More on Miguels bio: Miguels possible next project; An open source tool which reads and writes the patented MS Office MS-XML.
You see, he has a habit of following/copying Microsofts tech, no matter how many patents are behind it. People need to stop following Microsoft because it obviously can't lead to anything good or well designed. IMHO.
yup, and all the while their intent is to also remove the advantages these products have running on Linux. Now MSFT has both GeCADs and Sybaris anntivirus software and both DID support Linux.
Just like a halloween doc said that they would hire key open source developers, this is just a variation on that. They're purchasing products/companies which help enhance the usefulness of Linux in the enterprise. They did this to JAVA too.
> It's like complaining about Antitrust because Microsoft bought Bungie.
No, it's more like complaining about Antitrust if Microsoft could/did purchase Gimp and only produced a Windows version.
Since Microsoft was found guilty of illegal use of its monopoly in operating systems against other operating systems, it should NOT be allowed to remove products from the market when they provide products for OTHER operating systems. IMHO.
This is Microsofts second purchase of Anti-Virus sofware which runs/ran on Linux. Sybari announced Linux support last year and RAV was a very popular Linux based product already.
Good for Microsoft, bad for Linux and bad for consumers.
yeah, what are you talking about, I've got Linux doing REALTIME ocean wave interval counting.;-)
hey, realtime is relative. Surely, a secondary vehicle speed indicator does not need uSec timing.
Heck, go get an OBDII interface and a PalmIII PDA, then write the code to reverse and invert the speed data received from the OBDII interface( via RS232 ). Just set the PalmIII on the dash with the backlight turned ON. Voila, heads-up display. You might have to work with the angle of the PalmIII and the refresh rate might be too slow for a Digital display( try a bargraph display ). Obviously, a laptop could be used and the display resolution and control(contrast,brightness,etc) would be better controlled. But you won't need a RTOS for this. IMHO.
From everything I've read about it, SOM was one of the first, if not THE first, CORBA implementations. As you probably know, the first few revs of CORBA were not complete( is any industry spec ) and they got better as it matured and this lead to far better interoperability among CORBA product vendors. Regardless, it sure looks like the WPS was based on SOM, which was based on CORBA, which was/is an OMG.org distributed object spec. Google'ing this resulted in these:
sorry, I didn't know you were going back THAT far to justify why today, the system is 0,0 in the upper left. I know all about line printers and text terminals. What I was getting at was that once we left the text based UI, that system did not have to exist but then again, unless you're doing graphing, top left is where everything starts... In English anyways( as you mentioned ).
Personally, I liked how OS/2 had 0,0 in the lower left. It just felt right. Probably because of all the schooling I've had used the same system. But hey, were still using the freak'n QWERTY keyboard too....
It is exactly like asking electricians to swap + and - but since OS/2 isn't around much, we're stuck doing just that. Time to move on. Have a good one.
could very well be. You know, it was pretty sweet running XFree86OS2 on OS/2. I used to develop apps in that environment and then copy the code down the the HPUX systems in the Labs and test them on the real hardware. Heck, I even ran X Client apps on OS/2 and exported the display to UNIX workstations when needed since some of the hardware I/O was only on the OS/2 systems.
Holger did an incredible job on that and it was pretty darn fast. Tests showed it only took a 10% hit from a full Linux/XFree86 env but on OS/2, it ran with the OS/2 apps, DOS, and Windows apps. OS/2 was a pretty nice system in that you could pick the platform you needed/wanted to develop and run in, and do it all on OS/2 and all at the same time. Loved having the Korne shell and vim on OS/2 also.:-)
Even without Microsofts Windows code, IBM still paid Microsoft for other license code in OS/2. The only way I know this is from hearing IBMers saying this when asked about open sourcing OS/2.
I don't know about "killer" apps but a quick example which comes to mind is FootPrint Works. It became IBM Works. There was some Lotus stuff too but I don't think that really counts.:-/
whatever, again, IBMers said that they had beta versions of Win95OS2 running until Microsoft changed the resource compiler to put a small portion of the resources above the 512MB address space and therefore Win95OS2 stopped working. Microsoft built Win95 with 1GB of virtual address space and they knew OS/2 supported up to 512MB of virtual address space.
what I ment was that I've never had to worry about when the video device driver, or device itself, refreshed a pixel on the screen. Turning pixels on in the GDI is one thing but controlling the hardware directly is something full featured OS's have done for years. So it really doesn't matter which way the display is refreshed so long as it's refreshed quicker than it's updated in the code.
that definately is the results but I've only heard, til now, that it was a Microsoft design/request. It would be nice to learn the real history in this... Thanks for the comment.
who knows what would have happened if Linux had tried MicroPort UNIX or even Concensus UNIX. I had MicroPort UNIX for 286 in the mid/late 80's and then Consensus 386 in the late 80's. Multi-user too but only Consensus had the new XWindow system. It was pretty cool having 3 people using one 286 or 386 but it was not cheap. WordPerfect for Unix was $500 while the DOS versin was $250. Almost everything was 2x more expensive for the UNIX version compared to the DOS version but I think that was mostly because UNIX was the business/workstation OS and they could get that kind of money.
Had Linus and the GNU people been about 3-5 years sooner with their product, Microsoft may have ended with DOS and Windows never seen daylight. Microsoft Zenix would be their product today and they would be 10th the size they are today.
agreed, WordPerfect/2 was a WinAPI application which used a new API in OS/2 called MIRROR or MERGE or something like that. MIRROR allowed much of the WinAPI source code to be compiled and run on OS/2. It was kind like WINE is today on Linux, but it required recompiling the WinAPI apps IIRC. It was not really a native OS/2 application but did have some specific native OS/2 capabilities like WPS integration and some threading of file loading and saving.
They didn't put everything they had into OS/2. They barely tried to move it at all.
-- They didn't ship OS/2 with IBM systems and on most it wasn't even offered
-- They didn't make OS/2 inexpensive for other OEMs (or alternately free)
Well, they had to pay Microsoft big licensing fees for stuff in OS/2. Someone mentioned $80/unit sold. Why do you think Ferenge was shipped? It used the Windows code/license you already had on your hard disk. So they really couldn't give it away or sell it cheaply. Great news for Microsoft and bad for IBM. Heck, Microsoft would know exactly how well OS/2 was selling too. Do you think the 3 year long Chicago/Windows 95 extravagence would have existed if OS/2 was not selling millions of copies per month AT RETAIL?
-- They didn't make OS/2 "killer apps" that IBM owned free or low cost
they did some but left it up to the market to fill in the blanks. When they saw something they liked, they purchased the product or the company and made it available in or with OS/2
-- The PS/2 division wanted OS/2 to be Microchannel only.
-- The OS/2 division never decided to simply include licenses of Windows with OS/2 and instead for an API approach without dedicated anywhere near the resources required to reverse engineer a very complex and rapidly changing OS.
What do you think the WinOS2 subsystem was? It WAS WINDOWS and WAS LICENSED from Microsoft. IBM fixed it so it was faster and more stable than DOS/Windows but it was Windows. What they had to reverse engineer was what Microsoft was doing UNDER Windows to make it not run on OS/2. IBM had OS/2 running Win95 apps until Microsoft found out. Then Microsoft modified the system so a very small portion of the resourses for each app would load up at the 1GB address. OS/2 only supported 512MB of virtual memory and therefore could nolonger run Win95 applications.
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well put but may I add that OS/2 v2.0 did have a TCP/IP stack. You had to purchase it seperately but it was available. There was PMX and Netware support in that kit too.
I had 486 systems running with 10MB of memory running X apps on Sparc stations via PMX over TCP/IP while running a Windows application and linking a few Netware shares into the system.
As you said, OS/2 ran circles around NT. And typically, you had to throw 2x the hardware at NT to even get close to OS/2. OS/2 and Netware owned the PC network server market until Microsoft finally shipped Windows 95. Then, they took $100's of millions they'd spend on marketing Win95 and started marketing WinNT. Even though OS/2 was a strong 2nd to Netware, only ONE review ever compared OS/2 with NT and Netware. As mentioned, OS/2 blew them away and we never saw another review which included OS/2.
And another thing, NT shipped( v3.1 ) with the OS/2 subsystem because without it, it would have had no networking. Microsoft Lan Manager for OS/2 bundled with/into NT to give NT the networking( albeit 16bit ) subsystem to compete with OS/2 and Netware. It wasn't until v3.51( 1996 ) when they finally got around to porting all that stuff to native NT and even then, there was hardly any multi-threading used.
People need to remember that Microsoft owned the press back then and when lies were printed, it took 3+ months to get a correction printed. And even then, the correction was buried on page 72 and not in the headlines like the original store. They were found guilty of anti-competitive practices in computer OPERATING SYSTEMS. It's not so easy for them to lie these days with the internet/WWW and all.
OS/2 rocked for the most part but the press were paid to push Microsoft.... IMHO.
not sure why a CRT refreshing from top to bottom means much with regard to the API cord system but FWIW, a 1970's lineprinter output that way and IMO, it's what Microsoft followed. Oh wait, wasn't the FAT filesystem based on 1970's floppy disk filesystems too. How long did Microsoft milk that ancient tech for? Where's the "innovation"? Sounds like copying to me.;-)
From what I've heard, the input queue on OS/2s GUI( not the OS but the GUI ) was synchronous because Microsoft fought IBM to make it that way. Did they do this BEFORE they internally decided to go with Window instead of OS/2 or after? ie, was it sabotage or not? Either way, it's how OS/2 ended up and it was a big thorn in it's side. But it was not an operating system flaw, it was a flaw in the GUI. Like GNU/Linux, OS/2 is a very robust OS with a GUI on top. The OS needs less than 4MB of RAM to run with the GUI( WPS ) needed 4-6MB( for Warp 3 GUI ). Pretty incredible and it's why OS/2 was/is 2-4 times faster than WinNT tech. But it also has some portions of the OS/kernel written in assembly( optimized ).
Another thing to remember is that unlike the MacOS and Windows 3.x, the synchronous queue issue only came up when there was a problem. All other times, it was multi-threaded and preemtive and the way it ran showed this. ie, very responsive 99% of the time.
funny you mention Doom and OS/2 because IBM hired Id Software to help them build a direct video interface so games like Doom could run in a window with other applications on oS/2. As you mentioned, Doom was a DOS application and only ran in full-screen. The OS/2 API created is called DIVE( Direct Interface Video Extension ) and later enDIVE( enhanced ). It was used for the video conferencing application shipped in OS/2 v3 Connect in 1994 called Person2Person. IBM and Id showed off Doom on OS/2 at a early 90's Comdex show in L.V. and huge crowds gathered to see it. Microsoft caught wind of this and had to have Doom running in a Microsoft window. Eventually, Microsoft DirectX was the result.
I think IBM and Id had a falling out over development practices or something like that and that's why Doom/2 was never released to the public. I'm sure Microsofts blocking of OS/2 everywhere IBM tried to push it helped in IBMs descision to stop working on gaming on OS/2. Along with other future OS/2 technologies and eventually the OS/2 all together.
Oh, and without Microsoft, OS/2 would not have had the synchonous input queue. That was Microsofts doing and it hobbled OS/2 for years and years because one stuck application could freeze the queue and all input to other applications.
I think the way Microsoft tracked and attacked OS/2 technology and development would make a great book. But I doubt many would believe it.
Following CUA just means that copy works with Ctl-C keys, etc and has nothing to do with the design of the system. On the otherhand, the WPS was/is based on the OO( object oriented ) design/spec called CORBA( industry standard ). It was/is OO all the way through and therefore those little icons you see are consistent in how they work since they are all based on a few basic objects. The Win95 interface was based on HP NewWave and was/is a shallow GUI interface with special bits of code for some parts and other parts use the same bits.
There is really a world of difference between what Microsoft wants for its system and what IBM wants. IBM( and most C++ developers in the tech sector ) wanted and used a full hierachical object model( z inherits from y which inherits from x ) while Microsoft had tried to stay away from that kind of thing because it "hides" the underlying structure( the Windows APIs ). Back in the early 90's, there were alot of application frameworks out there for devopers to use and most would allow the applications to be compiled on OS/2 or Windows and many times UNIX too. That was bad for Microsoft and they did a great job at making sure OO frameworks went away.
Even computer language history would have changed without Microsoft or Windows 3.0. Without Microsoft hold of the desktop, JAVA would not exist and SmallTalk would have probably be much more popular. In the late 80's and early 90's, IBM was trying to find a language/system to use across all of it's operating systems. SOM and Smalltalk were popular until JAVA came along. But this is speculation and will always be so opinions will vary.
I will say that the stuff from IBM typically looked more like it was designed to solve customers and developers problems, instead of being designed to protect a monopoly( ala Microsoft ). IMO.
step 1) ship a desktop version on every PC sold with their OS(s) step 2) make it the DEFAULT for every Microsoft application pre-installed on Windows step 3) make the desktop search fall back to Microsofts online search step 4) create this system with a nice little flaw which captures all google searches and mistakenly does a Microsoft search step 5) tell the DOJ that it was a coding error and that it will be fixed soon, reall soon now, it's almost done,.....
Otherwise, it's doubtful that they can actually compete with Google but they are great at preventing/blocking choice. Somehow, customers always seem to ask for this. Go figure.:-/
Surely what comes out of the mouths of the Redmonders is something other than PR. So discussing its merits is hardly a worthwhile endeavor. Discussing it's impact on PHB's and others who MIGHT believe them still would be more fruitful.
If it was someone other than Microsoft then evaluating its validity and technical merit would be the correct course of action. But, this is Microsoft we are getting this junk from.
These people need to be countered with the truth about its own systems. Then again, the virus and worm of the week seems to be doing a good job of this already. After all, why else would they feel they need to say this if the market were not accepting the fact that GNU/Linux ends up being more secure than Windows????
Very nicely written but except for the part about part where you say that Microsoft snaps up good researchers "primarily so that nobody else can have them".
Everything I've seen or heard from Microsoft and Bill come AFTER someone else has already done much of the work. Win API after Apple, DDE from Wang, COM from SOM, ActiveX and dotNet from JAVA, Cleartype again from Apple, and many many others.
Considering how closely Bill Gates runs that ship, the fact that their stuff still stinks is more of an indication that it's research department isn't much of one. I don't care what they pay people to spin their wheels on, it's not showing up out here. And man, does academia really respect Microsofts technology? Most all of my instructors laughed at it and most all developers who've worked on other OS's( OS/2 and UNIX ) feel Windows is inferior technology.
I do agree that they hire many of the best in the industry but from what I've seen( see halloween docs ), it's like you say, they do it to keep these people from doing real work for others. If Microsoft hadn't do so much to kill off innovative tech year after year, I'd not be soo anti-MS but year after year they attack anything which starts getting interesting and many times bury it.
I do agree that alot of research never finds a home in the market but again, like you say, that's exactly how Microsoft works. Therefore, I'll stick by what I said earlier unless something else comes to light.
BTW, those exclusive academic contracts which showed up over the past couple of years were very "interesting"....
Slashdot Mirror
More on Miguels bio:
Miguels possible next project; An open source tool which reads and writes the patented MS Office MS-XML.
You see, he has a habit of following/copying Microsofts tech, no matter how many patents are behind it. People need to stop following Microsoft because it obviously can't lead to anything good or well designed. IMHO.
LoB
yup, and all the while their intent is to also remove the advantages these products have running on Linux. Now MSFT has both GeCADs and Sybaris anntivirus software and both DID support Linux.
Just like a halloween doc said that they would hire key open source developers, this is just a variation on that. They're purchasing products/companies which help enhance the usefulness of Linux in the enterprise. They did this to JAVA too.
LoB
> It's like complaining about Antitrust because Microsoft bought Bungie.
No, it's more like complaining about Antitrust if Microsoft could/did purchase Gimp and only produced a Windows version.
Since Microsoft was found guilty of illegal use of its monopoly in operating systems against other operating systems, it should NOT be allowed to remove products from the market when they provide products for OTHER operating systems. IMHO.
LoB
This is Microsofts second purchase of Anti-Virus sofware which runs/ran on Linux. Sybari announced Linux support last year and RAV was a very popular Linux based product already.
Good for Microsoft, bad for Linux and bad for consumers.
LoB
yeah, what are you talking about, I've got Linux doing REALTIME ocean wave interval counting. ;-)
hey, realtime is relative. Surely, a secondary vehicle speed indicator does not need uSec timing.
Heck, go get an OBDII interface and a PalmIII PDA, then write the code to reverse and invert the speed data received from the OBDII interface( via RS232 ). Just set the PalmIII on the dash with the backlight turned ON. Voila, heads-up display. You might have to work with the angle of the PalmIII and the refresh rate might be too slow for a Digital display( try a bargraph display ). Obviously, a laptop could be used and the display resolution and control(contrast,brightness,etc) would be better controlled. But you won't need a RTOS for this. IMHO.
LoB
Obviously, the Prius is a pre-Bistromathic Drive vehicle.
LoB
From everything I've read about it, SOM was one of the first, if not THE first, CORBA implementations. As you probably know, the first few revs of CORBA were not complete( is any industry spec ) and they got better as it matured and this lead to far better interoperability among CORBA product vendors. Regardless, it sure looks like the WPS was based on SOM, which was based on CORBA, which was/is an OMG.org distributed object spec. Google'ing this resulted in these:
N EW .HTML
5 870.5 5493.30
http://www.scoug.com/OS24U/1996/SCOUG605.2.ODOC
And under the SOM section of:
http://kb.indiana.edu/data/aeri.html?cust=62
LoB
sorry, I didn't know you were going back THAT far to justify why today, the system is 0,0 in the upper left. I know all about line printers and text terminals. What I was getting at was that once we left the text based UI, that system did not have to exist but then again, unless you're doing graphing, top left is where everything starts... In English anyways( as you mentioned ).
Personally, I liked how OS/2 had 0,0 in the lower left. It just felt right. Probably because of all the schooling I've had used the same system. But hey, were still using the freak'n QWERTY keyboard too....
It is exactly like asking electricians to swap + and - but since OS/2 isn't around much, we're stuck doing just that. Time to move on. Have a good one.
LoB
could very well be. You know, it was pretty sweet running XFree86OS2 on OS/2. I used to develop apps in that environment and then copy the code down the the HPUX systems in the Labs and test them on the real hardware. Heck, I even ran X Client apps on OS/2 and exported the display to UNIX workstations when needed since some of the hardware I/O was only on the OS/2 systems.
:-)
Holger did an incredible job on that and it was pretty darn fast. Tests showed it only took a 10% hit from a full Linux/XFree86 env but on OS/2, it ran with the OS/2 apps, DOS, and Windows apps. OS/2 was a pretty nice system in that you could pick the platform you needed/wanted to develop and run in, and do it all on OS/2 and all at the same time. Loved having the Korne shell and vim on OS/2 also.
LoB
Even without Microsofts Windows code, IBM still paid Microsoft for other license code in OS/2. The only way I know this is from hearing IBMers saying this when asked about open sourcing OS/2.
:-/
I don't know about "killer" apps but a quick example which comes to mind is FootPrint Works. It became IBM Works. There was some Lotus stuff too but I don't think that really counts.
whatever, again, IBMers said that they had beta versions of Win95OS2 running until Microsoft changed the resource compiler to put a small portion of the resources above the 512MB address space and therefore Win95OS2 stopped working. Microsoft built Win95 with 1GB of virtual address space and they knew OS/2 supported up to 512MB of virtual address space.
LoB
what I ment was that I've never had to worry about when the video device driver, or device itself, refreshed a pixel on the screen. Turning pixels on in the GDI is one thing but controlling the hardware directly is something full featured OS's have done for years. So it really doesn't matter which way the display is refreshed so long as it's refreshed quicker than it's updated in the code.
LoB
that definately is the results but I've only heard, til now, that it was a Microsoft design/request. It would be nice to learn the real history in this... Thanks for the comment.
LoB
hey, I said no message. ;-)
who knows what would have happened if Linux had tried MicroPort UNIX or even Concensus UNIX. I had MicroPort UNIX for 286 in the mid/late 80's and then Consensus 386 in the late 80's. Multi-user too but only Consensus had the new XWindow system. It was pretty cool having 3 people using one 286 or 386 but it was not cheap. WordPerfect for Unix was $500 while the DOS versin was $250. Almost everything was 2x more expensive for the UNIX version compared to the DOS version but I think that was mostly because UNIX was the business/workstation OS and they could get that kind of money.
Had Linus and the GNU people been about 3-5 years sooner with their product, Microsoft may have ended with DOS and Windows never seen daylight. Microsoft Zenix would be their product today and they would be 10th the size they are today.
LoB
agreed, WordPerfect/2 was a WinAPI application which used a new API in OS/2 called MIRROR or MERGE or something like that. MIRROR allowed much of the WinAPI source code to be compiled and run on OS/2. It was kind like WINE is today on Linux, but it required recompiling the WinAPI apps IIRC. It was not really a native OS/2 application but did have some specific native OS/2 capabilities like WPS integration and some threading of file loading and saving.
LoB
-- They didn't ship OS/2 with IBM systems and on most it wasn't even offered
-- They didn't make OS/2 inexpensive for other OEMs (or alternately free)
Well, they had to pay Microsoft big licensing fees for stuff in OS/2. Someone mentioned $80/unit sold. Why do you think Ferenge was shipped? It used the Windows code/license you already had on your hard disk. So they really couldn't give it away or sell it cheaply. Great news for Microsoft and bad for IBM. Heck, Microsoft would know exactly how well OS/2 was selling too. Do you think the 3 year long Chicago/Windows 95 extravagence would have existed if OS/2 was not selling millions of copies per month AT RETAIL?
-- They didn't make OS/2 "killer apps" that IBM owned free or low cost
they did some but left it up to the market to fill in the blanks. When they saw something they liked, they purchased the product or the company and made it available in or with OS/2
-- The PS/2 division wanted OS/2 to be Microchannel only.
-- The OS/2 division never decided to simply include licenses of Windows with OS/2 and instead for an API approach without dedicated anywhere near the resources required to reverse engineer a very complex and rapidly changing OS.
What do you think the WinOS2 subsystem was? It WAS WINDOWS and WAS LICENSED from Microsoft. IBM fixed it so it was faster and more stable than DOS/Windows but it was Windows. What they had to reverse engineer was what Microsoft was doing UNDER Windows to make it not run on OS/2. IBM had OS/2 running Win95 apps until Microsoft found out. Then Microsoft modified the system so a very small portion of the resourses for each app would load up at the 1GB address. OS/2 only supported 512MB of virtual memory and therefore could nolonger run Win95 applications.
It looks like you fell for too much of MS FUD.
Lob
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well put but may I add that OS/2 v2.0 did have a TCP/IP stack. You had to purchase it seperately but it was available. There was PMX and Netware support in that kit too.
I had 486 systems running with 10MB of memory running X apps on Sparc stations via PMX over TCP/IP while running a Windows application and linking a few Netware shares into the system.
As you said, OS/2 ran circles around NT. And typically, you had to throw 2x the hardware at NT to even get close to OS/2. OS/2 and Netware owned the PC network server market until Microsoft finally shipped Windows 95. Then, they took $100's of millions they'd spend on marketing Win95 and started marketing WinNT. Even though OS/2 was a strong 2nd to Netware, only ONE review ever compared OS/2 with NT and Netware. As mentioned, OS/2 blew them away and we never saw another review which included OS/2.
And another thing, NT shipped( v3.1 ) with the OS/2 subsystem because without it, it would have had no networking. Microsoft Lan Manager for OS/2 bundled with/into NT to give NT the networking( albeit 16bit ) subsystem to compete with OS/2 and Netware. It wasn't until v3.51( 1996 ) when they finally got around to porting all that stuff to native NT and even then, there was hardly any multi-threading used.
People need to remember that Microsoft owned the press back then and when lies were printed, it took 3+ months to get a correction printed. And even then, the correction was buried on page 72 and not in the headlines like the original store. They were found guilty of anti-competitive practices in computer OPERATING SYSTEMS. It's not so easy for them to lie these days with the internet/WWW and all.
OS/2 rocked for the most part but the press were paid to push Microsoft.... IMHO.
LoB
not sure why a CRT refreshing from top to bottom means much with regard to the API cord system but FWIW, a 1970's lineprinter output that way and IMO, it's what Microsoft followed. Oh wait, wasn't the FAT filesystem based on 1970's floppy disk filesystems too. How long did Microsoft milk that ancient tech for? Where's the "innovation"? Sounds like copying to me. ;-)
LoB
From what I've heard, the input queue on OS/2s GUI( not the OS but the GUI ) was synchronous because Microsoft fought IBM to make it that way. Did they do this BEFORE they internally decided to go with Window instead of OS/2 or after? ie, was it sabotage or not? Either way, it's how OS/2 ended up and it was a big thorn in it's side. But it was not an operating system flaw, it was a flaw in the GUI. Like GNU/Linux, OS/2 is a very robust OS with a GUI on top. The OS needs less than 4MB of RAM to run with the GUI( WPS ) needed 4-6MB( for Warp 3 GUI ). Pretty incredible and it's why OS/2 was/is 2-4 times faster than WinNT tech. But it also has some portions of the OS/kernel written in assembly( optimized ).
Another thing to remember is that unlike the MacOS and Windows 3.x, the synchronous queue issue only came up when there was a problem. All other times, it was multi-threaded and preemtive and the way it ran showed this. ie, very responsive 99% of the time.
LoB
funny you mention Doom and OS/2 because IBM hired Id Software to help them build a direct video interface so games like Doom could run in a window with other applications on oS/2. As you mentioned, Doom was a DOS application and only ran in full-screen. The OS/2 API created is called DIVE( Direct Interface Video Extension ) and later enDIVE( enhanced ). It was used for the video conferencing application shipped in OS/2 v3 Connect in 1994 called Person2Person. IBM and Id showed off Doom on OS/2 at a early 90's Comdex show in L.V. and huge crowds gathered to see it. Microsoft caught wind of this and had to have Doom running in a Microsoft window. Eventually, Microsoft DirectX was the result.
I think IBM and Id had a falling out over development practices or something like that and that's why Doom/2 was never released to the public. I'm sure Microsofts blocking of OS/2 everywhere IBM tried to push it helped in IBMs descision to stop working on gaming on OS/2. Along with other future OS/2 technologies and eventually the OS/2 all together.
Oh, and without Microsoft, OS/2 would not have had the synchonous input queue. That was Microsofts doing and it hobbled OS/2 for years and years because one stuck application could freeze the queue and all input to other applications.
I think the way Microsoft tracked and attacked OS/2 technology and development would make a great book. But I doubt many would believe it.
LoB
Following CUA just means that copy works with Ctl-C keys, etc and has nothing to do with the design of the system. On the otherhand, the WPS was/is based on the OO( object oriented ) design/spec called CORBA( industry standard ). It was/is OO all the way through and therefore those little icons you see are consistent in how they work since they are all based on a few basic objects. The Win95 interface was based on HP NewWave and was/is a shallow GUI interface with special bits of code for some parts and other parts use the same bits.
There is really a world of difference between what Microsoft wants for its system and what IBM wants. IBM( and most C++ developers in the tech sector ) wanted and used a full hierachical object model( z inherits from y which inherits from x ) while Microsoft had tried to stay away from that kind of thing because it "hides" the underlying structure( the Windows APIs ). Back in the early 90's, there were alot of application frameworks out there for devopers to use and most would allow the applications to be compiled on OS/2 or Windows and many times UNIX too. That was bad for Microsoft and they did a great job at making sure OO frameworks went away.
Even computer language history would have changed without Microsoft or Windows 3.0. Without Microsoft hold of the desktop, JAVA would not exist and SmallTalk would have probably be much more popular. In the late 80's and early 90's, IBM was trying to find a language/system to use across all of it's operating systems. SOM and Smalltalk were popular until JAVA came along. But this is speculation and will always be so opinions will vary.
I will say that the stuff from IBM typically looked more like it was designed to solve customers and developers problems, instead of being designed to protect a monopoly( ala Microsoft ). IMO.
LoB
step 1) ship a desktop version on every PC sold with their OS(s)
:-/
step 2) make it the DEFAULT for every Microsoft application pre-installed on Windows
step 3) make the desktop search fall back to Microsofts online search
step 4) create this system with a nice little flaw which captures all google searches and mistakenly does a Microsoft search
step 5) tell the DOJ that it was a coding error and that it will be fixed soon, reall soon now, it's almost done,.....
Otherwise, it's doubtful that they can actually compete with Google but they are great at preventing/blocking choice. Somehow, customers always seem to ask for this. Go figure.
LoB
Surely what comes out of the mouths of the Redmonders is something other than PR. So discussing its merits is hardly a worthwhile endeavor. Discussing it's impact on PHB's and others who MIGHT believe them still would be more fruitful.
If it was someone other than Microsoft then evaluating its validity and technical merit would be the correct course of action. But, this is Microsoft we are getting this junk from.
These people need to be countered with the truth about its own systems. Then again, the virus and worm of the week seems to be doing a good job of this already. After all, why else would they feel they need to say this if the market were not accepting the fact that GNU/Linux ends up being more secure than Windows????
LoB
Very nicely written but except for the part about part where you say that Microsoft snaps up good researchers "primarily so that nobody else can have them".
Everything I've seen or heard from Microsoft and Bill come AFTER someone else has already done much of the work. Win API after Apple, DDE from Wang, COM from SOM, ActiveX and dotNet from JAVA, Cleartype again from Apple, and many many others.
Considering how closely Bill Gates runs that ship, the fact that their stuff still stinks is more of an indication that it's research department isn't much of one. I don't care what they pay people to spin their wheels on, it's not showing up out here. And man, does academia really respect Microsofts technology? Most all of my instructors laughed at it and most all developers who've worked on other OS's( OS/2 and UNIX ) feel Windows is inferior technology.
I do agree that they hire many of the best in the industry but from what I've seen( see halloween docs ), it's like you say, they do it to keep these people from doing real work for others. If Microsoft hadn't do so much to kill off innovative tech year after year, I'd not be soo anti-MS but year after year they attack anything which starts getting interesting and many times bury it.
I do agree that alot of research never finds a home in the market but again, like you say, that's exactly how Microsoft works. Therefore, I'll stick by what I said earlier unless something else comes to light.
BTW, those exclusive academic contracts which showed up over the past couple of years were very "interesting"....
LoB