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Quite a few of the "toy" computers that were around when the IBM PC appeared were quite a bit more powerful.
I would be interested in references for this... I had always understood the IBM PC was the first i8088 system under US$5K, and that the i8086 was too expensive. Are you thinking the Motorola parts, were they really more powerful? Or were the systems themselves better balanced?
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The original IBM PC was a slow, lame piece of shit
Comparing to what?
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no matter what OS you used
But the CP/M-86 is said to have been better... and the UCSD p-system was portable, what would have commoditised hardware even more.
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we mostly have Intel to thank, not IBM
Perhaps you are right, but I tend to think had IBM choosen Motorola instead we'd have saner systems without so much dirty-and-cheapo'ness. OTOH it was IBM that validated the i808[68] for general computing, out of the hobbist millieu, so I think it gets the credit.
Is it really free? AFAIK it's proprietary to SGI, never was top performance, and is being obsoleted at that. Perhaps there is some hidden wisdom to the choice, but hidden indeed at least from me. I could understand better an ARM, POWER or SPARC clone.
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Even with the amount prices on SCSI especially have dropped, it is still nowhere near as cheap as IDE
It doesn't have to be. Even the smaller SCSI drives are bigger than one could wish for. I see it as a trade off between size and reliability, and reliability wins every time.
But I don't mean everyone should always pay the price for quality; I mean it is sad we are in a cheapo culture, and I bashed MS for having contributed to it.
I see two sides to it: one, MS helped lower expectations. Second, MS bloat makes us keep needing more and more instead of better and better. As I see it, were we running open systems, we could accept last year hardware speed, get next year system performance, and mostly important, we could even get workstation quality and reliability. Balance is the key to performance, not speed.
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If you can't argue without resorting to childish insults
Actually I am trying to argue, but you kept throwing preconceptions without any historical basis. So I tried something more lighthearted... if you took offense, your problem, not mine.
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I never claimed that Windows reduced the street price of Altair by 25%
So what? You still attribute everything to MS Windows, in total defiance of History. It is like 1984 or USSR, where someone rewrote the past...
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I wasn't arguing anything else.
Yes, you were arguing MS did it all. Can you see the difference between doing something and capitalising on it? Digital Research did it with x86, IBM made it happen with the PC, MS capitalised on it.
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Microsoft was one of the major factors in commoditizing PC hardware
As someone else argued in this thread, MS did nothing the like. IBM created the open PC, DR created the OS... forgot MS-DOS was a CP/M-86 clone? Microsoft only did to PC-DOS what DR had been doing to its own CP/M, to wit selling it to everyone and your father. It didn't create the OS, didn't create the business model (DR), didn't gave it respectability or volume (IBM).
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just as soon as I can get my USB scanner to work
Let me guess, you can't see how MS is part of the problem, right? So let me explain...
First, by dumping open system for proprietary ones, MS drastically reduced availability, portability and quality of programs, so that we have less useable, more expensive, less capable programs. Granted, the proprietary Unix vendors are almost as guilty, so GNU has to catch up now.
Second, by making use of NDAs and general secrecy all around in a monopolised market, MS Windows gets all the drivers. Were there competition, we'd have the drivers for most OSs, or better yet the necessary information to create them.
Third, by fostering a cheapo culture, MS helped validating this kind of crap a USB scanner is. USB was never meant to drive scanners; SCSI and FireWire are. Buy crap, live with it, it's simple as that.
The title says it all. Any real info about what's the architecture (as in, is it x86, MIPS, SPARC, POWER, E2K?...), and how will it be marketed (clones vs proprietary, embedded vs general purpose, etc)?
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it's pretty damn ironic that the PRC would be the source of the world's only free (as in freedom) microprocessor architecture
Actually, not. The LEO's a SPARC clone for quite some time now, and OTOH I haven't seen a word yet on the freedom relative to the Dragon.
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the chip is RISC-based (no word on which subset of the RISC family, though), and thus binary-incompatible with x86
Not necessarily so. The Alpha could run x86 binaries, and at the time at equivalent speeds even if the OS was biased to the x86. And word is that the chip has a RISC core, as has the x86 since i80486 times... havn't seen no word yet on if it'll actually be RISC (as in interface).
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All of those were niche markets for hobby users.
Not only. Quite some people were seriously using VisiCalc and automating their routines with BASIC on CP/M before the IBM PC came around to give the whole thing business respectability and some additional horsepower.
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To argue anything else about them is dumb.
If you equate having more than 30 years, and having a memory at that, to being dumb...
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If we're talking hardware, that would be Compaq and all the other clone makers.
You sure have no historical and business perspective. The clone makers were already there with the CP/M, the i8080 and the Zylog z80. But it was the IBM PC that created the first big-time cloning opportunity. It was IBM's decision to create an "open" machine; MS only capitalised on it better, earlier and more ruthlessly than Digital Research.
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It was Windows that created that synergy between incresingly cheap hardware
Yes, sir. Typical MS weenie confusion of ideas, thinking there was no PC before MS Windows. Quite hopeless usually, but let's try...
Seriously, hardware did get cheaper before MS Windows. It even did get cheaper before MS DOS. BTW, it getting cheaper was the reason the i8080 and CP/M even did get created, as Unix and the PDP also did. Not even that, CP/M, Sinclair and the TRS-80 machines, not to mention the Commodores, were even cheaper than the IBM PC clones. Even the Apple Macintosh was cheaper than the original IBM PCs and PS/2s...
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and demand for a graphic OS. Unless you are still using Warp?
Let's say, Mac OS, Amiga OS, IBM OS/2, Unix... I fail to see how the graphics are relevant, though.
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Spare me the party line
What if it's relevant? One argues for, another against, what's the problem exactly? After all, these guys were actually convicted... are you in Plato's cave yet?
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Millions of people disagree with you.
I know quite a few people who are frustrated with their systems. MS Windows do work, but at enormous human cost in terms of stress, unaccounted work hours... making the user the sysadmin is no answer to the sysadmin cost problem, but it effectively hides it.
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Many/.ers are blissfully unaware that they can buy $400 "boxen" thanks to Microsoft.
Many MS lovers are quite unaware of History. Wait, make that most US people totally ignore History.
The fact is that there was cheap computing before Microsoft. Several flavors of it, at that: CP/M which MS cloned, Sinclair, TRS-80... each had a thriving market with several vendors, and the CP/M had quite a MS-like effect of commoditising hardware.
What IBM, not MS, did with the PC was to create a middle ground between toy microcomputers and midrange computers that was powerful enough to run real numbers in it, and respectable enough to be bought for office usage.
One can argue that, were MS honest, it would have persisted in migrating its MS-DOS users to Xenix, and we'd have better quality systems today, perhaps even faster, perhaps even cheaper, perhaps simply more reliable. Even without MS being honest, the Unix vendors could have made it had they stopped trying to pull proprietary lock-in on their customers. There is no reason to believe that MS alone gave us commodity systems.
Not to mention cheap boxes are usually trash. I'd rather have a FireWire, SCSI, USB, PostScript system than a USB, IDE, PS/2, PCL system anytime...
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Pre-EGCS-fork versions of the GCC manual would encourage coders to not worry about ANSI or ISO C standards, but rather to use as many GNU extensions as they wished, because "it's trivial to simply install GCC."
If one doesn't know enough to care about standards, than I agree it's good advice...;-)
Are you aware of any background moves by the major players in this farce that could bring a speedy resolution? Or, do you have any hopes for a speedy resolution?
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it's better for GNU/Linux (never know if rms is watching;) to comply to the older POSIX
Funny thing you mention them in the same breath, since RMS was behing the original/usr/group that gave birth to POSIX.
Given that his world view isn't Linux-centric, I guess he'd be behind POSIX even today, as compliance would make eventual port to the Hurd easier in some measure; OTOH, many of the LSB extensions are actually the officialisation of GNU extensions in glibc and other GNU tools, so they don't hurt so much these days that software get ported from GNU to proprietary Unix instead of the other way round.
All things considered, standards should go together; extensions aren't bad if they bring benefits and are easily flaggable, but simple violations are evil if they can just creep in without bringing benefits nor being easily spotted.
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Since when is it bad to give your own company "preference", and who are they to say it is "undue"?
You have to learn some History... the current incumbents are the successors to Ma'Bell, who was find guilty of illegal competitive practices. The penalty was the breakup, and with it a whole set of rules to ensure this would not repeat, and in some measure to revert the advantages gained thru illegal acts.
Not only that, telephone service is a government concession, so companies exploring it have to obey government regulations that seek competition and citizen's benefits.
Given that, one can still question the wisdom of this particular decision.
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the only FSF response to SCO has been a subtle Linux should really be called "GNU/Linux" diatribe
No, it was a quite clear position. And you have to take into account that it is too soon for the FSF to gear into action; SCO first must clarify its claims, and it has already stated it isn't in a hurry, its goal being to FUD people into paying UnixWare licenses. Furthermore, if the FSF would step into the scene as a Linux copyright holder, there would be a big backslash by FSF haters involved in the kernel works, like Larry McVoy and his sympathisers. So the FSF has to tread carefully here.
You have to remember that the FSF already has your Accountability Project in place for several years: its copyrights assignment requirement policy. Linus has more than once clearly stated his refusal to follow this line, he thinks he's covered enough. But several years ago the FSF had clearly stated the dangers of such a policy as Linus follows.
In the end, it may be in the FSF best interest to avoid the Linux fight at all and concentrate into getting the Hurd done, as it is completly free from such worries and is even more free (no binary modules or firmware) than Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be interested in references for this... I had always understood the IBM PC was the first i8088 system under US$5K, and that the i8086 was too expensive. Are you thinking the Motorola parts, were they really more powerful? Or were the systems themselves better balanced?
Comparing to what?
But the CP/M-86 is said to have been better... and the UCSD p-system was portable, what would have commoditised hardware even more.
Perhaps you are right, but I tend to think had IBM choosen Motorola instead we'd have saner systems without so much dirty-and-cheapo'ness. OTOH it was IBM that validated the i808[68] for general computing, out of the hobbist millieu, so I think it gets the credit.
Couldn't find it.
Is it really free? AFAIK it's proprietary to SGI, never was top performance, and is being obsoleted at that. Perhaps there is some hidden wisdom to the choice, but hidden indeed at least from me. I could understand better an ARM, POWER or SPARC clone.
Most, not all. And you've miss'd the tongue-in-cheek.
It doesn't have to be. Even the smaller SCSI drives are bigger than one could wish for. I see it as a trade off between size and reliability, and reliability wins every time.
But I don't mean everyone should always pay the price for quality; I mean it is sad we are in a cheapo culture, and I bashed MS for having contributed to it.
I see two sides to it: one, MS helped lower expectations. Second, MS bloat makes us keep needing more and more instead of better and better. As I see it, were we running open systems, we could accept last year hardware speed, get next year system performance, and mostly important, we could even get workstation quality and reliability. Balance is the key to performance, not speed.
I believe you, and I really mean it was a nice try. The problem is in my end, I can't bring myself to dig the archives you've pointed me to.
Actually I am trying to argue, but you kept throwing preconceptions without any historical basis. So I tried something more lighthearted... if you took offense, your problem, not mine.
So what? You still attribute everything to MS Windows, in total defiance of History. It is like 1984 or USSR, where someone rewrote the past...
Yes, you were arguing MS did it all. Can you see the difference between doing something and capitalising on it? Digital Research did it with x86, IBM made it happen with the PC, MS capitalised on it.
As someone else argued in this thread, MS did nothing the like. IBM created the open PC, DR created the OS... forgot MS-DOS was a CP/M-86 clone? Microsoft only did to PC-DOS what DR had been doing to its own CP/M, to wit selling it to everyone and your father. It didn't create the OS, didn't create the business model (DR), didn't gave it respectability or volume (IBM).
Let me guess, you can't see how MS is part of the problem, right? So let me explain...
First, by dumping open system for proprietary ones, MS drastically reduced availability, portability and quality of programs, so that we have less useable, more expensive, less capable programs. Granted, the proprietary Unix vendors are almost as guilty, so GNU has to catch up now.
Second, by making use of NDAs and general secrecy all around in a monopolised market, MS Windows gets all the drivers. Were there competition, we'd have the drivers for most OSs, or better yet the necessary information to create them.
Third, by fostering a cheapo culture, MS helped validating this kind of crap a USB scanner is. USB was never meant to drive scanners; SCSI and FireWire are. Buy crap, live with it, it's simple as that.
The title says it all. Any real info about what's the architecture (as in, is it x86, MIPS, SPARC, POWER, E2K?...), and how will it be marketed (clones vs proprietary, embedded vs general purpose, etc)?
Actually, not. The LEO's a SPARC clone for quite some time now, and OTOH I haven't seen a word yet on the freedom relative to the Dragon.
Not necessarily so. The Alpha could run x86 binaries, and at the time at equivalent speeds even if the OS was biased to the x86. And word is that the chip has a RISC core, as has the x86 since i80486 times... havn't seen no word yet on if it'll actually be RISC (as in interface).
Nice try, haven't the time. Leave it rest.
Not only. Quite some people were seriously using VisiCalc and automating their routines with BASIC on CP/M before the IBM PC came around to give the whole thing business respectability and some additional horsepower.
If you equate having more than 30 years, and having a memory at that, to being dumb...
You sure have no historical and business perspective. The clone makers were already there with the CP/M, the i8080 and the Zylog z80. But it was the IBM PC that created the first big-time cloning opportunity. It was IBM's decision to create an "open" machine; MS only capitalised on it better, earlier and more ruthlessly than Digital Research.
Yes, sir. Typical MS weenie confusion of ideas, thinking there was no PC before MS Windows. Quite hopeless usually, but let's try...
Seriously, hardware did get cheaper before MS Windows. It even did get cheaper before MS DOS. BTW, it getting cheaper was the reason the i8080 and CP/M even did get created, as Unix and the PDP also did. Not even that, CP/M, Sinclair and the TRS-80 machines, not to mention the Commodores, were even cheaper than the IBM PC clones. Even the Apple Macintosh was cheaper than the original IBM PCs and PS/2s...
Let's say, Mac OS, Amiga OS, IBM OS/2, Unix... I fail to see how the graphics are relevant, though.
What if it's relevant? One argues for, another against, what's the problem exactly? After all, these guys were actually convicted... are you in Plato's cave yet?
I know quite a few people who are frustrated with their systems. MS Windows do work, but at enormous human cost in terms of stress, unaccounted work hours... making the user the sysadmin is no answer to the sysadmin cost problem, but it effectively hides it.
Many MS lovers are quite unaware of History. Wait, make that most US people totally ignore History.
The fact is that there was cheap computing before Microsoft. Several flavors of it, at that: CP/M which MS cloned, Sinclair, TRS-80... each had a thriving market with several vendors, and the CP/M had quite a MS-like effect of commoditising hardware.
What IBM, not MS, did with the PC was to create a middle ground between toy microcomputers and midrange computers that was powerful enough to run real numbers in it, and respectable enough to be bought for office usage.
One can argue that, were MS honest, it would have persisted in migrating its MS-DOS users to Xenix, and we'd have better quality systems today, perhaps even faster, perhaps even cheaper, perhaps simply more reliable. Even without MS being honest, the Unix vendors could have made it had they stopped trying to pull proprietary lock-in on their customers. There is no reason to believe that MS alone gave us commodity systems.
Not to mention cheap boxes are usually trash. I'd rather have a FireWire, SCSI, USB, PostScript system than a USB, IDE, PS/2, PCL system anytime...
Isn't there any more detailed, online write-up?
I hoped for a reason, not an authority.
If one doesn't know enough to care about standards, than I agree it's good advice... ;-)
Uglier?
Haven't!... :-(
I would love to read all this history in full!
Evidence? Seems an unfounded accusation to me.
Are you aware of any background moves by the major players in this farce that could bring a speedy resolution? Or, do you have any hopes for a speedy resolution?
Do you have any references? I could never find a nice history of POSIX.
Funny thing you mention them in the same breath, since RMS was behing the original /usr/group that gave birth to POSIX.
Given that his world view isn't Linux-centric, I guess he'd be behind POSIX even today, as compliance would make eventual port to the Hurd easier in some measure; OTOH, many of the LSB extensions are actually the officialisation of GNU extensions in glibc and other GNU tools, so they don't hurt so much these days that software get ported from GNU to proprietary Unix instead of the other way round.
All things considered, standards should go together; extensions aren't bad if they bring benefits and are easily flaggable, but simple violations are evil if they can just creep in without bringing benefits nor being easily spotted.
Hmm... can you translate that into structured English or something the like?
AFAIRI, you can't make encrypted content compressable withou destroying it.
You have to learn some History... the current incumbents are the successors to Ma'Bell, who was find guilty of illegal competitive practices. The penalty was the breakup, and with it a whole set of rules to ensure this would not repeat, and in some measure to revert the advantages gained thru illegal acts.
Not only that, telephone service is a government concession, so companies exploring it have to obey government regulations that seek competition and citizen's benefits.
Given that, one can still question the wisdom of this particular decision.
No, it was a quite clear position. And you have to take into account that it is too soon for the FSF to gear into action; SCO first must clarify its claims, and it has already stated it isn't in a hurry, its goal being to FUD people into paying UnixWare licenses. Furthermore, if the FSF would step into the scene as a Linux copyright holder, there would be a big backslash by FSF haters involved in the kernel works, like Larry McVoy and his sympathisers. So the FSF has to tread carefully here.
You have to remember that the FSF already has your Accountability Project in place for several years: its copyrights assignment requirement policy. Linus has more than once clearly stated his refusal to follow this line, he thinks he's covered enough. But several years ago the FSF had clearly stated the dangers of such a policy as Linus follows.
In the end, it may be in the FSF best interest to avoid the Linux fight at all and concentrate into getting the Hurd done, as it is completly free from such worries and is even more free (no binary modules or firmware) than Linux.
Given porn is usually done for profit, i doubt there will be much of that in FreeNet... undubtedly there will be some, but how much?
...but your arg cuts both ways. If porn gets done for free, it could become pop.