The "winning" product must have had something going for it in order to dominate. But I think the original implication was that inferior technology kept winning.
PC's were cheaper, but not more open. Somebody reverse engineered IBM's BIOS. I don't think anything's stopping anyone from doing a clean-room reverse-engineering of Apple ROM's. Technically speaking, PC's sucked.
VHS may have been cheaper or had more widespread support. But ask the professional production studios and TV stations why they still use Beta...
BTW, get a clue, the more you speak the dumber you look if you haven't got your facts straight. If you've seriously used OS/2 at all, you'll know that when Warp 3 came out, the most common devices and good quality brands were quite well supported. In fact, it's only been recently that WinNT itself has overtaken OS/2 in terms of device driver availability.
Besides, I don't see device driver availability a drawback to Linux getting this far, OS/2 still has better support in that regard.
Hard to use software sucks. So it fails the test. Powerful and flexible does not necessarily imply hard to use. They are not mutually exclusive.
Take a look at MacOS. It's so easy to use. Yet, with the simple inclusion of a command-prompt window (which it doesn't have), you can add power as well, WITHOUT sacrificing either.
KDE and GNOME are an excellent start, not only for the desktop, but as well for any compliant apps. However, if any of you "macho command prompt" dweebs would get your heads out of your ass and check out what's available, you'd find that they are still quite a bit behind the best GUI's available (X-Windows + Window Managers don't count as GUI's in my book, no matter how cool looking the buttons and window frames). Check out past interviews with the GNOME and KDE guys, even they acknowledge that there are much better GUI's, such as OS/2's WPS.
Easy to use for non-experts is an excellent goal. Suppose I tell you that anyone who owns a car should also know how to fix it. Do you? Feel stupid now that it's something not in your area, eh? Computers are the same, some people are experts, some are not, but expertise shouldn't be required to use them.
Frivolous lawsuits seem to be a problem in the US, but not here in Canada. But this is not the same situation.
READ THE FRIGGIN' STORY! Corel is suing because the US gov't department decided they would run with Microsoft Office without first putting the contract to tender and open to fair competition. Same thing happened in Canada and they won.
Look at it this way, if the government were to build, say, and Advanced Tactical Fighter, do you think anyone would let them get away with awarding the contract to Lockheed without first having a competition with Northrop? I don't think so!
It's salary all the way. I don't know _any_ engineers who are paid hourly, except perhaps consultants. (I'm an electrical engineer, BTW). I don't get overtime pay, but I don't care. I'm fairly well compensated to start with, and if I'm busy, I'll pull 10-12 hours a day if necessary. If things are slow, I can take off early or whatever. I think it's best both ways, my company has a relatively fixed cost for salary every year, and I have the flexibility to work as much as needed.
Ask me to punch the clock and get paid hourly and I'll quit. You CANNOT get engineers to work like that. I've worked at an "hourly" job before and it sucks! Sometimes you gotta work just that bit more to finish up, but you can't cause you gotta get authorization to pull overtime first and all that crap.
My brother is a CompSci guy, and he also refuses to work hourly (as do his peers), they'll work however long and whenever they damn well please. (Oh you employers don't worry, it's always at least 40 hours per week).
I don't think so. As far as I know, OS/2 has had this for years now. While it will tell you to write down the information which it dumps to screen (stupid!), it actually also saves a copy to disk.
The only time I've had the pleasure of this experience was when I fried my mobo...
There are tons of applications where hands-free operation is desirable. - HP already has a voice-activated scope. It's damn handy! - How about hands free control of your automobile gadgets? Radio, heat, air, cell phone etc.. You can hardly call cars a "specialized" environment. - Operating room, when the surgeon needs to get a readout from instruments without looking up or fiddling with knobs...or hoping the nurse isn't asleep...
Wouldn't take me too long to come up with a list of other "non-computing" areas in which voice recognition would be fabulous.
Look, get it straight, OS/2 isn't dead yet. These are the facts, judge for yourself. 1) No new client is to be released AT THIS TIME. 2) OS/2 v.5 SERVER (not client) was just released this year. 3) Fixpacks, updates and new drivers CONTINUE to be made available to users for FREE by IBM. 4) You can still purchase OS/2 v4. It continues to be a very viable solution to get your work done, for at least the next year or 2, if not more. (If ya wanna play games, grab yourself a Dreamcast)
=> OS/2 doesn't NEED a client refresh. Just more drivers. The old, base V4 already has support for OpenGL, USB, whatever, you name it. SMP is missing , but as someone pointed out, how many client machines have SMP on board?
And lastly, there ain't gonna be no code released because IBM still owns OS/2 and continues to make gobs of money of OS/2.
This user here ain't movin' off OS/2 until a suitable replacement comes along. Linux, IMHO, is not mature enough for Joe-Average user to use (what? 30min to recompile my kernel for sound card support? NO THANKS!). BeOS? Not enough apps. OS/2's object-oriented PM+WPS is by far, the most advanced UI still around. I use MacOS, X, and Win95 daily as well, and they do not compare. Period. Those of you working on Linux, THIS is what you should be aiming for.
Check with the OS/2 guys.... They have a beta driver for these Lucent Winmodems up and running. If you ask reeeaal nice, maybe the source code can be had.
Oh, uh, let's see what else came from the Great White North.... -Reginald Fessenden, Canadian transmits the worlds first voice message in 1900: AM Radio! -Avro's Jetliner was North America's first jetliner in 1949 -IMAX projector & camera -standard time -the TELEPHONE -the electric cooking range -Pablum -Figher pilot's G-suits -World's first combine harvester -Pulp paper plants -Macinstosh Apples -Zippers -electron microscope -Cable TV -Basketball and Hockey -insulin -Vortex lamp, the world's brightest light source -the Avro Arrow and the Orenda Iroquois turbojet, which kicked ass on every other fighter in the world -the engineers from the Avro Arrow who went down to NASA to help get Neil on the moon -Captain Edwards (the first engineer+test pilot for which Edwards Airforce Base is named), Mr. Gosling of Java fame, James Cameron, of T1, T2 fame and also Titanic, only the most successful movie ever, Pamela Lee Anderson, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Mike Myers -the snowmobile -the electric wheelchair -Commodore 64's -the Wonderbra? -the Canadarm used on the shuttle -the safest and most efficient nuclear reactor designs in the world -the (questionable) V-Chip -the only country who knows how to build nukes and chooses not to -the No.#1 country in the world 6 years running
Oh, is the list getting too long? I better stop for now. I'm sorry, I guess not everyone is privy to the fastest national network in the world.
Yup, and OS/2 for PowerPC was actually quite a big re-write. From what I've seen of the architecture and specs, it would've been nicely portable (that _was_ one of its goals). Too bad they never finished the work...
If any geek wants a read, IBM has a big.PDF on-line for free at: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg244630.h tml
They could use OS/2 Warp Server. It is available NOW and can handle up to 64-CPU and claims to be optimized for 8-CPU. The scaling is terrific. Just a bit below 1:1 linear beyond 2 and 4 CPU.
I dunno about anti-OS/2. I mean, it does, at least, point to Warpcast and OS/2 News&Rumors.
ON THE OTHER HAND, somebody submits a GTK+ on BeOS story and that gets printed. A story on GTK+ on OS/2 was submitted and NOTHING showed up on Slashdot.
BeOS is cool too, but there are a heck of a lot more OS/2 users than BeOS right now!
Re:I've never seen an OS/2 article on Slashdot
on
GTK+ for BeOS Update
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot, as I understand it, != Linux news. Slashdot is "news for nerds" or so it claims. And nerds are semi-interested in OS developments, yes?
I know that at least one or 2 interesting stories about OS/2 have been submitted to Slashdot, yet never get posted. Yet some yahoo goes around asking about modems for Linux and the like and _that_ gets posted.
No second hand source required. About 6 months ago (yeah, eternity in computer years), the guy in charge of OS/2 at the time (I think Jeff Smith or something??) was interviewed in one of the trade rags.
He said that OS/2 and the related services brought in revenue in the $billion dollar range. _That's_ why IBM will not let OS/2 die yet.
(If you know that HSBC PLC -- I think it's like top-20 biggest bank in the world -- Bank of Brasil, etc, are all OS/2 shops, you start to realize who those revenues are achieved).
Unfortunately, the story doesn't give many technical details about the method. (Where's it mention EHZ?)
Anyhow, my rough guess of what I know of the encryption routines... The 6x6 diode is probably representing a 6x6 matrix which is used in deciphering the code. A key? A kernel? I don't know what it's called.
The beauty of light is that, amongst other things, it can do Fourier transforms, convolutions, etc. virtually INSTANTANEOUSLY. It, in fact, doesn't even scale with the size of the "image" you want to transform. Obviously I can't go into an optics discussion here, but you can "view" the transform simply by looking a certain distance away. I'm guess it is something like this which enables this machine...
You'll have a bigger problem just trying to _find_ OS/2 PPC.
For the conspiracy minded (i.e. me;) I think IBM has some big tricks up it's sleeve.
Think about it for a sec. You give away PPC CHRP designs for FREE! That wouldn't do any good, except that Linux is on the upswing. Now WinNT is no longer supported on PPC, so you have been freed from the Wintel monopoly. (Or you use it as leverage to get better prices from Intel).
Once the hardware is there, well, you have a choice of possible OS: Linux, BeOS, AIX, OS/2. Lessee.....if I were IBM, would I not like to own the chips and the OS? I'd make damn sure that at least one of AIX or OS/2 worked on it.
(BTW, don't think IBM is being "generous" about it. The board designs may be free, but every single board will have to use a PowerPC manufactured by...guess who? Big Blue).
I have a K6-2 350 running OS/2 and it cranks out a block in somewhere around 24hrs or less WITH the RC5DES client going at the same time. I shut the machine off at night due to the noise, and a block is always ready within 2 days.
And just how would one stop the system from being completely overloaded with papers published by some crackpot? Yes, peer review / open source publishing is great, but it also means that _anybody_ can publish. That means a whole lot of crap to wade through before getting at the really useful gems.
Well, yes I agree the "little kids" should stop trying to measure up to the super models.
However, I don't know where you live, but size 14 is average? Not in this part of the world!
I don't have any female friends which are over size 12 and most are around size 6-8. That would include my sister, my cousin, my g-friend, etc. So I know DARN WELL what they eat, which is A LOT! My sister and my g-friend especially continually graze all day and any given meal, they'll be able to wolf down as much as I can. And that is a lot! (No, they don't really work out either).
Ranges around 5"-5"4 checking in at 100-120lbs is the norm here.
No more choosing between Rogers or Microsoft as to the most hated corporation in Canada!
Those of you not living up in the Great White North here, Rogers is infamous for poor customer service, misleading ads and questionable business practices. I think our good ol' attorney general or CRTC are looking into them yet again... heh!
BeOS will support SMP nicely, but it's not a server OS, really, is it? WinNT tops out at 2 CPU, or 4 if you believe MS, (or really, it just plain craps out period). OS/2 Server is optimized for 8 CPU and handles up to 64 CPU. How many CPU will Linux handle? Is the current kernel only good for 2 CPU?
Slashdot Mirror
The "winning" product must have had something going for it in order to dominate. But I think the original implication was that inferior technology kept winning.
PC's were cheaper, but not more open. Somebody reverse engineered IBM's BIOS. I don't think anything's stopping anyone from doing a clean-room reverse-engineering of Apple ROM's. Technically speaking, PC's sucked.
VHS may have been cheaper or had more widespread support. But ask the professional production studios and TV stations why they still use Beta...
BTW, get a clue, the more you speak the dumber you look if you haven't got your facts straight. If you've seriously used OS/2 at all, you'll know that when Warp 3 came out, the most common devices and good quality brands were quite well supported. In fact, it's only been recently that WinNT itself has overtaken OS/2 in terms of device driver availability.
Besides, I don't see device driver availability a drawback to Linux getting this far, OS/2 still has better support in that regard.
Hard to use software sucks. So it fails the test.
Powerful and flexible does not necessarily imply hard to use. They are not mutually exclusive.
Take a look at MacOS. It's so easy to use. Yet, with the simple inclusion of a command-prompt window (which it doesn't have), you can add power as well, WITHOUT sacrificing either.
KDE and GNOME are an excellent start, not only for the desktop, but as well for any compliant apps.
However, if any of you "macho command prompt" dweebs would get your heads out of your ass and check out what's available, you'd find that they are still quite a bit behind the best GUI's available (X-Windows + Window Managers don't count as GUI's in my book, no matter how cool looking the buttons and window frames).
Check out past interviews with the GNOME and KDE guys, even they acknowledge that there are much better GUI's, such as OS/2's WPS.
Easy to use for non-experts is an excellent goal. Suppose I tell you that anyone who owns a car should also know how to fix it. Do you? Feel stupid now that it's something not in your area, eh? Computers are the same, some people are experts, some are not, but expertise shouldn't be required to use them.
Frivolous lawsuits seem to be a problem in the US, but not here in Canada. But this is not the same situation.
READ THE FRIGGIN' STORY!
Corel is suing because the US gov't department decided they would run with Microsoft Office without first putting the contract to tender and open to fair competition. Same thing happened in Canada and they won.
Look at it this way, if the government were to build, say, and Advanced Tactical Fighter, do you think anyone would let them get away with awarding the contract to Lockheed without first having a competition with Northrop? I don't think so!
It's salary all the way. I don't know _any_ engineers who are paid hourly, except perhaps consultants. (I'm an electrical engineer, BTW).
I don't get overtime pay, but I don't care. I'm fairly well compensated to start with, and if I'm busy, I'll pull 10-12 hours a day if necessary. If things are slow, I can take off early or whatever.
I think it's best both ways, my company has a relatively fixed cost for salary every year, and I have the flexibility to work as much as needed.
Ask me to punch the clock and get paid hourly and I'll quit.
You CANNOT get engineers to work like that. I've worked at an "hourly" job before and it sucks! Sometimes you gotta work just that bit more to finish up, but you can't cause you gotta get authorization to pull overtime first and all that crap.
My brother is a CompSci guy, and he also refuses to work hourly (as do his peers), they'll work however long and whenever they damn well please. (Oh you employers don't worry, it's always at least 40 hours per week).
After over 1000 years or so, you can still read the thing since Chinese is still essentially unchanged.
I guess it was Y1K compliant afterall...
I don't think so.
As far as I know, OS/2 has had this for years now.
While it will tell you to write down the information which it dumps to screen (stupid!), it actually also saves a copy to disk.
The only time I've had the pleasure of this experience was when I fried my mobo...
You're thinking too narrow...too much COMPUTER!
There are tons of applications where hands-free operation is desirable.
- HP already has a voice-activated scope. It's damn handy!
- How about hands free control of your automobile gadgets? Radio, heat, air, cell phone etc.. You can hardly call cars a "specialized" environment.
- Operating room, when the surgeon needs to get a readout from instruments without looking up or fiddling with knobs...or hoping the nurse isn't asleep...
Wouldn't take me too long to come up with a list of other "non-computing" areas in which voice recognition would be fabulous.
Look, get it straight, OS/2 isn't dead yet.
These are the facts, judge for yourself.
1) No new client is to be released AT THIS TIME.
2) OS/2 v.5 SERVER (not client) was just released this year.
3) Fixpacks, updates and new drivers CONTINUE to be made available to users for FREE by IBM.
4) You can still purchase OS/2 v4. It continues to be a very viable solution to get your work done, for at least the next year or 2, if not more. (If ya wanna play games, grab yourself a Dreamcast)
=> OS/2 doesn't NEED a client refresh. Just more drivers. The old, base V4 already has support for OpenGL, USB, whatever, you name it. SMP is missing , but as someone pointed out, how many client machines have SMP on board?
And lastly, there ain't gonna be no code released because IBM still owns OS/2 and continues to make gobs of money of OS/2.
This user here ain't movin' off OS/2 until a suitable replacement comes along. Linux, IMHO, is not mature enough for Joe-Average user to use (what? 30min to recompile my kernel for sound card support? NO THANKS!). BeOS? Not enough apps.
OS/2's object-oriented PM+WPS is by far, the most advanced UI still around. I use MacOS, X, and Win95 daily as well, and they do not compare. Period.
Those of you working on Linux, THIS is what you should be aiming for.
Check with the OS/2 guys....
They have a beta driver for these Lucent Winmodems up and running. If you ask reeeaal nice, maybe the source code can be had.
Oh, uh, let's see what else came from the Great White North....
-Reginald Fessenden, Canadian transmits the worlds first voice message in 1900: AM Radio!
-Avro's Jetliner was North America's first jetliner in 1949
-IMAX projector & camera
-standard time
-the TELEPHONE
-the electric cooking range
-Pablum
-Figher pilot's G-suits
-World's first combine harvester
-Pulp paper plants
-Macinstosh Apples
-Zippers
-electron microscope
-Cable TV
-Basketball and Hockey
-insulin
-Vortex lamp, the world's brightest light source
-the Avro Arrow and the Orenda Iroquois turbojet, which kicked ass on every other fighter in the world
-the engineers from the Avro Arrow who went down to NASA to help get Neil on the moon
-Captain Edwards (the first engineer+test pilot for which Edwards Airforce Base is named), Mr. Gosling of Java fame, James Cameron, of T1, T2 fame and also Titanic, only the most successful movie ever, Pamela Lee Anderson, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Mike Myers
-the snowmobile
-the electric wheelchair
-Commodore 64's
-the Wonderbra?
-the Canadarm used on the shuttle
-the safest and most efficient nuclear reactor designs in the world
-the (questionable) V-Chip
-the only country who knows how to build nukes and chooses not to
-the No.#1 country in the world 6 years running
Oh, is the list getting too long? I better stop for now. I'm sorry, I guess not everyone is privy to the fastest national network in the world.
Yup, and OS/2 for PowerPC was actually quite a big re-write.
.PDF on-line for free at: h tml
From what I've seen of the architecture and specs, it would've been nicely portable (that _was_ one of its goals).
Too bad they never finished the work...
If any geek wants a read, IBM has a big
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg244630.
They could use OS/2 Warp Server.
It is available NOW and can handle up to 64-CPU and claims to be optimized for 8-CPU.
The scaling is terrific. Just a bit below 1:1 linear beyond 2 and 4 CPU.
BZZZZT! Sorry, try again!
Seems people are willing to pay for the price difference between a PIII 500 and a PIII 550, which I last saw around $200-300 at least.
You get way more performance from your extra $79 for an Athlon board than from 500-550MHz.
I dunno about anti-OS/2. I mean, it does, at least, point to Warpcast and OS/2 News&Rumors.
ON THE OTHER HAND, somebody submits a GTK+ on BeOS story and that gets printed.
A story on GTK+ on OS/2 was submitted and NOTHING showed up on Slashdot.
BeOS is cool too, but there are a heck of a lot more OS/2 users than BeOS right now!
Slashdot, as I understand it, != Linux news.
Slashdot is "news for nerds" or so it claims. And nerds are semi-interested in OS developments, yes?
I know that at least one or 2 interesting stories about OS/2 have been submitted to Slashdot, yet never get posted.
Yet some yahoo goes around asking about modems for Linux and the like and _that_ gets posted.
Funny...I get the same feeling as Timur.
Nobody seems to want to even acknowledge that OS/2 exists in the Linux world.
I remember seeing ONE good blurb about OS/2's WPS...
No second hand source required.
About 6 months ago (yeah, eternity in computer years), the guy in charge of OS/2 at the time (I think Jeff Smith or something??) was interviewed in one of the trade rags.
He said that OS/2 and the related services brought in revenue in the $billion dollar range. _That's_ why IBM will not let OS/2 die yet.
(If you know that HSBC PLC -- I think it's like top-20 biggest bank in the world -- Bank of Brasil, etc, are all OS/2 shops, you start to realize who those revenues are achieved).
Unfortunately, the story doesn't give many technical details about the method. (Where's it mention EHZ?)
Anyhow, my rough guess of what I know of the encryption routines...
The 6x6 diode is probably representing a 6x6 matrix which is used in deciphering the code. A key? A kernel? I don't know what it's called.
The beauty of light is that, amongst other things, it can do Fourier transforms, convolutions, etc. virtually INSTANTANEOUSLY. It, in fact, doesn't even scale with the size of the "image" you want to transform. Obviously I can't go into an optics discussion here, but you can "view" the transform simply by looking a certain distance away.
I'm guess it is something like this which enables this machine...
You'll have a bigger problem just trying to _find_ OS/2 PPC.
;)
For the conspiracy minded (i.e. me
I think IBM has some big tricks up it's sleeve.
Think about it for a sec. You give away PPC CHRP designs for FREE! That wouldn't do any good, except that Linux is on the upswing. Now WinNT is no longer supported on PPC, so you have been freed from the Wintel monopoly. (Or you use it as leverage to get better prices from Intel).
Once the hardware is there, well, you have a choice of possible OS: Linux, BeOS, AIX, OS/2.
Lessee.....if I were IBM, would I not like to own the chips and the OS? I'd make damn sure that at least one of AIX or OS/2 worked on it.
(BTW, don't think IBM is being "generous" about it. The board designs may be free, but every single board will have to use a PowerPC manufactured by...guess who? Big Blue).
What kind of dope does your computer smoke?
I have a K6-2 350 running OS/2 and it cranks out a block in somewhere around 24hrs or less WITH the RC5DES client going at the same time.
I shut the machine off at night due to the noise, and a block is always ready within 2 days.
And just how would one stop the system from being completely overloaded with papers published by some crackpot?
Yes, peer review / open source publishing is great, but it also means that _anybody_ can publish. That means a whole lot of crap to wade through before getting at the really useful gems.
Well, yes I agree the "little kids" should stop trying to measure up to the super models.
However, I don't know where you live, but size 14 is average? Not in this part of the world!
I don't have any female friends which are over size 12 and most are around size 6-8. That would include my sister, my cousin, my g-friend, etc. So I know DARN WELL what they eat, which is A LOT! My sister and my g-friend especially continually graze all day and any given meal, they'll be able to wolf down as much as I can. And that is a lot!
(No, they don't really work out either).
Ranges around 5"-5"4 checking in at 100-120lbs is the norm here.
No more choosing between Rogers or Microsoft as to the most hated corporation in Canada!
Those of you not living up in the Great White North here, Rogers is infamous for poor customer service, misleading ads and questionable business practices. I think our good ol' attorney general or CRTC are looking into them yet again... heh!
Sound like some other company you know?
BeOS will support SMP nicely, but it's not a server OS, really, is it?
WinNT tops out at 2 CPU, or 4 if you believe MS, (or really, it just plain craps out period).
OS/2 Server is optimized for 8 CPU and handles up to 64 CPU.
How many CPU will Linux handle? Is the current kernel only good for 2 CPU?
Yes, I concur, there's no better mail program for Windows (I've tried Eudora. Yuck!). But what's even better is PMMail/2 for OS/2, of course!