Microsoft Paternity Case Settled

Many readers have written to tell us that last week, a Judge dismissed the defamation law suit brought by Tim Paterson, who sold a computer operating system to Microsoft in 1980, against journalist and author Sir Harold Evans and his publisher Little Brown. The software became the basis of Microsoft's MS-DOS monopoly, and the basis of its dominance of the PC industry."

Comments

Article bias

[Schnoogs]

I love the cheap jab at the end as if to suggest that his failings were anything but a complete lack of business sense.

Re:Article bias

[cfoushee]

Its a good thing I my filter set to read all comments otherwise I wouldn't even see your guys funny and insightful comments regarding the bias of the article that will no doubt remain at a score less than 2. Remember folks that something can be bias even its "true". What most of us want from journalistic publications are the facts. Leave the pop shots to forms were people can debate their opinions.

Re:Article bias

[c6gunner]

Maybe you should stop hanging out with Marxists....

Markets, not quality, decide predominance

[athloi]

It's a sad but iron fact of life that market viability and not the quality of the end product defines what lives and what ends up with the Amiga and other good ideas in the storeroom of history. This doesn't mean I like it. In fact, I'd like to live in a society where superior engineering was accepted over superior marketing. Any ideas? Will move, if there's even dialup internet access.

Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance

[LWATCDR]

Sorry but not going to happen. It probably wouldn't be all that much better. What sells in the long run is what works. Windows for all it's warts does work for most people. Mac OS/X is selling because it works better for some people and Linux is gaining ground because it works for others.
If technical excellence was the only benchmark then Linux would also be in trouble. It is good but even Linux which I do like and use has it's warts. The difference is people are are free to fix the worst of them.

Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, economics have something to do with marketing every now and then. We need to figure out the best technology at the best price. That sometimes results in inferior but cheaper technology taking root. I, for one, am glad that people other than the four richest kings of Europe own computers.

Great pain and mental anguish

[Wiseman1024]

Anybody starting a trial because something gave him "great pain and mental anguish" needs to be beaten. Hardly.

Meh. Why is America so ridiculously obsessed with trials, laws, and all that crap they love such as patents or imaginary property, to the point of turning so-called justice into an industry of fat, vicious thugs who make up anything to sue for a living, exploit ludicrous legal loopholes, or live on patents? They have degraded and degenerated the concept of "justice" to the point I can no longer speak out loud the word "justice" without feeling I have to wash my mouth. I'm glad I'm not American, and I'll avoid setting a foot on it, lest I get sued for making a bad face to a pickpocket, causing him great mental injury. At this rate, America's so-called justice system will be worse than third world dictatorships', if it already isn't.

Re:Great pain and mental anguish

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen to Metallica at all? Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich cane to this conclusion in 1988. At the time I thought the album was a bit of a sellout compared to Master Of Puppets or Kill 'em All, but in retrospect it still had the edge compared to the albums that followed.

And Justice for All

God, I feel old when I realise I just waxed nostalgic about ...And Justice for All. Anyway. Metallica had it right. Justice is meaningless. One need only look as far as the illegality of marijuana and the fiscal reasons for it. Makes one want to puke.

You really need to hear the song to get a the sense of disgust and anger that James, Kirk and Lars pound out.

Re:Great pain and mental anguish

[Myopic]

-1, Troll

Come on, mods.

Re:Great pain and mental anguish

[jschrod]

Aristocrats -- you mean, like, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Stanford, Carnegie, Ford, Flagler, and all the other robber barons? Or do you mean their modern equivalent -- the Bush family estate, Kennedies, the persons who control Haliburton?

They might not have "von" or "de" or other aristocratic parts in their name, but they are aristocrats for all that matters. Remember the duck test: When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

Re:Credit where none should be assigned.

[hardburn]

Yup. No driver real model, passes everything important off to the BIOS (and ignores everything important that it can't), can't multitask on its own, a memory limitation that seems very obvious in retrospect, no sensible pipes, and a file system that's constantly losing track of its own mind. But apparently, someone wants credit for it.

Re:"Dos"...

[jmyers]

In this case Darth Bill killed off all the younglings and there is no son to challenge the father.

Drama

[dgun]

But then Kildall was motivated by technical excellence, not by the need to dominate his fellow man

I'm a fan of Gary Kildall's, but was the last part of that statement even necessary?

Why interject commentary in an otherwise fairly objective and good article?

Re:Thrown Out

[misleb]

What they lost in copyright, they regained with frivolous and overreaching patents.

Personally, I think the whole idea of "intellectual property" is absurd from the start. Owning an idea? Ridiculous. It is my humble prediction that so called "intellectual property" will one day be the downfall of capitalism as we know it. Or rather, it will make capitalism obsolete.

-matthew