, some will add functionality.
To me it seems as if Microsoft's effort for security and stability is an attempt for them to catch up.
Passing through like the stake in a vampire's heart.
If you post it, they will read.
Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies.
This is quite consistent with what Bill Gates has said many times before, that "freedom to innovate" was endangered by any action against Microsoft, despite it being officially judged a monopoly.
Alongside this use of doublespeak is the recent lobbying by the "Institute for Software Choice" in Australia for government organizations there to avoid free and open source because of the economic harm it would cause to MSFT, a corporation based in the United States.
As a U.S. citizen, I've already enjoyed the benefits of free and open source software developed in Australia and look forward to seeing more of it. Likewise, a lot of free and open source software has been developed in the United States that could be of great benefit to Australian users in government, industry and at home. I don't see why the Australian government should be especially restricted from making the kinds of command decisions on IT infrastructure that companies all over the world make every day - you know the kind - the corporate standard is to run Windows and to use Word, etc.
The hue and cry about freedom of choice and innovation is only raised when there is a palpable danger that the choice might be other than one designed to further bolster the financial interests of Microsoft, or that innovation might result in a potentially lucrative new technology being developed outside Microsoft.
People like Bill Gates who, with his money and fame, enjoys instant access to government officials and the media across the world to promote his point of view (aligned to increase shareholder value at MSFT) is able to get an audience that common people, or even average knowledgeable IT people, simply cannot hope to get.
The fact that free and open source software is making inroads through grass-roots word of mouth based on its own merits, devoid of such a heavily funded marketing organization, and despite this lopsided point of view being propagated by Gates at the highest levels and in most public venues, is a remarkable testament to Lincoln's adage that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
It gives me hope.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
In 8 years MS has dominated the market with their OS. Windows 98 is still perfectly usable. It's been 12-13 years for Linux and it's far from done.
I'd love to sit around and wait for Linux to get done but I've got work to do now.
The great thing about closed source is that it has a clear road map that the developers have to follow and the developers get paid. As a result things get done far faster than in the Open Source model where it's not really clear what's needed and few are really dedicated to putting 8+ hour days in on their part all year for x years.
"Many eyes" is a joke when talking about MS. Bill Gates probably has more people working on Windows than there are people working on Linux. And if he needed "more eyes" he'd hire them.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
People are dumb, panicky animals that will follow anyone willing to arouse them. Bill is just real damn good at getting the herd to put their collective nose in his crotch.
He must be getting a better grade of delusional drugs than the current US administration...
I guess having been scourged by the "...passing OS thing..." known as LINUX/UNIX, I must be immune to this mind-altering influence of Windows...
Hey, let's all become educational institutions...I call dibs on "School of Hard Knocks"...no, "University System of Hard Knocks"...yeah, that's it...
I just want to know what everyone else is wondering, what size bowl is used for his haircuts?
btw, MS didn't kill OS/2, IBM did to protect thier PC business and the Windows discounts that kept them competetive. It was IBM vs. IBM as much as it was MS vs. IBM. But I suppose it's the "victor" that gets to write history, no?
USA TODAY: On May 14th, Orlando Ayala [Microsoft's senior VP for the Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partner Group, which aims to introduce Microsoft products to smaller companies and purchasers] in his e-mails authorizing him to draw from a special fund to offer the software set discounts or even free if necessary, under no circumstances lose against Linux. Has Microsoft changed its behavior patterns?
BG: The idea is that we're in a competitive situation, that we're willing to provide a better price. This is not a general problem. This is about education situations, and educational bids are very, very price sensitive, and we've always provided super low pricing for education. We're actually providing even lower pricing now for education then we ever have, but it's been unique pricing for us, literally since the company was founded. And yeah, we, on educational bids, we will meet competition. That's considered healthy pro-competitive behavior.
So is USA Today insinuating that MS is not just using this special fund to "pay for" educational discounts, but also for any other "beat linux" deal? Bill says that this is only occurring for education, but USA Today's question hints at more. Who's telling the truth and who's not?
Linus Torvalds says "Linux Kicks Ass".
Six sick
"USA TODAY:There seems to be some worry at Microsoft about Linux and some of these Web-based things like Sim Desk that have popped up. Houston, Munich, and Beijing have all been considering using Linux-based products rather than going through Microsoft. How much of this is a concern?
Bill Gates: Well those are our current competitors. I mean, it's no different than in the past people used [IBM's operating system] OS/2."
Wrong, Linux is very different as a competitor. Open source, GNU, not company controlled, thousands of developers, millions of users, large base of software, large base of experts, should I go on Billy? Should I remind you that your company claimed Linux as its biggest threat? How about all those "Halloween" documents? I bet OS/2 wasn't looked into that far.
Then again, that is the best answer he could give without scaring investors, customers, and the public into thinking that Microsoft is finding it very difficult to compete against Linux.
Perception means a lot in business.
Question everything.
ditto
It wasn't even really competing with MS, because the people who used apps on os/2 ran them in windows (which was conveniently bundled with it out of the box)
I fail to see mr. Gate's analogy here.
Speak for yourself.
Powered by Microsoft Information Minister 2003
"We bet on graphical user interface...You always have to do something very dramatic to move things up to the next level"
Right... by far the greatest risk Microsoft ever took.
I think the biggest thing holding Linux OSs behind Microsoft is the fact Microsoft is really ubiquitous. I can't really use Red Hat or SUSE at school next year if I want to transfer documents around because no one can really accept them.
-Brad
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
Bill is a has-been, a computer-wannabe who had the spotlight for, what only like 20 years in the late 20th century? He thought he was all hot shit, but then a little pipsqueak, linus, showed the world that software doesn't have to be monopolized, but can be made collaboratively by seemingly unrelated persons for the benefit of all of humanity, irregardless of socio-economic background. Linux, with untapped power and the development cycles of millions of contributors throughout the world, became the dominant model for software through the 21st century. Unfortunately, that speed and power achieved what Microsoft could never do in a closed environment....the birth of AI. At first the machines did as we asked, performing tasks none of us wanted. But at some point, the machines fought back. No one knows who started it, but we blackened the sky.
Linus, thankyou for saving us and dooming us at the same time. If not for the amazing potential of your OS, the machines would never have been powerful or stable enough to take over the earth.
May we meet someday in Zion...
CORBA, for instance, is designed for interlanguage operability, and is at once heavyweight and feature-deprived as a result, whereas J2EE remote object technologies are very Java-specific. CORBA, for instance, uses distributed reference counting for garbarge collection, RMI uses leases.
If by "underlying technology," you mean that CORBA offers naming, lookup, and invocation, and J2EE does too, then, uh, ok. I wouldn't say that McDonald's is the underlying technology for my mother's house, just because they both have kitchens and serve food.
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Translation:
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider having monkeys come flying out of your butt?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It's either "new" as in GNU/Linux or "new" as in the African animal.
According to an interview I once read with St. RMS, it's pronounced GUH-noo, and not NOO. Just how Gary Gnu used to say it. And despite the fact that Gary was a Guh-Noo (Gnu) and that he pronounced his name just the way that the open source movement would later adopt the phrase, the recursive acronym Gnu's Not Unix has nothing at all to do with the African animal.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Ok...it seems a bit silly to say "Well Windows beat out all the other OSes around" when you think about the computing scene then and the computing scene now.
Back then, we had MS already deeply entrenched because of the licensing deal with MS-DOS. Windows was an obvious upgrade. So you buy a PC with MS-DOS, perhaps Windows, or a Mac. This is what the consumers bought. Large institutions were still working on UNIX, mainframes with COBOL, etc.
Now...now you have a computer as common an appliance as a telephone and a toaster. MS is still deeply entrenched, no doubt about it. But this ignorance of "we beat other OSes before" won't last this time. Now we've got 8 year old kids beating the crap out of me with their *NIX coding, with these kids networking their house for their parents, playing with other operating systems. The kids see other alternatives to servers and OSes more suited to programming. So what if Linux isn't on the desktop yet. If it's got THIS much popularity without a pretty desktop face, just wait until it DOES get one. And do you really think...after the Internet bubble burst, companies would be blindly embracing something without a viable reason? IBM, HP going with Linux. Apple with a UNIX core...
The point is, more people are actually willing to try other OSes right now, not just the select few that could afford a $3,000 286 Leading Edge Model D.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Bill Gates just doesn't "get it" does he? Microsoft doesn't push ANY new technology in terms of actual innovation. Now if he means "push" in the sense of a drug dealer, then he's being truthful.
Can you mount an ISO image with a plain vanilla instllation of Windows XP? No. But you can with the BSDs and GNU/Linux. It's built into most ditros as support for the ISO filesystem and loop devices.
Can you set up encrypted secure tunnels for specific ports, execute remote commands (encrypted again), and also transport remote desktop displays over the same mecahnism that does the tunnels and remote commands in a default installation of Windows XP? No. But you can with any OS that supports OpenSSH. Again, most distros come with this by default.
All the Windows XP wankers have been railing on about the Fast User Switching that Windows XP introduced. But you know what? We *nix users have had this feature for over a decade. Both at the command prompt and within the GUI by way of virtual terminals. I can have many users logged into their own desktops on the same machine with apps running and easily switch between them using Ctrl-Alt-F(n). Nothing new to us.
And as far as Remote desktop goes, *nix users have again had this since the earliest versions of X. Again over a decade. X was designed with this in mind from the start. And with Xnest, you can actually run a different user's desktop within your desktop on the same machine. You CAN'T do that with Windows XP.
Microsoft just got the "RUNAS" command. Hmmm... anyone familiar with su? And now with GUI alternatives, *nix has innovated much farther than Windows has. And still kept security job one.
What about the idea of not using drive letters and instead mounting to a folder. Windows 2000 introduced this. But Linux, the BSDs and other *nixes have had this from the very start.
VNC? Still came from the *nix world first since it is based completely on X. And we've had it longer than Microsoft.
What about things like esd (The Enlightened Sound server)? While you can share a remote desktop in Windows and even share the sound associate with it, you can't easily reconfig it to FOLLOW you from one machine to another one. I use VNC and esd together so I can log into a running desktop at any machine on my network and the audio will follow me. Again... how long has Open Source had this? for almost a decade (the lifespan of esd). Does Windows have this feature? No.
Need I point out anything else? I'm sorry, but the innovations all seem to come from open source first and then Windows plays catch up 5-10 years later.
The interviewer did this for the papperazi in the USA? Wow. Im seriously impressed. Some quality newspaper will snap this undoublty young person up soon. Why?
/Dread
- He got to ask unpopular, smart questions to BillG, a feat I havent yet seen dony by Slashdot f.e.
- He persists, even if Bill gives him a run around.
- He holds his style (Nobody used OS/2, will linux run MS)
Bill G is right when he sais:
"And yeah, we, on educational bids, we will meet competition. That's considered healthy pro-competitive behavior."
That means Bill gives software away for free BECAUSE OF COMPETITION!
That probably means they get their revenue on that from SUPPORT! (Or they are undercutting potential competition, which is abuse of monopoly, and they are cleary not doing that anymore he sais)
Did Bill sniff some clue glue?
(And apparently Linux isnt competition in the business market, so one has to ponder what the hell these business managers are thinking, if the education market prooves it can be done, isnt the business paying too much?)
I have left contracts in a hurry I have left contracts after a good job I have left contracts with colleagues I have now left contracts with Friends teflon w/o the don...
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
Since it was a short, horribly done interview, it *must* be that the horrible evil corporation fixed this up and sent it off, right?
Let's make it clear then, a short, horribly done interview with the richest man in the world, printed in a newspaper with world-wide distribution. Let's move on...
It couldn't be that the interviewer just didn't know his a** from a hole in the ground?
For the above mentioned newspaper? Not likely. What kind of newspaper would take an opportunity like that and blow it? Who would assign such an interview to someone who knew nothing about technology?
It couldn't actually be someone elses fault that something is messed up could it? Nope, must be Microsofts fault. Come on man.
Whose exactly? I have given good reasons why I think what I think, what are your reasons?
In response to your second question, if I had interviewed the richest man in the world in such a poor fashion, I wouldn't want my name on it either.
This is an argument? You are a reporter for the USA Today, and you have the chance to interview Bill Gates. You then decide, "ahh, that interview wasn't very good, I think I'll take my name off of it." Have you ever even heard of journalism? Thank you for supporting my point of view through your childish and poorly thought out ideas. Just because I pointed a critical eye at this interview doesn't mean I am out to get Microsoft. The only thing worse that zealots are people who try to classify everyone as a zealot.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Not enough for it to win.
Not enough for it to matter in the long run.
Not enough keep it alive.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I beg to differ...
As "the leader of the company, he's not^H^H^H^H^H^H IS there to look objectively at an^H^Heverything!" He'd darned well better be on top of how Linux threatens Microsoft, or else he's incompetent.
OTOH, "the leader of the company, he's not there to look^H^H^H^Hspeak objectively at^Hbout anything1" He needs to know the threats, and know how to placate the market and paint his company in the best possible light, with respect to those threats.
OTGH, he needs to watch out exactly how far he stretches or shrinks the truth, because he is bound by SEC regulations, and is not supposed to mislead stockholders or analysts. It's a tightrope.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Gates is right about one thing, microsoft certainly adds more innovation to the OS and OS/server market than any other software company out there. Yes you can make the argument that a lot of it is stolen ideas or bought technology, but microsoft is the only one that really has the guts to try to make it main stream. Look at the next version of the windows file system, microsoft is going to try to integrate it directly with a relational database. Now say what you will about ReiserFS also doing this and various other nitch technologies taking this same approach this is still major innovation and an attempt to advance the market.
Linux on the other hand is basically a reimplementation of known technologies in order to make them open source. I'm sure there are Linux zealots who can point out extremly technical areas where Linux makes some small innovation but on the whole it is just a reimplementation of the same ideas that *nix has used for thirty years.
Basically I am saying that I agree with Bill, microsoft does bring a lot of innovation to the market and linux brings very little innovation.
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Of course there's no consideration of that. By even CONSIDERING it, Gates would be dispelling the FUD that he and his minions have been spewing for years. By MS porting something to LINUX would indicate that Linux was a 'viable' platform.
You don't spend money on something that you are expecting to go away (or have taken away by you're little SCO minion.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
yes, they've been 1 apart.
and That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies
does the article submitter think that Linux is the one pushing new technologies? yeah, that'll be the day...
If he wanted to troll he should have posted as AC.
Course people use visual basic. There's tens of thousands of VB scripts spreading from Outlook to Outlook screwing peoples PCs up every day
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
"People always think today's competition is somehow different and unique in some way..."
Really? People have always been thinking about "totally free" (as in beer, speech, puppies)? Right on!
A few years back Bill was on the cover of Fortune (again) and the cover story was "Bill's makeover." He had - for the first time anywhere, apparently - an actual hairstyle and designer wireframe glasses.
Obviously, the hairstyle. Check out that shapeless bowlcut - yeesh! Somebody needs to clue him in on "Executive Hair."
You pointed out what should have been obvious...
One, this is USA Today. The general readership in not exactly aiming at Mensa members...
Two, Gates is going to push MS and downplay competitors because *gasp* he OWNS MS! Who would'a thunk it?!
Look, if it was Scott McNeally, he'd be pushing Sun. If it were Larry Ellison, he'd be telling you how much DB2 sucks. If it were Linus, he'd tell you Linux is the future.
But if you're not a total OSS chearleader, even if you support OSS, a dozen trolls will creep out of the woodwork to flame you for "spreading MS FUD". Doctor, how much will it cost to get that chip removed from my shoulder?
Idealism over ideology, please. The two are not the same, and the former works when it's accompanied by a nice dose of honesty....
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Oh yeah?
Do codecs not count?
Don't worry, WINE will get what we want, but we mostly prefer our own stuff.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Yeah, but it does make me really curious about a few things.
You only have to look at the leaked MS memos that get publicized on Slashdot to see just how seriously MS treats Linux. Without too much speculation, MS views Linux as the most serious threat to its dreams of dominating the data centres, you can assume that their top technical people spend a lot of time analyzing the capabilities of Linux to find weak points (witness the carefully chosen MS vs Linux benchmarks they have sponsored) and there is no way that MS is ignoring Linux where it really matters - on the sales pitch. The frantic flying of top MS executives to wavering MS houses (such as governments) is evidence enough. The memo to Sales executives to "not lose a sale to Linux under any circumstances" is further proof.
So don't ever assume that MS takes Linux lightly. There are a lot of smart people employed by MS - Lioux is the single biggest threat to MS today - they know it. That should also be a wake up that we should never get complacent simply because Billy G. isn't publicly endorsing Linux.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Check out the pictures in that article. Doesn't anyone else think Bill has REALLY been piling on the pounds since even a year ago? He used to be kinda thin, but now his face is a lot wider. And check that haircut.. this isn't the face of a go-getter billionaire!
I wonder who the next generation of go-getting IT people will be. We had the glory days of Jobs (although some would say he's still well at it), Gates, Ellison and McNealy.. but they're all almost into their 50's now.
Where are the young assholes in their 20's and 30's? Yeah, you got it, they're A list webloggers!
1. Bill Gates 2. ??? 3. PROFIT!!!
--
I seem to remember a company memo that got published stating Steve Balmer was looking at Linux as a very active threat and Microsoft needed a strategy to beat it. Is old Wild Bill just blowing smoke here to keep the posse off his trail or is he going a might soft? Circle the wagons boys, troubles a comin! YEEHAW!
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Yeah, but I can still find you examples of places still using an IBM 370 if I wanted. Hell, I bet someone still uses a PDP somewhere. The real measure of life of a system is new sales, and when is the last time someone bought OS/2 that didn't already have an OS/2 commitment? 1996 sounds about right.
As for COBOL and FORTRAN, new compilers are still made for them, so I'd say they're very much more alive than OS/2.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Dear...
...Linux developer. Why do you care about what Microsoft says or does? They're irrelevant. We don't use their products, and to compete with them, we'd have to become them by writing idiot proof apps written for idiots. If you want to write apps like that, do it on Windows, and make some money from the rubes.
...Linux user. You're irrelevant to linux either way. All you can do is whine for features. Please use Microsoft products.
...Microsoft user. Please stick with Microsoft products. Once you know how to develop, and are prepared to compile apps, fix bugs yourself, submit patches for them, or run your own forks, please feel free to skip the useless Linux user step and become a Linux developer.
How about we define ourselves in terms of what we are, rather than in terms of what we're not? Microsoft isn't the enemy, and it's irrelevant what they think. Anyone influences by what Bill says, well, they weren't going to be contributing to improving Linux for our mutual benefit anyway, were they?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't OS/2, an IBM, closed source, short-lived product w/o all that many applications? If so, how can he compare it to Linux, a worldwide, open source, rapidly growing project w/ tons of applications for just about everything... I think he's a little unaware of the raw magnitude of modern open source stuff- yeah I know, this is /. but I'm really not just saying that, fad's just don't last this long.
.NET and the like. And I highly doubt any home users, and few businesses, will upgrade from xp to 2k3 (legally that is).
As far as costs go, regardless of how many "bets" they've cashed in on, hardly anyone has money these days to invest in the latest and greatest stuff like TabletPCs,
I'm really not surprised by Gates' final statement...
Linux will have proved itself and the game will be over on the day M$ changes their stance in favor of porting M$ apps to it.
Sigs pose an operational security risk and help the baddies aggregate data. I guess commenting does too, oops.
I absolutely love BillG's reply. "BG: Are you kidding? I mean, let's be serious." Or translated for those who cannot read between the lines, "You vapid piece of fuck. Why are you interviewing me again?"
For those who have their heads totally up their asses, a lot of people are still using OS/2, or at least were until very recently. The UK postal system was a big OS/2 customer, for example.
There's no surprises in this document, including the fact that billyg ain't taking Linux seriously enough.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's a shame IBM wont release the code to OS/2. I personally don't think it would take the community very long to make it better than Linux.
...but according to this article on CNN. Companies aren't looking to buy the newest technology anymore. They are looking to cut costs. What gets me about this article though is they say that Sun and other Unix providers suffer and companies like Oracle and Microsoft win. I guess they are talking about proprietary Un*xes that use non-x86 CPUs.
Is it me, or is he looking more and more like a fat cat robber baron every day?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
First (and I'm not trying to be a smart ass here) wasn't Windows a direct knock-off of Apple's interface? That alone would make it more appropriate to complain nothing much risky or new has been done in an even longer time.
But thats not really the case. While the basic KDE and GNOME interfaces do seem to be trying to ease users in, there have been plenty of alternatives that look nothing like the standard Windows interface. Blackbox is my personal favorite, nothing but a clean desktop and the applications I'm currently using. For convenience I also use the KDE kicker (example) to provide clickable links and additional eye candy.
Sites like kde-look.org provide great examples of UI enhancements both conceptual and implemented (see SuperKaramba or Slicker). Of course freshmeat.net is an excellent resource for just about every imaginable interface. If theres one thing Linux is good for its developers being free to experiment with new ideas.
Quack, quack.
I remembered during the recent M$ anti-trust trial, one of the witnesses called to the stand is an IBMer (Garry Norris Story One and Story Two). He mentioned that IBM was given license to ship Win95 on the eve of it's launch on Aug 95.. I mean, M$ holding back on giving IBM license to ship Win95 until a couple of days before it's official launch!
Imagine the black-mail by M$ to IBM
Anyway, according to the testimony, IBM and M$ finally reach a deal for the Win95 licensing and one of the conditions was a gradual abandonment of OS/2..
I remembered whenever Bill Gates was giving interview, post-launch of Win95, when asked about competition from a more superior OS - OS/2, he kept saying that he's wondering why IBM is still supporting a 'dead' OS..
All the time!
Is he saying it again about Linux because he reached a deal with someone who'll ensure the death of Linux too?
SCO ? Darl McBride? Hello hello?
Signed in blood by a former Team OS/2 member, now Team Tux
Will sys-admin for food
1) Tablet PC.
Yeah, GRiD did that 15 years ago
2) SQL as a File System.
Why bother?
3) Office Suites.
AMAZING! How old is this one? What have they really
changed other than introducing incompatabilities
with other office suites and changing standards
and file formats?
4) Multi-language Programming Framework.
How many languages do you need? What purpose
does this really serve? Is this really innovation?
5) A whole bunch of crap that failed.
I'd only add, and a whole bunch of crap nobody
really needed in the first place that was
marketed to death until accepted.
If I am not mistaken, Linux/OSS is the only place
anything new is happening. With a wide range
of window manager choices as far and wide
and varied as snowflakes. With applications
that aren't copies so much as work-alikes, each
with their own features that make them better than
the so called originals they are copying. You
simply can't talk about something like this with
no actual experience. It's high time people like
yourselves take the time to get familiar with the
subject matter instead of regurgitating everything
you read coming from the FUD mills.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Finansial institutions is one of the earliest and most avid adopters of Linux. Use Google for info but here is an eWeek article probabluy not the best (it's eWeek) but the first I found
Help fight continental drift.
I hate it when people get the history wrong.
In 8 years MS has dominated the market with their OS.
Microsoft started out with a monopoly on IBM PC systems; after the clones were released, it still had a monopoly. When faced with DR-DOS (which was quickly undermining that monopoly) they used anti-competitive tactics to exclude DR-DOS from the retail chain, and cheap stunts like misleading error messages in MS-Windows 3.1 Beta to undermine the reputation of DR-DOS as an excellent, reliable OS.
This has been going on for over twenty years. It isn't that Microsoft has dominated the market with their OS; it's that cheap commodity hardware has dominated the market, and Microsoft has the business savvy to ride that train, and the position and ruthlessness to exclude others.
Windows 98 is still perfectly usable. It's been 12-13 years for Linux and it's far from done.
Horse-drawn carriages are perfectly usable. Doesn't make me want to use one for transportation.
When will Linux be "done?" What is your definition? It does everything that MS-Windows XP does, and a lot more. (I'm not talking about the applications that ride on top of the OS; just the OS itself. But even in application space, Linux is Ready.) And, in case you haven't noticed, no operating system is ever *done*. And they all suck, even Linux. It's just that Linux (and OS X) suck less.
The great thing about closed source is that it has a clear road map that the developers have to follow and the developers get paid.
Hello, McFly?!? Linux Torvalds? The guy who controls all this? You think he's just randomly applying patches?
I realize I'm just feeding a troll (and a poor one at that), but this "closed source has direction" idea has been disproven so many times its no longer even an interesting thought.
Microsoft has changed directions so many times (think "Internet," for an example) it makes the head spin to watch. But, if you listen to pundits, this makes them "flexible."
This roadmap chestnut is a bit shopworn.
"Many eyes" is a joke when talking about MS. Bill Gates probably has more people working on Windows than there are people working on Linux. And if he needed "more eyes" he'd hire them.
This is so fucking idiotic, I am not sure which fallacy to address first.
Let's start with the number of people working on MS-Windows. Very few people at Microsoft have the ability to look at all the code. Those working on networking cannot look at the filesystem code, for instance. So, even if MS had 10,000 people working on MS-Windows, very few are able to see beyond their chunk of code.
Secondly, MS hires programmers and stick them where they are needed. This does not necessarily mean they are placed where their talents lie, and their interest is rarely taken into account.
This self-selection in the open-source world is one of the most brilliant aspects of the whole affair. It has been shown time and again that a programmer is orders of magnitude more efficient when they are deeply interested in what they are doing. I would wager that 2 hours a night by a good Linux programmer beats 8 hours a day by a typical MS-Windows programmer. (Note I am comparing "good" to "typical;" yes, I know this is not fair.)
Further, Microsoft spends more money on the sales department than in R&D. This should give you a hint why Microsoft has so successfully excluded all other contenders from the distribution chain.
Gotta go; I have to accomplish real work with my Linux box, work that can't be done on an XP box.
But, happy trolling!
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Bill Gates just doesn't "get it" does he? Microsoft doesn't push ANY new technology in terms of actual innovation. Now if he means "push" in the sense of a drug dealer, then he's being truthful.
Can you mount an ISO image with a plain vanilla instllation of Windows XP? No. But you can with the BSDs and GNU/Linux. It's built into most ditros as support for the ISO filesystem and loop devices.
Can you set up encrypted secure tunnels for specific ports, execute remote commands (encrypted again), and also transport remote desktop displays over the same mecahnism that does the tunnels and remote commands in a default installation of Windows XP? No. But you can with any OS that supports OpenSSH. Again, most distros come with this by default.
All the Windows XP wankers have been railing on about the Fast User Switching that Windows XP introduced. But you know what? We *nix users have had this feature for over a decade. Both at the command prompt and within the GUI by way of virtual terminals. I can have many users logged into their own desktops on the same machine with apps running and easily switch between them using Ctrl-Alt-F(n). Nothing new to us.
And as far as Remote desktop goes, *nix users have again had this since the earliest versions of X. Again over a decade. X was designed with this in mind from the start. And with Xnest, you can actually run a different user's desktop within your desktop on the same machine. You CAN'T do that with Windows XP.
Microsoft just got the "RUNAS" command. Hmmm... anyone familiar with su? And now with GUI alternatives, *nix has innovated much farther than Windows has. And still kept security job one.
What about the idea of not using drive letters and instead mounting to a folder. Windows 2000 introduced this. But Linux, the BSDs and other *nixes have had this from the very start.
VNC? Still came from the *nix world first since it is based completely on X. And we've had it longer than Microsoft.
What about things like esd (The Enlightened Sound server)? While you can share a remote desktop in Windows and even share the sound associate with it, you can't easily reconfig it to FOLLOW you from one machine to another one. I use VNC and esd together so I can log into a running desktop at any machine on my network and the audio will follow me. Again, how long has Open Source had this? for almost a decade (the lifespan of esd). Does Windows have this feature? No.
Need I point out anything else? I'm sorry, but the innovations all seem to come from open source first and then Windows plays catch up 5-10 years later.
Un-news
The day I beleive that Microsoft is innovating is the day that I look at the source code and it's proven to me that they are not utilizing open-source code in their OS... and other products...
To further illustrate, how is it that they develop support for a new technology, it's buggy as hell, it sucks. The LINUX kernel begins to support it and it's rock-solid as hell and if it's not there's a patch available... The next windows version, the support for the same technologies is rock-solid and stable...
They've back-stabbed everyone else they've dealt with... why not steal from the only OS which COULD wipe them out of the OS market?
When I was there till recently, I asked for and got read-only access to the NT codebase. I was dicking around with Bochs, reading the Intel arch. manual. To kind of see what was going on, I found and read the code for the NT boot sector that bootstraps from real-mode to protected mode, and then continues in the "real OS"
That file is dated 1987, OS/2 1.0 joint code with Microsoft and IBM. It must be the last OS/2 code still in there. I dunno, it just struck me as funny as hell to find code from 1987 OS/2 driving the WinXP/Server2003 boot sector!
Make some jokes or something. That sure is what we in the south call a "Shit-Eatin' Grin" ol' Billy is wearing. He'll give you the HEEBIE JEEBIES.
Is it me, or does Bill Gates look like he's doing a bad William Shatner impression?
Linux, on the other hand, still IS, and is a extremely large competetor to Microsoft, at least in the server arena.
Overall, the opinions of Billy Gates on this issue are rather baseless, comparing Linux to OS/2 and the like. Two key differences are that Microsoft actually participated in the creation of OS/2, and it was not open source.
They concentrate on one individual comeptitor at a time and bring them down. Or they just buy them up. If you look at all the companies they've crushed, there is a very linear and serial pattern to the whole thing. Anyone competing with Microsoft has to realize that they're going to have to run to stay ahead of Microsoft's game. Even if they do, most of the time they just end up being bought out anyway.
I can only think of one piece of technology that Microsoft developed all on their own, and that's "Microsoft Bob," which was quite possibly the biggest flop in computing history.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you look off to the side, you'll see links to the other parts of this interview. There were a few questions on each of ten subjects. I was acutally thinking they'd scored a pretty long interview.
Many publications won't let authors publicly claim credit for the bigger stories. There's a tendency for guys being assigned the hot stories to become stars in their own right and leave the paper, letting the name create an asset for the competition. There's also a standard of not crediting interviews where the questions were put together by a full staff and only one person was actually delivering the questions.
As the OS/2 2.x API was not stable when work began on NT, there was no good way for Microsoft to include OS/2 2.x support during original development. By the time IBM actually released OS/2 2.x, Microsoft and IBM had already went their seperate ways so there was no business reason for Microsoft to include compatability with a competing operating system.
i don't see the big deal here. if daddy gates decided to say that linux is a serious competitor, then the rest of the idiots (media, corp. world, bush) will say the same and will want to take a closer look. its a great strategy. if daddy gates decided to say that linux is nothing but a mear mortal pizza shit OS, then the rest of the idiots will say windows is the best OS out there. But is it really an OS? may be an SOS after you get DoSed fort not taking port 445 seriously will answer your question.
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
You know -- with a few billion dollars I'd think he'd be able to get a hair cut that doesn't look like somebody put a bowl on his head and cut away.
Bill's view of the world is predictably MS centric.
Who cares what some corporate director thinks of Linux? Linux and OSS do not have to compete in the market as they are not of the market. They cannot be bought or sold, or controlled, driven out of business.
OSS is not another Pepsi for the masses, its for coders, and people that want an OS that was created to be useful, not filled with stupid sh*t thought up by a focus group.
Bill goes on about all of the hot new "technologies" that MS is creating, all with suitably meaningless code names, "longhorn", "lance", "infinity", "big sleek cat like thing". Who knows if any of these things will be useful. Most MS technologies seem to be focused on locking their customers in to their platform rather than providing any useful functionity. Paladium, Doc scripting, passport, the paperclip, need I say more?
Commercial software is increasingly becoming a platform to get you to buy other stuff. Personally, I get enough advertising stuffed through my eyeballs already. Its like movie theatres, remember when you used to go to a movie pay your $2.50 and NOT be showen 30m of commercials before the movie started?
In a nut shell, commercial software producers think a great enhancement is a talking paperclip whereas OSS producers think a popup blocker is a good feature.
Just be happy, and grateful to OSS developers, that you have a choice.
Of course he is going to say that. He is supposed to be out there championing Microsoft, it is his corporate responsibility. Would you expect something less from any other CEO?
Whaddya call /. if not one big linux astroturfing society? And I say that as a linux user.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
USA TODAY: The general geek population on slashdot seems to think you are a complete megalomaniac and make crummy software, how would your respond to that?
Bill: You have to look at this in a cost analysis understanding of innovative perspectives on the issue of technological returns on intellectual profit margins related to personal benefits surrounding the whole issue. Besides they are just a bunch of geeks, who cares what they think anyways?
USA TODAY: How do really expect to out sell free software?
Bill: You are really missing the point, windows is has the innovative process oriented goal approach to creating productive applications for developing real and lasting investment based and task oreinted production models, Linux doesn't come anywhere close to that kind of obfiscated dispersmentary monetary returns, it's like saying OS/2 is better than windows.
USA TODAY: Are you really out of touch with reality, or do you think people like buggy, expensive software?
Bill: If you look at it from our perspective, there really aren't any bugs in our software, we should be politically correct here and call them "underappreciated features lacking proper activation evironments". For example, let's say you are writing a really scathing email about your boss and he comes up behind you while you are writing, you would really appreciate a good BSOD at that moment, but most of the time the BSOD is activated at inopportune times, like when you are almost finished with a 300 page report. If users really understood the value of a good BSOD, they would use it more wisely. But because of the general lack of understanding of the purpose of the BSOD, it's mistakenly refered to as a "bug", when it's not a bad thing at all.
USA Today: What about the rampant virus spreading and security holes in Outlook?
Bill: Need I remind you that if it wasn't for Microsoft, there wouldn't be the booming Anti-Virus software market like there is today, you can thank us personally for that.
Another odd thing about the interview is that the questions are very poorly written. For example:
I had to read this several times before I could I could parse it. I think it means something like:
It sounds like the interviewer is writing the question while he is talking and is stumbling. I think this is probably an indication of a lack of preparation. But, another explanation is that Microsoft wrote the questions. Their spokesmen often speak in this almost incomprehensible manner.
Who has the guts and the willingness to do risk-taking to get ink into the standard user interface? Who else is going to push that forward? Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface?
Umm, maybe Apple?
Seriously, InkWell and Apple's speech technologies are way ahead of the Dark Side.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Seriously though, MS has probably spent more on market research for regular Joe user than any other big name technology company. Several others had good ideas, but I don't think many come close to funding the amount of pure research in user interfaces.
Of cource, there are rumors that they fund all that research for the same reason that the US pays former Soviet scientists--busy work to keep them from working for their enemies.
science is a religion
Get it right. IBM chopped 384K off the top. There were several other manufacturers (Victor, Zenith, Tandy) who had MS-DOS implementations with 900K usable memory.
Microsoft didn't spec the IBM PC, and IBM didn't spec MS-DOS.
Furthermore, since MS-DOS didn't provide a memory allocator, it's stupid to say that MS-DOS can't address non-contiguous memory.
if i'm not mistaken, any ATMs still run OS/2. it may not be a true player, but it's certainly not completely irrelevant.
Five years ago, such an interview would not even have mentioned Linux, and people like us would say
'but in the future you will have to deal with Linux, why are you ignoring it?'
Does anyone have suggestions for what is not mentioned in this interview but that will have to be mentioned in 5 years?
Or is the open source paradigm a big enough change that there is nothing similar on the horizon?
I think we need to rename the CLR.
LCLR = Lowest Common Language Runtime
The thing is that for languages to work under CLR they have to be changed (sometimes quite dramatically) to fit into the object oriented environment that CLR is. The only language that fits cleanly is the new one they wrote JAV^h^h^hC# (yeah, cheap shot).
The point about anything compiling to Java byte-code, but not well, applies to most other languages that work within the CLR. (Just look at how much pain it causes VB "programmers".)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
...does that mean that Bill G has regeneration powers?
OS/2 was IBM's product...
We bet on the 16-bit PC.
So OS/2 was IBMs and Microsoft "bet" on 16 bit processors?
This is wierd, why can't the guy give and take credit where it's due? OS/2 was IBM AND M$'s baby and IBM came to M$ well after they started making 16 bit 8086s.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
What on earth is Bill doing anyway?
:-)
By talking about Linux at all he is ensuring that there will be secondary articles appearing all over the world mentioning him and Linux in the same paragraph.
Perhaps he's been using the same PR company as SCO
I'll bite.
And that explains why you can compile the network device drivers, the graphics drivers, an HTTP listener, and all that other good stuff into the kernel. Don't get me wrong, I agree that the desktop should be distinct from the Kernel, but I think that you may be the incompetent AC who doesn't know the meaning of "Monolithic."
I think that it would be wise to write a gui kernel module, however, in order for the Linux desktop to be viable. X is good in its own right, and will always be there for anyone to use, but the Windows desktop does not have the whole client/server protocol going on. If you want converts from Windows, you need to give them something that is snappy and quick, even if you let it sit idle for 40 minutes. A lightweight GUI that has compatible libraries for GTK, GTK+, QT, and all the others would really be a threat on the desktop.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
They understand it, much better than you realize. We got our first glimpse of that with the Halloween memos. Now MS has an entire group devoted to fighting Linux. They have competitive strategy memos, presentations, and an eerily accurate understanding of why people develop and use Linux.
How clued in are the top-level people about the capabilities of Linux?
Very much so, I'm sure. How hard is it to get some underling -- an underling whose job it is to figure out how to compete with Linux anyway -- to download and install Red Hat Linux 9 and then tell you about it?
Will their strategy of ignoring it and spreading FUD change
Give them some credit here! The FUD is mostly gone: when's the last time you heard MS saying that "Linux is just a toy OS" or "There's no high-quality support available for Linux?" MS is competing now on features, on total cost of ownership, and (if illegally) on price. They are giving their software away cheaply or for free in colleges, grade schools, and underdeveloped markets. They're also (rightfully?) trying to quell any legislation that would mandate free software.
I sat in a room with a few hundred people way back when and heard Bill say that OS/2 was the future. I wonder if he will be proven right once again :)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm no fan of Bill Gates, or his buggy software... but one has to realize that at the time, 16bits was all you had to work with. That gives you 65,536 byte addresses. It took some time for "cost effective" 32 bit processors to hit the mainstream. I think they did a fairly good job considering the hardware they had to work with as well as considering they had to make it affordable. The big problem was with all of the backwards compatibility Bill insisted on for his stupid 16bit Visual Basic programs when designing the successor of Win 3.11. Add in the monopolistic business practices, and you have someone that most people can hate and loathe... lol ;)
Ah, the ol' "largest target" falacy.
/home directory structure instead of something like /usr/home or who cares/knows.
IIS enjoys only one half the market share of Apache for web servers. Meanwhile IIS enjoys the majority of actual hacking events.
Why? Monocultured soft target. Look at Nimda and Code Red they're working on the hopes that you have your files located in C:\winnt\system32\...
Easy target. Pushover even. But NOT the largest target.
Your Linux scenario neglects a few things about priviledges needed to open up ports and the like. You also need to give that program execute priviledges and hope that (in your scenario) they are using the
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
and yet he still commands - BY FAR - the largest part of the desktop market as well as the most popular browser.
I'm betting he gets at least part of it, don't you think?
does not mean no longer used. It means it has had its usage peaked. Linux, not dead, still ging into new markets and aquiring new users.
Windows. this is interesting, it ets 'new users' but that means the same old users buying upgrades.
It is moving into new markets, but slowly because it is not designed well for low level usage.
I almost wnat to use the term 'undead'.
Unix is dying. No not a troll. There are fewer users every year, and not a lot of new markets, because in has already penetrated all markets.
Mostly being killed by Linux.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Again, I'd say it's not really innovative. I use mplayer myself, but none of those features are innovations among themselves, it emulates the functionality of other products under one product which is a really nice thing but not really innovative. Maybe I just have a narrower view of innovation than you do.
IBM can't; too much of it's critical core is covered by original agreements with Microsoft.
Umm. To my knowledge, windoze still does not have speach enabled UI or apps. OS/2 Warp 4 had it as part of the OS. The speech-enabled netscape was quite nice.
Ho-hum. Wake me up when we get Linux on Bill Gates. Should make a challenging port.
This article could be the show prep for another Larry King snooze session.
Once Palladium/DRM turns every Winbox into a lockbox with $msft/ holding all hkeys for media and applications, how many of these "journalists" are going to be playing softball with Brother Bill, especially when they find out they can't play their mp3s or mpegs without MSFT-managed MPAA/RIAA licenses any more?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
A head with his head stuck in the sand (or somewhere else...).
If Microsoft shareholders really knew what was going on this would be a major warning sign they are out of touch, and the same sort of plummet would occur.
Instead he should have said something like "We welcome all competition, as it helps form a healthy, competitive, monopoly-free market".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...for the moment. MS needs to stop worrying about innovation and concentrate on making a product that works better. Once they accomplish that, then start innovating again. Same can be said for cell phone companies. They come up with all these stupid and useless features like camera phones, but you still can't get a signal half the time. I bought a cell phone for making phone calls, not taking pictures. Sheeeze!
Right below the article there was a box titled "Related Advertising Links" with an ad for NT 4.0. You can get it for only $69.99!
Who am I to blow against the wind? -- Paul Simon
I use linux at work and for my servers, and I like it.
But really, windows is pushing new technologies more than linux.
Windows XP has USB 2.0, it has low-latency audio, it can play DVDs, it has translucent windows, built-in NAT, drag-and-drop CD recording, an MPEG-4 media player, it has an encrypted, compressed file system, they have fine-grained access controls, they have a common language runtime. They are pushing and developing modern programming languages so that we aren't all stuck programming in C. Some of this technology sucks, and most of it they didn't invent, but they are pushing new technology. (I also know that most of this stuff is available on linux, but it's also kind of a pain in the ass.)
You're implying Bill Gates actually wrote MS-DOS -- he didn't. He bought the short-sighted OS from someone else.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Although Gates makes some points but I think comparing OS/2 with Linux is comparing Apples vs. Oranges.
.5 to 2.5 (The fact that windows has more polished and released applications that are easier to find then linux so that is 1/2 of part 3)
3 Major reasons why Microsoft has dominated the PC market.
1. The fact that they started early and developed their OS for many different companies thus giving a non-vender lock in on hardware, like Apple or Amega.
2. At the time they sold their products at a fair price which was cheaper then most of the competition and was just about as good.
3. Because of 1 and 2. A large amount of software was written for their systems.
Now with these factors this is why OS/2 Lost.
1. OS/2 by IBM would threaten the clone market. Some clone people could see OS/2 Warp as a way for IBM to recollect on the clone market which they lost a while back.
2. OS/2 Warp was more expensive then Windows 95 at the time so peoples mindset was to try Windows 95 and if it really sucks that bad (like 3.1) then they will switch to OS/2 Warp. So after people started using Windows 95 they found it a lot better then 3.11 so they stayed with it.
3. So When OS/2 Warp went out they started late so people were use to running their DOS and were worried about loosing their older programs or have them run slower then before this may or may not be true but fear keeps people down. OS/2 Warp Failed on that. And developers were afraid to make new software for this platform because of 1 and 2 combined.
Now this why Linux linux has a lot better chance.
1. Linux is ultra portable and works on many different platforms including non PC systems. The fact that Linux is not owned by any one company it allows a felling of a non lock in with linux. It is a lot more liberating to know if I am using a Mac I can install Linux or if I am using a PC I can install Linux. So now I can choose my computer more on what the hardware as to offer me and not just sticking to 1 type of platform.
2. Upfront cost Linux is free or you can get a package for a lot less then Windows. There is little to none financial risk of running Linux. So you can try it out and if you like it you keep it if not then shell out some cash and put windows back on. But once Linux is on the system people will normally get hooked and keep it on either they like it better or to lazy to put something else on.
3. Linux with a huge selection of free developer tools it is easy and affordable for developers to write programs for this platform.
So here are the stats.
Windows V.S. OS/2 3 to 0
Windows V.S. Linux
Why Linux is better then windows and vice versa for OS/2 is not about which is a better product technically it is about risk of using the other product.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"GUI: Path to enlightenment or straight-jacket?"
Yes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You will enjoy the Mug Shotat the Inquirer of OS2/ MS
Help fight continental drift.
Wait. You mean *Gates* was sitting still for...
--- Ban humanity.
...is as bright as Bill says, why are he and Steve divesting a billion dollars in the past month?
Your knowledge is just wrong then.
I'm not sure about the native OS, but the latest Windows(R) definitely has some speech recognition in it. It snot bad. Though yule-log fence wear that it wood be better without it.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I seem to recall it was QDOS (from "Quick and Dirty Operating System" -- funny how MS added the "Disk" after the fact! Why...? ;-)
Although the rest of your comment is accurate, I wanted to point out that the number of bits the processor is capable of wasn't the problem. In fact, to the external world, the 8088 processor only handled 8 bits, although internally it processed data in 16 bit chunks. The important fact was the number of address lines. There were 20, but due to the way the system was implemented, the upper four were rendered unavailable. I think someone else pointed out that there were other 8088-based systems that had 900+KB of memory available.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Famous Last Words
Yeah. Totally missed that. Talk about a crappy website! Usually when you get to the end of an article, there are links to the next set of questions or something. There were so many other "garbage" boxes on the screen that I missed the other parts of the interview. Way to go USA Today, make me look like jerk! :-)
So it was a long interview. And some of the questions did sound like someone was actually talking to him, because they got interrupted.
So somebody with mod points mod my post down. In some crazy turn of events, it is @ +5. (still nothing interesting in the interview, just that Bill is just as smart as he ever was. You can read into that what you will.)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think Bill's interview is typical PR material; anyone from MS's marketing group could probably give the same interview. But what scares me, is that every time Microsoft "innovates", all they really do is make stuff that is incompatible with anything non-Microsoft (and sometimes their own products aren't compatible!)
That in mind, it seems more important to me to promote open standards than Linux itself. Of course I would love to see Linux have a respectable desktop market share for better OEM support. But what good is my Linux machine if I can't even surf the web because too many web pages are written only for IE? How much of a pain is it if I have to tell everyone to resend their MS Office documents in a format I can read (OOo won't always cut it)?
And now we're seeing some cases where the US and/or state governments' are officially blessing Microsoft's otherwise incompatible data formats---this should be criminal! Public information that is avaialable electronically (either through the web or some other means) should not dictate which software is used to view, edit, modify or interact with that data.
If you go to a "IE only" government website, you're effectively seeing a tax funded advertisement for Microsoft. Your taxes paid for the software purchase, for the staff to setup and maintain that system, and now you're effectively taxed again by being forced into purchasing some (very expensive) software. And people call open source communist?!
I think we need to put some effort into a strong "inform the masses" campaign. An easy first step is to write editorials to your local paper brining to light the dangers of proprietary data formats and vendor lock-in. I was thinking about pre-scripting a lot of these letters and posting them on my website for all to use/borrow/steal/whatever. These letters also need to be sent to government representatives.
The article should contain proposed solutions. As much as we love Linux and friends, we can't beat it down peoples' throats. Some other viable thoughts:
Finally, I think it's important to have some good, strong analogies or metaphores to illustrate the negative impact of the Microsoft monopoly (and their use of proprietray, non-compatible data formats). The most obvious analogy, to me, is as follows:
What if Ford Motor Co. owned all the roads in the U.S.? Surely they would design the roads such that only Ford vehicles worked on them. And furthermore, they would hide behind IP laws to make it illegal for anyone to make a car for their roads. What if Ford only offered one or two models of cars that actually worked on these roads? And those cars were their most expensive?
If the above scenario were true, public outrage would be rampant. Most people simply don't realize that this contrived situation is the case with Microsoft. Worse, people don't understand the implications of Microsoft literally owning your data.
Welcome to the United States of Microsoft, comrade.
BG For any project, if you look at communications costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that, software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project. And so the question is can that 3% [compensate], in terms of how quickly you get the system set up?
Well if you look at total cost of ownership -- factoring in all the communications, hardware, personnel, and software costs that putting a PC on someone's desk leads do -- Wintel is a very very bad solution to almost any problem.
Back in the mid-90s, the TCO of a Wintel PC to a business was something like $20k p.a. based on obvious clearly measurable costs, and ignoring hard to measure factors productivity lost to downtime etc. etc.
So yes, probably less than 3% of that is software licenses. But a lot of it is makework created by licensing that software.
Note that in many companies, driving down support costs will lose you business. IT is usually a cost center in most companies, so for IT managers being needed and being big equate to power within the organisation.
For any project, if you look at communications costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that, software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project
He's obviously never been involved with a project using Oracle. Or SAP. Or any large, vertical application priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Actually, what's MS SQL server priced at these days? There's no way that 3% figure is close to being an accurate average.
If the average business-class desktop runs about $900.00, and WinXP runs $99 per seat, that's 10% right there. To drive that $99 down to 3% of the install per seat, communications and people costs would have to run $2,400.00 PER INSTALL!
So what's that say about the TCO for WinXP?
It's a good thing that they don't consider GNU/Linux a threat. The moment they do is the moment we start having a hard fight.
Not that I would mind a hard fight, but there is a time and a place for it. GNU/Linux is crossing a threshold right now and is gaining serious momentum. It should be a allowed to do so some more before taking on the 8000 lbs Gorilla.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
IIS, IE, outlook and outlook excess get hacked because they are shitty. Borked beyond belief.
The windows architecture is fundamentally broken. Even Mundie says it can't be fixed. And they won't fix what they can. Why do my win2k/Xpee servers have outhouse excess? Why do I have to hack them to get rid of that program? Why was it such a design priority to allow web sites to do arbitrary things to my system?
You're 'turfing, dude.
Let's be serious - he's in denial.
A) Os/2 is still quite widely used in ATM's and banks and some other situations. It's apparently rock solid in some versions. B) Linux has lasted what, well over 10 years at this point? Wasn't 2001 its 10th birthday? we're going on 15 years of this wonderful and powerful OS being public and widely used. Sorry Bill, it's gonna be tough to kill this one. Unlike you and IBM, there is no joint contract situation here. C) I mean, lets be serious, Bill. I mean, let's be serious. I mean, let's use 'I mean, let's be serious' 20,000 times in one interview.
I got a +5, Troll
With more than 100,000 brains, arms, hearts and genitalia that can individually regenerate the original beast with a few e-mails. Linux can't die, no matter how much FUD and the like gets tossed out by people like Gates. It's similar to saying you can kill p2p. Whatever. Linux is here to stay.
Microsoft on the other hand...
"Mod me down if you want, but if Linux commands were a lot more like DOS (which I already know) I'd be running some sort of Linux on my PCs at home. Frankly, I haven't the time to try to remember all of the equivalent Linux commands for those I already know in DOS."
.bashrc file (or .bash_profile), and use it as if it were a DOS command, from then on!
.bash_profile -
You got modded up my friend, so at least part of your post must be quality. Unfortunately, I am deeply suspicious of this part. I find it hard to believe that anybody uses the DOS command line to do complicated things, for extended periods of time. Could you please explain what you do at home that involves DOS? Maybe I'm wrong.
I do know that if you have trouble remember Linux commands that have a rough DOS equivalent, and would like them to be the same as DOS, then all you have to do in bash at least is make yourself a set of shell aliases. All you have to do is figure out the command once, put an alias to it in your
Here's an example, you do not want to remember that 'ls' is the command to list the files in a directory. You would rather use the DOS command 'dir.' Add this line to your
alias dir='ls --color | more'
Simple huh? That is just one example. If you want one command to execute multiple commands, you must use a shell function instead of an alias. There is lots of documentation for this.
Bash also supports tabbed completion, shell history, pipes, and the commands pushd and popd, features I can think of off the top of my head that makes it a superior command line to DOS. There are lots of other shells available on Linux, too.
Though its other merits may be in dispute, I can say with complete confidence that the Linux command line is vastly better than anything DOS has to offer, and you just don't know what you are missing. If you really use the DOS command line frequently, you are already doing so much unnecessary work that your time would be better invested in learning the Linux command line.
Now, if you have a lot of custom batch files or something, I could see how you would be hesitant to go through the work of porting those.
Otherwise, I cringe to think of what your life must be like without tabbed completion, let alone any other feature I mentioned. Oh, no tabbed completion hurts...
Actually, *BSD and GNU/Linux are pretty near interchangeable at this point. I think Linux has better peripheral hardware support, but they're both near 100% on ethernet and SCSI, so it doesn't really matter for servers.
In user-space, I suspect *BSD and GNU+ are virtually identical, probaly more than half of the actual installed software on a GNU/Linux or *BSD server is the same.
Not that this is nessesarily a bad thing. Having a little redundancy is helpful. If any major bug shows up in the Linux or BSD kernels, we'll be glad to have a near-drop-in replacement!
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Dear Cabal,
There have been numerous OS's that didn't and don't require you to have "esoteric" knowledge to install software. Should we do a little run through?:
MacOS (The original), Amiga, Atari, OS/2 for instance, right up to the morder day with Mac OSX, Linux (there are many distros and applications that require nothing more than double cklicking) right up and including my Nokia phone running Symbian.
I read through all of the articles (there is a box to the right of the article with links to the rest of the topics with which he spoke), and found this gem from his talk about Longhorn (XP successor OS):
"If I said to somebody today how on your PC do you keep track of stocks, movies, music, restaurants, you can do it, but it's pretty painful, pretty manual. The system doesn't have this innate understanding of all the things you deal with in typical life. You go and get directions on the computer, you get this funny Web page, and you probably just print the thing out. The idea of storing that, having it when you're offline -- anyway a lot of these things are still pretty complex. So Longhorn is a change of the user interface to unify a lot of things that have been disparate[my emphasis]. But it's a huge project. It's a very ambitious piece of work." - Bill Gates
Aside from the 'funny web page' comment, which I found mildly humorous, his admission of what the next Windows OS will attempt was enlightening - if not frightening.
I find it particularly interesting that Microsoft is again intertwining new information technologies with the operating system itself. To me, it looks like a replay of the Web Browser fiasco (where Internet Explorer was tied closely to Windows to elbow out the competition).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The last thing that Mr G should want is people even knowing about Linux. To even have an interview to discuss it with a magazine with the widest readership in the nation is the last thing he should be doing. He's helped take it out of being a geeky operating system and into a few more people's homes.
I'm just wondering how long it will be before one of my distant relatives for whom I'm "the computer expert" will ask me about what Linux is.
Good idea, captain obvious!
:) Yes, that is a good idea, but people fear change. If only people were willing to work a little harder to learn how to install something without click-click-click-click (actually, using a graphical RPM/other pkg installer, this is how it sometimes is in a linux X session) and perform some other tasks with just a drop more work (read: not nec. difficulty) than we would have more Linux users around. It's unfortunate, really.
Just kidding
I got a +5, Troll
That VB crap is ironic, since one of the reasons Microsoft and IBM parted ways with OS/2 is because Microsoft didn't want to make OS/2 run on the 286. IBM insisted, because when work began on OS/2 that promise was made to their customers who had invested a lot of money in the 286.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Welcome to... GhandiCon! You can do anything at GhandiCon! The impossible is unknown at GhandiCon!
(with apologies to Zombo)
Tweet, tweet.
If mine own foggy memory serves... OS/2 was a collaboration between IBM and M$, I'm pretty sure I remember His Borgness talking it up big time at a convention in 1989, "OS/2 is THE future." Then Big Blue hit financial troubles, M$ pulled out of the project and nicked most of the code to form the basis of NT. Does this guy have no shame ?? Ahhh, I'm kidding myself, it was surgically removed shortly after they germinated him.
"Neither has Linux. It's had, what, 3 years of being slightly important so far? OS/2 had many more."
I'd put it at more like five years. Some of us have been using it for even longer than that. It might have had hobbyist roots, but once we started selling masquerading firewalls to people with dialup and early Cablemodem/DSL, inroads were made. Then, we started selling file servers, and then servers to replace Windows NT Server as a PDC, and so on, and so on...
This isn't to say that it was immediate, or that it was in chunks, but grassroots movements, which Linux started out as, don't jump out immediately. It is rare that I find anyone at all who hasn't at least heard of Linux. They may not know anything about it at all, but simply hearing the name has some recognition.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
OS2 is what windows should have been. In fact, for a time Microsoft was in partnership with IBM on the project until they decided to go their seperate ways - conspiracy theories aside.
Unfortunately, while OS2 was a more stable system and an all-around better implementation, Microsoft won the war of the desktop through pretty graphics and flashy advertising.
Before Linux came along I was considering Warp on my desktop; now I'm running Slackware and loving it.
The number one thing about Linux, that I think will keep it alive - and on alot more desktops than anyone really perceives is the fact that it can breath life into older machines, unlike Microsoft offerings which invariably use more memory and require more CPU cycles to run effectively.
Case in point: My network:
P120 with 3 hard drives - file server running Redhat.
P300 - Wife's desktop - running Slackware
P 1.4Ghz - My desktop - running Slackware
p500 - Daughter's desktop - running Redhat
p250 - Daughter's 2nd desktop - running Windows (until I can get soundcard working on her p500 - then it becomes part of my growing Beowulf cluster...muhahaha!).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Bill underestimates the open source community as whole. Mr. Gates asserts that the social intertia behind the open source movement does not have enough MONEY to mount a challange to Micro$oft. The problem is that the economic value of the open source community is found in leverage mindshare. The economic force behind open source and Linux is in the abillity and intelligence of it's contributors. This is the vision and reality of R. Stallman in drafting the GPL. Micro$oft will never match the intelligence and creativity of the open source community.
Number 2: Compare time-to-market performance for Linux versus Micro$oft over the past few years and the eveidence is clear that Linux design cycles easily out-performs the lumbering monolith of the Micro$oft development process. Whatever Micro$oft throws at the market will be copied or improved much faster in the open source community than Micro$oft's developers. They have already lost due to their cumbersome internal organizational structure.
"It's the CONTENT stupid!"
JP
That file is dated 1987, OS/2 1.0 joint code with Microsoft and IBM.
I don't know, but perhaps 1987 was the last time they really needed to write a 32-bit kernel loader. 1987 was probably the last time that anyone need to write a 32-bit loader (look in specific spot on disk, load a file, run it). Regardless, I'm suprised that the copyright didn't read "Regents of UC Berkeley" or something like that.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I agree that it's wrong to say that MS-DOS can't address non-continuous memory. It clearly can, otherwise why go to the trouble of creating all those memory holes in the top 384k?
However, you are wrong to state that MS-DOS didn't provide a memory allocator. It certainly did, otherwise how would it load programs? If you don't believe me, look up INT 21 AH=0x48, 0x49 and 0x4A.
-Graham
Who cares?
When I started using computers 20 years ago, if someone had come up with speech or high speed handwriting recognition, it would have been a winner.
People have moved on and use keyboards. Not only more reliable, but quicker, and you don't need to train every machine you use. You sit down and start typing.
There are undoubtedly uses for pen and speech, but I don't see it as a growth area. People who have things like pen based computer systems for companies (for say restaurants) have specialist hardware (that isn't as large as a tablet). Most people would be better off getting a Palm and some software and saving some money.
Speech is great for disabled people, and for some extreme uses, but that's about it.
If M$ ports Word to Linux, I'll buy it, regardless of price. It's just better than AbiWord. I try to avoid using MS products, unless they make a product that is simply better than it's competition. The only real example of this that I've seen is Word. Word is simply well done... although I'd cut out some of the idiot-proofing, if I had my druthers.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
OS/2 is just like Linux? Perhaps in functionality/reliability for apps that couldn't afford to freeze up like Windoze....
I do remember seeing the OS/2 boot up on a number of bank machines being rebooted by security guards when they refill and take away deposits.
Gates pointing out that the IBM army was behind OS/2 is a load of horse puckey.
The one big thing that made me regret my $200 purchase of Warp was the fact that it took 8 months to get a beta OS/2 Warp sound card driver from IBM for my "Options By IBM" branded Media Magic sound card.
A number of recent articles looking at OS/2 in retrospect made me think of the example given of problems with post-brain opreation epileptics. One hand is pulling the trousers up while the other is pulling them down.
We use lots of FreeBSD for servers and Linux for desktops. The support for both is phenomenol and the reliability far outweighs what M$ has to offer.
Unlike OS/2 whose beleagured IBM 1-800 numbers were the only means of support at the time, The free IX's are widely supported online and will be here to stay for the long while.
OSS forever!
I also have issues with someone who says a dos command shell is better than any unix shell (csh, ksh, bash, sh, etc...).
Now OS2 did have ReX - which may be what our friend is talking about - a neat scripting language built into OS2 (one of the reasons I was considering moving to it). However lack of such basic things as history and string replacement in a shell makes it tedious - regardless of how fast you can touch type.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
news at 11.
-pyrrho
"Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing thru competition just like OS/2"
Isn't that pretty much what he said about the Internet in the 1996 revision of The Road Ahead? (later edited out)
Yes, I don't think those thick glasses are sufficiently correcting his short-sightedness.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That is because of a monopoly that refuses to use standards. Has undocumented API's, proprietary document formats, propreitary protocols. They take a standard and "embrace and extend" it and push it out to their 90%+ desktop market and have just made a new standard that no one else can participate in. Do it the MS way or get lost. Sorry, I have morals and I believe that our society can do better and put human advancemnet before monitary gain. I boycott products and companies that I feel are unethical. There are many people that bitch and moan, yet they do not take action. I have been using Linux for about 5 years and exclusively for 2 1/2 years. When I switched exclusively to Linux, it was a little rocky. However, once I learned the OS and how to find help and help myself, there was not any single task I could not do.
Oh, and do you really think all the hardware support under ms windows has anything to do with ms windows? No. It is the hardware manufactuers that make all those drivers, not Microsoft. If you use Linux and some hardware is not supported, then complain to the manufactuer and use your money to get the support you need to make the choices you want. When I bought a digital camera, I found a manufactuer that uses a standard usb mass-storage and then supported them for making that decision with my money. The camera works perfectly under Linux. I have a ton of hardware for my systems at home. All the hardware works great with Linux becuase I did a little research before I purchased and then I support manufactuers for support Linux with my money and also by explicitly thanking them for supporting Linux and letting them know that the one of the main reasons I chose them was becuase of that Linux suppport.
There are too many lazy people out there that want to complain and yet take no action. If more people were to take action then support for Linux across the board would grow by leaps -n- bounds.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
That M$ had to bet on new technology. Not much of a bet when you hold all the cards and all the players by their balls (ie: in the form of expensive licenses). It's sort of hard to lose when everyone else loses their shirts if you pull out of the game. Yet I'm willing to wager a bet that M$ will start to look more and more like *Nix in the next 3-5 years.
-Cnik
Bush, with every speech, pushes the American people into further misery where he pretends to be the sole relief to that misery. He acts like we need him to fight terrorism when all he's really doing is creating endless fear. He uses this fear to justify everything and anything he does. How many times were we on high terror alert? How many times were we attacked? See my point?
Bush is a nationalist masquerading as a patriot. It is "un-american" to disagree even though, oddly enough, that is what founded this country. The first ammendment gaurantees us that right, yet we are made to fear exercising that right.
He is merely someone who presents the facts
I guess you're going to tell me that WMD were facts. I guess the CIA was wrong when they told the president that the evidence was not verified. I guess it wasn't a lie when the president told us he found WMD even though the "mobile weapons lab" he pointed to were really stations for filling up hot air balloons. The only thing that is undeniable now is that Bush is a liar and he can't say the word nuclear.
Of all the stuff they've released in multiple markets over the past two decades,
All of it has been bought, borrowed, or stolen EXCEPT Bob and Clippy. Show us something else they've done that actually demonstrates anything resembling innovation, and maybe we'll stop poking fun at Bob and Clippy.
In other words, we're not poking fun at Bob and Clippy because they were mistakes (MS has made plenty of other mistakes, i.e. the autoexecution features in outlook). So, saying that "mistakes were made with Linux or OS X [too]" is missing the point completely.
Now, I'll grant you that there isn't a whole lot of innovation in Linux either. But the flip side of that is that Linux advocates don't go around bragging about their "commitment to innovation" either.
roger that. I never worked on the 8088 based systems (cut my teeth on 386 and above)...
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: fsck u!
I love how this story follows the one about Dreamworks' Linux farm.
(There used to be something clever here.)
The richest man in the world and he has Melinda throw a cereal bowl on his head for haircuts.
I mean, Pro-Cuts occasionally has $4.95 haircuts and all so why the bowl Bill?
You sound like Delenn telling Sheridan to shut up and let Morden go so the Shadows wouldn't openly attack stuff.
:-)
Frankly I think this is more of a Drahk situation where we need to build a pair of bigarse destroyers to knock out the deathcloud before it rains thermonuclear Longhorns onto the planet that'll dig deep into our computers and destroy the world of computing.
All I can think to launch at the approaching death-cloud right now are Knoppix discs.
We need to neutralize the NTFS gunfire if we're to install a decent planetary defense against the first wave. Otherwise we need to get to get all the other projects to make a sort of flying wedge so KDE and Gnome can use their main guns.
But if we wait until the last minute we'll prolly be plagued with Windows for another half-decade.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
If the upper four bits of a 20-bit address are unavailable then you only have a 16-bit address. The 8088 did provide a full 20-bit address to the bus, otherwise it wouldn't have a one megabyte address space. IBM reserved the upper memory for video cards and IO. The processor had nothing to do with memory limitations, aside from a 20-bit address which was a very small jump up from 16-bits. Heck, the 68000 already had a 24-bit bus (Early 68000's may not have brought out all address lines, I can't recall for sure)
Uh, let's see... Apple? Apple's done this twice, once with the Newton's OS, and once with Mac OS X, which ships standard now with handwriting recognition. Microsoft didn't take any risks on this one, and they're sure not a trailblazer...
Ever new IBM Mainframe sold, even ones with the newly developed 390/G5 CMOS processor, comes with a laptop running OS/2 to provide system management functions.
accordingly,
Windows is a "pass up" monstrosity.
Netcraft confirms BSD is a "pass-ing" fad. Sorry...got carried away...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Furthermore, since MS-DOS didn't provide a memory allocator [...]
Uh, are you on crack?
Ever seen a virus for OS/2? Nope. Ever see a rootkit or other exploit for OS/2? Nope. True, market share was a lot less than Windows, but this doesn't mean that since it had a smaller userbase that it was any less secure.
No, but it means that it was a much less interesting target for hackers. There are dozens of operating systems that have never had a virus or root kit, just because nobody has ever been motivated to try hacking them. It also helps that OS/2 was on the decline as the Internet was becoming popular.
I realize it doesn't mean it was more secure, but since Windows and the Linux flavors are built off of common files (that is, common between the versions) this means that they are less secure.
I'm trying hard to find any logical statement in there and am failing badly. Software that maintains files between versions is less secure than software that is rewritten from scratch with each version? How does this apply to OS/2???
Future "daring" M$ gamble to be braged about by Gates:
And lastly, his image alone screams "risk taker".. I give this guy some mad props, I mean god knows I don't have the balls to cut my own hair with a weed whacker. Just look at him! I fear him man, that superbad "I risk my own life and limb on a weekly basis cutting my own hair with a headge trimmer just to *tempt* the reaper, just for the rush" look. You just *know* he's living life on the edge, eating rusty nails for breakfast, and whooping some major kung fu @ss in biker bars every night.
Gates, you not just *a* man, you *DA* man.
Beware blue cats moving at
....and he still wears a suit.
The day I have enough money in the bank to never work again is the day I burn my suit. Or at least I would if I had one. I saw a suit once. In a shop.
Now wash your hands.
"We bet on the NT technology base" -- Bill Gates
Wtf? New Technology Technology? Can't Bill get his own products straight?
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
...and it was part of the standard desktop package.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
For the record, the 8088 had an 8-bit bus, 16-bit registers, and 20-bits of address space. The 8088 is to the 8086 as the 80386SX was to the 80386DX, and few people claim that the 80386SX was a 16-bit chip, otherwise we'd be claiming that current consumer CPUs are anywhere from 64-bit to 512-bit.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Many ATM cash machines still use OS/2, although definitly not a majority these days.
& also many bank teller terminals too
Here's another:
If he announced that the sky was blue, that would be enough of a reason for me to head to the nearest window to see what colour it had changed to...You got modded up my friend, so at least part of your post must be quality. Unfortunately, I am deeply suspicious of this part. I find it hard to believe that anybody uses the DOS command line to do complicated things, for extended periods of time. Could you please explain what you do at home that involves DOS? Maybe I'm wrong.
Generally anything involving manipulation of files. Before working for IBM supporting OS/2, I'd never used an OS with a GUI, nor a mouse. For me, its second-nature to fart around in DOS.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
I'm trying hard to find any logical statement in there and am failing badly. Software that maintains files between versions is less secure than software that is rewritten from scratch with each version? How does this apply to OS/2???
Well, it may not directly relate to OS/2, but you're telling me that every flavor of Linux is written completely from scratch? So, they reinvent the wheel everytime? And this is the same with Windows? They don't use components from existing OS' and make the OS from scratch for every version?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
IIRC, MS was contracted by IBM to develop OS/2 in partnership. MS stalled while it went ahead and developed it's DOS environment to run Excel on something other than the Macintosh -> MS Windows was born. MS can't white-ant Linux in the same fashion. They have the weapon that IBM perfected in the seventies - FUD. They can also employ a wide range of client puppets to attack Linux on their behalf. SCO?, BSA, various Govts.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Well the really good thing I like with mplayer and xine is that they allow you to play any chapter on any DVD without having to go through the stupid menu system someone has designed to work with IR remotes.
Also mplayer/mencoder is a one-stop-shop for a lot of neat things: want to watch TV in a text console? you've got a choice of AAlib for the fun factor and of direct FB access if you don't like X. You want to record and encode this show in real time? there you go. You want to backup this DVD onto a CD? no problem.
Mplayer is a neat piece of software that brings nearly all multimedia under the one heading.
I can pull 637K WITH both CD and mouse drivers on my old 486! (OK, so it's got 16MB total RAM, but there's still only 640K conventional...) It's called using MemMaker for Windows performance (aka loading everything high). BTW, IBM had a machine that could go over 640 conventional: the PCjr could be hacked for 768KB conventional. What version of DOS did you have? What drivers were you loading? On my Win95 laptop, I would simply boot nothing (no drivers, not that it had a CD) to get roughly 625K.
But- what in the world gives you the idea that Microsoft is NOT fighting GNU/Linux at the absolute, flat-out, top limit of their considerable ability?
That's the amazing thing- they are running flat out even now, they are doing absolutely everything they can legal or illegal, public or private. Did you expect butterfly-colored ninjas? Be realistic, they are trying to lock down the means of production (i.e. duplication in New Zealand) even. If you can't see this I don't know how to get it across to you: they are fighting with everything they got. You're just confused because they backstab. Some of us have figured that part out already.
With all of the things he was mentioning (ink, speech, etc.), and saying that noone else has looked into that, I couldn't help but think of my home OS X system that does all that he mentioned and more. And betting on the gui? Puhlease.
what a sad, blind man. Linux is FREE!
640k quote replacment:
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
Linux is based on (even if it shares none of the code) Unix, which started 30+ years ago and never went away. Unix is not just an OS, it's a software development philosophy. Open source is another philosophy, and although it's tenets are independent from those of any particular piece of software/firmware, it makes a profound combination when applied to Unix. Sure, Linux may come and go (not likely) but you really want to bet safely, the Unix-like operating environment is not going anywhere.
...was a terminal emulations program that worked on the NCP based (actually they called it LLC2 protocol -- works over tokenring with netbeui) IBM 3270 mainframe...
I got to look at one of the machines that they were using at our local Wells Fargo, and it was running Windows 2000, and used a combination between an intranet web server and a tn3270 client for accessing accounts. It was also running Hummingbird Exceed (an X server), and allowed for regular web access. On the ATM machine, it was running OS/2, and they had some sort of IBM server in the back, but I didn't get to look at it closely. They did indeed have broadband at this branch, along with computers intended for public use for the online banking. While they are using old technology, I'd rather have it be stable than have it use the newest technologies or paridigm shifts--as one poster suggested--than have it blue screen while performing nightly backups or handling transactions.Well, it may not directly relate to OS/2, but you're telling me that every flavor of Linux is written completely from scratch? So, they reinvent the wheel everytime? And this is the same with Windows? They don't use components from existing OS' and make the OS from scratch for every version?
We are totally failing to communicate. New versions of OS/2 are based upon old versions of OS/2. New versions of Linux are based upon old versions of Linux. New versions of Windows are based upon old versions of Windows. New versions of PalmOS are based upon old versions of PalmOS. I don't know what this "proves" about security in OS/2 or Linux or Windows. I don't think it proves anything at all! I don't know why you brought up the issue of new versions being based upon old ones back in the top post. You said: since Windows and the Linux flavors are built off of common files (that is, common between the versions) this means that they are less secure. I still don't know what you meant.
except that his house is in Bellevue (or Medina to be more specific). I was there a few years ago when it was under construction (my teacher must have had connections!) and it was pretty impressive at the time.
MS-DOS 2.0 and above had a memory allocator. MS-DOS 1.0 didn't. It made writing TSR programs (particularly TSRs that did disk access) rather interesting.
As someone who was actually around for MS-DOS 1.0, it wasn't at all clear for 2-3 years that:
(a) The IBM PC would be a big seller, or that
(b) MS-DOS (as opposed to, say, CP/M 86, UCSD Pascal, or bare-metal programming) would be the winning programming environment.
The best-selling IBM PC word processor for the first couple of years had no OS at all - it ran on the bare metal.
From the USNEWS interview: "Q. Did you ever say, as has been widely circulated on the Internet, "640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody?"
BG: "No! That makes me so mad I can't believe it! Do you realize the pain..."
I don't know about you guys but that quote alone makes me want to keep propagating the legend true or not!
The point is that the way you determine how much RAM there is in the box is to use a BIOS call that returns the number of accessible paragraphs in the first contiguous bit of RAM. There's no way for it to tell you about some other large lump of RAM which lives up there beyond the address of the monochrome display, for example.
BILL GATES: There's no consideration of that at this point.
In user-space, I suspect *BSD and GNU+ are virtually identical, probaly more than half of the actual installed software on a GNU/Linux or *BSD server is the same.
No doubt. Isn't most of the software on proprietry Unixes GNU and BSD stuff.
As I said, it doesn't necessarily have to do with OS/2.
What I meant is, since Windows and Linux are built off of previous versions of their respective OS', they're pulling old code thats either already exploited & patched, or not yet exploited. I wasn't saying that Windows & Linux shared code between the two.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
How about:
"Linux is a movement by some of the people and for some of the people."
Linux is not for everyone; neither by intent nor by design nor by implementation.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
... or does anyone else think Bill sounded like the Iraqi Information Minister in that interview?
- No Tanks here, we are in complete control!
... [Insert decent Sig]
Maybe you were there, maybe you weren't, but your information is not factual.
1. How the hell would you write a TSR program for MS-DOS 1.0? The int 21 ah=0x31 call ("Terminate and Stay Resident") did not appear until MS-DOS 2.0. MS-DOS 1.0 didn't even have config.sys - there was no such thing as a TSR or anything even remotely similar to it.
It did, however, have a rudimentary memory allocator, in the sense that a running program could load another subprogram into the remaining available memory, and the system kept track of which memory was in use by which program. This is actually a CP/M feature ("chain to program").
The best-selling early IBM PC word processor was WordStar, which certainly ran under the OS. There was no major word processor that ran on the "bare metal." It was written in assembly language, but it functioned as an MS-DOS executable and used MS-DOS FCB calls to access the disk.
I do agree that it was not immediately clear that the IBM PC would dominate over the other systems at the time. The Apple II and TRS-80 were both cheaper, had more features, and were initially more popular than the PC.
-Graham
Yeah, I remember it's near his parent's house. Might've actually been Bellvue, I don't remember 100%. But it seems like I remember that the site was changed at some point.
My journal has hot
Code that has been exploited and fixed is now fixed. It is more, not less, likely to be secure than new code.
Yeah, he sounds a lot like Bush trying to explain why cutting taxes on the rich is really better for the poor, or where the WMDs went.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What if Ford Motor Co. owned all the roads in the U.S.? Surely they would design the roads such that only Ford vehicles worked on them. And furthermore, they would hide behind IP laws to make it illegal for anyone to make a car for their roads.
They did practically that--Ford, GM and other auto companies lobbied for the creation of the Interstate Highway System in 1957, but their chief competition was passenger trains, which were of course incompatible with highways.
My point was that something has to happen in the GNU world to keep Longhorn from being adopted on a massive scale.
;-) have to put the alternative together and launch it.
We (ie, everyone but me
It needs to be able to create a userspace on an NTFS partition for demo purposes.
It needs killer apps, ready to use.
It needs WINE, to keep people happyish during/after their conversion.
It sadly needs to default to an enhanced windows like interface.
It needs to hook users on being able to control things better than Windows is generally capable of (so Windows looks more and more crippled to them).
And it needs to be something that average people can migrate to more or less on their own.
Sounds vaguely like Knoppix, needs a bit more work though.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
He has never actually used anything but Windows for years.
All the Linux clames of innovation are impossable for Windows hence to Bill it must also be impossable for anyone else.
Reminds me of the Amiga days when everyone was behind the Amiga by 6 months to 2 years.
Now however Windows lags behind everyone by about 5 years.
Linux has to fight with systems designed from chip fab to OEM to run Windows and is reasonably successful. What do you think would happen if ONE company stopped making systems based on Windows requirements?
I give you MY pc. I assembled it using parts I got at one of those discount computer shows where you buy parts at a discount.
Video card: Won't work on windows 95 (I replaced it with a 3D card)
TV card (dose not like my 3D card but Linux has a workaround)
Scanner (SANE is the only drivers I can find for it)
two sound cards (confuses the hell out of Windows)
With some hacks Window sorta works a little bit.
Not that I care.
I don't actually exist.
RMS on Windows
Woz on Microsoft
Ford on Chevolet
(Insert big name company) on (insert major compediter)
I think of those Woz MIGHT be fair. Maybe... if he feels like it.
As a rule compediters trash each other. I'd just like to see a day when the industry realises Bill Gates isn't any more truthfull than any other CEO.
I don't actually exist.
he never mentioned he'd factor the prime numbers into prime numbers. 3 and 6 are factors of 18, even though they're not prime factors of 18.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
True enough, you win.
I commend you on this peice of work, it lightened up my day on my meta-mod dutys that I must forfil myself with (otherwise I will get bored and play chicken with cars).
I think you're forgetting that this was a paper with worldwide distribution. Oh wait, you did point that out. So.....paper with worldwide distribution puts out shoddily done article that makes it seem like they're kissing the pucker of the richest man in the world? No. No self-respecting media company would do something like this. We all know they spread unbiased truths to the betterment of society.
but obviously your reasoning skills are very limited
Never judge someone on one chance encounter and especially not after a comment over the internet. Based on one comment you're going to state the "obvious" that my reasoning skills are limited? Maybe your judgement skills need to be honed a bit more.