Doesn't this look like SCO would be interested in selling it's Unix properties to Microsoft if they're actually successful in solidifying their position?
An interesting postulate. Perhaps that's the carrot MS are dangling before SCO. If SCO can get a sort of 'monopoly' on Unix, MS will buy them and put them all on easy street.
There's been a lot of speculation that MS would go towards their own Linux distro, and that both Windows and Belgian Blue (Longhorn) are dead in the water. To enter a new market, Bill would want a monopoly.
I'd be happy if you were right, and up until yesterday I would have thought you were, but to underestimate Bill Gates is to lose, and the man is an incredible schemer. I do not put it past him to have sketched this scenario for the past five years, since before ESR ever got the Halloween Documents. Five years is a long time to let grass grow between your toes, and MS would not let that happen.
They're playing poker. Something they've always been excellent at. They're not playing to win the hand by showing their cards; they're playing to out-bluff and intimidate all the other players until everyone folds.
Anyone else in business, up against the open source threat, would have given up, would have assessed the situation as hopeless.
Uh, I thought this thread was about the Swedish Cypak disposable computer? How did we get talking about Jobs's temper without getting modded as off-topic?
And as for Jobs making a brilliant move here: I disagree anyway. Woz didn't like what Jobs did, and quit because of it, and I would hardly call a 2% market share 'successful'.
'This is but further proof of the superiority of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Windows has never had a problem with its passwd commands or files. I personally recommend Microsoft Windows for serious enterprise computing precisely for this reason.'
- J Allchin
Whatever - lots of theories what Billg is up to. But Billg is a great poker player, and this is just one more poker hand. His cards are terrible, but he can bluff the others to fold.
Think about it - it's a poker game, that's all. Anyone else would have given up in the face of open source. Not Billg. He's amazing. Totally evil, but amazing.
Don't think I'm offended - I'm not - but what is it with you people? If it's not Linux, it has to be - Windows? Just thinking about a product - and a platform - that has several times the market share the penguin has.
Sorry, but have you been following this story since it first broke - years ago, when ESR was given the original Halloween Documents? Do you realise what MS feel is at stake here, and how far they are willing to go?
This is a no compromise situation. If $86 million is a lot of money to you in this situation, then how do you feel about $5 BILLION? For that is what MS expended on Internet Explorer, not to make it best of breed, but just to make it good enough, so that with all their other shady dealings, they could drive Netscape out of the market. And they never even once considered selling IE. Those $5 billion were a drop in the ocean to them.
It's incredible. I mean, there is no way, I repeat, no way, these guys can be expected to be taken seriously. Without serious (M)$ backing them, how can they go on?
Someone needs to marry these apps and make them settle down.
Yeah right. Exactly. They're promiscuous. Only trouble with that is - it wasn't their fault. Don't know whose it was? Look northwest - way northwest.
For the longest time, Gates ignored WP and Kahn (Borland) both. Kahn got Quattro Pro going; he also had the only IDE for Windows that worked; and WP was dominant everywhere, around the globe. They'd started on minis, and when it came to PCs, as so many have pointed out, they wiped the competition on DOS.
But Gates wakes up late and then goes after his target ruthlessly. Gates denied WP the info on Windows 3.1 his company had promised them. He didn't care if they tired of waiting and hacked into the system themselves (which they admit they did) or just didn't come out with a product - it was time for Word and it was time for Office, it was time for Visual who-knows-what, and it was time to make even more money and to totally crush the competition.
The word processor war began shortly thereafter - probably instigated by Gates (who else). Every week MS would produce statistics proving their Word was the most used word processor in the world; then WP would counter with more realistic statistics of their own, and so forth.
And the WP printing routines were notorious. Admins used to say that if the printers were down, someone was using WP again.
Gates came from behind, dealt both Kahn and WP a blow, and then the two of them united for a short time. I believe Borland actually helped with WP 6 for Windows. I know I still have two copies of the official soundtrack [yes, they had a CD soundtrack].
But as the lead-in said, going up against the juggernaut is not an easy business. Coding might not have always been stellar at WP, but it was a damned sight better than Redmond's ever been capable of, if one discounts Cutler's Tribe. This 'promiscuity' is mostly about what Gates does to his colleagues in the business - the exemplary way he treats his fellow 'software architects'.
IMO the programmers didnt understand how to program for Windows, and rewrote a whole bunch of stuff which was already there in the WinAPIs
Of course. WP had a deal with MS for details on the Windows 3.1 interfaces for that product. In typical fashion, MS reneged and WP had to hack their way into the system to figure out what was going on.
... and in related news, Bill Gates, Chief Software Genius of Microsoft Corporation, had dinner at home with his family tonight for the first time in a long time. A hacker who earlier in the day broke into the Gates household computer and turned on its microphone was able to pick up the entire conversation.
[Melinda] Pass me the salt, will you honey? How was work today?
[Bill] Here you go. Yeah, things are looking better again. Uncle Darl called.
[One of the Gates children] Who is Uncle Darl, daddy?
[Melinda] A good friend of your father's. So what did he say, honey?
[Bill] He said a lot, actually, but it all boils down to him keeping the thumbscrews on that criminal Torvalds and us keeping him afloat.
[Melinda] But you can do that, can't you, honey? You need Darl to help your business, don't you?
[Bill] Sure I can. I'm the richest mother in the world. Pass the gravy.
Seven years... is a long time. To be totally wrapped up in a project. And Tolkien is -literary-, not your vanilla Stallone stuff. The guy was an Oxford professor. In so many words, it's nice to see good material sweep. A lot of people guessed LotR would get a lot of awards, but I don't think anyone predicted they'd get all 11.
What kind of developer are you? This entire discussion of message box / alert panel buttons is just so much nonsense. It's what the programmer does with them that matters. No one is forcing anyone to put anything into any precise order, or to be inconsistent.
Further, at least Windows can highlight whatever button you want, to make it obviously the default button. Eg if you prefer the thoughtless 'no' answer to the thoughtless 'yes' answer, just make 'no' the default - and note that this has nothing to do with the order of the buttons.
Finally, it's the return codes sent to the programmer that tell him what the user chose. This is arbitrary. Did the user click the first button? Send a code. Second button? Send a code.
It was either Richter or Oney. And I think both of them would know where to go. But even the people who work there don't have the answers. The ones that do may have quit. For years there was no one dared touch the Win16 GDI, USER, KRNL for precisely this reason.
Another example: what's the gibberish between the DOS and PE headers that came with MSC 12? Do you know? Can you find anyone who does?
Issuing an update to XP would represent a significant shift for the software maker, which for months has insisted that it had no plans to create a separate version of Windows before Longhorn.
This is all good. It's a clear sign that they're getting shaky, that they don't know what to do.
What's that oft-used Gandhi quote that ends with 'we win'?
There's something missing here. I think it's the guy in the white coat with the clipboard. I don't think it really matters if the interface is intuitive; enough people are not going to understand anyway. And I think it's essential the software work correctly, and when you start worrying excessively about how the user is going to react, you can make mistakes.
An impasse. So what to do about it? What did they do in those old days, before we started hacking away? They had the white coats. These guys were the buffer between the users (the programmers) and the computer.
We don't have that anymore. If companies could take time to set people up in front of their consoles, most of this wouldn't happen. What we're left with is a guessing game, where one company tries to outdo another in 'intuitiveness' when the real objective of computer software is to compute.
I guess that's just what happens when you help Bill achieve his dream of a computer on every desktop.
Version 2.7 of the Linux kernel will concentrate its PR on the animosity between the Redmond campus and the University of Helsinki; it will be billed as The Two Towers.
The next version of the kernel will see the re-emergence of Linux and Unix on the desktop, and will be billed as The Return of the King.
Windows will become more secure if Microsoft stops issuing patches?
The implications are more far-reaching. The patches themselves are the cause of the vulnerabilities; without the patches, there would be no vulnerabilities. It's the patches that make the code vulnerable in the first place.
If it weren't for the patches, the code would be 100% secure.
It's discussing these issues that leads to issues - so to speak. Hammer 'em with the DMCA and we can all go to bed early tonight - on our Redmond campus office futons.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't this look like SCO would be interested in selling it's Unix properties to Microsoft if they're actually successful in solidifying their position?
An interesting postulate. Perhaps that's the carrot MS are dangling before SCO. If SCO can get a sort of 'monopoly' on Unix, MS will buy them and put them all on easy street.
There's been a lot of speculation that MS would go towards their own Linux distro, and that both Windows and Belgian Blue (Longhorn) are dead in the water. To enter a new market, Bill would want a monopoly.
That's a given.
Incredible. I accuse the moderators of slacking, when the entire discussion gets off-topic, and they call this comment off-topic.
/.?
I guess brown shirts are required clothing for mods at
You've only made things worse for yourselves.
I'd be happy if you were right, and up until yesterday I would have thought you were, but to underestimate Bill Gates is to lose, and the man is an incredible schemer. I do not put it past him to have sketched this scenario for the past five years, since before ESR ever got the Halloween Documents. Five years is a long time to let grass grow between your toes, and MS would not let that happen.
They're playing poker. Something they've always been excellent at. They're not playing to win the hand by showing their cards; they're playing to out-bluff and intimidate all the other players until everyone folds.
Anyone else in business, up against the open source threat, would have given up, would have assessed the situation as hopeless.
But not our Bill.
Uh, I thought this thread was about the Swedish Cypak disposable computer? How did we get talking about Jobs's temper without getting modded as off-topic?
And as for Jobs making a brilliant move here: I disagree anyway. Woz didn't like what Jobs did, and quit because of it, and I would hardly call a 2% market share 'successful'.
'This is but further proof of the superiority of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Windows has never had a problem with its passwd commands or files. I personally recommend Microsoft Windows for serious enterprise computing precisely for this reason.'
- J Allchin
Whatever - lots of theories what Billg is up to. But Billg is a great poker player, and this is just one more poker hand. His cards are terrible, but he can bluff the others to fold.
Think about it - it's a poker game, that's all. Anyone else would have given up in the face of open source. Not Billg. He's amazing. Totally evil, but amazing.
I can personally guarantee them to get $3k closer when they do...
I'll double that. But I still want to know what they're doing to get into enterprise computing. This is all a futile exercise until they do.
Don't think I'm offended - I'm not - but what is it with you people? If it's not Linux, it has to be - Windows? Just thinking about a product - and a platform - that has several times the market share the penguin has.
Get working on porting OpenOffice.org to Aqua! The current ETA is 2005
Apple are coming out with their own product. It will be called either iWord, iWrite, iDesk, iOffice, or iWork.
I suggested iSoar, but they didn't want it.
Sorry, but have you been following this story since it first broke - years ago, when ESR was given the original Halloween Documents? Do you realise what MS feel is at stake here, and how far they are willing to go?
This is a no compromise situation. If $86 million is a lot of money to you in this situation, then how do you feel about $5 BILLION? For that is what MS expended on Internet Explorer, not to make it best of breed, but just to make it good enough, so that with all their other shady dealings, they could drive Netscape out of the market. And they never even once considered selling IE. Those $5 billion were a drop in the ocean to them.
Get a grip!
... In Lindon, Utah.
It's incredible. I mean, there is no way, I repeat, no way, these guys can be expected to be taken seriously. Without serious (M)$ backing them, how can they go on?
I think it's high time someone thought about cooling atoms down. Those little buggers, when they get excited and hot, they start bumping into things.
Someone needs to marry these apps and make them settle down.
Yeah right. Exactly. They're promiscuous. Only trouble with that is - it wasn't their fault. Don't know whose it was? Look northwest - way northwest.
For the longest time, Gates ignored WP and Kahn (Borland) both. Kahn got Quattro Pro going; he also had the only IDE for Windows that worked; and WP was dominant everywhere, around the globe. They'd started on minis, and when it came to PCs, as so many have pointed out, they wiped the competition on DOS.
But Gates wakes up late and then goes after his target ruthlessly. Gates denied WP the info on Windows 3.1 his company had promised them. He didn't care if they tired of waiting and hacked into the system themselves (which they admit they did) or just didn't come out with a product - it was time for Word and it was time for Office, it was time for Visual who-knows-what, and it was time to make even more money and to totally crush the competition.
The word processor war began shortly thereafter - probably instigated by Gates (who else). Every week MS would produce statistics proving their Word was the most used word processor in the world; then WP would counter with more realistic statistics of their own, and so forth.
And the WP printing routines were notorious. Admins used to say that if the printers were down, someone was using WP again.
Gates came from behind, dealt both Kahn and WP a blow, and then the two of them united for a short time. I believe Borland actually helped with WP 6 for Windows. I know I still have two copies of the official soundtrack [yes, they had a CD soundtrack].
But as the lead-in said, going up against the juggernaut is not an easy business. Coding might not have always been stellar at WP, but it was a damned sight better than Redmond's ever been capable of, if one discounts Cutler's Tribe. This 'promiscuity' is mostly about what Gates does to his colleagues in the business - the exemplary way he treats his fellow 'software architects'.
IMO the programmers didnt understand how to program for Windows, and rewrote a whole bunch of stuff which was already there in the WinAPIs
Of course. WP had a deal with MS for details on the Windows 3.1 interfaces for that product. In typical fashion, MS reneged and WP had to hack their way into the system to figure out what was going on.
Right on. The more people react against this junk, the better. And they're gaining momentum. Oh happy day.
... and in related news, Bill Gates, Chief Software Genius of Microsoft Corporation, had dinner at home with his family tonight for the first time in a long time. A hacker who earlier in the day broke into the Gates household computer and turned on its microphone was able to pick up the entire conversation.
[Melinda] Pass me the salt, will you honey? How was work today?
[Bill] Here you go. Yeah, things are looking better again. Uncle Darl called.
[One of the Gates children] Who is Uncle Darl, daddy?
[Melinda] A good friend of your father's. So what did he say, honey?
[Bill] He said a lot, actually, but it all boils down to him keeping the thumbscrews on that criminal Torvalds and us keeping him afloat.
[Melinda] But you can do that, can't you, honey? You need Darl to help your business, don't you?
[Bill] Sure I can. I'm the richest mother in the world. Pass the gravy.
Seven years... is a long time. To be totally wrapped up in a project. And Tolkien is -literary-, not your vanilla Stallone stuff. The guy was an Oxford professor. In so many words, it's nice to see good material sweep. A lot of people guessed LotR would get a lot of awards, but I don't think anyone predicted they'd get all 11.
What kind of developer are you? This entire discussion of message box / alert panel buttons is just so much nonsense. It's what the programmer does with them that matters. No one is forcing anyone to put anything into any precise order, or to be inconsistent.
Further, at least Windows can highlight whatever button you want, to make it obviously the default button. Eg if you prefer the thoughtless 'no' answer to the thoughtless 'yes' answer, just make 'no' the default - and note that this has nothing to do with the order of the buttons.
Finally, it's the return codes sent to the programmer that tell him what the user chose. This is arbitrary. Did the user click the first button? Send a code. Second button? Send a code.
Methinks you are no developer, sir.
Stories like this give me a lift.
Whatever!
It was either Richter or Oney. And I think both of them would know where to go. But even the people who work there don't have the answers. The ones that do may have quit. For years there was no one dared touch the Win16 GDI, USER, KRNL for precisely this reason.
Another example: what's the gibberish between the DOS and PE headers that came with MSC 12? Do you know? Can you find anyone who does?
Good luck my friend.
Issuing an update to XP would represent a significant shift for the software maker, which for months has insisted that it had no plans to create a separate version of Windows before Longhorn.
This is all good. It's a clear sign that they're getting shaky, that they don't know what to do.
What's that oft-used Gandhi quote that ends with 'we win'?
There's something missing here. I think it's the guy in the white coat with the clipboard. I don't think it really matters if the interface is intuitive; enough people are not going to understand anyway. And I think it's essential the software work correctly, and when you start worrying excessively about how the user is going to react, you can make mistakes.
An impasse. So what to do about it? What did they do in those old days, before we started hacking away? They had the white coats. These guys were the buffer between the users (the programmers) and the computer.
We don't have that anymore. If companies could take time to set people up in front of their consoles, most of this wouldn't happen. What we're left with is a guessing game, where one company tries to outdo another in 'intuitiveness' when the real objective of computer software is to compute.
I guess that's just what happens when you help Bill achieve his dream of a computer on every desktop.
Watch out someone doesn't claim ownership of the ASCII character set.
Version 2.7 of the Linux kernel will concentrate its PR on the animosity between the Redmond campus and the University of Helsinki; it will be billed as The Two Towers.
The next version of the kernel will see the re-emergence of Linux and Unix on the desktop, and will be billed as The Return of the King.
Windows will become more secure if Microsoft stops issuing patches?
The implications are more far-reaching. The patches themselves are the cause of the vulnerabilities; without the patches, there would be no vulnerabilities. It's the patches that make the code vulnerable in the first place.
If it weren't for the patches, the code would be 100% secure.
It's discussing these issues that leads to issues - so to speak. Hammer 'em with the DMCA and we can all go to bed early tonight - on our Redmond campus office futons.