Sure, NT owned the "cheap and nasty" segment, but IBM didn't even bother to make a serious effort, even tho they co-owned all the PDC/BDC/Whatever stuff. (And to argue that IBM didn't have the resources or technology is silly.)
> 3D games is what really pushed the hardware
Did you totally forget that we're talking about servers? 3D games didn't create 4-Proc Pentium Pro boxes, PCI RAID cards, or rackmount x86 boxes. NT did that.
> How can this article be used on a news site, when it is simply nothing more than a rant?
SFGate is a tabloidized version of the SF Chronicle. Their headlines and story selection is usually a lot more inflammatory than the real paper, even though the stories are the same. You'll notice this guy only writes online, not in print.
Also, Apple is the hometown boys, and therefore get tons of press in SF.
I recall a story where someone discovered you could root any Mac by sending it a DHCP packet when it was booting up. Apple chose to do this because its apparently to hard for Mac admins to turn on a setting when connecting it to one of the rare networks running Apple's directory services.
Not really easily expoitable outside of a coffeship, but a classic security vs ease-of-use dilema, and similar to Microsoft's problems (corporate services exploited on home machines).
At least in my experience, "firewall everything" started in about 1994. People figured out pretty damn quickly that your average Sun (etc) machine did not come out of box ready to put on the Internet.
Besides, the technical point of the article is basically that Macs are safer because they come with a software firewall (which now Windows does to).
> (i assume people like me make up a lot of numbers)
The "unhappy with Windows" crowd may be the loudmouths, but I believe that it's a minority of Linux's userbase. Most Linux use is on the SERVER for Unix-type applications.
Besides, if OS/2 was the 90% marketshare OS, y'all would just find some reason to hate OS/2 (and as I said in another post, there was plenty to hate on a nuts-n-bolts level).
The Novell numbers are also new shipments, but they are seat numbers, not server. But you'll see that Novell (#1) is in a pissing match with Microsoft (#2) and can't be arsed to even mention IBM (who was probably considered on the way out by 96).
Well, the performance tests I saw generally put OS/2 only slightly ahead of NT (which is understandable due to the leaner featureset).
Again, the point was not that OS/2 was horribly defective, but that IBM had no intention of putting a serious, fullfledged OS on x86 and marketing it to the same extent as MS. That's why NT was an undeniable success on the server and OS/2 never got anywhere.
> When NT came out, just about NO ONE bought it > OS/2 not a server?
Meanwhile back in reality, NT Server was outselling OS/2 Server 100:1 after a year. IBM was not serious about the x86 server market, for obvious reasons.
> Do you have the slightest idea what you're talking about?
I worked with OS/2 as server, BTW. TCP/IP cost a boatload extra, the software selection was generally poor, and it wasn't particularly stable (less so than NT, but I think that was primarily drivers). We had various problems that were related to 16MB limits and so on, indicating 16-bit code.
Anyway, the point wasn't that OS/2 was so horrible. Only that it wasn't designed to be a server, nor was it seriously positioned in that market.
Funny how you fail to mention Windows NT, which was superior to OS/2 in every way execept the graphical shell.
The fact is that OS/2 was "gimped" in certain ways -- no integrated networking, no file permissions, no multiple users, various 16-bit legacy limitations in the kernel. This was done on purpose because IBM had no intention of letting Intel-based OSes intrude on it's midrange AS/400 and RS/6000 server business.
When NT hit the market, it immediately started taking over server applicaitons. Something that OS/2 never would or could do. At least for servers, NT has always been the hardware driver, pushing the x86 platform upwards, and Linux has benefited hugely from that.
If Windows never existed, the entire proprietary server market (DEC, SGI, HP, Sun, and IBM) would be very much richer and happier today.
Right, it wasn't the "invention" of Windows386, it was the business decision to push this over OS/2. Similar to how IBM had all the resources to write OS/2 version 1 as 32-bit native, but chose create a 16-bit OS instead.
History hinges on the fact that IBM chose not to buy out Microsoft and/or Windows when they had a chance. The proper applicaiton of $$$$ would have made Windows disappear, and eventualy users would have come around to dumping DOS for OS/2.
As for how this would affect Linux -- probably not that much. The main market driver for Linux was people who wanted UNIX on Intel, cheap. OS/2 was less applicable than Windows.
The main goal is just to get users off of IE, and if Netscape is the easiest and most acceptable way to the boss to do it, so be it.
Netscape 6/7 has all of a 0.5% marketshare going for it after 4 years. Firefox has around 5% after a couple months. Netscape couldn't even get people off Communicator 4, much less IE.
Maybe your boss responded to the Netscape brandname, but mine have tended to run for the barfbucket.
I think you may have misread that. When the Intelligence community uses the term "open source", they mean "publicly avaliable". In that post they are talking about software developed from published crypto algorithms, not published sourcecode.
To me, "open source" does not imply that the source is legally modifiable and redistributable. In that sense, your use of "open sense" is contrary to the long established term "open source intelligence".
The obvious solution would be invent a term that COULD be trademarked. It would take a while to catch on, but it would give your certification process that much more weight.
As many slashdot discussions show, these things often degenerate into semeantic debate of the meaning of "open" or "free", which takes away from the meaning of OSI's approval process.
The first job I had out of school, the company was 30% Mac, but had stopped purchasing them.
The second job I had was 75% Mac. The few PCs even had LocalTalk cards. They'd also stopped buying them. Reasons: Incompatibile networking, ridiclous prices, no RAD tools like VB, crappy delivery schedules, poor service, etc etc etc.
These were both large "enterprise" corps (admittedly in Apple's back yard in the Bay Area). But to say that Apple had no chance in the large business market is ridiclous. They were in that market, they just couldn't respond properly to customer demand.
Well, that's a bigger issue. Ideally (I suppose), the Macintosh wouldn't have been such a Clean Break, and would have built on the Apple II's installed base (sorta like how Windows displaced DOS).
But realistically, by the time the Apple IIGS came out, everyone knew that Mac was the future, and there was no migration route from the ][. The GS couldn't compete with the Amiga or the Mac -- it was Edu-Ghetto only. Given that, making the IIGS into a "Fake Mac" (and it was a better Fake Mac than most of the compeititon) was a big mistake.
Apple had 50%+ of the education market even in the late 90s tho.
I think Scully saw his job as Chief Marketeer, and he let just let the producution side run amok. However, he did spend massive amounts on very speculative R&D, and at the very least had a few cool ideas to show for it (Newton for example), if not actual products (like a nextgen OS).
However, without Scully and his Apple-Brand-Icon marketing, Apple wouldn't have had the loyal customer base that allowed it to get through the rough times, and you probably wouldn't have hundreds of people descending on every/. Mac story pimping Apple's stuff.
Finally, Scully's strategy of huge margins built up billions of dollars in the bank. So even if Apple lacked the "discipline", at least they had the $$$$ to survive.
Well, you're right about 1994, but in 1992 even a whitebox i486 machine ran over $5K, and namebrand was considerably more.
By 1994-5, the 950 was primarily sold as server or an Avid machine, and Apple was selling cheaper Centris/Quadra 040 desktop models.
(I remember the first Q950 I got to use in about 1994. It was already obsolete, but it had 100MB of RAM! Even the PC Servers topped out at 16 or 32MB in those days.)
I don't doubt it, but they were only selling them as replacement parts to the legacy installed base. There was no first party or third party software coming out for the things.
Why? Did the 68000 cost that much more than the IIGS's chip? IIRC, the GS wasn't really price competitive with even Amigas/Ataris either. Also, the idea of "at cost" is sorta silly because Apple routinely cleared 60-70% margins on systems in those days.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple themselves copied the idea from MS IE for Mac, which appeared long before OS X.
Sure, NT owned the "cheap and nasty" segment, but IBM didn't even bother to make a serious effort, even tho they co-owned all the PDC/BDC/Whatever stuff. (And to argue that IBM didn't have the resources or technology is silly.)
> 3D games is what really pushed the hardware
Did you totally forget that we're talking about servers? 3D games didn't create 4-Proc Pentium Pro boxes, PCI RAID cards, or rackmount x86 boxes. NT did that.
Egg's on my face because Apple actually fixed it.
here
But it was still a "ease of use" lousy configuration decision and not a software flaw.
Linus has said in interviews that is main imputuses for writing Linus was:
A) MS & IBM fucking up with the i386 transition (He was/is a pretty big fan.)
B) The cost of proprietary Unix OSes.
If this had happened a year later, Linus probably would have just bought OS/2 2.0 or WinNT and ported some Unix tools to it.
> How can this article be used on a news site, when it is simply nothing more than a rant?
SFGate is a tabloidized version of the SF Chronicle. Their headlines and story selection is usually a lot more inflammatory than the real paper, even though the stories are the same. You'll notice this guy only writes online, not in print.
Also, Apple is the hometown boys, and therefore get tons of press in SF.
I recall a story where someone discovered you could root any Mac by sending it a DHCP packet when it was booting up. Apple chose to do this because its apparently to hard for Mac admins to turn on a setting when connecting it to one of the rare networks running Apple's directory services.
Not really easily expoitable outside of a coffeship, but a classic security vs ease-of-use dilema, and similar to Microsoft's problems (corporate services exploited on home machines).
At least in my experience, "firewall everything" started in about 1994. People figured out pretty damn quickly that your average Sun (etc) machine did not come out of box ready to put on the Internet.
Besides, the technical point of the article is basically that Macs are safer because they come with a software firewall (which now Windows does to).
Sure, but if OS/2 was 386 from Day 1, that would have removed most of MS's technical incentive for developing Windows 386 or Windows NT.
Remember in those days, MS was IBM's bitch, but the decisions IBM enforced on OS/2 became one of the big reasons MS wanted to break away.
> (i assume people like me make up a lot of numbers)
The "unhappy with Windows" crowd may be the loudmouths, but I believe that it's a minority of Linux's userbase. Most Linux use is on the SERVER for Unix-type applications.
Besides, if OS/2 was the 90% marketshare OS, y'all would just find some reason to hate OS/2 (and as I said in another post, there was plenty to hate on a nuts-n-bolts level).
The Novell numbers are also new shipments, but they are seat numbers, not server. But you'll see that Novell (#1) is in a pissing match with Microsoft (#2) and can't be arsed to even mention IBM (who was probably considered on the way out by 96).
According to the following link, IDC said NT was #2 in 1996:
2 /p r97017.html
178,100 OS/2 servers
vs
973,000 Novell servers
vs
~700,000 NT servers
Obviously the 97 numbers you are a different baseline and not comparable.
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1997/0
Well, the performance tests I saw generally put OS/2 only slightly ahead of NT (which is understandable due to the leaner featureset).
Again, the point was not that OS/2 was horribly defective, but that IBM had no intention of putting a serious, fullfledged OS on x86 and marketing it to the same extent as MS. That's why NT was an undeniable success on the server and OS/2 never got anywhere.
> When NT came out, just about NO ONE bought it
> OS/2 not a server?
Meanwhile back in reality, NT Server was outselling OS/2 Server 100:1 after a year. IBM was not serious about the x86 server market, for obvious reasons.
> Do you have the slightest idea what you're talking about?
I worked with OS/2 as server, BTW. TCP/IP cost a boatload extra, the software selection was generally poor, and it wasn't particularly stable (less so than NT, but I think that was primarily drivers). We had various problems that were related to 16MB limits and so on, indicating 16-bit code.
Anyway, the point wasn't that OS/2 was so horrible. Only that it wasn't designed to be a server, nor was it seriously positioned in that market.
Funny how you fail to mention Windows NT, which was superior to OS/2 in every way execept the graphical shell.
The fact is that OS/2 was "gimped" in certain ways -- no integrated networking, no file permissions, no multiple users, various 16-bit legacy limitations in the kernel. This was done on purpose because IBM had no intention of letting Intel-based OSes intrude on it's midrange AS/400 and RS/6000 server business.
When NT hit the market, it immediately started taking over server applicaitons. Something that OS/2 never would or could do. At least for servers, NT has always been the hardware driver, pushing the x86 platform upwards, and Linux has benefited hugely from that.
If Windows never existed, the entire proprietary server market (DEC, SGI, HP, Sun, and IBM) would be very much richer and happier today.
Right, it wasn't the "invention" of Windows386, it was the business decision to push this over OS/2. Similar to how IBM had all the resources to write OS/2 version 1 as 32-bit native, but chose create a 16-bit OS instead.
History hinges on the fact that IBM chose not to buy out Microsoft and/or Windows when they had a chance. The proper applicaiton of $$$$ would have made Windows disappear, and eventualy users would have come around to dumping DOS for OS/2.
As for how this would affect Linux -- probably not that much. The main market driver for Linux was people who wanted UNIX on Intel, cheap. OS/2 was less applicable than Windows.
The main goal is just to get users off of IE, and if Netscape is the easiest and most acceptable way to the boss to do it, so be it.
Netscape 6/7 has all of a 0.5% marketshare going for it after 4 years. Firefox has around 5% after a couple months. Netscape couldn't even get people off Communicator 4, much less IE.
Maybe your boss responded to the Netscape brandname, but mine have tended to run for the barfbucket.
I think you may have misread that. When the Intelligence community uses the term "open source", they mean "publicly avaliable". In that post they are talking about software developed from published crypto algorithms, not published sourcecode.
> the term is descriptive
To me, "open source" does not imply that the source is legally modifiable and redistributable. In that sense, your use of "open sense" is contrary to the long established term "open source intelligence".
The obvious solution would be invent a term that COULD be trademarked. It would take a while to catch on, but it would give your certification process that much more weight.
As many slashdot discussions show, these things often degenerate into semeantic debate of the meaning of "open" or "free", which takes away from the meaning of OSI's approval process.
Slightly slower but at least compatible with software like Netscape. I use to call it the "Loser Computer" :)
The first job I had out of school, the company was 30% Mac, but had stopped purchasing them.
The second job I had was 75% Mac. The few PCs even had LocalTalk cards. They'd also stopped buying them. Reasons: Incompatibile networking, ridiclous prices, no RAD tools like VB, crappy delivery schedules, poor service, etc etc etc.
These were both large "enterprise" corps (admittedly in Apple's back yard in the Bay Area). But to say that Apple had no chance in the large business market is ridiclous. They were in that market, they just couldn't respond properly to customer demand.
Well, that's a bigger issue. Ideally (I suppose), the Macintosh wouldn't have been such a Clean Break, and would have built on the Apple II's installed base (sorta like how Windows displaced DOS).
But realistically, by the time the Apple IIGS came out, everyone knew that Mac was the future, and there was no migration route from the ][. The GS couldn't compete with the Amiga or the Mac -- it was Edu-Ghetto only. Given that, making the IIGS into a "Fake Mac" (and it was a better Fake Mac than most of the compeititon) was a big mistake.
Apple had 50%+ of the education market even in the late 90s tho.
I think Scully saw his job as Chief Marketeer, and he let just let the producution side run amok. However, he did spend massive amounts on very speculative R&D, and at the very least had a few cool ideas to show for it (Newton for example), if not actual products (like a nextgen OS).
/. Mac story pimping Apple's stuff.
However, without Scully and his Apple-Brand-Icon marketing, Apple wouldn't have had the loyal customer base that allowed it to get through the rough times, and you probably wouldn't have hundreds of people descending on every
Finally, Scully's strategy of huge margins built up billions of dollars in the bank. So even if Apple lacked the "discipline", at least they had the $$$$ to survive.
Well, you're right about 1994, but in 1992 even a whitebox i486 machine ran over $5K, and namebrand was considerably more.
By 1994-5, the 950 was primarily sold as server or an Avid machine, and Apple was selling cheaper Centris/Quadra 040 desktop models.
(I remember the first Q950 I got to use in about 1994. It was already obsolete, but it had 100MB of RAM! Even the PC Servers topped out at 16 or 32MB in those days.)
I don't doubt it, but they were only selling them as replacement parts to the legacy installed base. There was no first party or third party software coming out for the things.
Why? Did the 68000 cost that much more than the IIGS's chip? IIRC, the GS wasn't really price competitive with even Amigas/Ataris either. Also, the idea of "at cost" is sorta silly because Apple routinely cleared 60-70% margins on systems in those days.