Good Point. He is also a computer scientist, and is therefore interested in new approaches to computng problems. Linux is hardly a new approach to anything (except for the development model), and therefore probably is of very little interest to Thompson.
I doubt Thompson has much operational experience with any recent commercial operating system, except for what's sitting on his desk. So take his opinion for what it is. However, he is probably familiar with other computer scientists working at Microsoft and their work. Which probably interests him more than a bunch of folks on the Internet rebuilding the wheel. --
Actually Win2K seems to have dropped all systems below a Pentium Pro from the HCL, except for some laptops. The beta runs OK on my P-133 112MB RAM, however.
As far as I can tell, many of the backwards-compatiblity issues have to do with tighter default security in Win2K - Normal users will no longer be able to write to certain registry keys and so on. This makes it hard for sloppy 9x applications.
The real reason Windows 2000 is late is the ActiveDirectory and IntelliMirror, and all the gee-whiz network management stuff they've been promising for years.
Still, Win2000 is probably a shoe-in on the desktop. --
The breakup of AT&T didn't cause peoples telephones to suddenly become incompatible with new versions of telephone service from competing companies. In fact, the hardware the consumer had to purchase was pretty damn cheap even if it had become incompatible (which it didn't).
Actually, for office phone systems (PBXs), it did. These systems are all horriblely proprietary and incompatible. Buy one and you're pretty much locked in. (Back in the AT+T days, I suspect there was only one to buy-er-lease.)
Is the Smart Reseller test the same that was published on ZDNet?
If so, the configs were hardly "out of the box" - the Linux box in the ZD test was heavily tuned by a member of the Samba team. Furthermore, ZD didn't publish this information, where at least Mindcraft admitted that they tuned the hell out of the NT box.
I was thinking about the "clone shop" price for pre-installed Windows 98, which is usually around $89. . During the Windows Refund thing, it came out that eMachines was getting Windows with no support for about $30.
Full version of RedHat with phone support is $80. --
Three OEMs for DOS was a historical anomaly. Microsoft essentally cloned/stole Digital Research CP/M code, so it wasn't that hard to turn CP/M-86 into a 99% compatible version of MS-DOS.
IBM and MS DOS were exactly the same until version 6.0, and then they only differed by the included tools.
Is Windows 98 $30-40 too expensive? I dunno, whatever you think of Windows itself, $100 is awful cheap for a full featured OS where you actually paid the programmers (unlike, say, RedHat). Now, $600 for MS Office - that's too expensive. --
A Web-based word processor may be a little far off (unless you count Word 2000 running as a OLE server inside of IE5!), but in-house corporate app development is moving to the web big time.
The real core of Windows-Everywhere inside of corporations is the ability to deploy client-server applications easily. Internal web applications kill the Microsoft propretary advantages of Access and VB.
In the short run, this probably helps Apple more than it helps Linux. They've already got all of the other desktop apps which you need to run 'native'. --
The previous two Quake games were some of the most popular in history. Ports to other platforms were inevitable, so I'm sure they saved money by simultaniously developing three versions.
Just understand that Quake is a special case. As any Mac gamer when they get a game that's not a sure-hit.
A similar analogy could be made for WordPerfect - it will do reasonably well on any platform they put it on. --
Certainly the Win16 -> Win32 transition cost corporations money, but much less money than a Windows -> Linux/OS2/MacOS transition would have cost. Don't forget that a Win16 line-of-business app from 1992 would run on all PC Windows platforms for the forseeable future.
The cost of a mixed Windows base is higher than a standardized desktop, but much lower than a mixed Unix/Macintosh/Windows/OS2 base.
[As for WinCE, I don't see that being supported by businesses at all (possibly in the future as a NC-type device). Win64 doesn't exist yet.]
Don't forget the most important "consumers" for the PC OS market are not home users, hobbyests, schools, unix fans, slashdot readers, and so on. The real consumers are the businesses who collectively made the decision that they want a "standard" desktop OS.
Even thought the average corporation is paying through the nose in technicians and licences for all of those Win 9x desktops, they probably wouldn't choose to go back, because the standardization is saving them money in the long run. (A different definition of "best product".) Would a fractured Windows cost them money? Absolutely.
Of course, now that these company's are seeeing some of their other favorite vendors getting squeezed by illegal monopolistic tactics from Microsoft, maybe there not so sure anymore about a monopoly desktop supplier.
But the fact remains that the most important customer base (corporations) intentionally chose to make Microsoft what they are - a desktop monopoly.
The company owns the mail equipment and your "work product" while you're sitting there, so your complaint wouldn't really stand up. Many companies do have a policy of randomly reading people's e-mail (especially contractors'). If you refused to work for every company that had this policy, work would be hard to come by.
Of course you could get Yahoo mail or something, but even those messages could be logged by a proxy server.
As a mail administrator, there's been a few times I've had to access mail files for administrative reasons. Management has needed access for legal or counter-espionoge reasons a few times too. I can tell you though, there's nothing more boring than people's personal e-mail. Aside from professional ethical considerations, reading personal e-mail is just about the biggest waste of time there is (especially when I could be reading/.!) --
On this stock NTS4 SP4 box the Run key is Everyone = Set Value, so mhm23x3's comment is probably correct for 80%+ of the NT boxes out there.
This is a prime example of Microsoft's one-size-fits-all engineering. The marketing impulse to allow users (or ActiveX controls) to install things that pop into your system tray (like AOL IM or Real) or nag you for registration has outweighed even the most obvious security considerations.
Certainly, this problem is easily fixed with Registry ACLs, but does the average NT Admin who has only read the glowing description of "C2 Security" in the MS manuals know that?
Previous propaganda on this issue mentioned two requirements which Linux apparently doesn't have - A SysRq key which puts the system in a secure mode (ctrl+alt+del on NT) and file and directory Access Control Lists.
But then on the other hand, you've say you've got C2-certified Slackware boxes, so what do I know! --
I get the idea that the MCSE's you worked with are pretty junior, and not represenative of most MS engineers.
I've worked on-and-off with NT since 1994 (shit - 5 years!), and generally the MS technical community is very cynical about Microsoft's business practices and marketing, and especially suspect of MS's technical claims or benchmarks. Many of the folks I've worked with have been through the Microsoft PR gristmill with Novell, OS/2, and various midrange systems, and have seen it all before.
While things like the Mindcraft study will impress the totally clueless PHBs and the Gee Whiz NT admins, no technical person with experience dealing with MS would give the thing a moments worth of thought. Even the ZD "PC Week" article essential was headlined "MS rigs benchmark".
Microsoft's user loyalty is a mile wide and an inch deep - don't forget that when dealing with MS Zombies. When the Unix/Linux tide starts rising, they'll follow right along. --
After some trial and error, you can turn off most of the autoformatting crap and get it back in Word 6.0 compatiblity mode. Once there, Word's actually an excellent word processor.
Me types: "To Do List:"
Clippy materalizes: "It looks like you are typing a letter. Do you want to launch the Letter Writing Wizard?" --
Seems like an invalid comparison to me. RedHat gets used as both a server and a workstation, and they are comparing to NT Server and Unix Server shipments only.
Assuming that Microsoft's not lying, you can be pretty sure that almost every NT Server or Workstation licence shipped has been deployed or is going to be deployed shortly. You can't make the same assumption with Redhat CDs shipped.
I know people who purchased RedHat 5.1 and 5.2, apparently counting as two shipments in that graph. And, many people are just dinking around with RedHat, and are by no means using it as their production OS.
On the other hand, there's the huge number of CheapBytes CDs, FTP downloads, and other Linux Distros, so maybe it all evens out. --
Slashdot Mirror
Good Point. He is also a computer scientist, and is therefore interested in new approaches to computng problems. Linux is hardly a new approach to anything (except for the development model), and therefore probably is of very little interest to Thompson.
I doubt Thompson has much operational experience with any recent commercial operating system, except for what's sitting on his desk. So take his opinion for what it is. However, he is probably familiar with other computer scientists working at Microsoft and their work. Which probably interests him more than a bunch of folks on the Internet rebuilding the wheel.
--
Actually Win2K seems to have dropped all systems below a Pentium Pro from the HCL, except for some laptops. The beta runs OK on my P-133 112MB RAM, however.
--
As far as I can tell, many of the backwards-compatiblity issues have to do with tighter default security in Win2K - Normal users will no longer be able to write to certain registry keys and so on. This makes it hard for sloppy 9x applications.
The real reason Windows 2000 is late is the ActiveDirectory and IntelliMirror, and all the gee-whiz network management stuff they've been promising for years.
Still, Win2000 is probably a shoe-in on the desktop.
--
The multiple brands of VCR _ARE_ produced by different companies. That does not mean that they are incompatible.
My understanding was that 80% of the VHS mechinisms are produced by Matstushia (sp?), and the VCR vendors only produce the UI and cases.
(Kind of like Intel chipsets and motherboards versus thousands of "computer companies" turning screws.)
--
The breakup of AT&T didn't cause peoples telephones to suddenly become incompatible with new versions of telephone service from competing companies. In fact, the hardware the consumer had to purchase was pretty damn cheap even if it had become incompatible (which it didn't).
Actually, for office phone systems (PBXs), it did. These systems are all horriblely proprietary and incompatible. Buy one and you're pretty much locked in. (Back in the AT+T days, I suspect there was only one to buy-er-lease.)
--
Is the Smart Reseller test the same that was published on ZDNet?
If so, the configs were hardly "out of the box" - the Linux box in the ZD test was heavily tuned by a member of the Samba team. Furthermore, ZD didn't publish this information, where at least Mindcraft admitted that they tuned the hell out of the NT box.
--
I was thinking about the "clone shop" price for pre-installed Windows 98, which is usually around $89. . During the Windows Refund thing, it came out that eMachines was getting Windows with no support for about $30.
Full version of RedHat with phone support is $80.
--
Three OEMs for DOS was a historical anomaly. Microsoft essentally cloned/stole Digital Research CP/M code, so it wasn't that hard to turn CP/M-86 into a 99% compatible version of MS-DOS.
IBM and MS DOS were exactly the same until version 6.0, and then they only differed by the included tools.
Is Windows 98 $30-40 too expensive? I dunno, whatever you think of Windows itself, $100 is awful cheap for a full featured OS where you actually paid the programmers (unlike, say, RedHat). Now, $600 for MS Office - that's too expensive.
--
A Web-based word processor may be a little far off (unless you count Word 2000 running as a OLE server inside of IE5!), but in-house corporate app development is moving to the web big time.
The real core of Windows-Everywhere inside of corporations is the ability to deploy client-server applications easily. Internal web applications kill the Microsoft propretary advantages of Access and VB.
In the short run, this probably helps Apple more than it helps Linux. They've already got all of the other desktop apps which you need to run 'native'.
--
The previous two Quake games were some of the most popular in history. Ports to other platforms were inevitable, so I'm sure they saved money by simultaniously developing three versions.
Just understand that Quake is a special case. As any Mac gamer when they get a game that's not a sure-hit.
A similar analogy could be made for WordPerfect - it will do reasonably well on any platform they put it on.
--
Certainly the Win16 -> Win32 transition cost corporations money, but much less money than a Windows -> Linux/OS2/MacOS transition would have cost. Don't forget that a Win16 line-of-business app from 1992 would run on all PC Windows platforms for the forseeable future.
The cost of a mixed Windows base is higher than a standardized desktop, but much lower than a mixed Unix/Macintosh/Windows/OS2 base.
[As for WinCE, I don't see that being supported by businesses at all (possibly in the future as a NC-type device). Win64 doesn't exist yet.]
--
Don't forget the most important "consumers" for the PC OS market are not home users, hobbyests, schools, unix fans, slashdot readers, and so on. The real consumers are the businesses who collectively made the decision that they want a "standard" desktop OS.
Even thought the average corporation is paying through the nose in technicians and licences for all of those Win 9x desktops, they probably wouldn't choose to go back, because the standardization is saving them money in the long run. (A different definition of "best product".) Would a fractured Windows cost them money? Absolutely.
Of course, now that these company's are seeeing some of their other favorite vendors getting squeezed by illegal monopolistic tactics from Microsoft, maybe there not so sure anymore about a monopoly desktop supplier.
But the fact remains that the most important customer base (corporations) intentionally chose to make Microsoft what they are - a desktop monopoly.
--
You are assuming that websites = pubic websites. Internal "Intranet" websites where you have a controlled client base can and do use CSS.
--
Yea, but even your 486 might have an ethernet card or PPP account or something.
--Posted by an Apple II on FidoNet.
--
The company owns the mail equipment and your "work product" while you're sitting there, so your complaint wouldn't really stand up. Many companies do have a policy of randomly reading people's e-mail (especially contractors'). If you refused to work for every company that had this policy, work would be hard to come by.
/.!)
Of course you could get Yahoo mail or something, but even those messages could be logged by a proxy server.
As a mail administrator, there's been a few times I've had to access mail files for administrative reasons. Management has needed access for legal or counter-espionoge reasons a few times too. I can tell you though, there's nothing more boring than people's personal e-mail. Aside from professional ethical considerations, reading personal e-mail is just about the biggest waste of time there is (especially when I could be reading
--
Actually bugging the recpetionist is probably a worse way to contact a company than using the website.
Better yet, get the name or direct line of the "Director of Engineering" or something and bug him-or-her.
--
On this stock NTS4 SP4 box the Run key is Everyone = Set Value, so mhm23x3's comment is probably correct for 80%+ of the NT boxes out there.
This is a prime example of Microsoft's one-size-fits-all engineering. The marketing impulse to allow users (or ActiveX controls) to install things that pop into your system tray (like AOL IM or Real) or nag you for registration has outweighed even the most obvious security considerations.
Certainly, this problem is easily fixed with Registry ACLs, but does the average NT Admin who has only read the glowing description of "C2 Security" in the MS manuals know that?
--
Previous propaganda on this issue mentioned two requirements which Linux apparently doesn't have - A SysRq key which puts the system in a secure mode (ctrl+alt+del on NT) and file and directory Access Control Lists.
But then on the other hand, you've say you've got C2-certified Slackware boxes, so what do I know!
--
I believe that "Windows Update" does exactly what you suggest.
--
I get the idea that the MCSE's you worked with are pretty junior, and not represenative of most MS engineers.
I've worked on-and-off with NT since 1994 (shit - 5 years!), and generally the MS technical community is very cynical about Microsoft's business practices and marketing, and especially suspect of MS's technical claims or benchmarks. Many of the folks I've worked with have been through the Microsoft PR gristmill with Novell, OS/2, and various midrange systems, and have seen it all before.
While things like the Mindcraft study will impress the totally clueless PHBs and the Gee Whiz NT admins, no technical person with experience dealing with MS would give the thing a moments worth of thought. Even the ZD "PC Week" article essential was headlined "MS rigs benchmark".
Microsoft's user loyalty is a mile wide and an inch deep - don't forget that when dealing with MS Zombies. When the Unix/Linux tide starts rising, they'll follow right along.
--
After some trial and error, you can turn off most of the autoformatting crap and get it back in Word 6.0 compatiblity mode. Once there, Word's actually an excellent word processor.
Me types: "To Do List:"
Clippy materalizes: "It looks like you are typing a letter. Do you want to launch the Letter Writing Wizard?"
--
Or was that a troll? If so, I bit.
--
Somehow I don't think people pay the 100% premium for SGI hardware to webserve and play quake.
--
Seems like an invalid comparison to me. RedHat gets used as both a server and a workstation, and they are comparing to NT Server and Unix Server shipments only.
Assuming that Microsoft's not lying, you can be pretty sure that almost every NT Server or Workstation licence shipped has been deployed or is going to be deployed shortly. You can't make the same assumption with Redhat CDs shipped.
I know people who purchased RedHat 5.1 and 5.2, apparently counting as two shipments in that graph. And, many people are just dinking around with RedHat, and are by no means using it as their production OS.
On the other hand, there's the huge number of CheapBytes CDs, FTP downloads, and other Linux Distros, so maybe it all evens out.
--
Maybe it does, but Mac SMP hardware is pretty damn obscure and expensive (9500/MP and Daystar Clones only as far as I know.).
Of that 1% running NT or Linux, how many actually have SMP machines?
--