Maybe the thread should have been called "rewriting history to make MS look good/bad/innovative"
Business PCs existed before the IBM PC came along. Although VisiCalc (running on the Apple II) must be given the credit for breaking into the corporate conciousness, there were a lot of micros in offices running Wordstar (and later SuperCalc). These micros ran CPM on Z80's and 8080's because thats all there was around. In this 8-bit world not only was most of the hardware incompatable with other manufactures stuff but each manufacturer's version of CP/M used a different disk format.
The first successful attempt at standardisation of hardware, driving down costs, was the S100 Bus.
Digital Research did underestimate the potential of the 8088's pseudo-16bit architecture but many of its customers didn't. A number of small manufacturers did basic ports of CP/M to the 8088. I did one of them before working on CP/M-86 and Concurrent CP/M.
When the 8086, with its real 16 bit architecture, appeared and IBM started looking at producing their own micro (as a way of stopping its mainframe customers from buying outside IBM) they learnt the lessons of the S100 Bus and decided to open up their hardware so that other add-on builders would be attracted. Their generosity probably didn't extend to believing that their BIOS chip would be re-engineered so quickly.
Then Digital Research shot themselves in the foot by refusing to talk to IBM (who'd been pointed at DR by Bill Gates) and Microsoft bought up one of the 16 bit clones of CP/M and sold it to IBM as PCDOS/MSDOS.
As for GUI's, no one seems to remember that the WIMP gui originated at Xerox's PARK. Xerox management insisted that the developers at PARK show the visitors from Apple the internals of their WIMP. Off went the Apple people, very impressed, to produce their own WIMP.
The important legal battle wasn't Xerox-v-Apple or Apple-v-MS, it was Apple-v-DR. This was because DR had developed GEM a fairly good GUI (considering the monochrome monitors around) and some good applications. The original Windows 2.0 was a carthorse compare to GEM.
Despite the Mackintosh and GEM having the look-and-feel of Xerox Star, the court decided that GEM was a copy of Apple's Copy of Star and told DR to remove a number of features. The major restriction was that windows on the screen couldn't overlap. (strangely the verdict didn't apply to the Atari GEM). The Subsequent Windows 3.1 sounded the death knell for GEM on the Intel platform.
DR weren't totally out of the market because they had DR-Dos, an alternative to MSDOS, but, as we now know, MS took steps to make users thing that DR-Dos was incompatable by adding fake errors and warnings into Win 3.1 and Win 95.
Since gaining dominance most of MS's "innovations" have been by buying the company the developed the "innovation" or just by developing their own version. Most of the true innovations have been features designed to lock people into MS products or to lock competitors out.
1) appointing new members to the Supreme Court that will "interpret" laws their way..
2) doing "deals"..
a: The Court came up with some punishments for Microsoft, the administration changed, MS was let off with only a wrist-slap.
b: An energy company charges tens of millions of dollars for energy not delivered... the governor wants them to pay it back.. the governor is unseated.. new governor accepts 1 cent on the dollar.
2) The administration can decide to take no action against people or companies whom most of the public think broke the law..
The admin can also change legislation to remove company's actions from list of crimes.
if their past record is anything to go by, MS will just run off a million MS Office CD's at a few cents each and "donate" then to EU schools, saying that their retail value more than covers the fine..
then they will claim the full retail value of the CDs against US tax...
When MS "donates" copies of its software to schools it usually claims the full retail cost against tax.
Is it claiming the full cost of these CDs against tax? If so, it is effectively getting the US Government (and its tax-payers) to buy these copies.. Thousands of copies at $500 a time without even placing and order ?
Great business if you can get it ! Why bother fighting off Linux in the Open Market, and spending all that money on marketing? Just send millions of copies of Office to various Fed departments and make $499.90 profit on each one...
"Although I would love to blame increasing insurance rates on the lawsuits, it is really that our society demands that people receive the best possible medicial care"
A large proportion of US citizens (approx 40%), have jobs that don't include medical insurance and dont pay enough for them to take out their own medical insurance. These people recieve a level of healthcare that is almost the lowest in the industrialised world.
If they are unfortunate enough to need the services of a hospital for a member of the family then they are usually charged 30% to 40% more than a HMO is charged. For a minimum wage family the costs of a hospital stay can often only be met by selling the family home and most their possessions, still leaving them with debts .
US citizens have consistantly rejected the view taken in Europe, Canada and elsewhere that a civilised society should attempt to provide all of its citizens with decent healthcare. Yet in Canada it costs far less [per person] to provide everyone with decent healthcare than it costs to provide healthcare for the lucky 60% of US citizens.
back in the far distant past the BBC did a 53hr [yes 53 hours] radio dramatisation of Lord of the Rings with a young Ian Holm as Frodo Baggins. Thats probably why he got the part of Bilbo in the movie.
Yes he could carry off the part of Bilbo in the Hobbit but he would require a lot of care to stay healthy at the age he might be by the time the movie gets to be finally made.
two outside possibilities would be Bob Hoskins or Armin Shimerman [Quark in DS9}
Wouldn't it be even cooler if you could just download a small program, run it, and have it list all your hardware (including versions), ask you a few questions about what you want to use the PC for, and then send a list to a site that would produce a system tailored for you hardware and usage needs?
This article claims to be about the fastest growing Linux distribution, yet it is nothing of the sort.
It should be retitled "Linux shares amongst web servers accessable from Netcraft" because that's all it deals with. Its as if file-servers, database-servers and desktops don't exist. I know its difficult to get accurate figures for the latter uses of Linux but that shouldn't mean that they are ignored.
This distorts the figures by, for instance, ignoring the fact that many distributions are targetted at the desktop (especially the home user's desktop) and so are never likely to register highly on a sample of internet-linked web hosting servers.
As many of these distribtions achieve their market share by being downloaded rather than purchased in a box, some idea of their level of distribution would be gained from the multi-distribution download sites (linuxiso.org etc) or sites like Distro Watch.
For instance, over the last 6 months the average hits-per-day by people looking for information on Distro Watch are
Mandrake : 991
Red Hat : 696
Knoppix : 643
Debian : 567
Fedora : 518
Gentoo : 477
Yet in this article Mandrake is an non-player and Knoppix doesn't merit a mention.
if figures could be assembled from download sites, i have a shrewd suspicion that Debian and Mandrake would be well ahead, with dists like Gentoo and Knoppix definitely contenders.
as for the article being "solid", it seems pretty thin on information and very shaky on its contentions..
back in 1970 i helped out with a somewhat similar project at the Royal College of Art in London (i was writing 3d mapping software at the time). Some lucky students got to digitise real-live naked girls.
the 3d-figures were used in a program that "hung" student's dress designs on them.. the hardware wasn't fantastic but it did work..
but it was a great excuse to closely examine some very pretty girls' bodies
The NHS "discount" is a sham.. It is you who are misinformed..
As at the time of the MS change of Licence cost I was the person responsible for the IT budget of a major Council, i do know more about. ALL councils were presented with retrospective supplimentary bills from Microsoft. Our Council was faced with paying a minimum of 250,000 (if we bought retail) to 400,000 (if we stayed with the site agreement). Newham have 4 times as many PC's as we had and were faced with much greater extra costs. That was why all the Councils (including Newham) got together to object publicly.
You obviously were blind to all those public objections. If you did then you would have noticed that it was the supporters of capitalism, not the anti-capitalists, who objected loudest.
The NHS "discount" you refer to is a discount on the new higher cost that MS was trying to impose. Yes it was a saving on what they could have ended up paying but it was still about 45% more than they would have paid had not unilaterally changed the site licence contract.
I notice that you don't disagree with the statement that MS has been found guilty.
As i understand it, Newham was one of those Councils who were recently told by Microsoft that they site licence conditions had been changed and that they would have to pay almost an extra 1 Million to keep the software they'd already bought.
As for the discount itself. Even with the discount, Going with software will still cost the ratepayers an awful lot of money. It will be of even less value if the deal that they do to get this discount costs Newham tax payers a lot more money in the future.
I notice from your other postings that you are filled with an enormous amount of hatred for almost everyone and everything and because of your personality problem cannot conceive of anybody
else making any choices other than on the grounds of hatred. I know its difficult to understand but there are some people who actually want to make rational decisions and therefore demand that the comparison is a fair one.
I do not believe that taxpayers should be fleeced just to maintain an illegal monoply and reward illegal business practises.. Or haven't you noticed that time and again in the US courts, and elswhere, MS has been found guilty of establishing its monopoly by illegal business practises.
Nor do i think that tax-payers should pay more taxes than they need to just because some crazie hates all software that isn't Microsoft's.
Matt Lambert and I were, until recently, elected members of the same Council, one that was contolled jointly by Matt's party (Liberal Democrats) and the independents (of which I was one). Despite some of you thinking that all MS people are the devil's spawn, he is a really nice guy.
I had the unenviable responsability of overhauling the Council's IT structure and of introducing e-government. Although i was able to ensure that the contracts for document management, financial and GIS systems included guarantees that the suppliers would support their software on Linux desktops, I totally failed to get Matt's party to support my requests for the resources to run trials of OpenOffice on Windows and of a Linux Desktop.
Matt Lambert took absolutely no part in these discussions but I was supprised to be accused by a Councillor from his party, in a public session, of wanting an open source trial because "I hated Microsoft". I definitely don't hate Microsoft.
It was partly because of my experience that i set up the Open Council site to push the case for Open Source in local government. Microsoft's willingness to pay for this audit only goes to reinforce my assertion that local government is a critical area in the campaign to popularise Open Source and deserves more attention and support from the open source movement.
Knowing the way that local government works, my worry with this Newham situation is that it may just be a ploy to get cheap software from MS and that, in exchange for a big discount, the Council will agree that Open Source is too expensive. The results of this audit need to be closely scruitinised.
if its the radiation that you're worried about then you should worry at least as much about mobil phone because, even if they radiate on low power, they are held very close to your brain. surely the inverse-square law would suggest that more of you are likely to get a fried-brain that way.
i've noticed quite a few of those worried about the possibility of danger from power lines do smoke cigarettes. with cigarettes damage to your body rises from a possibility to almost a certainty.. yet that doesn't worry them..
The most annoying thing about being unemployed is that I still can't visit all those places that I wanted to visit but didn't have the time because now that I've got the time I haven't got the money.
On the positive side I've done the other things that people have suggested...
I've got involved : restructured the local borough's service delivery and IT structures..
I'm setting up a (hopefully) useful website www.opencouncil.org to promote open source in local government and, in particular, assist in the process of persuading the decision makers, not the techies, of the merits of open source.
I'm creating an open source product... one for creating "Rich Internet Applications" and front-ending web-services.
I keep trying to write that book... over 20 years of journalism only helping a little...
And I'm keeping myself up-to-date with new technologies.
read lots of books... and not just computer manuals... discovered James Lee Burke, rediscovered Jerome K Jerome
Actually I was able to do more when I was employed and busy. Having so much time makes it so difficult to concentrate on individual projects.
Staying up all night does let me discover old programs on cable (2hrs of Dr Who most nights) and catch up on the episodes that I missed decades ago..
The availability of instant messaging and email to keep in contact with old friends would take up all my time if I let it.. not having to get up early lets me match my UK time with my friends US time as well.
The bad bits : I am annoyed that my 35 years IT experience is considered a problem - "we have a young team". That being able to understand business systems and problem solving doesn't count if you experience only covers up to version 3.475 of some software that has just released version 3.476.
Seeing job ads that want people in "mid-career" and define that as 2 to 3 years experience. Being unable to apply for lesser jobs because they'll think I'll leave.
And then recently watching a TV ad campaign conning people into spending their money on computer training that will guarantee them high earnings "even if you have no experience".. You have to laugh don't you ??
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Maybe the thread should have been called "rewriting history to make MS look good/bad/innovative"
Business PCs existed before the IBM PC came along. Although VisiCalc (running on the Apple II) must be given the credit for breaking into the corporate conciousness, there were a lot of micros in offices running Wordstar (and later SuperCalc). These micros ran CPM on Z80's and 8080's because thats all there was around. In this 8-bit world not only was most of the hardware incompatable with other manufactures stuff but each manufacturer's version of CP/M used a different disk format.
The first successful attempt at standardisation of hardware, driving down costs, was the S100 Bus.
Digital Research did underestimate the potential of the 8088's pseudo-16bit architecture but many of its customers didn't. A number of small manufacturers did basic ports of CP/M to the 8088. I did one of them before working on CP/M-86 and Concurrent CP/M.
When the 8086, with its real 16 bit architecture, appeared and IBM started looking at producing their own micro (as a way of stopping its mainframe customers from buying outside IBM) they learnt the lessons of the S100 Bus and decided to open up their hardware so that other add-on builders would be attracted. Their generosity probably didn't extend to believing that their BIOS chip would be re-engineered so quickly.
Then Digital Research shot themselves in the foot by refusing to talk to IBM (who'd been pointed at DR by Bill Gates) and Microsoft bought up one of the 16 bit clones of CP/M and sold it to IBM as PCDOS/MSDOS.
As for GUI's, no one seems to remember that the WIMP gui originated at Xerox's PARK. Xerox management insisted that the developers at PARK show the visitors from Apple the internals of their WIMP. Off went the Apple people, very impressed, to produce their own WIMP.
The important legal battle wasn't Xerox-v-Apple or Apple-v-MS, it was Apple-v-DR. This was because DR had developed GEM a fairly good GUI (considering the monochrome monitors around) and some good applications. The original Windows 2.0 was a carthorse compare to GEM.
Despite the Mackintosh and GEM having the look-and-feel of Xerox Star, the court decided that GEM was a copy of Apple's Copy of Star and told DR to remove a number of features. The major restriction was that windows on the screen couldn't overlap. (strangely the verdict didn't apply to the Atari GEM). The Subsequent Windows 3.1 sounded the death knell for GEM on the Intel platform.
DR weren't totally out of the market because they had DR-Dos, an alternative to MSDOS, but, as we now know, MS took steps to make users thing that DR-Dos was incompatable by adding fake errors and warnings into Win 3.1 and Win 95.
Since gaining dominance most of MS's "innovations" have been by buying the company the developed the "innovation" or just by developing their own version. Most of the true innovations have been features designed to lock people into MS products or to lock competitors out.
In a number of ways ...
..
... the governor wants them to pay it back .. the governor is unseated .. new governor accepts 1 cent on the dollar.
1) appointing new members to the Supreme Court that will "interpret" laws their way..
2) doing "deals"
a: The Court came up with some punishments for Microsoft, the administration changed, MS was let off with only a wrist-slap.
b: An energy company charges tens of millions of dollars for energy not delivered
2) The administration can decide to take no action against people or companies whom most of the public think broke the law..
The admin can also change legislation to remove company's actions from list of crimes.
its easy
if their past record is anything to go by, MS will just run off a million MS Office CD's at a few cents each and "donate" then to EU schools, saying that their retail value more than covers the fine..
then they will claim the full retail value of the CDs against US tax...
this Mickey Mouse technology........
When MS "donates" copies of its software to schools it usually claims the full retail cost against tax.
...
Is it claiming the full cost of these CDs against tax? If so, it is effectively getting the US Government (and its tax-payers) to buy these copies.. Thousands of copies at $500 a time without even placing and order ?
Great business if you can get it ! Why bother fighting off Linux in the Open Market, and spending all that money on marketing? Just send millions of copies of Office to various Fed departments and make $499.90 profit on each one
"Although I would love to blame increasing insurance rates on the lawsuits, it is really that our society demands that people receive the best possible medicial care"
A large proportion of US citizens (approx 40%), have jobs that don't include medical insurance and dont pay enough for them to take out their own medical insurance. These people recieve a level of healthcare that is almost the lowest in the industrialised world.
If they are unfortunate enough to need the services of a hospital for a member of the family then they are usually charged 30% to 40% more than a HMO is charged. For a minimum wage family the costs of a hospital stay can often only be met by selling the family home and most their possessions, still leaving them with debts .
US citizens have consistantly rejected the view taken in Europe, Canada and elsewhere that a civilised society should attempt to provide all of its citizens with decent healthcare. Yet in Canada it costs far less [per person] to provide everyone with decent healthcare than it costs to provide healthcare for the lucky 60% of US citizens.
back in the far distant past the BBC did a 53hr [yes 53 hours] radio dramatisation of Lord of the Rings with a young Ian Holm as Frodo Baggins. Thats probably why he got the part of Bilbo in the movie.
Yes he could carry off the part of Bilbo in the Hobbit but he would require a lot of care to stay healthy at the age he might be by the time the movie gets to be finally made.
two outside possibilities would be Bob Hoskins or Armin Shimerman [Quark in DS9}
Wouldn't it be even cooler if you could just download a small program, run it, and have it list all your hardware (including versions), ask you a few questions about what you want to use the PC for, and then send a list to a site that would produce a system tailored for you hardware and usage needs?
It should be retitled "Linux shares amongst web servers accessable from Netcraft" because that's all it deals with. Its as if file-servers, database-servers and desktops don't exist. I know its difficult to get accurate figures for the latter uses of Linux but that shouldn't mean that they are ignored.
This distorts the figures by, for instance, ignoring the fact that many distributions are targetted at the desktop (especially the home user's desktop) and so are never likely to register highly on a sample of internet-linked web hosting servers.
As many of these distribtions achieve their market share by being downloaded rather than purchased in a box, some idea of their level of distribution would be gained from the multi-distribution download sites (linuxiso.org etc) or sites like Distro Watch.
For instance, over the last 6 months the average hits-per-day by people looking for information on Distro Watch are
Yet in this article Mandrake is an non-player and Knoppix doesn't merit a mention.
if figures could be assembled from download sites, i have a shrewd suspicion that Debian and Mandrake would be well ahead, with dists like Gentoo and Knoppix definitely contenders.
as for the article being "solid", it seems pretty thin on information and very shaky on its contentions..
back in 1970 i helped out with a somewhat similar project at the Royal College of Art in London (i was writing 3d mapping software at the time). Some lucky students got to digitise real-live naked girls. .. the hardware wasn't fantastic but it did work..
but it was a great excuse to closely examine some very pretty girls' bodies
the 3d-figures were used in a program that "hung" student's dress designs on them
The NHS "discount" is a sham .. It is you who are misinformed ..
As at the time of the MS change of Licence cost I was the person responsible for the IT budget of a major Council, i do know more about. ALL councils were presented with retrospective supplimentary bills from Microsoft. Our Council was faced with paying a minimum of 250,000 (if we bought retail) to 400,000 (if we stayed with the site agreement). Newham have 4 times as many PC's as we had and were faced with much greater extra costs. That was why all the Councils (including Newham) got together to object publicly.
You obviously were blind to all those public objections. If you did then you would have noticed that it was the supporters of capitalism, not the anti-capitalists, who objected loudest.
The NHS "discount" you refer to is a discount on the new higher cost that MS was trying to impose. Yes it was a saving on what they could have ended up paying but it was still about 45% more than they would have paid had not unilaterally changed the site licence contract.
I notice that you don't disagree with the statement that MS has been found guilty.
So far, we haven't had an American president run his entire political campaign based on stirring up anti-German hatred
True... Bush distracted people from his shortcomings by striring up anti-FRENCH hatred.
As i understand it, Newham was one of those Councils who were recently told by Microsoft that they site licence conditions had been changed and that they would have to pay almost an extra 1 Million to keep the software they'd already bought.
.. Or haven't you noticed that time and again in the US courts, and elswhere, MS has been found guilty of establishing its monopoly by illegal business practises.
As for the discount itself. Even with the discount, Going with software will still cost the ratepayers an awful lot of money. It will be of even less value if the deal that they do to get this discount costs Newham tax payers a lot more money in the future.
I notice from your other postings that you are filled with an enormous amount of hatred for almost everyone and everything and because of your personality problem cannot conceive of anybody else making any choices other than on the grounds of hatred. I know its difficult to understand but there are some people who actually want to make rational decisions and therefore demand that the comparison is a fair one.
I do not believe that taxpayers should be fleeced just to maintain an illegal monoply and reward illegal business practises
Nor do i think that tax-payers should pay more taxes than they need to just because some crazie hates all software that isn't Microsoft's.
Matt Lambert and I were, until recently, elected members of the same Council, one that was contolled jointly by Matt's party (Liberal Democrats) and the independents (of which I was one). Despite some of you thinking that all MS people are the devil's spawn, he is a really nice guy.
I had the unenviable responsability of overhauling the Council's IT structure and of introducing e-government. Although i was able to ensure that the contracts for document management, financial and GIS systems included guarantees that the suppliers would support their software on Linux desktops, I totally failed to get Matt's party to support my requests for the resources to run trials of OpenOffice on Windows and of a Linux Desktop.
Matt Lambert took absolutely no part in these discussions but I was supprised to be accused by a Councillor from his party, in a public session, of wanting an open source trial because "I hated Microsoft". I definitely don't hate Microsoft.
It was partly because of my experience that i set up the Open Council site to push the case for Open Source in local government. Microsoft's willingness to pay for this audit only goes to reinforce my assertion that local government is a critical area in the campaign to popularise Open Source and deserves more attention and support from the open source movement.
Knowing the way that local government works, my worry with this Newham situation is that it may just be a ploy to get cheap software from MS and that, in exchange for a big discount, the Council will agree that Open Source is too expensive. The results of this audit need to be closely scruitinised.
if its the radiation that you're worried about then you should worry at least as much about mobil phone because, even if they radiate on low power, they are held very close to your brain. surely the inverse-square law would suggest that more of you are likely to get a fried-brain that way. i've noticed quite a few of those worried about the possibility of danger from power lines do smoke cigarettes. with cigarettes damage to your body rises from a possibility to almost a certainty .. yet that doesn't worry them..
The most annoying thing about being unemployed is that I still can't visit all those places that I wanted to visit but didn't have the time because now that I've got the time I haven't got the money.
On the positive side I've done the other things that people have suggested ...
I've got involved : restructured the local borough's service delivery and IT structures..
I'm setting up a (hopefully) useful website www.opencouncil.org to promote open source in local government and, in particular, assist in the process of persuading the decision makers, not the techies, of the merits of open source.
I'm creating an open source product ... one for creating "Rich Internet Applications" and front-ending web-services.
I keep trying to write that book ... over 20 years of journalism only helping a little...
And I'm keeping myself up-to-date with new technologies.
read lots of books ... and not just computer manuals ... discovered James Lee Burke, rediscovered Jerome K Jerome
Actually I was able to do more when I was employed and busy. Having so much time makes it so difficult to concentrate on individual projects.
Staying up all night does let me discover old programs on cable (2hrs of Dr Who most nights) and catch up on the episodes that I missed decades ago..
The availability of instant messaging and email to keep in contact with old friends would take up all my time if I let it.. not having to get up early lets me match my UK time with my friends US time as well.
The bad bits : I am annoyed that my 35 years IT experience is considered a problem - "we have a young team". That being able to understand business systems and problem solving doesn't count if you experience only covers up to version 3.475 of some software that has just released version 3.476.
Seeing job ads that want people in "mid-career" and define that as 2 to 3 years experience. Being unable to apply for lesser jobs because they'll think I'll leave.
And then recently watching a TV ad campaign conning people into spending their money on computer training that will guarantee them high earnings "even if you have no experience".. You have to laugh don't you ??