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Linux in a World Where Windows 3.0 Never Happened
covertbadger writes "Larry Osterman said farewell yesterday to David Weise, the developer he credits with getting applications to run in protected mode on Windows 3.0, which led directly to Microsoft choosing to push Windows instead of OS/2. Today he speculates on what the IT world would be like if Weise had never completed this work. Windows 95 would never have existed, OS/2 would be the de facto standard, and IBM would never have put weight behind Linux because it had its own operating system to push."
"What if?" can be fun, especially when you apply it to wars. What if Hitler had never invaded Russia? What if he had invaded Britian earlier in the war?
What if Germany had been able to continue fighting for another 3-6 months?
Significance? Although the atomic bomb was used against Japan, it was developed in response to the threat of the *Germans* developing one themselves.
It was completed 2 months after Germany surrendered, and used against Japan approx. 1 month after that.
Although we now know that Germany was nowhere near building a true atomic bomb during WWII, this was not known at the time.
Well, bearing in mind that the atomic bomb was used against Japan, who- whatever else happened- were never a likely risk when it came to atomic weapons, I find it hard to believe that they would not have used them against Germany to bring the war to a swift conclusion.
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Without having to worry about Britain and the rest of western Europe, Hitler may well have been able to anniliate the Sovet Union. The American push for war would only have been able to come from Africa -- which lacked, among other things, sufficient industrialized and geographic proximity to the fight, to make it an effective place for America to base its entire effort. Although I don't think Hitler would have ultimately won, it could have been a much longer and more painful process.
Still, even during 1941, Hitler lacked a sufficiently large number of troop transports to even consider an invasion of Britain, so even without the amazingly stupid invasion of the Soviet Union, it's unclear how soon Germany would have been able to invade. With lend-lease, for all we know, Britain could have held out as late as 1944 or longer.
That's the point of alternative histories I suppose: to make it easy to nitpick at other alternate histories.
Or if he had done the exact opposite, going east beore finishing Europe. In 1941 he wasted a few critical divisions and a few critical weeks by invading Yugoslavia before attacking the USSR. If he had left Yugoslavia alone and invaded the USSR one month earlier, maybe he wouldn't have been stalled on the outskirts of Moscow in december 1941. Or if he had concentrated on one soviet target at a time, instead of dividing his armies trying to take Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad at the same time.
"What if Hitler had never invaded Russia? What if he had invaded Britian earlier in the war?"
What if he had just been accepted to art school in Vienna? Now try and figure out how the last 2/3 of the 20th century would've gone.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I posted another comment explaining that I was NOT comparing Hitler to Bush. What amazes me time after time, in spite of having been caught by the same effect time after time, is how people are so eager to jump to conclusions. I nowhere said Bush was another Hitler, I said Bush has the same closed mind as the Nazis and other dictatorships.
What is it with people who jump so fast and so often? Is it the same jumpers each time, or is it the same random effect that leads us to believe that so many drivers are idiots, when we see just one or two during the morning commute, out of the tens of thousands of cars we pass? Is it because only the bozos stand out, and everyone is a bozo once in a while, or is it just a few bozos who jump over and over again?
Whatever it is, it is sure interesting reading comments from the rabid ones who think Bush is a saint and assumed I was comparing him to Hitler. They must have be extremely arrogant to think Bush is anywhere near that important, and extremely insecure to read that comparison into what I wrote.
And yes, this post is off-topic. Guess how much I care.
Infuriate left and right