Subject: Focus guys and Gals
From: dave (ddemings2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Nov 09 2001 - 11:41:57 MST
I agree I had a couple of basic questions and I want to ask more but out of
the 230+ emails posted while I was away 15% were technical responses. 20%
life style choices. 10% on where to find things. 55% were peanut gallery.
What is worse is that some of the people in the peanut gallery are the most
technically adept on the list and should know better. Please, in the
interest of advancing LINUX and the the way the world computes can we
maintain a level of professionalism. Use AOL if you want to rant
There are other LinuxPPC lists that are more professional but they are not
Yellow Dog specific.
> From: "../randydog" <yellowdog@randys.org>
> Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
> Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 10:26:36 -0800
> To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
> Subject: Re: MacOS X 10.1
>
> this is the yellowdog list, right?
>
> I don't get it. I ask a question pertinent to the list and no
> one makes a peep. Some schmuck makes a comment about OS X and
> here comes the peanut gallery. Can we please move this off the
> list and move on to other, more pertinent, issues?
>
> this is not a soap box, or a history class
>
> On Friday, November 9, 2001, at 10:08 AM, nathan r. hruby wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, Michael Giffin wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> nnow, i have a question for Joe B:
>>> i know little about Apple's systems pre-OSX, but was Apple's stuff at
>>> such a competitive disadvantage against M$, given that the latter was
>>> really DOS? my understanding was that Apple's main failure was in
>>> marketing. Windows2000 is the only operating sys from M$ i would
>>> use, especially if i never had to fix it when it breaks, yet they
>>> dominated the world on on lousy GUIs slapped onto a weak and ancient
>>> system. but i imagine i do not fully understand the situation.
>>>
>>
>> Marketing and Licensing and Timing is what made Microsoft the
>> giant it is
>> today.
>>
>> Back in the 80's MSFT got a deal with IBM to ship DOS (aka: cp/m with
>> hacks) on all of it's "personal computers." IBM didn't care,
>> they thought
>> PC's were not going anywhere and their cash flow came from Big Iron
>> anyway.. so out shipped the IBM PC and others started to make clones.
>> People wanted the same software to run, so they used MS-DOS.....
>> (Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall theat MSFT had a
>> stipulation in their contract with IBM that said all clones that were
>> licensed through IDB also has to ship with MS-DOS, but I'm not sure if
>> that's true or not.. I've never been able to confirm it) So
>> the PC took
>> off and it took DOS along for the ride. Bill Gates knew it would, and
>> played IBM's disrespect for the PC maket to his advantage.
>> After clones
>> started becoming commonplace Microsoft began branding the DOS
>> as MS-DOS,
>> along with MS-Word, MS-Multiplan, etc... They kicked the
>> marketing machine
>> into high gear and made lots of folks belive that they needed DOS.
>> granted at the time there weren't a host of other OS's to
>> choose from for
>> your x86 hardware. The 386 made a difference, and Quarterdeck's X
>> implementation became popular with some.. but successive
>> releases of DOS
>> ensured that it wouldn't run. as well as their own DOS implementation.
>>
>> Enter Apple and the Mac. They drive PC's one step further. A
>> GUI OS that
>> runs on a machine the size of a large toaster with just the
>> same amount of
>> RAM as most PC's were shipping with (4MB). This pisses Bill off. He
>> finds out where the GUI technology comes from (Xerox) and does
>> the same,
>> but Microsoft, now already loaded down with a legacy OS to
>> support, can't
>> just up and break every DOS application out there -- enter
>> Windows, a GUI
>> that runs atop DOS. Interesting, and similar to the way X
>> works.... But
>> now with the need to process more data to power the GUI, DOS can't keep
>> up, so windows pretty much has to glue a whole new operation
>> system ontop
>> of DOS so that legacy apps still work. They do several revsions of
>> windows, and by version 3 they finally get it right (and yes, I've used
>> Windows-286).. sort of... there's still the legacy of DOS underneath
>> win3.x, 95, 98 and ME. I think more that this is a testiment
>> to DOS than
>> of windows :) I have a $30k magnetic motion capture system
>> sitting in a
>> rack down the hall from me. What's it run? DOS-6.22. (why?
>> 'casue you
>> can pretty much use DOS as a el-cheapo embedded system on standard x86
>> components..)
>>
>> But clearly, power users and folks running <gasp> NetWare
>> servers wanted
>> to run Windows on all their machines for *all* their tasks.
>> Well, enter
>> again, IBM. IBM and MSFT make an agreement to create "the next
>> generation
>> operating system" after about a year this falls apart. IBM
>> comes up with
>> OS/2 and MSFT creates WindowsNT. Market market market.. nd you
>> know the
>> rest.
>>
>> A great deal of why MSFT is so big is beacuse most people (who
>> aren't CS
>> majors) just don't know about anything else, and when presented with
>> something like Linux, Darwin, FreeBSD.. well they don't know it
>> and it's
>> scary. No one wants to be scared, right? No one wants to re-learn a
>> whole new OS, right? So like dutiful sheep tens on millions of
>> people go
>> out and buy Microsoft products becasue it's the path of least
>> resistnace.
>> MSFt go into the right market at the right time and blinded
>> enough people
>> for long enough that they could entrench themselves into the PC
>> market so
>> well that it would take an act of god to remove them (and as
>> we're seeing
>> now.. an act of Congress, just won't cut it :)
>>
>> -n.. wowsa... I'm a ranty little mofo today :)
>>
>> --
>> ......
>> nathan hruby - nhruby@arches.uga.edu
>> computer support specialist
>> department of drama and theatre
>> http://www.drama.uga.edu/
>> ......
>>
>>
>
> -- randy
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Fri Nov 09 2001 - 11:53:55 MST