Remember, VA couldn't make a business out of selling Linux boxes. Maybe not enough people want to buy them from Dell either
IBM has no qualms about talking up Linux and bad-mouthing Microsoft, but go try to buy a desktop with it from them. Until recently you could buy Thinkpads with Linux, but I see no evidence on their site of this anymore.
Two problems with this argument: In the era of 2000 and XP almost every system boots off the CD, so the floppies are now irrelevant; and Windows is usually preloaded anyway.
OS/2 2.x was a great piece of software in many ways, but IBM missed the mark on several important points, some of which the linked story gets.
For example, it should be perfectly obvious by now, and was to many even at the time, that preloads were a critical factor. Microsoft appreciated this much earlier than IBM, who couldn't even convince their own PC company to preload OS/2. Remember that OS/2 2.0 came out long before Windows 95 - If OS/2 really was a better Windows than Windows, like IBM claimed, no threat Microsoft could make should matter. The IBM PC Co should have been happy to preload OS/2 2.0 and dump Windows 3.x. (Remember IBM even had their own DOS on the same code base, they didn't need Microsoft at all.) The fact that IBM PC Co could never be convinced to preload OS/2 is damnimg evidence that it was never all it was cracked up to be.
There were dozens of important problems. Among which:
32-bit OS/2 driver support lagged badly behind Windows driver support, which was a far higher priority for every device vendor out there. For the first year or so there were maybe two graphics cards with OS/2 drivers shipping, which meant that you were stuck with standard VGA on any other system (I don't think they had a standard SVGA 8x6 then).
The minimum RAM requirement for OS/2 was 4MB, a high-end requirement at the time. By the time Windows 95 came out in 8/95 4MB was mainstream, but it was a real problem for IBM, especially since they were trying to sell into the existing installed base.
The OS/2 Netware driver shipped very late and was a steaming turd when it did ship. Good Netware support was about as critical as can be, so it's hard to see how IBM didn't place a higher priority on this. IBM's own LAN Manager networking was rock solid once you had it set up properly, but as others have pointed out, it was a bitch to set up.
This is a matter of taste, but I always thought the Workplace Shell was an awful user interface. The context menus were crowded with complicated and irrelevant distractions. You really needed to use HPFS for your file system because the disconnect between the naming system in OS/2's FAT and the WPS was complete. Fortunately, HPFS was a good file system for its time (invented at Microsoft by the great Gordon Letwin), but if you wanted to dual-boot from OS/2 to DOS/Windows you were screwed.
Microsoft was hardly friendly to OS/2 after it washed its hands of it in the 1.3 days, but all the big reasons for its failure in the market have IBM's fingerprints all over it. Them and a gang of fanatics that make the worse Linux advocated look downright boring.
The UI, Presentation Manager, and the GPI, were always IBM code. MS contempt for PM & GPI was one of the early reasons for friction between the companies.
So what? InstallShield is not Windows Installer. The article doesn't say that the problem is with Windows Installer, it says the problem is with Install Shield, which is not a Microsoft program.
The article is obviously wrong about something: either the problem really is with Installer or it's with InstallShield and shouldn't have been mentioned, since it's not a Microsoft product.
if an external program (including any of these mass-mailer scripts) tries to send mail you are prompted to allow or deny the operation. After some period if you don't respond it times out and denies the mailing.
Outlook 2000 also strips those executables if you security patches that have been available for almost 2 years. This may be true of Outlook 98 as well. These patches also block the mass-mailers, so the only reason the mass-mailers exist is that people are running older versions of Outlook (97 and earlier) or not patching their current versions.
I agree about the government establishment point, but the important distinction to me is that in the classic monopoly the company has some ability to restrict total supply of the product in the market, thus restricting the ability of customers to take their business elsewhere.
There is not a single customer of Microsoft who didn't have an alternative product that they could have bought. They all chose to buy Microsoft products in spite of those alternatives. I would argue that they did this because Microsoft's products were the best deal.
So how much did IBM, Sun, Oracle and AOL/TW/Netscape spend on political contributions at the same time they were working with the government against Microsoft?
Microsoft no longer sells Windows 95, but it does sell 98 and ME. Besides, the message I responded to asked about 95, so you're changing the subject.
As for the kit not being free, well, that really sucks I guess. It is odd, since the DDK is free. They must not want a lot of the NT/2K/XP IFS kits out there.
1) download updates automatically and ask the user whether to install them
2) notify the user automatically that updates are available and ask them whether to download and install them
3) none of this
Lots of PCs were sold with 64K in them and had to run something. I'm sure you couldn't even boot Xenix without more than that, and you'd end up swapping floppies constantly.
You never actually coded this stuff, did you?
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
Are you seriously suggesting that a code translator could work with operating system code? That the "display string" call, which like most of MS-DOS uses BIOS calls on the PC that don't exist for CP/M, would be a simple matter of translating 8-bit 8080 code to 16-bit 8088 code? For an application I can see a translator maybe doing half the job, for an OS what you suggest is a joke.
MS-DOS was written from day one for the 16-bit 8088/8086 and the 16-bit version of CP/M didn't come out for many months afterwards. CP/M was only available for the 8080/Z80 at the time, which was not only an 8-bit chip but had a pretty different instruction set.
So explain to me how they were supposed to lift code from an 8-bit Z80/8080 program and drop it into a 16-bit 8088 program? Don't know? That's because you're full of crap!
The compatibility between CP/M and MS-DOS extended to similarities in the PSP (Program Segment Prefix, the first 100h bytes of a.COM file) and some other similar program structures, such as File Control Blocks. The idea was to make it easier for CP/M programmers to adapt their programs to DOS.
Incidentally, the claim in the Byte piece that this had some relevance to the success of MS-DOS is exaggerated. DOS 2.0 was a complete rewrite and introduced both EXE files (pushing developers away from CP/M-compatible.COM files) and file handles, making FCBs obsolete.
I agree that there's no legal problem for Wine, but your comparison to PC/MS-DOS is incorrect. PC-DOS was a licensed version of MS-DOS based on the actual code written by Microsoft. It was not an attempt to clone.
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Remember, VA couldn't make a business out of selling Linux boxes. Maybe not enough people want to buy them from Dell either
IBM has no qualms about talking up Linux and bad-mouthing Microsoft, but go try to buy a desktop with it from them. Until recently you could buy Thinkpads with Linux, but I see no evidence on their site of this anymore.
Two problems with this argument: In the era of 2000 and XP almost every system boots off the CD, so the floppies are now irrelevant; and Windows is usually preloaded anyway.
I remember the IBM OS/2 Fiesta Bowl on New Years Day, probably 1992. The announcers made frequent jokes about how they had no idea what hell it was.
OS/2 2.x was a great piece of software in many ways, but IBM missed the mark on several important points, some of which the linked story gets.
For example, it should be perfectly obvious by now, and was to many even at the time, that preloads were a critical factor. Microsoft appreciated this much earlier than IBM, who couldn't even convince their own PC company to preload OS/2. Remember that OS/2 2.0 came out long before Windows 95 - If OS/2 really was a better Windows than Windows, like IBM claimed, no threat Microsoft could make should matter. The IBM PC Co should have been happy to preload OS/2 2.0 and dump Windows 3.x. (Remember IBM even had their own DOS on the same code base, they didn't need Microsoft at all.) The fact that IBM PC Co could never be convinced to preload OS/2 is damnimg evidence that it was never all it was cracked up to be.
There were dozens of important problems. Among which:
Microsoft was hardly friendly to OS/2 after it washed its hands of it in the 1.3 days, but all the big reasons for its failure in the market have IBM's fingerprints all over it. Them and a gang of fanatics that make the worse Linux advocated look downright boring.
The UI, Presentation Manager, and the GPI, were always IBM code. MS contempt for PM & GPI was one of the early reasons for friction between the companies.
So what? InstallShield is not Windows Installer. The article doesn't say that the problem is with Windows Installer, it says the problem is with Install Shield, which is not a Microsoft program.
The article is obviously wrong about something: either the problem really is with Installer or it's with InstallShield and shouldn't have been mentioned, since it's not a Microsoft product.
if an external program (including any of these mass-mailer scripts) tries to send mail you are prompted to allow or deny the operation. After some period if you don't respond it times out and denies the mailing.
Outlook 2000 also strips those executables if you security patches that have been available for almost 2 years. This may be true of Outlook 98 as well. These patches also block the mass-mailers, so the only reason the mass-mailers exist is that people are running older versions of Outlook (97 and earlier) or not patching their current versions.
I agree about the government establishment point, but the important distinction to me is that in the classic monopoly the company has some ability to restrict total supply of the product in the market, thus restricting the ability of customers to take their business elsewhere.
There is not a single customer of Microsoft who didn't have an alternative product that they could have bought. They all chose to buy Microsoft products in spite of those alternatives. I would argue that they did this because Microsoft's products were the best deal.
which means they got the franchise from some level of government, which was the original point.
How about Windows Update? Do you really want to use a cracked version of Windows XP and not have access to fixes?
So how much did IBM, Sun, Oracle and AOL/TW/Netscape spend on political contributions at the same time they were working with the government against Microsoft?
Microsoft no longer sells Windows 95, but it does sell 98 and ME. Besides, the message I responded to asked about 95, so you're changing the subject.
As for the kit not being free, well, that really sucks I guess. It is odd, since the DDK is free. They must not want a lot of the NT/2K/XP IFS kits out there.
You talking about the File System Driver reference? Try http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/wmeother/s torage_5uig.asp
Just because you haven't looked for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Anyone remember that book? It may have been his first.
Interesting that the curve shoots up as Gartner tells people to ditch IIS.
three options, and it asks you which you want:
1) download updates automatically and ask the user whether to install them
2) notify the user automatically that updates are available and ask them whether to download and install them
3) none of this
When you set up XP it automatically checks for updates as part of the setup process
Lots of PCs were sold with 64K in them and had to run something. I'm sure you couldn't even boot Xenix without more than that, and you'd end up swapping floppies constantly.
You're thinking of Comcast
Are you seriously suggesting that a code translator could work with operating system code? That the "display string" call, which like most of MS-DOS uses BIOS calls on the PC that don't exist for CP/M, would be a simple matter of translating 8-bit 8080 code to 16-bit 8088 code? For an application I can see a translator maybe doing half the job, for an OS what you suggest is a joke.
MS-DOS was written from day one for the 16-bit 8088/8086 and the 16-bit version of CP/M didn't come out for many months afterwards. CP/M was only available for the 8080/Z80 at the time, which was not only an 8-bit chip but had a pretty different instruction set.
.COM file) and some other similar program structures, such as File Control Blocks. The idea was to make it easier for CP/M programmers to adapt their programs to DOS.
.COM files) and file handles, making FCBs obsolete.
So explain to me how they were supposed to lift code from an 8-bit Z80/8080 program and drop it into a 16-bit 8088 program? Don't know? That's because you're full of crap!
The compatibility between CP/M and MS-DOS extended to similarities in the PSP (Program Segment Prefix, the first 100h bytes of a
Incidentally, the claim in the Byte piece that this had some relevance to the success of MS-DOS is exaggerated. DOS 2.0 was a complete rewrite and introduced both EXE files (pushing developers away from CP/M-compatible
I sued /. over this in 1982 and won.
I agree that there's no legal problem for Wine, but your comparison to PC/MS-DOS is incorrect. PC-DOS was a licensed version of MS-DOS based on the actual code written by Microsoft. It was not an attempt to clone.
The Internet Options dialog is also accessible as the Internet Options Control Panel applet.