Being an European myself, I'm not surprised. Europe as such had always less serious approach to habeas corpus than America. In many European countries, police needs no warrant to search & seize private property. Police is not obliged to read the arrested person "his Miranda". When you are arrested in Europe and you'll say "hey! I have a right to make a phone call", the policeman is quite likely to say "no, you don't - you're watching too much American flicks". And he might be right. Of course, one can name many violations of individual freedom in the USA (especially in the past), but they are a violation of something that exists at least in theory. In Europe, it might not even be in theory, not to mention reality. Heck, Great Britain doesn't even have a constitution, so if you'll ever say "buddy, you violate my constitutional rights" to a British policeman, you will probably give him a good laughter.
One cannot forget that many European states had experiences with fascism, communism and other authoritarianisms. The lawmakers and administrators creating the democratic Germany and Austria had often Nazi or even SS past - like the infamous Theodor Oberlander or Kurt Waldheim. But similar affairs of the "Vichy past" were striking the French public life, and actually the Spanish "Guardia Civil" is exactly the same formation known as "death troops" during the Franco regime - they didn't even bother to change the name. The authoritarian past in Europe is not that distant - Spain, Portugal and Greece ended their dictatorships as late as in mid-1970's. Now Europe accepts fresh crop of authotirtarians from the post-communist states. The people who once sent other people to gulag and confiscated their "bourgeois property" will be the lawmakers in Strasbourg and Brussels. Along with the people who sent other people to "gaskammers" and confiscated their "Jewish property".
Yes, I am exaggerating (and maybe even flamebaiting;-)), but that's because I am very much concerned by the direction the EU is turning to. But I want to emphasize the fact, that while "hey, it's against habeas corpus!" is still a valid argument in the USA (even if it will be overruled by the "what's good for RIAA/MPAA is good for everyone", also known as the Zero Amendment) - in Europe it might not even be a valid argument at all.
No, I was stating that it is more recognizable. Anyone that has seen and realized what Tux is forever links it with Linux. It is a unique logo that can spread the brand name around all over the place.
Hardly. Unfortunately, the idea "let's promote our brand by adopting a cute penguin as our logo" was too obvious NOT to be already taken. In Great Britain, penguin is associated rather with a popular paperback publisher. In Poland, it is associated with a popular pre-paid cell phone operator. People can see Tux on screen and think it's just some cross-promotion of a computer manufacturer, paperpack publisher and phone operator.
But what if a window user could open up a Messenger-like window and just talk to the OS?
Microsoft tried this already. It was the most hated innovation in the MS Office package. The dreaded Mr Paperclip was a test balloon of a whole new concept for future Windows UI - developed by Gates' wife, Melinda as the "Microsoft Bob". The idea was to have a friendly face, impersonating the OS, that would tell you "sorry, your drive is almost full" and listen to your commands like "help me configure my printer, Bob". Obviously, it was not a good idea, as any MS Office user will assure you. You can't "just talk to the OS", it's not a blinkenlicht machine from a 1960's science-fiction flick. It sounds good in a movie ("open the goddamn door, Hal!"), but it's hopeless if you try to organize your work this way. No one really want to drive his car or operate his TV set by voice commands ("please hit the brakes, will ya?", "switch the bloody channel, I hate this show" etc.).
16 pounds? Man I would much rather tote around a 6.9 pound Apple 17in Powerbook
If you are an Apple fan, consider Macintosh portable. It was also a 16-pounder and it had similar design principle - a "no compromise" replacement for the desktop Mac. To achieve this goal in 1989, the machine required a car-like lead-acid battery, responsible for much of the weight. Obviously, it was a marketing disaster and the company did not repeat the same mistake designing the first powerbook two years later. When discussing portable items, size does matter - and it's usually the smaller the greater...
IANALANAUC (I am not a lawyer and not a US Citizen) but isn't the concept of "Freedom Of Expression" a US law only?
No. In 1789, French National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Its 10th and 11th articles read:
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
If I read this correctly, this "game" is just a bunch of cross-linked text pages. Ten dollars for this is a rip-off -- there's no non-deterministic play (same thing happens every time if you make the same decisions),
I don't remember the box price of the classic Level 9 games in 1980's - I was a teenager then, so my father was paying for my computer games - but they were also text-only and strictly deterministic. And I think they were worth no less than modern video games I buy for my kids today...
The editors of/. need to treat corporate PR with a healthier degree of skepticism.
I disagree. I think it should be rather up to the slashdot users - if they can debunk corporate PR, let them do it. They don't need a guiding hand of the editors. At least that's how I understand the pride of being a nerd.
Tell your SO that the command line in MacOS X is required only to perform tasks he/she wouldn't want to do anyway. It's for all those computer nerds who just enjoy doing these *things*. But whatever he/she does on OS 9, he/she can also do in OS X, without never ever clicking on the Terminal icon. Tell him/her, that in OS 9 there was also something that computer nerds needed to do *things*, it was called ResEdit. Did he/she ever had to use it? Is he/she even aware of its very existence? No? Good. The same will be with the Terminal in MacOS X.
But just in case, buy him/her a book like this for next birthday or valentine. Maybe he/her will finally like it? Just imagine this kind of foreplay: you and your SO together in bed, doing *things* on two powerbooks connected via Airport...
In both the radio show and the BBC TV Series, what made the jokes work was the voice characterization and acting. Without a good director at the helm who has a letter perfect sense of comic timing and voice characterization necessary to pull off the sarchasm, this movie will fail.
Do you know his video of the song "Coffe & TV" by Blur? This song has lyrics full of melancholic sarcasm, quite like some passages from the HTTG. Garth Jennings managed to translate it to the screen, thought there is no storyline in this song and he had to find this weird yet cute visual metaphore. If his movie will be as good as this video - we will all be happy.
I never used Bluetooth and I don't know many people who had/have any use for it. Infrared is cheaper, if not quicker-I remember being able to browse the internet on my Palm using an infrared link to my mobile phone. Pretty cool.
It's even cooler if you just put on your laptop (or Palm) and get connected without paying any attention into proper aligning of both devices. IR devices have to "see" each other. BT devices just need to be in the same room. So you can have your cellphone somewhere in the backpack or in the pocket of your coat hanging somewhere behind you - and let it rest there. If you are on a train (or sitting on a passenger seat of your car, or sitting on a boring lecture etc.), all it takes is open your laptop and you're in. In some situations IR would be a hassle - you could drop connection just because the vehicle is braking or taking a sharp turn, and the devices just moved a bit on a table (or whatever).
Linking your post to the whole Apple Zealot vs. PC Muckraker thing is low, and that alone should have triggered troll alarms
Maybe, but the quote from the original article:
Another problem with Bluetooth is how difficult it is to use. Consumers often found it impossible to get two Bluetooth devices to talk to each other.
...has triggered at least my "it's the whole PC zealot vs Mac" alarm. I mean, only a PC user could write that there is any "problem" with "difficulty of use" of Bluetooth. Only PC users "often find it impossible to get two Bluetooth devices to talk to each other". Bluetooth support in MacOS X is an example of how it can be done right - hassle-free. Just plug in any generic BT-USB dongle (or just take any newer Mac out of its box), set your BT device for "discoverable" and your Mac for "discover new devices". You're done.
Maybe it's just because I'm a Mac zealot, but I really like BT. Just the very fact that your cellphone is no longer just a gateway to the GPRS Internet access when traveling, but also a remote control to your favorite presentation application (I always pity poor PC laptop users forced to use the KEYBOARD on their laptops to simply move to another slide!), to your software DVD player, to your favorite jukebox application etc.
Grapes from newly planted vines don't make good wine. It takes years for the plant to develop to the point where wine made from the grapes tastes good.
They aren't newly planted. I was visiting Skywalker Ranch in the spring of 2002 to attend an early screening of the "Clone Wars" (my job has some perks like this). The screenig itself took place in a peculiar building - an ultramodern screening room built in the shape of an old wine cellar adapted for an ultramodern screening room. Skywalker Ranch itself is an imitation of an old ranch, actually built in 1980's. Anyway, next to the fake "wineyard" there was a real plantation of vine. I asked immediately the guys from LucasArts what happens to these grapes, they told me they just eat them, but George is not ready yet to make his own wine. In fact, during the reception we were given Coppola's Zinfandel and Chardonnay. So I guess those vines were planted at least couple of years ago.
Yes and np. You cannot "declare obsolete" any particular code - if you wan't to count in Roman numbers, you are free to do so (and I'm pretty sure there is an emacs macro to facilitate this). However, in 1999 Morse code indeed was withdrawn from "officlal" maritime distress communication. When you find yourself in deep caca on a sinking wessel, you are no longer obliged to yell "dee dee dee daa daa daa dee dee dee" to your satellite phone. In twenty first century, you can just scream "heeeeellllp!". That's what I call progress!
I know this is will be Flamebait but with all these problems maybe the GPL should change.
IANAL, but I don't think it's possible without scrapping the whole Linux kernel. Since it is GPL'ed, all derivative works (including future kernel versions) have to be GPL'ed too. Of course, you can write a new version of GPL and call it NPL (or whatever) - but Linux kernel (and actually all the GNU stuff) until the Sun turns into a red giant and consumes our planet, including the RMS shrine.
The new license requires you to place acknowledgement "This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", and requires for it to be "in the same place and form as other third-party acknowledgments". Innocent as it sounds, it's actually a helluva loophole for lawyers that could sue your pants off for simply advertising, say, "with full iTunes DRM compatibility" on the cover of a boxed edition of your distro. Unless you really want to write "with full iTunes DRM compatibility and this product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors".
He only gets a 1 dollar check per year but his stock optins and bills that Apple picks up for him are worth millions.
No, they aren't. His stock options allow him to purchase Apple shares for $43.56. AAPL is currently at around $20.00. Right now, Steve Jobs stock options are worth exactly nada point null. And frankly, in the foreseable future they will rather keep this value. Jobs even once offered a journalist who was estimating their worth at some millions to buy them at half the estimated price. Obviously, the journalist declined. Even if Jobs was half-joking then, he had a valid point - it will take ages for AAPL to break through the $40.00 level and actually it's not even likely for it to ever happen.
Of course, the company pay for his semi-private jet and his powerbook. But even that is not exactly his own salary - if he quits from Apple, another CEO will fly "his" gulfstream jet.
Uhm, by about 1% of the total market? If Linux had the PR that Apple did, Apple would look like a bunch of chumps holding thier dicks in thier hands(or appropriate genitalia).
If MacOS for x86 would be free as-in-beer and as-in-speech, Linux wouldn't look like a bunch of anything. It would look like a footnote in the history of computing...
I wonder if this stems from any concern at Palm that Apple might come out with an Apple-branded PDA.
I don't expect it. iPod could evolve more and more PDA-like features (it already has some of them). However, I think that the target market for PDA's are people who - for any reason - are often away of their portable computer (or better yet, don't own one). Apple sells portable computers, so by marketing PDA's they would create internal competition. Personally I think that the combination of an iBook/Powerbook, iPod and a cell phone with rudimentary PDA capabilities (calendar, text notes, easy sync via iSync) makes PDA redundant. When I want to make a quick note (and I don't have a computer with me), I can do it on the cell phone. When I want to read a large text file (say, an ebook in.txt), I can read it on my iPod. When I want to access an actual computer, my iBook usually is somewhere around (and it wakes up from sleep in nanoseconds). I think Apple sees no future in this market.
Yes, you can argue that PC history would look similar without Bill Gates. But would your Grandma be using a multimedia machine today (and not tomorrow) without Microsoft's massive "marketing before secure, bug free computing" campaign?
Not really. There are genuine inventors, who manage to shape the technology - say, Henry Ford. Or Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse and GUI. However, this is not the case of Bill Gates and the PC revolution. There was no actual difference for computer users between MS-DOS and CP/M. In fact, MS-DOS was purposedly designed to mock some CP/M's features, like the dreadful 8+3 filename convention. Then Bill Gates managed to copy the desktop paradigm from Apple and Xerox machines, but anyone could do it - and the company that created CP/M did it to, with GEM Desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Being an European myself, I'm not surprised. Europe as such had always less serious approach to habeas corpus than America. In many European countries, police needs no warrant to search & seize private property. Police is not obliged to read the arrested person "his Miranda". When you are arrested in Europe and you'll say "hey! I have a right to make a phone call", the policeman is quite likely to say "no, you don't - you're watching too much American flicks". And he might be right. Of course, one can name many violations of individual freedom in the USA (especially in the past), but they are a violation of something that exists at least in theory. In Europe, it might not even be in theory, not to mention reality. Heck, Great Britain doesn't even have a constitution, so if you'll ever say "buddy, you violate my constitutional rights" to a British policeman, you will probably give him a good laughter.
;-)), but that's because I am very much concerned by the direction the EU is turning to. But I want to emphasize the fact, that while "hey, it's against habeas corpus!" is still a valid argument in the USA (even if it will be overruled by the "what's good for RIAA/MPAA is good for everyone", also known as the Zero Amendment) - in Europe it might not even be a valid argument at all.
One cannot forget that many European states had experiences with fascism, communism and other authoritarianisms. The lawmakers and administrators creating the democratic Germany and Austria had often Nazi or even SS past - like the infamous Theodor Oberlander or Kurt Waldheim. But similar affairs of the "Vichy past" were striking the French public life, and actually the Spanish "Guardia Civil" is exactly the same formation known as "death troops" during the Franco regime - they didn't even bother to change the name. The authoritarian past in Europe is not that distant - Spain, Portugal and Greece ended their dictatorships as late as in mid-1970's. Now Europe accepts fresh crop of authotirtarians from the post-communist states. The people who once sent other people to gulag and confiscated their "bourgeois property" will be the lawmakers in Strasbourg and Brussels. Along with the people who sent other people to "gaskammers" and confiscated their "Jewish property".
Yes, I am exaggerating (and maybe even flamebaiting
No, I was stating that it is more recognizable. Anyone that has seen and realized what Tux is forever links it with Linux. It is a unique logo that can spread the brand name around all over the place.
Hardly. Unfortunately, the idea "let's promote our brand by adopting a cute penguin as our logo" was too obvious NOT to be already taken. In Great Britain, penguin is associated rather with a popular paperback publisher. In Poland, it is associated with a popular pre-paid cell phone operator. People can see Tux on screen and think it's just some cross-promotion of a computer manufacturer, paperpack publisher and phone operator.
But what if a window user could open up a Messenger-like window and just talk to the OS?
Microsoft tried this already. It was the most hated innovation in the MS Office package. The dreaded Mr Paperclip was a test balloon of a whole new concept for future Windows UI - developed by Gates' wife, Melinda as the "Microsoft Bob". The idea was to have a friendly face, impersonating the OS, that would tell you "sorry, your drive is almost full" and listen to your commands like "help me configure my printer, Bob". Obviously, it was not a good idea, as any MS Office user will assure you. You can't "just talk to the OS", it's not a blinkenlicht machine from a 1960's science-fiction flick. It sounds good in a movie ("open the goddamn door, Hal!"), but it's hopeless if you try to organize your work this way. No one really want to drive his car or operate his TV set by voice commands ("please hit the brakes, will ya?", "switch the bloody channel, I hate this show" etc.).
Correction: It's Zuker/Abrams/Zuker.
Actually, it's Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker.
16 pounds? Man I would much rather tote around a 6.9 pound Apple 17in Powerbook
If you are an Apple fan, consider Macintosh portable. It was also a 16-pounder and it had similar design principle - a "no compromise" replacement for the desktop Mac. To achieve this goal in 1989, the machine required a car-like lead-acid battery, responsible for much of the weight. Obviously, it was a marketing disaster and the company did not repeat the same mistake designing the first powerbook two years later. When discussing portable items, size does matter - and it's usually the smaller the greater...
IANALANAUC (I am not a lawyer and not a US Citizen) but isn't the concept of "Freedom Of Expression" a US law only?
No. In 1789, French National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Its 10th and 11th articles read:
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
Are you sure it applies nationally?
If I read this correctly, this "game" is just a bunch of cross-linked text pages. Ten dollars for this is a rip-off -- there's no non-deterministic play (same thing happens every time if you make the same decisions),
I don't remember the box price of the classic Level 9 games in 1980's - I was a teenager then, so my father was paying for my computer games - but they were also text-only and strictly deterministic. And I think they were worth no less than modern video games I buy for my kids today...
The editors of /. need to treat corporate PR with a healthier degree of skepticism.
I disagree. I think it should be rather up to the slashdot users - if they can debunk corporate PR, let them do it. They don't need a guiding hand of the editors. At least that's how I understand the pride of being a nerd.
For Napster, any MP3 player will do.
Ummm, correction: you mean "any WMA player".
Tell your SO that the command line in MacOS X is required only to perform tasks he/she wouldn't want to do anyway. It's for all those computer nerds who just enjoy doing these *things*. But whatever he/she does on OS 9, he/she can also do in OS X, without never ever clicking on the Terminal icon. Tell him/her, that in OS 9 there was also something that computer nerds needed to do *things*, it was called ResEdit. Did he/she ever had to use it? Is he/she even aware of its very existence? No? Good. The same will be with the Terminal in MacOS X.
But just in case, buy him/her a book like this for next birthday or valentine. Maybe he/her will finally like it? Just imagine this kind of foreplay: you and your SO together in bed, doing *things* on two powerbooks connected via Airport...
In both the radio show and the BBC TV Series, what made the jokes work was the voice characterization and acting. Without a good director at the helm who has a letter perfect sense of comic timing and voice characterization necessary to pull off the sarchasm, this movie will fail.
Do you know his video of the song "Coffe & TV" by Blur? This song has lyrics full of melancholic sarcasm, quite like some passages from the HTTG. Garth Jennings managed to translate it to the screen, thought there is no storyline in this song and he had to find this weird yet cute visual metaphore. If his movie will be as good as this video - we will all be happy.
I never used Bluetooth and I don't know many people who had/have any use for it. Infrared is cheaper, if not quicker-I remember being able to browse the internet on my Palm using an infrared link to my mobile phone. Pretty cool.
It's even cooler if you just put on your laptop (or Palm) and get connected without paying any attention into proper aligning of both devices. IR devices have to "see" each other. BT devices just need to be in the same room. So you can have your cellphone somewhere in the backpack or in the pocket of your coat hanging somewhere behind you - and let it rest there. If you are on a train (or sitting on a passenger seat of your car, or sitting on a boring lecture etc.), all it takes is open your laptop and you're in. In some situations IR would be a hassle - you could drop connection just because the vehicle is braking or taking a sharp turn, and the devices just moved a bit on a table (or whatever).
Linking your post to the whole Apple Zealot vs. PC Muckraker thing is low, and that alone should have triggered troll alarms
...has triggered at least my "it's the whole PC zealot vs Mac" alarm. I mean, only a PC user could write that there is any "problem" with "difficulty of use" of Bluetooth. Only PC users "often find it impossible to get two Bluetooth devices to talk to each other". Bluetooth support in MacOS X is an example of how it can be done right - hassle-free. Just plug in any generic BT-USB dongle (or just take any newer Mac out of its box), set your BT device for "discoverable" and your Mac for "discover new devices". You're done.
Maybe, but the quote from the original article:
Another problem with Bluetooth is how difficult it is to use. Consumers often found it impossible to get two Bluetooth devices to talk to each other.
Maybe it's just because I'm a Mac zealot, but I really like BT. Just the very fact that your cellphone is no longer just a gateway to the GPRS Internet access when traveling, but also a remote control to your favorite presentation application (I always pity poor PC laptop users forced to use the KEYBOARD on their laptops to simply move to another slide!), to your software DVD player, to your favorite jukebox application etc.
Grapes from newly planted vines don't make good wine. It takes years for the plant to develop to the point where wine made from the grapes tastes good.
They aren't newly planted. I was visiting Skywalker Ranch in the spring of 2002 to attend an early screening of the "Clone Wars" (my job has some perks like this). The screenig itself took place in a peculiar building - an ultramodern screening room built in the shape of an old wine cellar adapted for an ultramodern screening room. Skywalker Ranch itself is an imitation of an old ranch, actually built in 1980's. Anyway, next to the fake "wineyard" there was a real plantation of vine. I asked immediately the guys from LucasArts what happens to these grapes, they told me they just eat them, but George is not ready yet to make his own wine. In fact, during the reception we were given Coppola's Zinfandel and Chardonnay. So I guess those vines were planted at least couple of years ago.
I dont drink and drive so obviously this has no appeal to me.
Substantial delay in starting your own car plus random distracton while driving has no appeal to you?
Yes and np. You cannot "declare obsolete" any particular code - if you wan't to count in Roman numbers, you are free to do so (and I'm pretty sure there is an emacs macro to facilitate this). However, in 1999 Morse code indeed was withdrawn from "officlal" maritime distress communication. When you find yourself in deep caca on a sinking wessel, you are no longer obliged to yell "dee dee dee daa daa daa dee dee dee" to your satellite phone. In twenty first century, you can just scream "heeeeellllp!". That's what I call progress!
I know this is will be Flamebait but with all these problems maybe the GPL should change.
IANAL, but I don't think it's possible without scrapping the whole Linux kernel. Since it is GPL'ed, all derivative works (including future kernel versions) have to be GPL'ed too. Of course, you can write a new version of GPL and call it NPL (or whatever) - but Linux kernel (and actually all the GNU stuff) until the Sun turns into a red giant and consumes our planet, including the RMS shrine.
The new license requires you to place acknowledgement "This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", and requires for it to be "in the same place and form as other third-party acknowledgments". Innocent as it sounds, it's actually a helluva loophole for lawyers that could sue your pants off for simply advertising, say, "with full iTunes DRM compatibility" on the cover of a boxed edition of your distro. Unless you really want to write "with full iTunes DRM compatibility and this product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors".
He only gets a 1 dollar check per year but his stock optins and bills that Apple picks up for him are worth millions.
No, they aren't. His stock options allow him to purchase Apple shares for $43.56. AAPL is currently at around $20.00. Right now, Steve Jobs stock options are worth exactly nada point null. And frankly, in the foreseable future they will rather keep this value. Jobs even once offered a journalist who was estimating their worth at some millions to buy them at half the estimated price. Obviously, the journalist declined. Even if Jobs was half-joking then, he had a valid point - it will take ages for AAPL to break through the $40.00 level and actually it's not even likely for it to ever happen.
Of course, the company pay for his semi-private jet and his powerbook. But even that is not exactly his own salary - if he quits from Apple, another CEO will fly "his" gulfstream jet.
Uhm, by about 1% of the total market? If Linux had the PR that Apple did, Apple would look like a bunch of chumps holding thier dicks in thier hands(or appropriate genitalia).
If MacOS for x86 would be free as-in-beer and as-in-speech, Linux wouldn't look like a bunch of anything. It would look like a footnote in the history of computing...
Alternatively, create a replacement for IE and Outlook that *look* like IE and Outlook.
;-).
Said replacement already exists. It is IE and Outlook... for Mac
I wonder if this stems from any concern at Palm that Apple might come out with an Apple-branded PDA.
.txt), I can read it on my iPod. When I want to access an actual computer, my iBook usually is somewhere around (and it wakes up from sleep in nanoseconds). I think Apple sees no future in this market.
I don't expect it. iPod could evolve more and more PDA-like features (it already has some of them). However, I think that the target market for PDA's are people who - for any reason - are often away of their portable computer (or better yet, don't own one). Apple sells portable computers, so by marketing PDA's they would create internal competition. Personally I think that the combination of an iBook/Powerbook, iPod and a cell phone with rudimentary PDA capabilities (calendar, text notes, easy sync via iSync) makes PDA redundant. When I want to make a quick note (and I don't have a computer with me), I can do it on the cell phone. When I want to read a large text file (say, an ebook in
Yes, you can argue that PC history would look similar without Bill Gates. But would your Grandma be using a multimedia machine today (and not tomorrow) without Microsoft's massive "marketing before secure, bug free computing" campaign?
;-)
Can you say "Apple"?
You could say that about anything.
Not really. There are genuine inventors, who manage to shape the technology - say, Henry Ford. Or Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse and GUI. However, this is not the case of Bill Gates and the PC revolution. There was no actual difference for computer users between MS-DOS and CP/M. In fact, MS-DOS was purposedly designed to mock some CP/M's features, like the dreadful 8+3 filename convention. Then Bill Gates managed to copy the desktop paradigm from Apple and Xerox machines, but anyone could do it - and the company that created CP/M did it to, with GEM Desktop.