I would estimate that only about 10% of Windows 3.1 machines ever had video acceleration enabled (even when they had a better card, the install hassles usually meant they were running the 'SVGA' driver).
So it's quite possible that unaccelerated X seemed no slower than unaccelerated 3.1 on the same machine, but really slow now that you've been spoiled with 6 years of accelerated Windows drivers. --
I imagine that works on Netscape/Mozilla for X too. 'Paste into Window' -- it's a feature that should be standard on Windows browsers as well.
The MacOS has a cool feature of allowing you to drag pieces of text around, so you could select the text and drag it to the address bar (at least you used to be able to - I don't have a Mac anymore). --
Did you even read my post -- I'm talking about custom pro *hardware* solutions like Avid and Digidesign, which is a big vertical for Apple. A rewrite to OS X will not be trivial for these folks.
As a friend of mine in audio said - "OS X makes $10,000 of equipment useless for me. I'm never going to upgrade."
Anyway, I don't disagree with your post at all. Only that you replied to the wrong person in some sort of misguided earnest. --
By, "iMac" version, I mean the version that will go out pre-installed as the primary OS for Apple core userbase of commandline agnostics. Apple and their customers absolutly do not want dependancies on shell scripts and the like.
My understanding is that the BSD utilities are a completely optional component in the installer. Unix is "in there" in that the APIs are required, but if it doesn't have the traditional Unix user interfaces except as part of an optional developer install, is it really "Unix"? --
Your post is dead on, I think -- Nowhere in the "Halloween Memos" did it indicate that the Microsoft PR machine would essentially troll Usenet and Slashdot for idelological arguments against Linux and the GPL. Sucks to think that some of you have been stoking Microsoft's machine.
Very very clever turning a community's divisions upon itself. But also of dubious real world use -- Face it - 99% of the use of Linux in business situations is for pragmatic, not ideological reasons. Trying to appeal to the philosopher inside of the IT manager is a stunt that's never been tried and probably won't be particularly successful. Arguments about "Freedom" might play on slashdot, but not in the boardroom.
I agree that *BSD is going to be used as the object example for Microsoft's next gen of portable, non-Windows-dependant software. However, not stuff like Office, but instead app servers and the other server-oriented middleware. There's also absolutely no need for "Microsoft BSD" -- remember that they only would be doing this to say "Look! We're Portable!" for certain pieces and wouldn't really want to detract from their core investment in NT.
And why BSD, besides the licening? I hate to sound like the troll, but when you look at numbers like Linux 20% versus BSD 1% for server shipments, at least from Microsoft's point of view it seems like a nice, safe, academic OS with little corporate adoption (or adoption only around the 'edges' such as routers and web servers) Meaning nobody would be too tempted to put their stuff into production Fortune 500 Corp. And if BSD use grows at the expense of Linux, hey, that ain't bad for Microsoft either.
Since nobody knows if the "iMac" version of OS X will even come with/bin/sh installed, it's a little premature to call them a "Unix vendor", at least by commonly accepted definitions of "Unix".
Don't forget, what's currently shipping is essentially a developer version, so it pays for Apple to talk up the Unix, the Java, the App framework and the other things that make developers happy. They'll chance course 180 degrees when it's time to market the thing to Mac users. --
Is emacs on the main OS CD or is it on the supplemental developer CD?
That's the usual way of bypassing the following bit in the GPL:
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. --
Another nitch market Apple sells into is the dedicated pro sound/video workstation market (Avid, Digidesign, etc). The vendors in this space like Macs because they have consistant hardware and they like MacOS because it's so feeble that it can easily be shoved out of the way by their custom hardware/software solutions.
So far, MacOS X has not got a very good reception in this market at all. Not only does it mean a total rewrite of their products, it also means they have to fight with a "real" OS, just like on NT. I would imagine that MacOS 9 will stay supported for a number of years because of this and other vertical market issues. --
Main reason was that it cost about a thousand dollars and was marketed as a special-purpose workstation OS. Which is exactly what Apple would have to charge today in order to cover their costs without the hardware business. Unrealistic.
Sorry, but MacOS X on Intel has "OS/2" or "BeOS" written all over it. Never going to happen -- There's only two ways to make it in the commodity OS market - have 90% marketshare or don't charge for your product.
Maybe a small group of john82-type hobbyists would pay for it (or would if the driver support was vastly expanded to cover 98% of PC mystery stuff). Most people will continue use the OS that came on their computer via MS OEM contract.
(Not to mention the technical issues of supporting the transition, not to mention the developer relation issues transitioning to both a new OS and a new platform, not to mention...) --
To agree with your point, Microsoft and Sybase split in 1993, long before MS-SQL was considered a very successful product. The original MS-SQL was for 16-bit OS/2, and both companies have sunk $millions into development in the 14 or so years since then.
And the arrangement wasn't entirely benificial to just Microsoft. Sybase has made a good business 'upsizing' MS-SQL databases, which was probably their plan to begin with. It's unfortunate that the big RDBMS vendors were unable to produce a very compelling NT product in the years it took Microsoft to get to SQL 7.0. --
I'd agree, and the Atari 800 had a pretty decent game library too (can't say for the C-64).
On the Atari 2600, for example, I'd estimate that 75% of the games are Space Invaders/Galaga-style shooters, varying in playability from excellent to awful. One of my favorites is Megamaina, where in a sorta surreal parody of the situation, you defend your planet by shooting invading hamburgers and toasters. --
The branding point is really critical because, face it, PostgreSQL has really lousy name.
In a largely agnostic development shop, it seemed as if everyone had at least heard of MySQL and had certainly heard of RedHat, but were stumbling over "Post-Gres.. Q L". These were technical people, engineers and project managers, so I can't imagine trying to sell a customer on this, even if it did save them $5K over MS-SQL.
"RedHat Database" (or "RHDB") might not be the greatest name either, but it's better than what they've got. (No offense to the Ingres, Post, and SQL people... Maybe change the name back to "Ingres" - some people remember it and it's easy to say) --
That only works if you have 3rd party vendor libraries installed.
I don't so running it gives me a message "There is no Windows 2000 compatible DVD decoder installed on this system.... A DVD drive alone is not sufficient." Looks like MMV. --
Re:Not entirely accurate
on
Net Cemetery
·
· Score: 2
Reel was one of the first Internet retailers for movies, and they were very well known, especially among DVD early adopters.
The funny thing is while other.coms were blowing millions in 1999 trying to overcome the "first mover advantage" of places like Reel and Amazon, Reel closed their doors, becoming one of the first big dot-com casualties. People (Investors) should have stood up and taken notice that if Reel couldn't make it, most of these other guys without name recognition or a customer base wouldn't either. --
1) Judging by what I see, most of the remaining Netscape 4 users on Windows/Mac have standardized on the mailer. Some large corporations purchased Netscape/iPlanet's mail/calendar servers and demand future support. That's when users asked for it.
It's a feature that obviously wasn't targetted at elite mutt users. But even so, isn't it the only free IMAP and SSL enabled GUI mail client on Unix? Don't look that gifthorse in the mouth.
2) Linux and other Unix users asked for the XUL platform by relentlessly flaming any particular widget decision. Since Netscape wanted to recruit open source programmers, they chose to be widget neutral instead of pissing off half the eligible coders by chosing an exising widget set (which didn't even exist in free production form at the time). --
Seriously, Windows can't really say that because there is no real "Windows community
Wanna know why there's no "Windows Community"? -- I live in the US, where most (but not all people) speak English. Even so, I notice there are very few clubs where people can hang out and talk about what a great language English is.
I also notice that there is no "HTML community". Is this because there's something wrong with HTML, or is just that common standards aren't worth forming a fanclub over?
However, anyone who thinks there aren't subcommunities in MS-space isn't looking hard enough. The local rags have adverts for Access programmer user groups, MS Office users, and so on. Not to mention a million small companies which do support and development for MS platforms and are usually completely loyal and perform their community service around the water cooler. And thousands of "partner" events and trainings and seminars that Microsoft puts on for these folks to network. Why hangout at a clubhouse when you can get paid good money for community activities?
Furthermore, the fact that there is a "Linux community" indicates that the OS does not have a mature user base. I can see valid communities forming around, say, Postgres or Perl. But the guys at the LUG are more interested in looking for like-minded pals than they are interested in discussing their configuration files. There ain't enough there there to form an authentic community around, and I think you could already find that the real Linux users aren't the guys down at the clubhouse. --
Microsoft has done this, sure. But so has every other company in the mapping business from Rand McNally on down to the guy selling "Maps to the Stars". Much like the Berkeley TCP/IP stack, that's what it's there for. --
I worked with OS/2 at a couple places, one on a token ring network. I can verify that OS/2 did not network out of box on any sort of network until "Warp 3 Client" which was released in 1995 or so.
What IBM pushed was SNA stuff to talk to the mainframes (included in OS/2 1.x EE, for example). --
Windows NT shipped with integrated networking and "internet ready" TCP/IP a year before OS/2 Warp shipped. It was also had the same price point as OS/2 and similar system requirements as OS/2, where DOS/Win was cheaper and ran on lower end machines.
IBM's biggest mistakes were not to subcontract code to Microsoft (the MS guys were the ones who figured out how to make a modern OS for the i286 CPU, for example). Instead their biggest mistakes were:
+ Shipping a "modern" 286-based OS in the first place when they could have beat everyone with a 32-bit, portable, i386 OS.
+ Selling a "power user" desktop system with NO integrated networking. It took numerous SKUs ($$$) and lots of futzing just to get an OS/2 box on a company network. TCP/IP for OS/2 2.x was $300 per machine, for example.
+ Refusing to market OS/2 as low-end server solution for fear it would cut into their profitable midrange stuff. NT kicked their butt in this segment.
+ Positioning OS/2 as a mainframe client when the world was going bonkers over other forms of client-server and mainframes were not selling.
+ Making it more stable than DOS/Win was good. However it never was *really* stable, nor did it have things like multi-user and file permissions, etc.
+ The "powerful" UI was powerfully disorganized and confusing until far too late.
Oh, why couldn't have the advocates glommed onto something reasonably nice - UnixWare for example - instead of OS/2.
No, it's not the keyboard. The misbegotten microsoft keyboard doesn't work any better than any other keyboard (so far as I can tell.)
I'd argue that that the keyboard makes a huge difference, athough I'd agree that the Microsoft ergo doesn't help the real problem one bit.
I find that if I'm typing on the average "smooshy" feeling keyboard that's almost universal now days for even a couple hours, I start to feel wrist tension. However, I can use a keyboard with positive key action almost indefinately without special pads or keyboard trays or unnatural postures.
If you have problems with your wrists, I highly recommend the IBM "clickity" Model M keyboard which shipped with AT and PS/2 systems, if only because it can be found fairly easily at flea markets and thrift stores or ebay for only a couple bucks. To minimize mouse usage, I'm currently using a "TrackPoint II" model, which is standard Model M with the thinkpad nipple on it. Also, learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible to keep your wrists in the same location. --
Well, Microsoft had ported their entire BackOffice suite (Exchange, SQL, etc) over to Alpha. There were also versions of IIS, VisualBasic (for DCOM), Netscape Enterprise, Oracle, Lotus Domino, and so on.
So, people made the (server) software, just that nobody bought it.
(My theory was that NT networks generally scale out across multiple boxes rather than up to larger boxes, meaning that few NT shops needed more than a 4-way Intel box, which was the only point the Alpha's started to get price competitive.)
We seriously considered Alpha/NT servers at one job I worked at back in 1995-6. It met our software checklist, but the DEC sales engineers couldn't even get their damn server to boot on two successive visits. Then the Pentium Pro shipped. Game Over. --
THREE years is far too short of a API transition period if you are catering ot the large (or "enterprise") market. It often takes three years for these guys just to develop and rollout a large client-server app, and having the "recommended" API change for no real good reason is just a pain in the ass and HUGE cost for these guys.
Microsoft needs to learn this if they want to play with the big boys (and they do). IBM supports APIs that are 10 or 20 or more years obsolete. --
Slashdot Mirror
I would estimate that only about 10% of Windows 3.1 machines ever had video acceleration enabled (even when they had a better card, the install hassles usually meant they were running the 'SVGA' driver).
So it's quite possible that unaccelerated X seemed no slower than unaccelerated 3.1 on the same machine, but really slow now that you've been spoiled with 6 years of accelerated Windows drivers.
--
I imagine that works on Netscape/Mozilla for X too. 'Paste into Window' -- it's a feature that should be standard on Windows browsers as well.
The MacOS has a cool feature of allowing you to drag pieces of text around, so you could select the text and drag it to the address bar (at least you used to be able to - I don't have a Mac anymore).
--
You don't need to remind me of anything. Call up Microsoft and make your case.
--
Did you even read my post -- I'm talking about custom pro *hardware* solutions like Avid and Digidesign, which is a big vertical for Apple. A rewrite to OS X will not be trivial for these folks.
As a friend of mine in audio said - "OS X makes $10,000 of equipment useless for me. I'm never going to upgrade."
Anyway, I don't disagree with your post at all. Only that you replied to the wrong person in some sort of misguided earnest.
--
By, "iMac" version, I mean the version that will go out pre-installed as the primary OS for Apple core userbase of commandline agnostics. Apple and their customers absolutly do not want dependancies on shell scripts and the like.
My understanding is that the BSD utilities are a completely optional component in the installer. Unix is "in there" in that the APIs are required, but if it doesn't have the traditional Unix user interfaces except as part of an optional developer install, is it really "Unix"?
--
Your post is dead on, I think -- Nowhere in the "Halloween Memos" did it indicate that the Microsoft PR machine would essentially troll Usenet and Slashdot for idelological arguments against Linux and the GPL. Sucks to think that some of you have been stoking Microsoft's machine.
Very very clever turning a community's divisions upon itself. But also of dubious real world use -- Face it - 99% of the use of Linux in business situations is for pragmatic, not ideological reasons. Trying to appeal to the philosopher inside of the IT manager is a stunt that's never been tried and probably won't be particularly successful. Arguments about "Freedom" might play on slashdot, but not in the boardroom.
I agree that *BSD is going to be used as the object example for Microsoft's next gen of portable, non-Windows-dependant software. However, not stuff like Office, but instead app servers and the other server-oriented middleware. There's also absolutely no need for "Microsoft BSD" -- remember that they only would be doing this to say "Look! We're Portable!" for certain pieces and wouldn't really want to detract from their core investment in NT.
And why BSD, besides the licening? I hate to sound like the troll, but when you look at numbers like Linux 20% versus BSD 1% for server shipments, at least from Microsoft's point of view it seems like a nice, safe, academic OS with little corporate adoption (or adoption only around the 'edges' such as routers and web servers) Meaning nobody would be too tempted to put their stuff into production Fortune 500 Corp. And if BSD use grows at the expense of Linux, hey, that ain't bad for Microsoft either.
--
Since nobody knows if the "iMac" version of OS X will even come with /bin/sh installed, it's a little premature to call them a "Unix vendor", at least by commonly accepted definitions of "Unix".
Don't forget, what's currently shipping is essentially a developer version, so it pays for Apple to talk up the Unix, the Java, the App framework and the other things that make developers happy. They'll chance course 180 degrees when it's time to market the thing to Mac users.
--
Is emacs on the main OS CD or is it on the supplemental developer CD?
That's the usual way of bypassing the following bit in the GPL:
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
--
Another nitch market Apple sells into is the dedicated pro sound/video workstation market (Avid, Digidesign, etc). The vendors in this space like Macs because they have consistant hardware and they like MacOS because it's so feeble that it can easily be shoved out of the way by their custom hardware/software solutions.
So far, MacOS X has not got a very good reception in this market at all. Not only does it mean a total rewrite of their products, it also means they have to fight with a "real" OS, just like on NT. I would imagine that MacOS 9 will stay supported for a number of years because of this and other vertical market issues.
--
Main reason was that it cost about a thousand dollars and was marketed as a special-purpose workstation OS. Which is exactly what Apple would have to charge today in order to cover their costs without the hardware business. Unrealistic.
Sorry, but MacOS X on Intel has "OS/2" or "BeOS" written all over it. Never going to happen -- There's only two ways to make it in the commodity OS market - have 90% marketshare or don't charge for your product.
Maybe a small group of john82-type hobbyists would pay for it (or would if the driver support was vastly expanded to cover 98% of PC mystery stuff). Most people will continue use the OS that came on their computer via MS OEM contract.
(Not to mention the technical issues of supporting the transition, not to mention the developer relation issues transitioning to both a new OS and a new platform, not to mention...)
--
To agree with your point, Microsoft and Sybase split in 1993, long before MS-SQL was considered a very successful product. The original MS-SQL was for 16-bit OS/2, and both companies have sunk $millions into development in the 14 or so years since then.
And the arrangement wasn't entirely benificial to just Microsoft. Sybase has made a good business 'upsizing' MS-SQL databases, which was probably their plan to begin with. It's unfortunate that the big RDBMS vendors were unable to produce a very compelling NT product in the years it took Microsoft to get to SQL 7.0.
--
I'd agree, and the Atari 800 had a pretty decent game library too (can't say for the C-64).
On the Atari 2600, for example, I'd estimate that 75% of the games are Space Invaders/Galaga-style shooters, varying in playability from excellent to awful. One of my favorites is Megamaina, where in a sorta surreal parody of the situation, you defend your planet by shooting invading hamburgers and toasters.
--
Hear Hear.
.. Q L". These were technical people, engineers and project managers, so I can't imagine trying to sell a customer on this, even if it did save them $5K over MS-SQL.
The branding point is really critical because, face it, PostgreSQL has really lousy name.
In a largely agnostic development shop, it seemed as if everyone had at least heard of MySQL and had certainly heard of RedHat, but were stumbling over "Post-Gres
"RedHat Database" (or "RHDB") might not be the greatest name either, but it's better than what they've got. (No offense to the Ingres, Post, and SQL people... Maybe change the name back to "Ingres" - some people remember it and it's easy to say)
--
That only works if you have 3rd party vendor libraries installed.
... A DVD drive alone is not sufficient." Looks like MMV.
I don't so running it gives me a message "There is no Windows 2000 compatible DVD decoder installed on this system.
--
Reel was one of the first Internet retailers for movies, and they were very well known, especially among DVD early adopters.
.coms were blowing millions in 1999 trying to overcome the "first mover advantage" of places like Reel and Amazon, Reel closed their doors, becoming one of the first big dot-com casualties. People (Investors) should have stood up and taken notice that if Reel couldn't make it, most of these other guys without name recognition or a customer base wouldn't either.
The funny thing is while other
--
Nope - you get it for free every day on Slashdot.
Guess you bots never thought your precious arguments would end up in a Microsoft EULA, did ya? Bill says keep up the good work-er-flamewars.
--
1) Judging by what I see, most of the remaining Netscape 4 users on Windows/Mac have standardized on the mailer. Some large corporations purchased Netscape/iPlanet's mail/calendar servers and demand future support. That's when users asked for it.
It's a feature that obviously wasn't targetted at elite mutt users. But even so, isn't it the only free IMAP and SSL enabled GUI mail client on Unix? Don't look that gifthorse in the mouth.
2) Linux and other Unix users asked for the XUL platform by relentlessly flaming any particular widget decision. Since Netscape wanted to recruit open source programmers, they chose to be widget neutral instead of pissing off half the eligible coders by chosing an exising widget set (which didn't even exist in free production form at the time).
--
Seriously, Windows can't really say that because there is no real "Windows community
Wanna know why there's no "Windows Community"? -- I live in the US, where most (but not all people) speak English. Even so, I notice there are very few clubs where people can hang out and talk about what a great language English is.
I also notice that there is no "HTML community". Is this because there's something wrong with HTML, or is just that common standards aren't worth forming a fanclub over?
However, anyone who thinks there aren't subcommunities in MS-space isn't looking hard enough. The local rags have adverts for Access programmer user groups, MS Office users, and so on. Not to mention a million small companies which do support and development for MS platforms and are usually completely loyal and perform their community service around the water cooler. And thousands of "partner" events and trainings and seminars that Microsoft puts on for these folks to network. Why hangout at a clubhouse when you can get paid good money for community activities?
Furthermore, the fact that there is a "Linux community" indicates that the OS does not have a mature user base. I can see valid communities forming around, say, Postgres or Perl. But the guys at the LUG are more interested in looking for like-minded pals than they are interested in discussing their configuration files. There ain't enough there there to form an authentic community around, and I think you could already find that the real Linux users aren't the guys down at the clubhouse.
--
Microsoft has done this, sure. But so has every other company in the mapping business from Rand McNally on down to the guy selling "Maps to the Stars". Much like the Berkeley TCP/IP stack, that's what it's there for.
--
I worked with OS/2 at a couple places, one on a token ring network. I can verify that OS/2 did not network out of box on any sort of network until "Warp 3 Client" which was released in 1995 or so.
What IBM pushed was SNA stuff to talk to the mainframes (included in OS/2 1.x EE, for example).
--
Windows NT shipped with integrated networking and "internet ready" TCP/IP a year before OS/2 Warp shipped. It was also had the same price point as OS/2 and similar system requirements as OS/2, where DOS/Win was cheaper and ran on lower end machines.
IBM's biggest mistakes were not to subcontract code to Microsoft (the MS guys were the ones who figured out how to make a modern OS for the i286 CPU, for example). Instead their biggest mistakes were:
+ Shipping a "modern" 286-based OS in the first place when they could have beat everyone with a 32-bit, portable, i386 OS.
+ Selling a "power user" desktop system with NO integrated networking. It took numerous SKUs ($$$) and lots of futzing just to get an OS/2 box on a company network. TCP/IP for OS/2 2.x was $300 per machine, for example.
+ Refusing to market OS/2 as low-end server solution for fear it would cut into their profitable midrange stuff. NT kicked their butt in this segment.
+ Positioning OS/2 as a mainframe client when the world was going bonkers over other forms of client-server and mainframes were not selling.
+ Making it more stable than DOS/Win was good. However it never was *really* stable, nor did it have things like multi-user and file permissions, etc.
+ The "powerful" UI was powerfully disorganized and confusing until far too late.
Oh, why couldn't have the advocates glommed onto something reasonably nice - UnixWare for example - instead of OS/2.
--
No, it's not the keyboard. The misbegotten microsoft keyboard doesn't work any better than any other keyboard (so far as I can tell.)
I'd argue that that the keyboard makes a huge difference, athough I'd agree that the Microsoft ergo doesn't help the real problem one bit.
I find that if I'm typing on the average "smooshy" feeling keyboard that's almost universal now days for even a couple hours, I start to feel wrist tension. However, I can use a keyboard with positive key action almost indefinately without special pads or keyboard trays or unnatural postures.
If you have problems with your wrists, I highly recommend the IBM "clickity" Model M keyboard which shipped with AT and PS/2 systems, if only because it can be found fairly easily at flea markets and thrift stores or ebay for only a couple bucks. To minimize mouse usage, I'm currently using a "TrackPoint II" model, which is standard Model M with the thinkpad nipple on it. Also, learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible to keep your wrists in the same location.
--
Nobody made NT on Alpha software
Well, Microsoft had ported their entire BackOffice suite (Exchange, SQL, etc) over to Alpha. There were also versions of IIS, VisualBasic (for DCOM), Netscape Enterprise, Oracle, Lotus Domino, and so on.
So, people made the (server) software, just that nobody bought it.
(My theory was that NT networks generally scale out across multiple boxes rather than up to larger boxes, meaning that few NT shops needed more than a 4-way Intel box, which was the only point the Alpha's started to get price competitive.)
We seriously considered Alpha/NT servers at one job I worked at back in 1995-6. It met our software checklist, but the DEC sales engineers couldn't even get their damn server to boot on two successive visits. Then the Pentium Pro shipped. Game Over.
--
THREE years is far too short of a API transition period if you are catering ot the large (or "enterprise") market. It often takes three years for these guys just to develop and rollout a large client-server app, and having the "recommended" API change for no real good reason is just a pain in the ass and HUGE cost for these guys.
Microsoft needs to learn this if they want to play with the big boys (and they do). IBM supports APIs that are 10 or 20 or more years obsolete.
--
This page:
http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/latin1.utf8
shows up fine in Mozilla for me. Maybe it's your font.
--