Cory Doctorow on Ubuntu
David Gerard
Reminding me that, despite our whining here, Ubuntu really is a
remarkably drama-free OS. Even more so than Mac OS X.
- d.
Liam Proven
OS X has a better, more consistent UI (but it is steadily losing the
consistency with each successive release. I suspect that the people
who really understood this stuff have mostly left the company now.)
The quality of the apps tends to be substantially higher, though.
But when it comes to critically-important issues like driver support,
software updates, and indeed just running on inexpensive commodity
hardware, Ubuntu has a *huge* edge. I suspect the UI will catch up
quite soon, and some of the apps are getting there.
I still see way too much fragmentation in Linux apps. I mean, aside
from the 4 or 5 or 6 competing desktops with competing app-suites:
GNOME 3 versus Unity versus KDE versus Xfce versus LXDE versus who
knows what else. How many media players are there? What compelling
advantages does any single one have over the others?
But gradually, people will cluster around certain apps and the others
will wither and die.
E.g. The last time I tried KDE 4, on PC-BSD, I was surprised and
amused to note that Gmail didn't support Konqueror. Konqui always was
an unfriendly, ugly, schizophrenic mess, IMHO - but it spawned
elegant, clean, tidy and efficient browsers such as Safari and Chrome.
The web browsers that matter now are Firefox and Chrome, with Safari,
IE and Opera somewhere off in the distance behind them.
Most of the media players will die. I'm not convinced that Banshee and
Rhythmbox are "there yet" myself.
In office suites, well, I hope that LibreOffice and OpenOffice merge
again and that their improvement continues and indeed accelerates. I'd
like to see Abiword & Gnumeric continue, too, just so there is a
single main FOSS rival in GNOME Office.
Email? It's just going away in the face of webmail, I fear.
Thunderbird is looking neglected and I have no clue what's happening
with Evolution and KMail.
ISTM that KDE is falling further and further behind and GNOME's star
continues to rise. The leading distros are both increasingly
GNOME-centric, AFAICT. But more herd-thinning is needed, I think...
--
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lpr...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpr...@gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lpr...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508
Michael Haney
weaknesses when it comes to attracting the attention of average users.
That is its vast diversity. If normal, average users are dumbfounded
when trying to choose which Windows 7 version is best for them, then
they have no clue when it comes to Linux distros. Most will have
likely heard of Ubuntu, if they even know about Linux at all. For the
average user Windows is the PC, and to them then likely Linux is
Ubuntu, same mindset. They don't understand that Ubuntu is just one
out of thousands of distros, and when presented with this VAST
diversity they're going to get lost pretty damn quick.
Just choosing a distro is one thing, now they have to decide on which
desktop. There are dozens of desktops for Linux, some I've probably
never used before or heard of. Its too much for them to sort through.
I'm close to that side of things in the IT world, so I understand
what Linux faces when trying to attract the attention of the average
computer user. They have to contend with the fact that 99% of the
average users out there are Computer Ignorant. No, not Computer
Illiterate, most have to use a computer at work so they know how to
use a PC running, most likely, Windows XP. Its when you put them in
front of a machine running Windows 7 or Ubuntu that they turn into
idiots who act like they have a learning disorder. Suddenly, they're
all frustrated, can't find things in the places they know to find them
in XP, and you have to repeat over and over again how to do something
that a five year old can learn just by being told how to do it once.
No, I'm not kidding, tell a five year old how to do something on a
computer once and suddenly they're an expert at it. The one thing you
have to understand is that these people aren't doing this
deliberately. Its a part of human nature to be afraid of change.
Education is one way to easing that problem, so its no wonder
education funding is being gutted from schools here in the US left and
right, but that's a rant for another post.
Moving on, hen I say the average computer user is Computer Ignorant,
its not because they can't learn something new. No, its because they
don't WANT to learn anything new. As I said, not on a conscious
deliberate level, but subconsciously. They want familiarity, they
want things the way they have always been and change scares them.
This is the reality starring Linux in the face. There are times where
having vast diversity is beneficial, as in culture, but in some cases
vast diversity can also be a liability. Android, despite being a
Linux distro technically, has seen major success in the mobile market.
Mostly because its UI has generally remained consistent throughout
most of its existence. That market is also very different from the PC
market, so vast changes in UIs are often expected by the consumers and
the Computer Ignorance Factor (tm) doesn't apply. Cellular users are
accustomed to having vastly different UIs from phone to phone. The
cellular market has taught this from the very start, thus this is the
education part. You following me so far?
Computers are a different species altogether. The average user
expects things to be one way, and if they aren't that way then they
get confused. Why do you think the For Dummies books are such huge
sellers?
Anyway, I'm getting to the part that's related to this thread. The
fact that most distros are moving towards using one specific DE or
Windows Manager instead of offering a variety of choices. Before I
elaborate more let me say that this is also a reality that the Linux
Community needs to learn, remember change scares people, so the fact
that the Average User is becoming a part of the community scares the
traditionally elite Linux user. The reason for the Linux elite
wanting only pure FOSS Linux distros without any proprietary anything
is because of fear. Fear that their favorite distro will appeal to
the average computer user, and that the people behind that distro will
want to expand and grow their business much the way Canonical is doing
right now and the way Red Hat has also done in the past. Patent
threats from Microsoft have never gone anywhere and will never go
anywhere. They've made those threats so many times before and have
never brought those patents forward, not once. Why do you think
Microsoft fought a proxy war against Linux using SCO? They wanted to
spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt because that was the only weapon
they had. SCO was pretty much destroyed in that war, but Microsoft
was able to stand silently on the sidelines safe and sound.
Getting to the topic, the move to using one specific UI in Linux is
because getting the attention of the average user is also where the
money is. This is why Windows has become such a success, and why
Apple has grown to be such a powerful company. The buying power of
the average user is tremendously powerful. Mark Shuttleworth probably
understands this too. Not to say that the Linux elite are poor or
cheapskates, but lets face it most are of the mindset that anything
Linux or open source should always be free, as in beer. Thus the
small trend towards FOSS only distros. But, along side those are a
much larger, and rapidly growing number of distros which are more and
more seeking to appeal to the average user. To reduce the Computer
Ignorance Factor many are choosing one specific UI, in this case
Gnome. Ubuntu has been trouncing the other distros for a while now in
the popularity game, and so many average users who have some Linux
familiarity with Linux also know Gnome. This is why the Gnome 3
change is so controversial, again change scares people. On the other
hand, the average users are being educated in a way by the mobile side
of things. Gnome 3 and Unity have "some" similarities to the UI in
Android and iOS. Note, I said SOME. These UIs feel familiar and safe
to the average user, so emulating them to some degree will reduce the
Computer Ignorance Factor on the PC side. Now do you get it?
This is why Canonical seems to be growing more and more corporate, and
more and more distros are seeking to be user friendly and are shifting
more towards one UI. There will always be those distros that appeal
only to the elite Linux user, but distros like Ubuntu which are
becoming more and more appealing to the average user are going to be
become more abundant.
The world of Linux is changing, and the elites are panicking. Welcome
to reality.
--
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan
Visit My Site: http://sites.google.com/site/thezorch/home-1
To Contact Me:
http://sites.google.com/site/thezorch/home-1/zorch-central---contacts
Free Your PC from the Bondage of Windows http://www.ubuntu.com
Cybe R. Wizard
Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of the media players will die. I'm not convinced that Banshee and
> Rhythmbox are "there yet" myself.
Certainly not Banshee with its Mono dependencies. I junk that stuff
first thing on a new installation.
Of course, others may (wrongly, IMO) think differently.
Cybe R. Wizard
--
Nice computers don't go down.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
"The Barsoom Project"
David Gerard
> On Tue, 17 May 2011 16:12:42 +0100
> Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Most of the media players will die. I'm not convinced that Banshee and
>> Rhythmbox are "there yet" myself.
> Certainly not Banshee with its Mono dependencies. I junk that stuff
> first thing on a new installation.
> Of course, others may (wrongly, IMO) think differently.
I actually use Totem in almost all cases, going to VLC only for things
that don't behave in Totem.
I've never gotten into the iTunes "we will take care of your gadget in
its entirety" model. I've tried, I hate it.
I have a BlackBerry phone (Curve 3G 9300). It's the best music player
I've ever owned, and does mp3, AAC, Ogg and Flac. It also apparently
does telephony, when I switch the radio on. I manage it by copying
files to it as a USB disk.
- d.
Liam Proven
... a whole essay.
Quite the screed, there, Mike. Wow.
I think you have some points, but I'm not sure I'd agree with all of it.
The distro-confusion thing /was/ an issue, but I don't think it has
been for years now. Linux tends to spread by word-of-mouth, personal
recommendations, and coverage online and in magazines. It's only a
relatively small number of weirdos like me who actively went looking
for new interesting distros.
Linux used to mean Red Hat in the English-speaking world, SuSE in
Germany and chunks of continental Europe, Turbolinux in oriental Asia
and Caldera in business, for instance.
Now, to most people, it means Ubuntu or possibly Red Hat (=CentOS,
Oracle Linux) or SUSE to certain businesspeople.
I'm fine with the spread of Ubuntu remixes and so on, although TBH I
think most of them are wastes of time. For me, Mint and Lubuntu are
worth a look and that's about it.
I think Ubuntu are doing the right thing in trying to simplify the
desktop, but the current efforts aren't radical enough. But change in
FOSS and in Ubuntu tends to be incremental. That's fine.
The ideas of gOS, Peppermint Linux and ChromeOS are all worthwhile and
may show some future directions.
I don't think desktop confusion and so on are real problems any more,
not for users. I think the issue with them is more that it leads to
developer effort getting spread thinly rather than focus - but hey,
they're volunteers, so they should do what they wish.
Currently it looks like Ubuntu is going in an Apple-ish direction.
That's fine. I like Mac OS X a lot; it would please me if Linux were
more like it.
But on the other hand, I've talked to many iPhone owners and some iPad
owners. They tend to *love* their devices - but, interestingly, they
have often tried Macs and don't like them. I've had such people get
angry and shout at me, "*NO*, Liam, Macs are NOT like that, they are
NOT that simple and easy, I've TRIED them!"
I think Macs are considerably easier than PCs, but to someone who only
knows the PC, they are weird and hostile and forbidding. Somehow the
iPhone transcends that. If Linux can find a way to do the same, it
could be a big win.
David Gerard
> I think Ubuntu are doing the right thing in trying to simplify the
> desktop, but the current efforts aren't radical enough. But change in
> FOSS and in Ubuntu tends to be incremental. That's fine.
I think the issue is the desktop is no longer the happening place.
It's phones now.
I think making the desktop into a phone is missing the point. But I'll
be hard pressed to find a distro to indulge me.
- d.
Liam Proven
> On 17 May 2011 22:02, Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think Ubuntu are doing the right thing in trying to simplify the
>> desktop, but the current efforts aren't radical enough. But change in
>> FOSS and in Ubuntu tends to be incremental. That's fine.
>
> I think the issue is the desktop is no longer the happening place.
> It's phones now.
True. And tablets, for reasons which, while they do not escape me, I
do not share.
> I think making the desktop into a phone is missing the point. But I'll
> be hard pressed to find a distro to indulge me.
I don't think they'll make a desktop into a phone, but they might make
it into a sort of smart tablet with a keyboard. Which would be great
for the masses, /hoi polloi,/ but a PITA for geeks. But hey, Linux is
*the* geek OS. I am sure desktop-oriented distros and desktops will
continue. Even if we have to give up on GNOME and its kin.
Douglas Pollard
you are saying. I have come to Ubuntu from a much different place than
you likely have. Computers frustrate me. I started using numerical
control machine shop equippment in the 1960's. I was a little behind the
curve and had to catch up. I was forced into learning each new thing.
From there I moved to CNC 2with it's built in computers and CNC
programs. There was satisfaction in learning each thing but I had
absolutely no interest in how code worked or what made the box do what
it did. I was only interested that it did what I needed done. I moved on
to the the PC , then windows 3.1, 95,98 and XP. All of these helped me
to run a machine shop full of machinists. After retiring I built a CNC
milling machine and wanted to run it off of a PC. Windows was unsuitable
though I used it anyway. I suffered with crashes when the machine would
take off break the cutter and slam into the end of it's travel. Along
came Gnu/ Linux with a program that would run well because of it's
stability. I had to learn enough about it to be able to use it. Each
new thing was not something I was particularly interested in. Each was a
new tool to do the things I wanted or needed to do. I am not looking
down on people who have interest in computers in fact I admire all of
you. I am afraid this sounds like I am somehow above being interested.
It's not that, it's just that all this is a different field than my
field of interest. I have grandsons who are computer engineers. They
think Grandpop is really cool using Ubuntu, choosing programs,
downloading and setting up upgrades. The strange thing is I have come to
like all this and there is no way in hell I would go back to Microsoft.
This to my way of thinking would seem a reverse in my trek forward
I should mention I am 76 years old and have less and less time to
use the things I learn. I also have less interest in gadgets. I have
a GPS for my car but don't even know how to use it. I have never read
the directions. If I want to go someplace in the car I look at a map and
go. I have a GPS on my sailboat that will give me all kinds of
information but the only thing I use is the lat and long it gives me,
then I look on a paper chart to see where I am. From there I may plot a
course with a pencil and ruler and find it.
I am not dumb I started up and ran a shop with 45 machinists in
it we built steam turbine rotors for the Navy and wind tunnel equipment
for Nasa. I personally built the arm to scoop up Mars dust on the first
Mars lander.
I suspect many of the people that don't move away from XP and 7
just don't have any need. I would be using 7 still today most likely If
I hadn't had a need for something better. I would have done my short
story writing, video and a little art that I do. I build a now and then
boat and use boat design software to make changes in the design.
Learning that stuff almost drove me nuts. I suspect that for the average
user they get what they want from Microsoft. That's what they know and
they don't know the advantages of Linux. Much like the eskimo that has
never been warm.
I have a small computer shop nearby that I go to to get something
now and then. The guy seems proud that he doesn't know anything about
Linux for some reason. He told me one day in front of several customers
that he didn't know anything about those weired programs looked at the
other customers and laughed. I told him that he is the only busyness
man that I know of who bragged to his customers that he was ignorant of
a large segment of his industry. He won't wait on me anymore.:-)
The thing that Linux needs is a good salesman like Bill Gates. The
technical guys are here but where are the salesmen.
Michael Haney
A friend of mine who is a die-hard Mac user has said pretty much the
same thing I have about Linux. Those who think the vast plethora of
distros isn't an issue are out of touch with how the average user sees
things (Sorry Liam). The huge selection of Linux distros to choose
form is vast, and just the small number of Windows versions is enough
to confuse most of them. So, how are they supposed to know which one
is best for them to use? Ubuntu has gotten more press, but the
average user isn't going to know where to look for information about
different distros. Since Ubuntu is talked about so often in the
mainstream technology news so often they'll all be drawn towards that
one distro. And, that is why Canonical is becoming more corporate.
They need to expand their business to appeal to the users who
represent that market. Ubuntu cannot sustain itself off the Linux
Elites anymore and needs to bolster support from the average Janes &
Joes of the world. That is why Ubuntu One and the Ubuntu Music Store
exist. That is why you can buy software in the Ubuntu Software Center
now, and it is why Canonical created Unity.
Doug you've done a hell of a lot in your life, I gather. Obviously
you have more knowledge and skill than the average user out there if
you're able to create your own computer control setup for a CNC
machine. It really irks me when I see Windows being used for
applications where its totally unreliable. I once saw an ATM machine
with a Windows BSOD! An ATM machine!!! Oh, on Reddit, someone post a
BSOD displayed on an airport terminal monitor showing arrival and
departure times. Sometimes the touch screen self check-out machines
at Giant Foods frack up and display a Windows general protection fault
error message. WTF!? This is where Microsoft is making all of their
money. From stupid people who use Windows in places where it should
never be used. It does not have the stability nor security to be used
in applications where money is involved like self-check out machines
and ATMs, period!!! A reliable, stable, and secure OS should be used
in those applications. If not Linux then at least BSD Unix, which is
vastly more secure and definitely very stable. Hell, the computers on
the NASA shuttles and the F16 fighter run a variant of BSD.
My friend also spoke of what you said in your last comment. Ubuntu
and Linux in general needs MARKETING. RedHat does some, but they
target a specific market that's far removed from the average user.
There needs to be Ubuntu TV and magazine ads.
I envisioned a great commercial for Ubuntu. Louis Armstrong's "What a
Wonderful World" starts playing. You see a teacher in a UK or US
classroom with a group of students, then the camera pans back and you
see the scene is a web cam session on a monitor in an school in
Africa. The camera goes through the school window and the scene
changes to a construction site with workers taking a survey of the
area. One users a theodolite while another worker has a tablet device
and you clearly see the Unity desktop with a application running ...
the Libre Office spreadsheet. The camera moves forward between the
two men and the scene changes to a stormy night, soldiers in camo rain
parkas are moving about with sand bags to prevent a flood. One
soldier is under a tent with one of those rugged laptops running
Ubuntu look at satellite data on storm and floods with Firefox. Zoom
into the screen and the scene changes to an office on Wall Street
showing a man behind a desk using a computer running the Unity desktop
some kind of financial application. The camera goes sideways through
a window and the scene changes a soldier in Afghanistan waving
happily, as the camera pans back you see a baby sitting in his
mother's arms waving back and smiling at the screen. The scene fades
to the camera looking down at field of green and a group of children
run in hand-in-hand and start going in a circle, which fades into the
familiar Ubuntu logo and the Ubuntu URL fades in as the song comes to
and end.
If I had the skills and resources to make that ad a reality I'd make it.
Bill Cairns
I am deliberately bottom posting because I need this quote:
On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Macs are considerably easier than PCs, but to someone who only
> knows the PC, they are weird and hostile and forbidding. Somehow the
> iPhone transcends that. If Linux can find a way to do the same, it
> could be a big win.
I am interested in your use of the term "PC" to be synonymous with "Windows".
To me, the Mac OS runs on a PC. Linus runs on a PC. Windows runs (not
very well) on a PC.
Please don't think that I am being critical - I assume that you are
using the term in a way that is common where you are. But I wonder if
other people use "PC" in the same was as me or am I way out different?
Bill
David Gerard
> I personally built the arm to scoop up Mars dust on the first Mars lander.
OK, now *that* is a cool story you have to tell us!
- d.
Michael Haney
> Hi Liam,
>
> I am deliberately bottom posting because I need this quote:
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think Macs are considerably easier than PCs, but to someone who only
>> knows the PC, they are weird and hostile and forbidding. Somehow the
>> iPhone transcends that. If Linux can find a way to do the same, it
>> could be a big win.
>
> I am interested in your use of the term "PC" to be synonymous with "Windows".
>
Which defines the problem here. To the Average Computer User the PC
"is" synonymous with Windows. To them Windows "is" their PC. Anyone
who has done a lot of IT support for regular folks (raises hand, note
corporate users don't count) can tell you they've run into this
hundreds of times. I run into it when I help my family with computer
problems. My best friend runs into it when he helps his family with
computer problems. So any who says its not a problem don't know Jack
Squat what.
> To me, the Mac OS runs on a PC. Linus runs on a PC. Windows runs (not
> very well) on a PC.
>
Tell me this. Why would a new, fresh install of Windows XP Pro have a
BSOD, with nothing installed, no drives installed, just the OS and all
you were trying to do is reboot? Never saw Mac OS X or Linux do that.
> Please don't think that I am being critical - I assume that you are
> using the term in a way that is common where you are. But I wonder if
> other people use "PC" in the same was as me or am I way out different?
>
Well, PC is a broad term. It basically represents a computer of a
certain type of architecture, or overall design. One could argue that
the Mac is now a PC because they use Intel processors. There are a
few other differences between Macs and PC, one being the fact that
Macs don't have a BIOS. They have an EFI (Extensible Firmware
Interface), which is fundamentally different from a BIOS in several
ways, but I digress.
A long time ago you called PCs "IBM Compatibles", but we've gone so
far beyond that stage now. PCs today are vastly different under the
hood from the old IBM Clones of yesteryear, but a few lingering pieces
still exist. The BIOS is one of them. The PC BIOS hasn't really
changed that much since the days of the old IBM PC. Some updates have
occurred to accommodate new technology such as new types of RAM, SATA
hard drives, bootable CDs, and bootable USB, but fundamentally the
BIOS in your PC right now isn't really all that different from the
BIOS of an IBM PC back in the 1980's. The PC world really needs to
move on to an EFI, which would provide so many more capabilities and
solve a lot of issues. Like with Apple's Bootcamp a BIOS can be
easily emulated for legacy software until operating systems are
updated to directly support an EFI.
Michael Haney
Whoa!!! Alrighty then! Uh, holy crap. Please tell us this story!
Also, have you ever thought of doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) post on
Reddit? They'd love to ask you questions about your work on Viking.
David Gerard
> Tell me this. Why would a new, fresh install of Windows XP Pro have a
> BSOD, with nothing installed, no drives installed, just the OS and all
> you were trying to do is reboot? Never saw Mac OS X or Linux do that.
Crappy hardware. I've seen OpenBSD fail to install on a box whose
Windows install crashed all the time, but then OpenBSD is severely
demanding on hardware reliability, since it treats flakiness as an
attack vector ;-)
(That's why OpenBSD is the acid test for virtual machine software, by
the way - you can tell VirtualBox is rubbish by OpenBSD only barely
working and then flakily. Flawless on VMware.)
- d.
Liam Proven
> and then. The guy seems proud that he doesn't know anything about Linux for
> some reason. He told me one day in front of several customers that he
> didn't know anything about those weired programs looked at the other
> customers and laughed. I told him that he is the only busyness man that I
> know of who bragged to his customers that he was ignorant of a large segment
> of his industry. He won't wait on me anymore.:-) The thing that
> Linux needs is a good salesman like Bill Gates. The technical guys are here
> but where are the salesmen.
Oh, bravo! *Applause*
Liam Proven
> Hi Liam,
>
> I am deliberately bottom posting because I need this quote:
Hey, it's a bottom-posting list. Indeed, of the 34 or so mailing lists
I am currently on and the 20-odd or so I've trimmed in recent years,
all are bottom-posting if they have an official position statement.
Top-posting is just wrong, period. I've heard all the excuses; none
are good enough.
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Liam Proven <lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think Macs are considerably easier than PCs, but to someone who only
>> knows the PC, they are weird and hostile and forbidding. Somehow the
>> iPhone transcends that. If Linux can find a way to do the same, it
>> could be a big win.
>
> I am interested in your use of the term "PC" to be synonymous with "Windows".
>
> To me, the Mac OS runs on a PC.
No. PCs are not Macs, Macs are not PCs.
Yes, modern Macs are x86-based and use PC chipsets, but they have no
BIOS and are not PC-compatible. PC OSs run on them by dint of lots of
special drivers & compatibility layers.
Ditto, running x86 editions of Mac OS X on PCs - it is not the native
platform & needs masses of work.
> Linus runs on a PC.
I daresay he does, although he has been an Alpha and a PowerPC user in
the past, at least. But I think you mean Linu*x* and not Mr Torvalds.
:¬)
> Windows runs (not
> very well) on a PC.
Digs aside, modern Windows is really very good. It's stable, reliable,
extremely manageable - something Linux and Mac OS X are relatively
speaking very poor at - and has an incredible wealth of drivers and
applications. Don't knock it; it makes us look bad.
You /cannot/ assess the weaknesses of the competition unless you also
assess its strengths.
> Please don't think that I am being critical - I assume that you are
> using the term in a way that is common where you are. But I wonder if
> other people use "PC" in the same was as me or am I way out different?
Windows is the native OS of the PC; the PC is the native platform of
Windows. Since PC DOS 1.0, Microsoft OSs have been the native OS of
the PC.
Various versions of Windows have also run on Unix workstations and
servers powered by DEC Alpha, Apple/IBM/Motorola PowerPC, Sun SPARC
and SGI MIPS processors; they still run on HP/Intel Itanium servers
and will soon run on ARM machines.
But the native platform is the x86-based IBM-PC-compatible.
It doesn't matter how many other OSs have run on the PC-compatible, or
how many other platforms Windows runs on - 99.9999% of all the PCs
ever shipped, shipped with a Microsoft OS, and 99.9999% of them never
ran anything else.
By the same token, 99.99% of the technical professionals and experts
in the world - hardware, software, networks, anything - have never
seen or used anything other than PCs running Windows.
A tiny fraction have dabbled with Linux, a few more have played with a
Mac - but Linux is still chiefly a hobbyist thing and Macs an
individual choice for those who get to choose *and pay for* their own
personal computers.
Political correctness is a self-defeating tactic. We have to
understand and face up to the truth.
Ignazio Palmisano
> On 18 May 2011 09:29, Michael Haney <thez...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Tell me this. Why would a new, fresh install of Windows XP Pro have a
>> BSOD, with nothing installed, no drives installed, just the OS and all
>> you were trying to do is reboot? Never saw Mac OS X or Linux do that.
>
>
> Crappy hardware. I've seen OpenBSD fail to install on a box whose
> Windows install crashed all the time,
Spot on. Saw that a few times, turned out to be dodgy RAM, or dodgy
installed RAM. Once the computer was sort of booting with the RAM
modules half out of the slot; machine put together by a self declared
expert (NOT me :-P)
I.
Douglas Pollard
> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 4:24 AM, David Gerard<dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 18 May 2011 03:00, Douglas Pollard<doug...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I personally built the arm to scoop up Mars dust on the first Mars lander.
>>
>> OK, now *that* is a cool story you have to tell us!
>>
> Whoa!!! Alrighty then! Uh, holy crap. Please tell us this story!
>
> Also, have you ever thought of doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) post on
> Reddit? They'd love to ask you questions about your work on Viking.
>
the testing of samples. The damn thing didn't work. Some of the
engineers new in advance that it wouldn't or at least thats what they
told me. I guess they didn't have a strong enough voice to change it.
Then there is the possibility that the fault lay with me and some
mistake I made? If there is any satisfaction in the whole thing for me
it's that I have a piece of junk that I built laying on Mars. Unless
someone goes and gets it it will be there for millions of years after I
am gone. I guess it's not the only thing I built that didn't work?
Doug
Michael Haney
Still, you're a part of history. You shouldn't be ashamed of your
work, regardless how it turned out. A part of something you built was
flown into space, landed on another planet, and was used to do soil
analysis of an alien world! That's nothing to shake a stick at.
You SO need to do a Reddit AMA!
Ric Moore
As Douglas said, it didn't do soil analysis, or anything else useful,
ergo maybe he might not want personally to broadcast that around the
planet. But, at least he got it there, on the basis of his expertise and
reputation. Now that's something we geeks can get a grasp on and admire!
Yet, others of lesser ability might throw rocks because, in their
ignorance, jealousy and even stupidity, they enjoy doing that.
Werner Von Braun failed to launch a rocket successfully many times
before one actually went straight up and on to it's destination.
Douglas, at least your successors got to learn from what went wrong, in
order to finally get it right. But, in your heart of hearts, I'm sure
you wish that the damn thing worked the first time. There's many a slip
between the cup and the lip, between here on Earth and there on Mars.
> That's nothing to shake a stick at.
>
> You SO need to do a Reddit AMA!
--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256
Douglas Pollard
me. I read some of th posts and for the most part I don't get it. Just
seems like a bunch of people wanting attention to me. Doug
Michael Haney
in some interesting industries come on and do AMAs. We've also had
celebrities, politicians, scientists and CEOs. One time, Redditors
were asked to come up with questions for Senator Al Franken, the best
were chosen and he answered them candidly.
In the end its all for fun, but it also gives the people a chance to
get answers for questions they otherwise wouldn't be able to get any
other way.
Douglas Pollard
bragging about my exploits as any fame that might have been involved is
now faded glory as is the whole space program for now:-) I don't
know what the figures are as far as whether or not Linux is gaining n
popularity or not. I feel that if it becomes less popular it will be
harder to get hardware to run on Linux and there may be a loss of
programmers to work on it. I know Ubuntu is gaining but I am wondering
if it is only at the expense of other Linux distros. I go to Barnes and
Noble's about once a week. I have for sometime been watching the Linux
books verses Windows oriented books disapear We are loosing that battle
there and In Books a Million. It is likely Linux users buy books on
line so there is not much incentive for these companies to carry them.
Still these places may well be where many Linux users get there first
experience reading about GNU/Linux. At the present time there is one
Linux shelf with about 10 books on it. I fear we may be going the way of
the do-do bird with so little marketing. Seems like we spend a lot of
effort selling to each other, making claims and most of us nodding our
heads in agreement while Microsoft and Apple are busy selling there
product. It is quite an experience to walk into an Apple store. It
looks like a 22 century intergalactic space station. Those places could
wind up being the most popular hang out in town. These people understand
snob appeal and they sell Apple to a great extent because the charge too
much for it. They are building the opportunity at some point to cheapen
the product and sell it to the masses because we would all like to join
the snob club.
Germany has been operating on reputation for 50 years. They cut
quality and as long as the product looks like quality, sales go on.
I have been thinking it might pay to open such a place with food
and coffee and a bunch of Ubuntu or Debian computers. space agey looking
to be used for free or cheap. Furnish the place with anodised aluminum
or titaineum and acrylic clear plastic. Technocratic waitresses and
waiters could help clients and sell drink and food to customers as well
as sell linux computers. In such a place the price of the box does not
matter as long as the atmosphere is right. Very pricey food and drink
to match the atmosphere!
There is tremendous knowledge in this community but it's hard to
make any money out of all this. Like it or not the ability to make money
is the true and final test of the value of a thing.
Something like this with a club atmosphere might become very
popular and could be franchised.
Anyway just thinking out loud and as such there are bound to be a
lot of flaws in all this but there may be some merit as well.
I really don't much care if a lot of other people use Linux except
that if it loosesl it's momentum it may at some distant point become
less usable. Doug
Douglas Pollard
At Reddit, an AMA post stands for "Ask Me Anything". We've had people in some interesting industries come on and do AMAs. We've also had celebrities, politicians, scientists and CEOs. One time, Redditors were asked to come up with questions for Senator Al Franken, the best were chosen and he answered them candidly. In the end its all for fun, but it also gives the people a chance to get answers for questions they otherwise wouldn't be able to get any other way.
Samuel Thurston
Internet cafes are more of a European thing I think Doug. They don't
work so well in the States because the people that don't have their
own laptops/smartphones/etc. to bring to the coffee shop also don't
have the income for pricey drinks.
Michael Haney
> I was trying to get across the idea of selling Linux rather than bragging
> about my exploits as any fame that might have been involved is now faded
> glory as is the whole space program for now:-) I don't know what the
> figures are as far as whether or not Linux is gaining n popularity or not.
> I feel that if it becomes less popular it will be harder to get hardware to
> run on Linux and there may be a loss of programmers to work on it. I know
> Ubuntu is gaining but I am wondering if it is only at the expense of other
> Linux distros.
Well, I do know that the number of people running Linux is actually
growing. Ubuntu's popularity and the news its been getting in the
mainstream tech media has been of some help. Also, what you said is
correct, other distros are feeling the pinch due to the Ubuntu's
popularity. A graph I saw on The Linux Action Show a few months back
exemplifies this quite clearly. Ubuntu has been eclipsing the other
distros for a while now and helped to make Debian variants among the
most widely used with Fedora and Slackware distros lagging behind.
Also, due to Ubuntu, Gnome has been eclipsing KDE and most of the more
obscure DEs and WMs.
> I go to Barnes and Noble's about once a week. I have for
> sometime been watching the Linux books verses Windows oriented books
> disapear We are loosing that battle there and In Books a Million. It is
> likely Linux users buy books on line so there is not much incentive for
> these companies to carry them. Still these places may well be where many
> Linux users get there first experience reading about GNU/Linux. At the
> present time there is one Linux shelf with about 10 books on it.
The reality is eBooks are gaining dominance. Kindle eBook sales now
dwarf hard copy book sales at Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble's Nook
sales are starting to cannibalize hard copy sales. Its happening to
the recording industry with MP3 downloads devastating the physical
media market, and streaming overtaking DVD and Blu-Ray sales.
> I fear we may be going the way of the do-do bird with so little marketing. Seems like
> we spend a lot of effort selling to each other, making claims and most of us
> nodding our heads in agreement while Microsoft and Apple are busy selling
> there product. It is quite an experience to walk into an Apple store. It
> looks like a 22 century intergalactic space station. Those places could
> wind up being the most popular hang out in town. These people understand
> snob appeal and they sell Apple to a great extent because the charge too
> much for it. They are building the opportunity at some point to cheapen the
> product and sell it to the masses because we would all like to join the snob
> club.
Not really. As I said, eBooks are very rapidly starting to overtake
hard copy book sales, and the Linux section at the Rockville, MD
Barnes & Noble store is actually pretty big. Its an example of
"you're mileage may vary", each store is different.
On the point about the Apple Store. I agree, there SO needs to be an
Ubuntu Store or a Linux Store like the Apple Store. Apple has money
to throw around though. Mostly due to the overwhelming success of
iTunes. What Linux needs are charismatic salesmen.
> Germany has been operating on reputation for 50 years. They cut quality
> and as long as the product looks like quality, sales go on.
The Germans have a long, and well deserved, reputation for being
superb engineers. What the Nazis did was inexcusable, but even today
their engineering feats still amaze us. We have jet travel and space
exploration because of the Germans. The Apollo lunar landings were
due to research captured from the Nazi V2 rocket program. Some of the
world's top engineering firms based in Germany.
> I have been thinking it might pay to open such a place with food and
> coffee and a bunch of Ubuntu or Debian computers. space agey looking to be
> used for free or cheap. Furnish the place with anodised aluminum or
> titaineum and acrylic clear plastic. Technocratic waitresses and waiters
> could help clients and sell drink and food to customers as well as sell
> linux computers. In such a place the price of the box does not matter as
> long as the atmosphere is right. Very pricey food and drink to match the
> atmosphere!
Now that's an idea!!! Ubuntu runs fast on those small Atom-based
nettops, and some can be mounted behind LCD displays so you don't need
to have tower systems. This is actually a good idea.
> There is tremendous knowledge in this community but it's hard to make
> any money out of all this. Like it or not the ability to make money is the
> true and final test of the value of a thing.
The problem is the "mentality" of the Linux Elite that everything
Linux should ALWAYS be free. This is why you see the elites getting
angry with Canonical, because Canonical is trying to make money by
favoring the users who are more willing to spend ... the average
consumer.
> Something like this with a club atmosphere might become very popular and
> could be franchised.
I agree with you. The Linux Cafe!!! Now that's an idea. If I had
the $$$ I'd do it myself, but me's a poor boy. LOL
> Anyway just thinking out loud and as such there are bound to be a lot of
> flaws in all this but there may be some merit as well.
> I really don't much care if a lot of other people use Linux except that
> if it loosesl it's momentum it may at some distant point become less usable.
> Doug
>
Competition is a good thing. The fact that Microsoft has been trying
to kill Linux for a while now, often using underhanded and
semi-illegal methods, is quite telling. I means that Linux might
actually be a bigger threat to them then we realize. Also, more
hardware today is compatible with Linux than ever before. More
hardware manufactures are releasing drivers for Linux than ever
before. It means that Linux is becoming important enough for it to
matter to them, and that's a good thing. Much of this is being driven
by the enterprise server market, where Linux is actually pretty
strong, and we mostly have IBM and Red Hat to thank for that.
Canonical needs its own Steve Jobs, and frankly ... Mark Shuttleworth
is definitely NOT Steve Jobs material. Its his guidance that has
gotten Ubuntu to where it is, but to forge on head Canonical needs a
more charismatic leader who can really get people's attention.
Michael Haney
<sam.th...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Internet cafes are more of a European thing I think Doug. They don't
> work so well in the States because the people that don't have their
> own laptops/smartphones/etc. to bring to the coffee shop also don't
> have the income for pricey drinks.
>
LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!!!!!!
It all depends on the Location! The point is, you wan to put such a
cafe in place that will attract the kind of customers who are willing
to pay more for expensive drinks.
Ric Moore
> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Samuel Thurston
> <sam.th...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Internet cafes are more of a European thing I think Doug. They don't
> > work so well in the States because the people that don't have their
> > own laptops/smartphones/etc. to bring to the coffee shop also don't
> > have the income for pricey drinks.
> >
>
> LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!!!!!!
>
> It all depends on the Location! The point is, you wan to put such a
> cafe in place that will attract the kind of customers who are willing
> to pay more for expensive drinks.
Keep in mind that 60% of all restaurant startups fail within 3 years.
You'd be better off going to Vegas with your cash capital, having one
helluva weekend gambling, and come home a winner or a loser. Either way,
you get past the three-year investment in torment in short order. And,
managed to do it in an air-conditioned environment, while drinking tall
drinks from taller straws.
I've had Sysco and Kraft institutional foods as customers, and working
with their reps in the field was a real eye-opener into the reality of
the food biz. It ain't pretty. A lot of the owners I met looked like
they had been beaten with a broom handle. LONG hours, small rewards as
in 6% to 10% profit after taxes. Best stick with what you know. To top
that bad news off, ALL new restaurant startups are always on COD. You
better have one fat checkbook, just for starts. Then there is the Health
Dept. to deal with, employees, etc. :) Ric
David Gerard
> Internet cafes are more of a European thing I think Doug. They don't
> work so well in the States because the people that don't have their
> own laptops/smartphones/etc. to bring to the coffee shop also don't
> have the income for pricey drinks.
As London is an international city *full* of immigrants, net cafes are
everywhere. They generally run a somewhat locked-down XP with Firefox,
IE and MS Office. Some offer games as well. They make a bit of money
selling time on the computers, and a bit more selling food and drink
at corner-shop prices.
- d.
Michael Haney
XP? EEEEWWWWWW!!!!!!!
Hell, open a cyber cafe with Ubuntu systems running Chrome, Libre
Office, and a fine selection of some of the best Linux games
available. Hold Nexuiz LAN party tournaments! LOL
David Gerard
> XP? EEEEWWWWWW!!!!!!!
> Hell, open a cyber cafe with Ubuntu systems running Chrome, Libre
> Office, and a fine selection of some of the best Linux games
> available. Hold Nexuiz LAN party tournaments! LOL
I suspect you'd need genuine MS Office in Crossover at the least.
You'd also need someone who could tell one end of a computer from the
other. Net cafe proprietors are notoriously the backyard barbecue sort
of "Windows Expert", middle-aged suburban w@r3z kiddies who have a
CD-R of everything and are free with terrible technical advice.
- d,
Michael Haney
Eeek, I know the type. I can't tell you how many times I've had clean
up after their messes. Used to be a support tech for a long time
until I was laid off and work offers dried up. Its the reason why I
moved out of Detroit, MI. Now, the place is a Third World Country in
the making. I live near Washington, D.C. now. Never will find a more
wretched hive of scum and villainy. No, I'm serious, you're going to
need waders and a shovel. Also, don't forget your gas mask, the smell
of all that bullshit is lethal!
I'm working with the Maryland Dept. of Rehab to find work and to get
new adaptive tech and low vision aids.
Douglas Pollard
Linux. I think Linux has the potential to be more exotic than Spanish
Fly in the right setting. I don't think you could make XP exotic with a
dance floor full of naked women doing the fandango. It is common as
dirt. The only thing it has going for it is that everybody uses it. If
they don't do something drastic they will have absolutely nothing to
sell. Doug
David Gerard
> That may be true but those cafes don't have anything nearly as exotic as
> Linux. I think Linux has the potential to be more exotic than Spanish Fly in
> the right setting. I don't think you could make XP exotic with a dance
> floor full of naked women doing the fandango. It is common as dirt. The
> only thing it has going for it is that everybody uses it. If they don't do
> something drastic they will have absolutely nothing to sell.
It works here because London is a city of immigrants. Particularly
Walthamstow (E17) where I live - it's cheap here, so everyone moves
here. Very ethnically mixed, which makes it quite a nice place to live
(if a cheap and ugly one). So lots of people go to net cafes to keep
in touch with home. The net cafes tend to sell phone cards and mobile
unlocking and so forth as well for the same reason.
- d.
Ric Moore
> Canonical needs its own Steve Jobs, and frankly ... Mark Shuttleworth
> is definitely NOT Steve Jobs material. Its his guidance that has
> gotten Ubuntu to where it is, but to forge on head Canonical needs a
> more charismatic leader who can really get people's attention.
I kinda disagree, we don't need fluff. Just more human engineering. The
crap that Jobs pulls on his own users, isn't what I would want for
Linux.
He sic'd his lawyers on me and the Apple Users Group that I founded in
the Johnson Space Flight Center, south of Houston, around 1981. He and
his lawyer minions DEMANDED I start charging and collecting dues from my
members, just so we could get their "Apple Core" fishwrap of a magazine
rag and an official membership card carrying status of his little
national cult. That, or "cease and desist" using the word "Apple" in our
user group name. So, that pissed me off.
I wrote back stating that we had several of the Apollo Astronauts and
their kids in our group, did I need to bring this gestapo action to
their attention? Did we need to boycott the local ComputerLand store,
who benefited greatly by our assisting others to buy their fine
Apple ][ products? I got nothing in writing in return, which pissed me
off even more, that they would make such an attempt on a group of loyal
followers, as well as a lazy founder that didn't want to do the chore of
paper work for collecting dues to start with.
Jobs, in my opinion, is a fool who tries to out-Gates Bill Gates. Didn't
work in our case. We ceased and desisted from doing business with the
ComputerLand, and they went out of business not long after, especially
after they threatened to sue me personally, as a club member was selling
Verbatim floppy disks for half what the Computer Land charged. Free
Market and Jobs in the same sentence? Pull my other finger. His business
model works in a real world vacuum, where you better have a Gold Card
and no sense of moral outrage when you become abandoned as soon as the
next "Great Thing<tm>" comes to market, and that users must marry
themselves blindly to his sense of the future. I have yet to see any
Apple Product be offered an real hardware upgrade path, as opposed to
the replace-everything-or-you-suck-you-luser path.
"Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Clearly, you
haven't been screwed over by Jobs, ...yet. But, you will. I'd bet on it.
I see no need for Linux users to lose their collective intellect to
follow a "charismatic leader". That would be a pathetically tragic thing
to roll between my ears.
We have Linus, that is good enough for me. And, Mark Shuttleworth is no
fool either. He has put his money where his mouth is. I'm GLAD he's no
Jobs, who wants your money where his mouth is. :) Ric
Ric Moore
> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 2:06 PM, David Gerard <dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 19 May 2011 19:03, Michael Haney <thez...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> XP? EEEEWWWWWW!!!!!!!
> >> Hell, open a cyber cafe with Ubuntu systems running Chrome, Libre
> >> Office, and a fine selection of some of the best Linux games
> >> available. Hold Nexuiz LAN party tournaments! LOL
> >
> >
> > I suspect you'd need genuine MS Office in Crossover at the least.
> > You'd also need someone who could tell one end of a computer from the
> > other. Net cafe proprietors are notoriously the backyard barbecue sort
> > of "Windows Expert", middle-aged suburban w@r3z kiddies who have a
> > CD-R of everything and are free with terrible technical advice.
> >
>
> Eeek, I know the type. I can't tell you how many times I've had clean
> up after their messes. Used to be a support tech for a long time
> until I was laid off and work offers dried up. Its the reason why I
> moved out of Detroit, MI.
I used to go to Detroit once a year to visit Mecca, where the paycheck
came from in Wyandotte. Three of us would venture into a local liquor
store, back-to-back, and still didn't feel safe. Later, we'd head up
across the border in Windsor, to attend the "Windsor Ballet", which was
the dance review at the Penthouse Magazine Club. :)
> Now, the place is a Third World Country in
> the making. I live near Washington, D.C. now. Never will find a more
> wretched hive of scum and villainy. No, I'm serious, you're going to
> need waders and a shovel. Also, don't forget your gas mask, the smell
> of all that bullshit is lethal!
I was born in DC, it's a great place! Especially to visit, as you get to
see where all your money goes for free. The best dining experiences on
the East Coast. It was even better in the early 70's. I had my choice
between watching a peace riot, and the hippys getting night-sticked by
the Park Police, or a race riot, where they were getting night-sticked
by the Nation Guard. What a great time! :)
> I'm working with the Maryland Dept. of Rehab to find work and to get
> new adaptive tech and low vision aids.
They are certainly one of the better national efforts. Try finding such
a thing in some other states. Of course, at the rates you pay taxes
there, you should get something in return! :) Ric
Douglas Pollard
with promoting Linux. Since no one can own it they can't do what Jobs
does nor does anyone want to. Capturing a large share of the market
with a better product has nothing to do with Fluff. I am talking about
getting more people to use Linux.
If you could open 25,000 cafes in the US or anyplace else Mark would
call you and thank you graciously even if the were using Debian. If we
want to be a bunch of hermits hiding in caves running Ubuntu thats
another story . Doug
Michael Haney
> On Thu, 2011-05-19 at 12:49 -0400, Michael Haney wrote:
>
>> Canonical needs its own Steve Jobs, and frankly ... Mark Shuttleworth
>> is definitely NOT Steve Jobs material. Its his guidance that has
>> gotten Ubuntu to where it is, but to forge on head Canonical needs a
>> more charismatic leader who can really get people's attention.
>
> I kinda disagree, we don't need fluff. Just more human engineering. The
> crap that Jobs pulls on his own users, isn't what I would want for
> Linux.
>
Let me clarify, we need someone charismatic like Steve Jobs WITHOUT
the douchebaggery of Steve Jobs. We need a balanced focus of human
engineering and commercial marketing.
> He sic'd his lawyers on me and the Apple Users Group that I founded in
> the Johnson Space Flight Center, south of Houston, around 1981. He and
> his lawyer minions DEMANDED I start charging and collecting dues from my
> members, just so we could get their "Apple Core" fishwrap of a magazine
> rag and an official membership card carrying status of his little
> national cult. That, or "cease and desist" using the word "Apple" in our
> user group name. So, that pissed me off.
>
Yeah, that's the kind of douchebaggery I'm talking about. That's
classic Steve Jobs there.
> I wrote back stating that we had several of the Apollo Astronauts and
> their kids in our group, did I need to bring this gestapo action to
> their attention? Did we need to boycott the local ComputerLand store,
> who benefited greatly by our assisting others to buy their fine
> Apple ][ products? I got nothing in writing in return, which pissed me
> off even more, that they would make such an attempt on a group of loyal
> followers, as well as a lazy founder that didn't want to do the chore of
> paper work for collecting dues to start with.
>
> Jobs, in my opinion, is a fool who tries to out-Gates Bill Gates. Didn't
> work in our case. We ceased and desisted from doing business with the
> ComputerLand, and they went out of business not long after, especially
> after they threatened to sue me personally, as a club member was selling
> Verbatim floppy disks for half what the Computer Land charged. Free
> Market and Jobs in the same sentence? Pull my other finger. His business
> model works in a real world vacuum, where you better have a Gold Card
> and no sense of moral outrage when you become abandoned as soon as the
> next "Great Thing<tm>" comes to market, and that users must marry
> themselves blindly to his sense of the future. I have yet to see any
> Apple Product be offered an real hardware upgrade path, as opposed to
> the replace-everything-or-you-suck-you-luser path.
>
Steve Jobs is a control freak. You see it in the practices of the
iTunes App Store. He might have been instrumental in getting Apple to
where it is now, but his douchebaggery is pissing off those developers
and consumers who aren't fanatical fanboys/fangirls.
> "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Clearly, you
> haven't been screwed over by Jobs, ...yet. But, you will. I'd bet on it.
> I see no need for Linux users to lose their collective intellect to
> follow a "charismatic leader". That would be a pathetically tragic thing
> to roll between my ears.
>
If not a charismatic leader then a charismatic spokesperson who can be
the bridge between the Linux Community and the Average Consumer.
Someone who listens to what we have to say and doesn't let his ego
(cough, cough, Steve Jobs, cough, cough) take over.
> We have Linus, that is good enough for me. And, Mark Shuttleworth is no
> fool either. He has put his money where his mouth is. I'm GLAD he's no
> Jobs, who wants your money where his mouth is. :) Ric
>
Mark Shuttleworth has own brand of douchebaggery too. I guess its a
case of the lesser of two evils.
Liam Proven
and extreme attention to detail has produced a remarkably high
proportion of the technical advances of the entire personal computer
industry over something like 35 years now. The whole damned world
*owes* him.
Without Jobs, we wouldn't have Windows. We would probably have GUIs -
he didn't invent them - but we'd have /really crap/ GUIs. The early
experimental ones were /rubbish/. It was Apple - Jobs' Apple - that
took this plaything of the academics and refined it and polished it
and made it useful and friendly and attractive and easy... which the
rest of the IT industry then copied. Often badly - look at OS/2, or
AmigaOS, or even Windows 1, 2 and 3. All were pretty crap GUIs.
Without Jobs, we'd have shitty geek-toy smartphones.
Without Jobs, we'd have some kind of solid-state successor to Minidisk
as audio players, software-locked down tighter than a duck's arsehole
with dreadful apps. Look at the abominations Sony creates and ships
with Vaios or its music players.
Without Jobs, we'd have had CLI-driven text-mode OSs well into the 90s
and some terrible OS/2-derived OS that cost a fortune. We'd never have
got laser printers or WYSIWYG or rich media integrated into our OSs
for free.
Stallman and GNU and so on would never have delivered all this. They
like EMACS, FFS! We have what we have because the FOSS world copies
Microsoft, and Microsoft copies Apple.
Jobs has done more to change this planet and benefit the human race
than any single politician since WW2 and probably more than any single
other American citizen who has ever lived.
He is a genuinely great man, and after some truly *horrific* medical
procedures in the last few years...
(If you don't know what the poor bastard has endured, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_procedure
He survived that. He /then/ underwent this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_transplant
The fact that he /came back to work/ after that is /incredible/ and
nothing short of heroic.)
... and now, after this medical nightmare which it is amazing he
survived, he is slowly dying. And that is a great shame, as this man
deserves all the praise we can give him.
Yes, he is head of a huge rich company with dodgy practices. All huge
rich companies have dodgy practices; Apple is better and cleaner than
most. It is vastly cleaner than Microsoft, for instance, or Exxon or
any fossil fuel company, or any major financial institution. Apple got
where it is by making insanely great products. Dozens of them, over 4
decades.
Sure, they're not all great. Lots of them suck. Some are horrible,
some of the business models ethically dodgy. But there are so many
great ones, it's forgiveable, and unlike Microsoft, nobody is forcing
you to buy them. (Try buying a brand-name PC without Microsoft. Try
running a major company without running Microsoft. It's virtually
impossible.)
Apple has done amazing things and it has, literally, changed the
world. So has Microsoft, yes, but in many cases either by copying
Apple(1), by methodically and illegally screwing its competitors(2),
by buying in products it is not competent to make itself(3), or by
illegally and immorally manipulating the marketplace(4). And of course
by simple lying(5) and theft(6) when none of the above worked.
Selected examples:
(1) Windows, especially 95 and 7.
(2) Aldus, WRT Word for Windows; Netscape, WRT IE.
(3) MS Mail, Powerpoint, Visual Basic, FrontPage, IE.
(4) Q.v. the deal with Hitachi over BeOS, or IBM re OS/2 and Office,
or any of its OEM contracts in the '80s & '90s.
(5) the obfuscation of deliberate, faked failure of Win3.1 on DR-DOS.
(6) DoubleSpace, from STAC; Video for Windows, from Apple.
Ric Moore
> Mark Shuttleworth has own brand of douchebaggery too. I guess its a
> case of the lesser of two evils.
Well, at least so far, he hasn't appeared on my scope as a complete
douchebag. He is spending his own dough, and I am one of many grateful
recipients. You know, the old saw about who pays the fiddler gets to
call the tune. I don't think I would want the job.
Actually, the perfect spokesman for the Linux movement retired ...Bob
Young, the Founder of Red Hat. Heckuva guy, classic "Uncle" type who
gently prodded people to their own level of greatness. I benefited
greatly under his tutelage, more in the sphere of life skills, than any
other. His RedHat Expos were legend and all of the distros were welcome
to set up booths and attend. It was Geek Circus. He would send crews of
volunteers on weekends, and pay all of our expenses, to attend and hold
Install Fests at Universities and LUGs. HIS dream, was to capture the
hearts and minds of all the student users. He bought truckloads of Poppa
John's pizzas (who were the first pizza chain to install RedHat in their
stores) for the Install Fests, free to the starving students who came.
Those people would become the new faithful client/admins of the near
future that he hoped to build upon. Like Jesus, Bob loved to feed a
multitude. :)
That was skillful subliminal marketing, without the push-push
in-your-face dynamics of Wall Street style marketing. When they closed
down the box-set edition of RedHat, after he left, I thought that was a
huge mistake. Ubuntu wouldn't be where it is today, had Red Hat not left
a huge vacuum to fill. So, I figure ole Mark has a bit of Bob Young in
him. And, his job is to herd cats. Someone's tail could get stepped on,
but it wouldn't be by design, the way I see it.
And Jobs? If it hadn't been for the Woz, he would have been barefoot and
schlepping wine coolers with blue rinsed old ladies, trying to sell them
a term life insurance program. :) Ric
Ric Moore
> Without Jobs, we'd have some kind of solid-state successor to Minidisk
> as audio players, software-locked down tighter than a duck's arsehole
> with dreadful apps. Look at the abominations Sony creates and ships
> with Vaios or its music players.
I would hazard a bet that his counterparts in Malaysia came up with the
cool designs.
> Without Jobs, we'd have had CLI-driven text-mode OSs well into the 90s
> and some terrible OS/2-derived OS that cost a fortune. We'd never have
> got laser printers or WYSIWYG or rich media integrated into our OSs
> for free.
I think more credit goes back to Steve Wozniak, who understood the
innards of such things and could design them in his head. The Woz went
to Cupertino also, during that fated tour, understood the innards and
the deficiencies of what he saw, and proceeded, just like with the
Apple ][, to design the entire thing, the code, the display, even that
single button mouse they saw, into a working unit. The fact that he got
top billing from the get-go, Jobs showed us his underbelly. He had few
compunctions against screwing over the Woz, his best friend and
benefactor.
> Stallman and GNU and so on would never have delivered all this. They
> like EMACS, FFS! We have what we have because the FOSS world copies
> Microsoft, and Microsoft copies Apple.
>
> Jobs has done more to change this planet and benefit the human race
> than any single politician since WW2 and probably more than any single
> other American citizen who has ever lived.
No, I'd give that trophy to Linus.
> He is a genuinely great man, and after some truly *horrific* medical
> procedures in the last few years...
>
> (If you don't know what the poor bastard has endured, read this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_procedure
> He survived that. He /then/ underwent this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_transplant
> The fact that he /came back to work/ after that is /incredible/ and
> nothing short of heroic.)
>
> ... and now, after this medical nightmare which it is amazing he
> survived, he is slowly dying. And that is a great shame, as this man
> deserves all the praise we can give him.
Not from me. Oh hell no.
> Yes, he is head of a huge rich company with dodgy practices. All huge
> rich companies have dodgy practices; Apple is better and cleaner than
> most. It is vastly cleaner than Microsoft, for instance, or Exxon or
> any fossil fuel company, or any major financial institution. Apple got
> where it is by making insanely great products. Dozens of them, over 4
> decades.
Not when he took a whiz on my shoes, as there were about a dozen
Apple][ owners (NASA types) when I moved to League City Texas. (just
south of NASA) A year or so later, after forming our User Group, 150
users. Threatening to SUE me?? For what?? For not handing over MY group
of friends to them, for sale, like a herd of cattle to be driven? F'
That. He's a GD idiot, in my book. The fact that Apple has gotten to
where it is, in spite of Jobs, is due to some good people. You know
what?? I later war-dialed all 150 former members that I could find, and
every last one of them went to the IBM XT. How is that smart? How is
that "insanely" GREAT? When you run off your founding user base? $2,000
in 1980s dollars was a LOT of money, even for today, for a home
computer, tricked out to 64k of memory and dual floppy drives. We got a
boot in the ass for our faithfulness.
Then Jobs closed what Woz created open. THAT is what Jobs did. All of
the cottage industries that made all sorts of boards and accessories for
the Apple ][, went under with the advent of the Apple ][c, which left
the XT the premier open design, for those innovative people to create
after market gadgets for. Apple lost it's edge and ass with that
decision and created their disposable computers and ...disposable
users.
Now, the open design that Woz created is the defacto standard in our X86
machines. Not only given away by Jobs, but spurned in his closed
sourceness. That is great?? How about that $10,000 Lisa? The owners got
screwed and left in the dirt, like the lovechild Jobs abandoned. He even
named the computer for her. Then ditched it too. Great? Pull my other
finger.
There's been plenty written about the early days of Apple and of both
Steves and their relationship with Bill Gates and MicroSoft. If I had
been working with DSS, I would have pulled The Woz out of that
dysfunctional crowd for his own protection, just for starts, and found
him a nice set of corporate loving step parents, so he could recover
from the emotional/intellectual abuse handed him by his evil twin. HE,
like Linus, wanted to create the "Right Thing" and set about doing it,
for the benefit of us all, and did it. The rest? Carney Barkers in a
techno side-show. Great, as in Pitch-Men, surrounded by slick attorneys,
no doubt about that. For all of their patent griefings, it's a miracle
we don't have to insert a coin to turn our computers on.
So am I sore about it? You bet. Woz designed the Right Thing in 1977.
Jobs trashed it, IBM swept it up and the XT, AT and all that followed
copied his design and strategy using an open published spec for others
to design for peripherals and extra goodies for. THAT was great, that
was what benefited us all, even until today, when you remove your aging
video card and slap another in, without replacing your entire kit.
So, ~please~, don't abuse the Woz any further by knighting Jobs. He's
been intellectually abused enough. No, Job's biggest mistake was
believing his own press and forgetting who brung him to the dance. Had
Jobs stuck to the Woz's dream, IBM would have been a mere contender
today, an "also ran", IMHO. I really feel sorry for The Woz. I really
really do.
> Sure, they're not all great. Lots of them suck. Some are horrible,
> some of the business models ethically dodgy. But there are so many
> great ones, it's forgiveable, and unlike Microsoft, nobody is forcing
> you to buy them. (Try buying a brand-name PC without Microsoft. Try
> running a major company without running Microsoft. It's virtually
> impossible.)
Nah, there is always Linux, thanks and all praise be to Linus. I wish he
would step forward to be a more public figure. But, that isn't his
style. I sure wouldn't say it's "impossible" to run a major company
without Windows, as many do, ...quite successfully. :) Ric
Liam Proven
> On Thu, 2011-05-19 at 20:50 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>> Without Jobs, we'd have some kind of solid-state successor to Minidisk
>> as audio players, software-locked down tighter than a duck's arsehole
>> with dreadful apps. Look at the abominations Sony creates and ships
>> with Vaios or its music players.
>
> I would hazard a bet that his counterparts in Malaysia came up with the
> cool designs.
Nope. Error #1. The physical design was Johnny Ive.
> I think more credit goes back to Steve Wozniak, who understood the
> innards of such things and could design them in his head. The Woz went
> to Cupertino also, during that fated tour, understood the innards and
> the deficiencies of what he saw, and proceeded, just like with the
> Apple ][, to design the entire thing, the code,
Error #2. Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzeld amongst others.
> the display,
Error #3. The original Mac hardware was Burrell Smith, beginning to end.
> even that
> single button mouse they saw
Jef Raskin, I believe. Error #4.
> , into a working unit. The fact that he got
> top billing from the get-go, Jobs showed us his underbelly. He had few
> compunctions against screwing over the Woz, his best friend and
> benefactor.
Woz is a multi-billionaire; how has he been screwed over, exactly?
FYI, Woz had nothing to do with the Mac. He was not even on the team,
TTBOMK. I am not 100% sure Wozniak was actually involved, but if so,
the only Mac hardware Woz ever designed was the disk controller chip
in the first Macs with high-density floppies (the Classic and IIfx, I
think): the SWIM chip, the "Super Wozniak Integrated Machine".
Note, for instance, that the IWM chip, the Integrated Woz Machine, the
single-chip disk controller in the Apple II, was not designed by Woz -
it was just named for him by its designer, Wendell Sander:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Five_Different_Macs.txt
>> Jobs has done more to change this planet and benefit the human race
>> than any single politician since WW2 and probably more than any single
>> other American citizen who has ever lived.
>
> No, I'd give that trophy to Linus.
WRT to the second clause, he's Finnish, not American. "Most
influential Finn," no question. But Linux itself, while it is slowly
reshaping the computer industry, is at the end of the day, just a Unix
clone. There were open-source Unixes before it (the BSDs) and after it
(e.g. Minix 3) and there's a good chance something else would have
taken its place had Linux not thrived as it has.
> Not when he took a whiz on my shoes, as there were about a dozen
> Apple][ owners (NASA types) when I moved to League City Texas. (just
> south of NASA) A year or so later, after forming our User Group, 150
> users. Threatening to SUE me?? For what?? For not handing over MY group
> of friends to them, for sale, like a herd of cattle to be driven? F'
> That. He's a GD idiot, in my book. The fact that Apple has gotten to
> where it is, in spite of Jobs, is due to some good people. You know
> what?? I later war-dialed all 150 former members that I could find, and
> every last one of them went to the IBM XT. How is that smart? How is
> that "insanely" GREAT? When you run off your founding user base? $2,000
> in 1980s dollars was a LOT of money, even for today, for a home
> computer, tricked out to 64k of memory and dual floppy drives. We got a
> boot in the ass for our faithfulness.
So you have a personal bitch with a company - which is a bit like a
personal bitch with a cold virus - and you're directly blaming the
CEO?
Er, yeah, right. (*Backs away slowly.*)
> Then Jobs closed what Woz created open. THAT is what Jobs did. All of
> the cottage industries that made all sorts of boards and accessories for
> the Apple ][, went under with the advent of the Apple ][c, which left
> the XT the premier open design, for those innovative people to create
> after market gadgets for. Apple lost it's edge and ass with that
> decision and created their disposable computers and ...disposable
> users.
"Its edge." But anyway, you appear to have a big personal issue with
this, and I have no particular opinions either way on the Apple II -
they were too expensive for anyone except the very wealthy here in
Britain - so I will leave you to your spittle-flecked ranting on that
one.
> Now, the open design that Woz created is the defacto standard in our X86
> machines.
What? Woz had nothing to do with the IBM PC.
The Apple II wasn't the first slot-based computer - S-100 and so on
beat it by years. IBM's slots are electronically and physically
totally different to Apple II slots. How do you justify this?
> Not only given away by Jobs, but spurned in his closed
> sourceness. That is great?? How about that $10,000 Lisa? The owners got
> screwed and left in the dirt, like the lovechild Jobs abandoned. He even
> named the computer for her. Then ditched it too. Great? Pull my other
> finger.
Apple killed a failing product. And?
> There's been plenty written about the early days of Apple and of both
> Steves and their relationship with Bill Gates and MicroSoft. If I had
> been working with DSS, I would have pulled The Woz out of that
> dysfunctional crowd for his own protection, just for starts, and found
> him a nice set of corporate loving step parents, so he could recover
> from the emotional/intellectual abuse handed him by his evil twin.
You're sounding increasingly deranged. Woz made a product, Jobs sold
it, both got very rich.
Linus gave it away and didn't. That's worthy of more respect. Woz is a
very talented designed and a good humanitarian, but he was able to
become so charitable /because/ he was a very successful businessman.
> So am I sore about it? You bet. Woz designed the Right Thing in 1977.
> Jobs trashed it, IBM swept it up and the XT, AT and all that followed
> copied his design and strategy using an open published spec for others
> to design for peripherals and extra goodies for.
That is one hell of a reach. The Apple II wasn't the first at anything
except being under US$1000 - there were open, slot-based expandable
machines before it and after it. IBM's was an unrelated product -
different bus, different slots, different CPU, different OS, different
connectors, different design. IBM's thing was a skunkworks project
done quickly on the cheap using off-the-shelf tech and parts, using a
cheap knock-off copy of the industry-standard OS, CP/M. It wasn't an
Apple clone, or copy, or even particularly influenced.
> Nah, there is always Linux, thanks and all praise be to Linus. I wish he
> would step forward to be a more public figure. But, that isn't his
> style. I sure wouldn't say it's "impossible" to run a major company
> without Windows, as many do, ...quite successfully. :) Ric
I didn't say flat-out impossible - I said "virtually impossible," as
in, very hard.
David Gerard
> WRT to the second clause, he's Finnish, not American.
Torvalds became a US citizen a few years ago, fwiw:
http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/stranger-in-strange-land.html
- d.
Michael Haney
technicality in Patent Law they lost. That technicality was the
difference in chipset design, specifically the PS/2 chipset, but other
companies reverse engineered it and redesigned it to do the same job
but in a different way. IBM Clones were allowed to continue selling
and companies like Dell and Packard Bell grew into huge power houses.
It wasn't until much later that upstart Gateway 2000 and then HP
started building PCs, and Acer and Toshiba didn't get into the
business until after the Clone Wars (ha ha) were long over. Packard
Bell died off in the US, but they are still big overseas.
It wasn't IBM's design that created the open standard that is the PC
today. In fact, the IBM-PC design was as closed as the Mac is now,
and that is especially true of the PS/2 micro-channel technology which
is the spiritual father of today's PC technology. The IBM PS/2
introduced the PCI bus, which was reverse engineered by PC Clone
manufacturers, and thus we have the technology in PCs today. The BIOS
and accompanying chipset was born the same way. So you can't put IBM
on a higher moral pedestal than Steve Jobs, because their technology
was just as closed. If not more so. It was the clone manufacturers
you can thank for the open PC standards we have today. Because of
them you can buy PC components off the shelf, from literally hundreds
of manufacturers, and install them yourself. Instead of buying
overpriced IBM approved and licensed components and having them
installed by IBM approved technicians, which is the way things would
have gone had the Clone Manufacturers not won in court.
The ironic thing is, the way Patents work today the PC Clone would
never have been successful. Today IDEAS can be patented, not just the
design, but the IDEA of how something works. Its the same totally
screwed up patent system that allowed NTP to sue the crap out of
Research In Motion and extort billions from them because of a Patent
that describes reading email using a portable device, without
describing or detailing any of the technical inner workings of that
device. It was an IDEA patent, a patent of an abstract concept, and
that is NOT what patents were originally meant to be about.
Liam Proven
On 20 May 2011 15:34, Michael Haney <thez...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Long ago IBM tried to fight the PC Clone manufacturers, but due to a
> technicality in Patent Law they lost.
References, please? I do not recall this and I've been watching the
industry since before the IBM PC was launched.
There were attempted lawsuits over the Compaq and Phoenix ROM BIOS
clones but the companies were able to demonstrate that they were
clean-room reverse-engineered, which is legal.
> That technicality was the
> difference in chipset design, specifically the PS/2 chipset,
There was no single "PS/2 chipset". The PS/2 range encompassed 3 CPU
architectures & 2 buses at launch.
> but other
> companies reverse engineered it and redesigned it to do the same job
> but in a different way.
The PS/2 was never cloned. A few companies /licensed/ the bus, such as Apricot.
> IBM Clones were allowed to continue selling
> and companies like Dell and Packard Bell grew into huge power houses.
Dell were relative latecomers.
> It wasn't until much later that upstart Gateway 2000
Gateway were in there in the very early 90s, contemporaneous with Dell.
HP were making "PCs" before IBM and clones pretty early.
> and then HP
> started building PCs, and Acer and Toshiba didn't get into the
> business until after the Clone Wars (ha ha) were long over.
Which "clone wars"?
> Packard
> Bell died off in the US, but they are still big overseas.
Relatively. Owned by someone else now - possibly Acer, actually.
> It wasn't IBM's design that created the open standard that is the PC
> today.
No, true, it wasn't. But the modern PC is descended from clones of the
original IBM.
> In fact, the IBM-PC design was as closed as the Mac is now,
No, it wasn't. Its CPU, system chipset, graphics displays, printer and
modem ports, etc., were all standard off-the-shelf kit. There were x86
computers before the IBM PC, and non-PC-compatible ones after it.
> and that is especially true of the PS/2 micro-channel technology which
> is the spiritual father of today's PC technology.
No, it isn't. You are very confused.
The PS/2 range gave us standard 3.5" floppies, the PS/2 keyboard &
mouse ports, and the VGA standard and connector. Not much else. The
Micro-Channel Architecture (MCA) bus is long gone and inspired nothing
much.
Well, I say long gone, I believe IBM POWER servers may still use it.
Not sure. I suspect they stopped some years ago, and are PCI now, but
they were the last gasp.
> The IBM PS/2
> introduced the PCI bus
No, it didn't. PS/2s predated PCI by many years and used the totally
different MCA bus.
> , which was reverse engineered by PC Clone
> manufacturers,
Not, it wasn't. It was an open standard, designed by the PCI SIG,
sponsored by Intel amongst others, and was openly published &
available for licensing from day one.
> and thus we have the technology in PCs today.
Nope. It was an open standard, the successor to the VESA Local Bus for
486s, AKA the VL-bus, also an open standard.
> The BIOS
> and accompanying chipset was born the same way.
Wrong.
The BIOS was proprietary IBM work, copied first by Compaq, then again
by Phoenix who sold it to all comers.
The IBM chipset was nothing special and was built from COTS "glue"
chips - anyone could do the same.
The PC *bus* was cloned, but it was nothing special or difficult & IBM
published the specs so that other companies could make cards for it.
> So you can't put IBM
> on a higher moral pedestal than Steve Jobs, because their technology
> was just as closed. If not more so.
Who put IBM on any moral pedestal, where?
> It was the clone manufacturers
> you can thank for the open PC standards we have today. Because of
> them you can buy PC components off the shelf, from literally hundreds
> of manufacturers, and install them yourself.
Well, that's true, but it's true /because/ IBM built the machine using
ordinary open bits and techniques. When it realised its mistake, it
tried again, in 1986-87, with the PS/2 range, which was very
proprietary, protected by patents and needed to be licensed.
It bombed.
> Instead of buying
> overpriced IBM approved and licensed components and having them
> installed by IBM approved technicians, which is the way things would
> have gone had the Clone Manufacturers not won in court.
Please offer some pointers to these court battles - I am very interested.
Yes, there were some squabbles, but IBM didn't take the threat of the
clones seriously - the PC was not intended to be a big, strategic
product - and it didn't fight hard for it, as I recall.
> The ironic thing is, the way Patents work today the PC Clone would
> never have been successful. Today IDEAS can be patented, not just the
> design, but the IDEA of how something works. Its the same totally
> screwed up patent system that allowed NTP to sue the crap out of
> Research In Motion and extort billions from them because of a Patent
> that describes reading email using a portable device, without
> describing or detailing any of the technical inner workings of that
> device. It was an IDEA patent, a patent of an abstract concept, and
> that is NOT what patents were originally meant to be about.
Here I think you're speaking of the US system. I'm not American and
don't want to be and have nothing much to say about US law.
Douglas Pollard
we after struggling with a texas instrument computer broke down and
bought an IBM machine.
IBM had been inventing and selling mechanical office machines that
were almost impossible for the owner to maintain. IBM had a huge
maintance devision with well dress highly trained repairmen runing all
over the contry keeping the equipment running. I think they saw the
computer as just another office machine to sell and maintain. I am sure
they saw the clones as nothing more than interlopers moving into a field
they concidered there own.
for a lathe When we started buying CNC machines to make parts I was
Highly Indignant when I paid $170,000 and It wouldn'd do certain things
I wanted to do. I called the factory and they told me for $10,000 they
would send me the code to perform the operation I wanted. I tried to
sue them and was advised that I didn't have a leg to stand on. From my
point of view that particular motion was nothing more than a bunch of
cams producing a certain motion but was electronic instead. I arged
that the motion was in the machine that I had bought and paid for and
that it was extortion to charge me for a thing I had already bought. My
Lawyer had a heck of a time making me see the difference. To me a copy
right was protection for writers and artists and a copyright for a
machine was not legitimate. I know this sounds crazy in todays world but
in the past this made sense. A copy right for a program is good for
over a hundred years and a patent on a starter bendix or something
similar was good for twenty and they may both supply the same end
result. So going back to the time IBM I saw them as only exercising
good business practice by protecting themselves. I actually sided with
IBM. Doug
Michael Haney
I took computer classes at Lions World Services for the Blind in
Little Rock, AR back in 1995. They had an old Texas Instruments
mainframe/mini-computer and server (not sure of the brand) running an
AT&T branded variant of Unix. The TI system was a monster, it was
very loud, and required its own separate room with a dedicated cooling
system. The instructors put one of its old disk platters on the wall
that had a 2cm deep dent on it from a head crash. The platter was as
big around as a Directv dish, maybe slightly bigger, and the drive it
came from weighted nearly 100lbs. The server running Unix was much
smaller, but they had all kinds of other equipment hanging off of it.
Some I still can't identify today. The whole computer lab was spider
webbed with long ass serial cables connected to IBM PS/2 and later
Dell PCs. We connected to the Unix server using terminal emulation
and the PCs themselves were running Windows 3.11 and DOS due to
necessity of being compatible with JAWS and Zoomtext. There was also
a Kurzweil Reader connected to one of the PCs, it was basically a
scanner that used OCR software and a screen reader. They also had
very old 8088 IBM PCs with Braille displays connected to them.
Liam: My memory may be a bit fuzzy about what happened with the PC
clones back then, but my point still stands. It was because of the
clone manufacturers that we have the modern open-standard PC. Not
IBM. US patent & copyright law is totally screwed up, and if your
country ratifies ACTA (or whatever they're calling it now) then it
will be just as screwed up where you live too.
Liam Proven
>
> Liam: My memory may be a bit fuzzy about what happened with the PC
> clones back then, but my point still stands.
Um. Not really. I am not a christian, but there is, I believe, a bit
about if you build your house upon sand, it will fall down.
Since all the salient points that you build your argument upon are
wrong, then it really does cast quite some doubt upon the conclusion,
it has to be said!
If you do not /know/ the facts of which you write, and you can't be
bothered to go and check them, then really, man, seriously, trust me
on this, it is not wise to write confident essays saying "this
happened and then that happened and because of that we have this." It
makes you seem very foolish.
Yes, the modern open PC market is because of all the cloners. Yay for
cheap off-the-shelf computers. Shame that the design that got so
widely copied was a crap one.
But the reason the PC was clonable was that IBM used cheap
off-the-shelf componentry, as the PC wasn't meant to be a Proper IBM,
it was a cheapo disposable sideline to their Proper Computers, the big
expensive ones.
We are both using the descendants of IBM PC-compatibles - clones -
right now. So is everyone on this list, I'll wager. Even modern Macs
use the same toolkit of parts, except the firmware.
And that firmware was the *only* closed intellectual property in the
original IBM PC: the BIOS, and that was copied within about 2 years by
just doing it very very carefully and in a legal way. Even then, the
BIOS was published - but it was still copyright code.
You point the finger of blame at the wrong parties and give credit to
the wrong parties.
IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
operating systems.
(The PS/2 machines were, for what little it's worth, lovely machines
with the best build quality of any PCs ever. I still have 2 in my
garage: a tricked-out Model 80-H21 with NT Server 3.51 and a 386sx
thing I plan to put OS/2 on some day. Lovely boxes. Horribly
expensive, average performance, arcane setup procedures, but *great*
design and build quality. I am typing on an actual branded IBM PS/2
keyboard from an actual IBM PS/2 right now.)
The entire reason that the PC did so well is /because/ the small
division of IBM responsible, the Entry Systems division in Boca Raton,
built it from off-the-shelf bits.
The Wikipedia article is actually a good potted history - I just now
looked. Not read it before this point. Check it out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC
It's a good job IBM chose to work that way, but the point is, the core
essential thing that you missed and got exactly ass-backwards, that
the IBM PC was designed and built from day 1 as an open system based
on COTS kit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf
The little division of IBM were told to make a cheap and cheerful box
from cheap and cheerful bits, and they did, deliberately choosing
*not* to use an IBM processor or an IBM operating system.
Anyone could go to Intel and buy an 8088, and many did. Anyone could
go to Microsoft and buy MS-DOS, and they did.
Note well that the early 8088 and 8086-based MS-DOS machines were
*not* IBM PC-compatible - the American Sirius from Victor or the
British Apricot machines were MS-DOS compatible but they were *not*
IBM PC-compatible. Ultimately, they died out.
This is important to understand or you cannot actually understand how
the PC industry took shape and became what it is. Even the pattern of
screws holding the motherboard in the case of almost every modern
desktop PC clone and every free-standing server is IBM-derived. The
motherboard screw holes in the case of your Dell or Gateway are where
they are because they're copied from the IBM PC in 1981.
> US patent & copyright law is totally screwed up, and if your
> country ratifies ACTA (or whatever they're calling it now) then it
> will be just as screwed up where you live too.
Possibly. I despair of world intellectual-property legislation: it's
all deeply screwed-up. European legislation is mad as well, from what
little I know. I have the impression that the USA's legislation is
even worse, that's all.
This is why GPL software is a good thing and ultimately why GPL FOSS
will probably win out, I think, myself. Much the same goes for
creative-commons licensed artistic works.
David Gerard
> IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
> ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
> IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
> ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
> operating systems.
IBM still makes x86 servers. They're high-quality rackable kit, but
still technically PCs.
(We bought one recently ... we run Solaris 10 on it. Even paying £300
for a year's Oracle "support" for the privilege. Even though it's a
Java application, because it's only certified by the vendor on
Solaris. We charged it to the department in question, who are
deliriously happy to be running on 12x2.6GHz Core i7 rather than
4x1GHz UltraSPARC III.)
- d.
Liam Proven
I was under the impression that the x86 line was sold off to Lenovo a
couple of years back? I think Lenovo are still shipping some corporate
kit with an "IBM" badge on it, but the relevant
people/divisions/factories etc. were all spun off to the Chinese
outfit some years ago.
Could be wrong...!
Michael Comperchio
> On 20 May 2011 18:39, David Gerard<dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 20 May 2011 17:49, Liam Proven<lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
>>> ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
>>> IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
>>> ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
>>> operating systems.
>> IBM still makes x86 servers. They're high-quality rackable kit, but
>> still technically PCs.
>>
>> for a year's Oracle "support" for the privilege. Even though it's a
>> Java application, because it's only certified by the vendor on
>> Solaris. We charged it to the department in question, who are
>> deliriously happy to be running on 12x2.6GHz Core i7 rather than
>> 4x1GHz UltraSPARC III.)
> I was under the impression that the x86 line was sold off to Lenovo a
> couple of years back? I think Lenovo are still shipping some corporate
> kit with an "IBM" badge on it, but the relevant
> people/divisions/factories etc. were all spun off to the Chinese
> outfit some years ago.
>
> Could be wrong...!
>
... "I'm a Mac, I'm an IBM"...) talk, left out the most bizarre little
machine, the IBM PC Jr! With the chicklet keyboard!!!
My first Personal Computer was a DEC Rainbow... 5mb HD... circa 1984?
...thought I was the cat's ass... PC/DOS OS...MIX C compiler, what I
learned to really code on and with. That COBOL, RPG, 360/370 Assembly I
learned in college doesn't count. Never had to use it for real.I later
had a PS/2 Mod 80... built like a brick outhouse with all that sheet
metal. And, yes, I loved that keyboard.
Anyway, that brings me to my point. I believe that that, no matter what
the taxonomy, it was either dos/windows, or Mac os. Who really cared
what the underlying hardware was? It's really irrelevant to the user...
except in what it cost. Because of this most people that use a 'PC' are
using something that is descended from the original IBM boxes and
PC/DOS. All that other hardware HAD to be compatible with that. It was a
simple twist of fate that IBM included the letters PC in the naming of
that first Personal Computer. So now we are stuck with it. If they only
knew...
Right now I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (undecided about Unity, would rather
not have it, but when I log in to the legacy GNOME desktop it just
doesn't work right...) with XP Pro running in a virtualbox... the way it
should be!
Michael
Liam Proven
> On 05/20/2011 01:49 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> On 20 May 2011 18:39, David Gerard<dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 20 May 2011 17:49, Liam Proven<lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
>>>> ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
>>>> IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
>>>> ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
>>>> operating systems.
>>>
>>> IBM still makes x86 servers. They're high-quality rackable kit, but
>>> still technically PCs.
>>>
>>> for a year's Oracle "support" for the privilege. Even though it's a
>>> Java application, because it's only certified by the vendor on
>>> Solaris. We charged it to the department in question, who are
>>> deliriously happy to be running on 12x2.6GHz Core i7 rather than
>>> 4x1GHz UltraSPARC III.)
>>
>> I was under the impression that the x86 line was sold off to Lenovo a
>> couple of years back? I think Lenovo are still shipping some corporate
>> kit with an "IBM" badge on it, but the relevant
>> people/divisions/factories etc. were all spun off to the Chinese
>> outfit some years ago.
>>
>> Could be wrong...!
>>
> You guys, with all your PC (which, IMHO, should be referred to as IBM ...
> "I'm a Mac, I'm an IBM"...) talk, left out the most bizarre little machine,
> the IBM PC Jr! With the chicklet keyboard!!!
Not really relevant to anything, though, was it?
> My first Personal Computer was a DEC Rainbow... 5mb HD... circa 1984?
> ...thought I was the cat's ass... PC/DOS OS
You see, this is exactly the kind of thing.
The Rainbow didn't run PC DOS. (Note, space, no hyphen, *not* a slash.)
The Rainbow was a *DOS*-compatible, *not* a *PC*-compatible. It ran
*MS-DOS* (hyphen, not a space), from Microsoft, not PC DOS from IBM.
PC DOS only ran on IBM clones; MS-DOS ran on non-IBM compatibles such
as the Victor, Sirius, Apricot and DEC Rainbow.
I mean, you're the one who started to talk about the history of this
stuff. You can't do so if you cheerfully conflate different products,
technologies and companies.
I know, it's nerdy to obsess over details like this, but if you don't,
then at the end of the day, you get your facts wrong and you don't
really know what you're talking about.
> Anyway, that brings me to my point. I believe that that, no matter what the
> taxonomy, it was either dos/windows, or Mac os. Who really cared what the
> underlying hardware was? It's really irrelevant to the user... except in
> what it cost.
Well, by the mid-1990s it was. In the late '80s, we still thought that
the Amiga, Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes ranges all had a chance. They
didn't, in the long run, of course. Nor did all the big expensive RISC
workstations running actual commercial UNIX™, which ended up just as
obsolete.
But the PC's architecture was about as inelegant as any of them.
The Mac /hardware/ design was pretty good and clean and largely
legacy-free. It would have been a sad, crippled thing if Apple had
tried to make it Apple II or III compatible. And even /more/ expensive
than it was.
The Mac OS, on the other hand, started out small and simple and grew
into a bit of a baroque nightmare. Apple did the right thing in
junking it and starting afresh with NeXTstep - not that it was
particularly clean or elegant, being built on 20y of Unix cruft
underneath. But at least Unix was designed to be a secure(ish)
multi-user multi-tasking OS from the beginning, which neither MS-DOS
not MacOS were.
> Right now I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (undecided about Unity, would rather not
> have it, but when I log in to the legacy GNOME desktop it just doesn't work
> right...) with XP Pro running in a virtualbox... the way it should be!
My mate Ed tells me that Unity is completely inaccessible at the
moment - but then, he was deeply unimpressed with Orca and GNOME.
There is loads it won't read, and when it does, it simply omits vast
amounts - for instance, when using Upgrade Manager, it omits all the
package descriptions and so on. There is, as far as we could tell,
simply no way to read that stuff at all.
It also dies randomly a lot, he tells me, and when it does, you often
can't restart it - and sometimes it takes the system with it.
The current level of blind accessibility on Linux, in terms of overall
experience, is something akin to what sighted users experienced with
Windows 3.0.
Ric Moore
> On 20 May 2011 07:16, Ric Moore <waywa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Now, the open design that Woz created is the defacto standard in our X86
> > machines.
>
> What? Woz had nothing to do with the IBM PC.
I'm saying he set an example, IBM had to have considered the design of a
machine that turned the market on it's ear. They could have closed up
the innards of their first XT, but didn't.
> The Apple II wasn't the first slot-based computer - S-100 and so on
> beat it by years. IBM's slots are electronically and physically
> totally different to Apple II slots. How do you justify this?
I owned several S-100 based cp/m machines. You couldn't take one board
out of one machine and stick it into another. The Apple ][, as extremely
popular as it was, gave the world one widely accepted computer, with one
slot system, with an open specification for others to build on. S-100,
shared by a lot of small companies, had divergent goals and made tweaks
to the S-100 standard, so it never achieved the clout, as it was no
insurance that you could swap parts with other S-100 machines.
> > Not only given away by Jobs, but spurned in his closed
> > sourceness. That is great?? How about that $10,000 Lisa? The owners got
> > screwed and left in the dirt, like the lovechild Jobs abandoned. He even
> > named the computer for her. Then ditched it too. Great? Pull my other
> > finger.
>
> Apple killed a failing product. And?
Never offered it's purchasers any sort of upgrade/fix after touting it
as the next Great Thing, dumping it in about a year from it's inception.
I'd say that was less than responsible behavior. $10k in mid 80's
dollars was a LOT of dough. For that kind of money, my friends who
bought one, were ~livid~ at the treatment they received. If it had been
your $10K, your "And" would have a ~far~ different perspective. It's not
good for a consumer to feel robbed and cheated.
> > There's been plenty written about the early days of Apple and of both
> > Steves and their relationship with Bill Gates and MicroSoft. If I had
> > been working with DSS, I would have pulled The Woz out of that
> > dysfunctional crowd for his own protection, just for starts, and found
> > him a nice set of corporate loving step parents, so he could recover
> > from the emotional/intellectual abuse handed him by his evil twin.
>
> You're sounding increasingly deranged. Woz made a product, Jobs sold
> it, both got very rich.
Almost right, Woz made a product, made it open source to the point that
the source code to both Integer and Floating Point Basic was published
in the Red and Blue books, that came with the original Apple ]['s. All
the hardware and logic was published, holding nothing back. Jobs closed
it, starting with the Apple][+. So, there was a very basic personal
schema/philosophy regarding personal computers, between the two. We
could have had an open source movement way before Linus or Stallman.
Jobs nixed that. If you ever get a chance to examine the Red and Blue
manuals, please do so. You'll see what I mean. Woz's intellectual child
didn't survive.
> Linus gave it away and didn't. That's worthy of more respect. Woz is a
> very talented designed and a good humanitarian, but he was able to
> become so charitable /because/ he was a very successful businessman.
>
> > So am I sore about it? You bet. Woz designed the Right Thing in 1977.
> > Jobs trashed it, IBM swept it up and the XT, AT and all that followed
> > copied his design and strategy using an open published spec for others
> > to design for peripherals and extra goodies for.
>
> That is one hell of a reach. The Apple II wasn't the first at anything
> except being under US$1000 -
That got you the basic 48k case and you have to purchase your own
monitor and phono-jack to plug in a cassette deck, which you had to
supply. Once you plugged in the extra 16k board and two harddrives, it
was almost $2,000. It also had to be one of the first to include it's OS
in ROM.
> there were open, slot-based expandable
> machines before it and after it. IBM's was an unrelated product -
> different bus, different slots, different CPU, different OS, different
> connectors, different design. IBM's thing was a skunkworks project
> done quickly on the cheap using off-the-shelf tech and parts, using a
> cheap knock-off copy of the industry-standard OS, CP/M. It wasn't an
Again, S-100 never took off. You couldn't take a Cromenco video card and
stuff it into an IMSAI. (I owned 3 of them)
> > Nah, there is always Linux, thanks and all praise be to Linus. I wish he
> > would step forward to be a more public figure. But, that isn't his
> > style. I sure wouldn't say it's "impossible" to run a major company
> > without Windows, as many do, ...quite successfully. :) Ric
>
> I didn't say flat-out impossible - I said "virtually impossible," as
> in, very hard.
Sorry, I still don't see that. No harder than setting up a Windows based
server... either takes some investment in time and comprehension. Both
have plenty of simple office apps. I don't follow that at all. You can
code just about anything imaginable with either. I'm switching our
Non-Profit office over to Linux. I've seen nothing like impossible to
it. :) Ric
Ric Moore
> I'm not American and
> don't want to be and have nothing much to say about US law.
Heh, we agree on that! :) Ric
David Gerard
> Right now I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (undecided about Unity, would rather not
> have it, but when I log in to the legacy GNOME desktop it just doesn't work
> right...) with XP Pro running in a virtualbox... the way it should be!
I use that sort of arrangement at work - 10.04 desktop (the only
Ubuntu desktop in the company ... our IT department use Ubuntu, but
they're technically part of our parent company ... I have Ubuntu
because I installed it, and then asked forgiveness afterwards rather
than permission beforehand) - with two XPs in VirtualBox and one XP in
VMWare. The XPs are to test Wine for Windows, which is as hideously
evil as it sounds. The VMWare copy is for talking to my BlackBerry
(VirtualBox is not all that great really if you get to hardware
twiddling on the USB, as the BlackBerry desktop does).
- d.
Liam Proven
Well, perhaps you've not worked in many multinationals. I have.
As for publishing the docs on /hardware/ - or pieces of software in
ROM bundled with hardware - that is utterly irrelevant to FOSS.
You can publish software and not make it FOSS. Look at RISC OS -
here's the source:
http://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/risc-os-tarballs
It's not FOSS.
You may not remember Sir Clive Sinclair's QL computer from ~1984. It
ran an OS that was later called SMS/Q-E. Here's the source:
http://www.scp-paulet-lenerz.com/smsqe/
It's not FOSS.
2 complete 1980s working OSs there, one for ARM, one for Motorola
680x0, both with Internet access and GUIs and accessories and
everything. All the code, right there to see. But they are *not open
source*.
FOSS is about *licensing*, not about availability of source code. It's
not about seeing the code - some universities and companies have
access to the source of Windows, but it's sure as hell not FOSS. It's
about your *rights* to the code - what you can do with it.
The source of RISC OS is right there in CVS, but it's not Open Source,
because you can't do what you want with it. For instance, it's not
permitted to port it to anything other than ARM. Any changes you make
belong to Castle Technology Ltd., not you. It's not Free and it's not
Open Source, even though the source is open.
IBM published the BIOS source code listing for the PC - but that
doesn't meant the BIOS is FOSS. It wasn't and when CDP and Compaq
reverse-engineered it, IBM sued, and the companies had to prove that
they did a complete clean-room job: nobody that wrote their compatible
BIOSes had ever seen a single line of IBM code.
One bunch of people carefully documented everything it did, and wrote
a formal description. Another, totally separate bunch of people, who
never met the first lot and never saw the original code, wrote
completely /new/ code to do the same thing in the same way. That
second lot were in a "clean room" - no access to the "dirty room"
where the IBM-protected proprietary code was.
Publishing stuff does not make it FOSS. That's a complete red herring.
As for the bus thing - hmm, perhaps a bad choice of mine, there. TBH
that stuff was before my time; at the end of the 1970s, I was 12, and
home computers were in the region of 6 months' pay on a good salary in
the UK at that time. So I didn't get one.
The first actual computer (as opposed to PDAs and things) that I ever
bought *new* was in 2001, I think, when I was making £30,000 a year or
so. (It was an IBM Thinkpad, FWIW. One of the nasty Acer-made ones, I
later learned.) From 1981 for the next 20y I bought 2nd hand or at
best shop-soiled reduced to clear, or built my own from a mix of new
and old bits. Mostly old bits.
VMEbus or Eurocard, instead? They are both still around.
Michael Haney
That RISC is actually on the rise again.
Its mostly due to the mobile market with ARM, a RISC based processor,
pretty much owning the global mobile processor market. The thing
about ARM processors is that they deliver more MIPS per wattage than a
x86 chip, thus they are far more efficient and can do more with less
power.
The new A5 from Apple, the Tegra 2 processors from Nvidia and some of
the new Texas Instruments OMAP processors that power the Motorola Xoom
tablet and cellphones running Android Gingerbread are a family of
processors called Systems On A Chip or SoC. This technology is
nothing new. Cyrix had an x86 SoC processor in the 90's called the
MediaGX which combined a x86 compatible processor with sound
capabilities. The A5 and OMAP SoCs combine an ARM Cortex A9 1GHz
dual-core processor with a PowerVR video GPU on the same chip. The
Tegra 2 is a the same processor coupled with an Nvidia Geforce GPU on
the same chip. Marvell, another ARM licensee, developed a ARM SoC
with the same graphics capabilities as the Playstation 3, and Nvidia
has a quad-core Tegra SoC its testing right now. ARM has grown to be
so prevalent that Microsoft is porting Windows 8 to that architecture!
Likely an attempt (a feeble one) to head Android off at the pass in
the growing tablet market.
Speaking of feeble attempts, but Intel is trying to push the Atom
processor as an alternative to ARM for mobile. Now, I admit the Atom
the processor is a good attempt. Like ARM it has a higher MIPS per
wattage ratio than say the Core i5-7 series, but its nowhere near the
same class as ARM. The Atom processor still uses too much power even
for a low power processor, and you put Windows on that processor and
you'll get an even larger power drain. Intel will really need to pull
a rabbit out of their hat if they intend to best ARM using an x86
chip.
Ric Moore
> This is why GPL software is a good thing and ultimately why GPL FOSS
> will probably win out, I think, myself. Much the same goes for
> creative-commons licensed artistic works.
And my point is that Woz foresaw the next "Right Thing" in 1978. He had
the "Big Idea" which shoulda coulda have led to the Open Source movement
back when. Jobs killed it. He bashed it in the head like a Harp Seal.
Hence, my utter disdain for the man and his closed proprietary thinking.
That left an intellectual void, waiting to be filled. Later on, it
was. :) Ric
Ric Moore
> The Mac /hardware/ design was pretty good and clean and largely
> legacy-free. It would have been a sad, crippled thing if Apple had
> tried to make it Apple II or III compatible. And even /more/ expensive
> than it was.
It wouldn't have been any bigger struggle than to take an Apple][, stuff
it with a new motherboard to make it Mac compatible. They didn't. Not so
with PC's. You could upgrade your kit from a 286 to a 386 to a 486, by
exchanging parts. You could upgrade your OS from Win3.1 to Win7 going
that route too and still use the same 286 keyboard you started with.
> The Mac OS, on the other hand, started out small and simple and grew
> into a bit of a baroque nightmare. Apple did the right thing in
> junking it and starting afresh with NeXTstep?
Huh? Jobs had been shown the door and developed NeXTstep outside of
Apple. Those that plunked down 10 grand for the Cube got left in the
lurch too. Sure, they later adopted elements of NeXTstep. Prolly paid
Jobs through the nose.
> - not that it was
> particularly clean or elegant, being built on 20y of Unix cruft
> underneath. But at least Unix was designed to be a secure(ish)
> multi-user multi-tasking OS from the beginning, which neither MS-DOS
> not MacOS were.
Concurrent DOS was multiuser and multitasking for sure. That later begat
DR-DOS, if I'm not mistaken. But, on a Novell network (remember token
ring?) files were shared, you could open remote desktops, etc.
> > Right now I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (undecided about Unity, would rather not
> > have it, but when I log in to the legacy GNOME desktop it just doesn't work
> > right...) with XP Pro running in a virtualbox... the way it should be!
I'm in no rush for the latest and greatest. I'm still on 10.4 and don't
experience 1/10th the grief I see reported on the list. :) Ric
David Gerard
> It wouldn't have been any bigger struggle than to take an Apple][, stuff
> it with a new motherboard to make it Mac compatible. They didn't.
Actually, they did. The original Mac LC came with an optional Apple IIc board.
- d.
Ric Moore
> > Sorry, I still don't see that. No harder than setting up a Windows based
> > server... either takes some investment in time and comprehension. Both
> > have plenty of simple office apps. I don't follow that at all. You can
> > code just about anything imaginable with either. I'm switching our
> > Non-Profit office over to Linux. I've seen nothing like impossible to
> > it. :) Ric
>
> Well, perhaps you've not worked in many multinationals. I have.
Then why all the press about Wall Street, Banks, car dealerships, pizza
chains, all running Linux?? Isn't NASA big enough? Or JPL? Or the CERN
project? Cloud computing?? Or isn't that relevant?
> As for publishing the docs on /hardware/ - or pieces of software in
> ROM bundled with hardware - that is utterly irrelevant to FOSS.
How so? Maybe in your opinion, but not in mine.
> You can publish software and not make it FOSS. Look at RISC OS -
> here's the source:
> http://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/risc-os-tarballs
>
> It's not FOSS.
>
> You may not remember Sir Clive Sinclair's QL computer from ~1984. It
> ran an OS that was later called SMS/Q-E. Here's the source:
> http://www.scp-paulet-lenerz.com/smsqe/
>
> It's not FOSS.
>
> 2 complete 1980s working OSs there, one for ARM, one for Motorola
> 680x0, both with Internet access and GUIs and accessories and
> everything. All the code, right there to see. But they are *not open
> source*.
>
> FOSS is about *licensing*, not about availability of source code. It's
> not about seeing the code - some universities and companies have
> access to the source of Windows, but it's sure as hell not FOSS. It's
> about your *rights* to the code - what you can do with it.
Then it's clear you didn't/haven't read the Red / Blue books. They are
rare, as the Apple][+ can with a shiny little bound book that barely
described anything other than where the power button was. In the
original Woz crafted manuals he put the source code there so others
could improve it. The notion of copyright then, wasn't the issue it is
today.
> The source of RISC OS is right there in CVS, but it's not Open Source,
> because you can't do what you want with it. For instance, it's not
> permitted to port it to anything other than ARM. Any changes you make
> belong to Castle Technology Ltd., not you. It's not Free and it's not
> Open Source, even though the source is open.
>
> IBM published the BIOS source code listing for the PC - but that
> doesn't meant the BIOS is FOSS. It wasn't and when CDP and Compaq
> reverse-engineered it, IBM sued, and the companies had to prove that
> they did a complete clean-room job: nobody that wrote their compatible
> BIOSes had ever seen a single line of IBM code.
>
> One bunch of people carefully documented everything it did, and wrote
> a formal description. Another, totally separate bunch of people, who
> never met the first lot and never saw the original code, wrote
> completely /new/ code to do the same thing in the same way. That
> second lot were in a "clean room" - no access to the "dirty room"
> where the IBM-protected proprietary code was.
>
> Publishing stuff does not make it FOSS. That's a complete red herring.
Not in 1978, being an avid Home Brew member Woz wanted everyone to know
how his machine worked. FOSS evolved into what it is today, but my
contention is that The Woz would have been part of that evolution.
> As for the bus thing - hmm, perhaps a bad choice of mine, there. TBH
> that stuff was before my time; at the end of the 1970s, I was 12, and
> home computers were in the region of 6 months' pay on a good salary in
> the UK at that time. So I didn't get one.
I borrowed the money from a bank for that Apple][, as 2 grand was a
large percentage of my income then. Just maybe your perspective would be
closer to mine had you slaved to pay off that loan and then get
threatened with a lawsuit for promoting their product without paying
them! Gimme a break. You don't have a personal dog in the fight.
> The first actual computer (as opposed to PDAs and things) that I ever
> bought *new* was in 2001, I think, when I was making £30,000 a year or
> so. (It was an IBM Thinkpad, FWIW. One of the nasty Acer-made ones, I
> later learned.) From 1981 for the next 20y I bought 2nd hand or at
> best shop-soiled reduced to clear, or built my own from a mix of new
> and old bits. Mostly old bits.
My perspective is from shelling out my large coin in 1978. A vast
difference in experience. My money, then, went where my mouth is today.
Liam Proven
>
>> The Mac /hardware/ design was pretty good and clean and largely
>> legacy-free. It would have been a sad, crippled thing if Apple had
>> tried to make it Apple II or III compatible. And even /more/ expensive
>> than it was.
>
> It wouldn't have been any bigger struggle than to take an Apple][, stuff
> it with a new motherboard to make it Mac compatible. They didn't.
Huh? I don't follow what you're getting at here.
The Mac used a different CPU, different graphics, different sound, a
different disk controller for different-size diskettes with a
different format - it was a totally unrelated machine. No resemblance.
It couldn't run Apple II software or use Apple II peripherals.
Not 'til the Apple II Compatibility Card for the Mac LC would a Mac
run Apple II software.
If you want to see what the Mac /could/ have been, kinda sorta maybe,
look at the Apple IIgs. I *still* want one of those. Cheap as anything
in the USA, I believe, rare and hard to find and expensive over here.
My point was, if the original Mac had been designed as an extension of
the Apple II, it would have been more complicated and more expensive -
to no direct benefit.
> Not so
> with PC's. You could upgrade your kit from a 286 to a 386 to a 486, by
> exchanging parts. You could upgrade your OS from Win3.1 to Win7 going
> that route too and still use the same 286 keyboard you started with.
Er, yes, and...?
>> The Mac OS, on the other hand, started out small and simple and grew
>> into a bit of a baroque nightmare. Apple did the right thing in
>> junking it and starting afresh with NeXTstep?
>
> Huh? Jobs had been shown the door and developed NeXTstep outside of
> Apple.
Yes. And in 1997 or something, Apple bought NeXT and made NeXTstep the
basis of Mac OS X.
> Those that plunked down 10 grand for the Cube got left in the
> lurch too.
No, not at all. NeXTstep and OpenStep went through 4 major revisions
and all the later versions would run on a Cube.
> Sure, they later adopted elements of NeXTstep.
"Elements?" Rubbish! Mac OS X 10.0 *is* NeXTstep 5, given a facelift
to be a bit more Mac-like and with the underpinnings updated to use
Mach 3 and a userland from FreeBSD.
> Prolly paid
> Jobs through the nose.
You do know that when Apple bought NeXT, Jobs became Apple CEO? And he
drew a salary of $1? One dollar.
>> - not that it was
>> particularly clean or elegant, being built on 20y of Unix cruft
>> underneath. But at least Unix was designed to be a secure(ish)
>> multi-user multi-tasking OS from the beginning, which neither MS-DOS
>> not MacOS were.
>
> Concurrent DOS was multiuser and multitasking for sure. That later begat
> DR-DOS, if I'm not mistaken.
True, and a good point. But that wasn't an MS product, of course.
> But, on a Novell network (remember token
> ring?) files were shared, you could open remote desktops, etc.
I don't remember remote desktops, but I used to install Netware 2, 3
and 4. Never on "BrokenString", though - I always used Ethernet.
>> > Right now I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (undecided about Unity, would rather not
>> > have it, but when I log in to the legacy GNOME desktop it just doesn't work
>> > right...) with XP Pro running in a virtualbox... the way it should be!
>
> I'm in no rush for the latest and greatest. I'm still on 10.4 and don't
> experience 1/10th the grief I see reported on the list. :) Ric
Fair call. I like the new shiny, myself. I've been impressed by
11.04, actually. It definitely feels faster in use.
Ric Moore
The Apple][c was about as closed as a Mac. IMHO! :) Ric
Liam Proven
> On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 20:10 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>> > Sorry, I still don't see that. No harder than setting up a Windows based
>> > server... either takes some investment in time and comprehension. Both
>> > have plenty of simple office apps. I don't follow that at all. You can
>> > code just about anything imaginable with either. I'm switching our
>> > Non-Profit office over to Linux. I've seen nothing like impossible to
>> > it. :) Ric
>>
>> Well, perhaps you've not worked in many multinationals. I have.
>
> Then why all the press about Wall Street, Banks, car dealerships, pizza
> chains, all running Linux?? Isn't NASA big enough? Or JPL? Or the CERN
> project? Cloud computing?? Or isn't that relevant?
They may all be using Linux, but I bet you they are not totally Microsoft-free.
>> As for publishing the docs on /hardware/ - or pieces of software in
>> ROM bundled with hardware - that is utterly irrelevant to FOSS.
>
> How so? Maybe in your opinion, but not in mine.
FOSS is about licensing, not publishing.
>> You can publish software and not make it FOSS. Look at RISC OS -
>> here's the source:
>> http://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/risc-os-tarballs
>>
>> It's not FOSS.
>>
>> You may not remember Sir Clive Sinclair's QL computer from ~1984. It
>> ran an OS that was later called SMS/Q-E. Here's the source:
>> http://www.scp-paulet-lenerz.com/smsqe/
>>
>> It's not FOSS.
>>
>> 2 complete 1980s working OSs there, one for ARM, one for Motorola
>> 680x0, both with Internet access and GUIs and accessories and
>> everything. All the code, right there to see. But they are *not open
>> source*.
>>
>> FOSS is about *licensing*, not about availability of source code. It's
>> not about seeing the code - some universities and companies have
>> access to the source of Windows, but it's sure as hell not FOSS. It's
>> about your *rights* to the code - what you can do with it.
>
> Then it's clear you didn't/haven't read the Red / Blue books.
Why would I? I've never owned an Apple II and I'm not a programmer.
> They are
> rare, as the Apple][+ can with a shiny little bound book that barely
> described anything other than where the power button was. In the
> original Woz crafted manuals he put the source code there so others
> could improve it. The notion of copyright then, wasn't the issue it is
> today.
You'd be surprised how close it was. Copyright is centuries old.
>> The source of RISC OS is right there in CVS, but it's not Open Source,
>> because you can't do what you want with it. For instance, it's not
>> permitted to port it to anything other than ARM. Any changes you make
>> belong to Castle Technology Ltd., not you. It's not Free and it's not
>> Open Source, even though the source is open.
>>
>> IBM published the BIOS source code listing for the PC - but that
>> doesn't meant the BIOS is FOSS. It wasn't and when CDP and Compaq
>> reverse-engineered it, IBM sued, and the companies had to prove that
>> they did a complete clean-room job: nobody that wrote their compatible
>> BIOSes had ever seen a single line of IBM code.
>>
>> One bunch of people carefully documented everything it did, and wrote
>> a formal description. Another, totally separate bunch of people, who
>> never met the first lot and never saw the original code, wrote
>> completely /new/ code to do the same thing in the same way. That
>> second lot were in a "clean room" - no access to the "dirty room"
>> where the IBM-protected proprietary code was.
>>
>> Publishing stuff does not make it FOSS. That's a complete red herring.
>
> Not in 1978, being an avid Home Brew member Woz wanted everyone to know
> how his machine worked. FOSS evolved into what it is today, but my
> contention is that The Woz would have been part of that evolution.
Not really, no. By the same token, IBM used to publish the source to
several of its operating systems back then. Publishing, as I keep
trying to get across, is not the big deal in FOSS. The big deal is
/rights./
IBM made its early OSs public domain. That's not really directly FOSS,
either, inasmuch as FOSS lets you keep your rights and ownership.
It's necessary to understand the difference between Free software and
freeware, between the GPL and the BSD licences, and between public
domain and Open Source, to really grasp what FOSS is all about.
It is *not* about publishing your source code.
This is not some arbitrary opinion of mine - it's part of the
definition of what "Free software" and "open source" *means*.
>> As for the bus thing - hmm, perhaps a bad choice of mine, there. TBH
>> that stuff was before my time; at the end of the 1970s, I was 12, and
>> home computers were in the region of 6 months' pay on a good salary in
>> the UK at that time. So I didn't get one.
>
> I borrowed the money from a bank for that Apple][, as 2 grand was a
> large percentage of my income then. Just maybe your perspective would be
> closer to mine had you slaved to pay off that loan and then get
> threatened with a lawsuit for promoting their product without paying
> them! Gimme a break. You don't have a personal dog in the fight.
Well, no, actually, I'm not going to give you a break on this, because
I think you're letting your emotional involvement cloud your judgement
here.
>> The first actual computer (as opposed to PDAs and things) that I ever
>> bought *new* was in 2001, I think, when I was making £30,000 a year or
>> so. (It was an IBM Thinkpad, FWIW. One of the nasty Acer-made ones, I
>> later learned.) From 1981 for the next 20y I bought 2nd hand or at
>> best shop-soiled reduced to clear, or built my own from a mix of new
>> and old bits. Mostly old bits.
>
> My perspective is from shelling out my large coin in 1978. A vast
> difference in experience. My money, then, went where my mouth is today.
I was 10. I didn't have any money to shell out. Not even pocket money.
But that doesn't change the key points here, I don't think!
Ric Moore
> On 20 May 2011 21:29, Ric Moore <waywa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 19:08 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
> >
> >> The Mac /hardware/ design was pretty good and clean and largely
> >> legacy-free. It would have been a sad, crippled thing if Apple had
> >> tried to make it Apple II or III compatible. And even /more/ expensive
> >> than it was.
> >
> > It wouldn't have been any bigger struggle than to take an Apple][, stuff
> > it with a new motherboard to make it Mac compatible. They didn't.
>
> Huh? I don't follow what you're getting at here.
>
> The Mac used a different CPU, different graphics, different sound, a
> different disk controller for different-size diskettes with a
> different format - it was a totally unrelated machine. No resemblance.
> It couldn't run Apple II software or use Apple II peripherals.
>
> Not 'til the Apple II Compatibility Card for the Mac LC would a Mac
> run Apple II software.
>
> If you want to see what the Mac /could/ have been, kinda sorta maybe,
> look at the Apple IIgs. I *still* want one of those. Cheap as anything
> in the USA, I believe, rare and hard to find and expensive over here.
And those who plunked down for their Apple][ GS got left in the lurch
within a year. Same ole, same ole.
> My point was, if the original Mac had been designed as an extension of
> the Apple II, it would have been more complicated and more expensive -
> to no direct benefit.
>
> > Not so
> > with PC's. You could upgrade your kit from a 286 to a 386 to a 486, by
> > exchanging parts. You could upgrade your OS from Win3.1 to Win7 going
> > that route too and still use the same 286 keyboard you started with.
>
> Er, yes, and...?
And that was/is my point. There was never any sort of upgrade available,
ever. You ditched what you had in the landfill, and bought the next
machine that would be dumped within a year. So, you bought again or got
off of that trainwreck and went PC.
My point is that shy of being independently wealthy, you won't find many
old time Apple customers become NEW Apple owner/customers. At some
point, they'll achieve critical mass, where they have pissed off too
many people and live to regret it.
> >> The Mac OS, on the other hand, started out small and simple and grew
> >> into a bit of a baroque nightmare. Apple did the right thing in
> >> junking it and starting afresh with NeXTstep?
> >
> > Huh? Jobs had been shown the door and developed NeXTstep outside of
> > Apple.
>
> Yes. And in 1997 or something, Apple bought NeXT and made NeXTstep the
> basis of Mac OS X.
>
> > Those that plunked down 10 grand for the Cube got left in the
> > lurch too.
>
> No, not at all. NeXTstep and OpenStep went through 4 major revisions
> and all the later versions would run on a Cube.
>
> > Sure, they later adopted elements of NeXTstep.
>
> "Elements?" Rubbish! Mac OS X 10.0 *is* NeXTstep 5, given a facelift
> to be a bit more Mac-like and with the underpinnings updated to use
> Mach 3 and a userland from FreeBSD.
>
> > Prolly paid
> > Jobs through the nose.
>
> You do know that when Apple bought NeXT, Jobs became Apple CEO? And he
> drew a salary of $1? One dollar.
And the stockholders got paid how much in dividends?
Heh, so did George Washington, who preferred to have an expense account,
instead. Congress lived to regret that deal.
> >> - not that it was
> >> particularly clean or elegant, being built on 20y of Unix cruft
> >> underneath. But at least Unix was designed to be a secure(ish)
> >> multi-user multi-tasking OS from the beginning, which neither MS-DOS
> >> not MacOS were.
> >
> > Concurrent DOS was multiuser and multitasking for sure. That later begat
> > DR-DOS, if I'm not mistaken.
>
> True, and a good point. But that wasn't an MS product, of course.
>
> > But, on a Novell network (remember token
> > ring?) files were shared, you could open remote desktops, etc.
>
> I don't remember remote desktops, but I used to install Netware 2, 3
> and 4. Never on "BrokenString", though - I always used Ethernet.
I remember when Token Ring was space age. But yes, remote desktop
sharing and cooperative screen sharing were done with Concurrent. Two
users could work on the same spreadsheet at the same time, one of them
being remote. Plus, the boss could watch you typing from his office.
Neat stuff, I personally saw it done. Mid to latter 80's. He liked to
pop in on the network to surprise the user by correcting his mistakes
for him on the user's screen. Big Brother was indeed watching.
> >> > Right now I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (undecided about Unity, would rather not
> >> > have it, but when I log in to the legacy GNOME desktop it just doesn't work
> >> > right...) with XP Pro running in a virtualbox... the way it should be!
> >
> > I'm in no rush for the latest and greatest. I'm still on 10.4 and don't
> > experience 1/10th the grief I see reported on the list. :) Ric
>
> Fair call. I like the new shiny, myself. I've been impressed by
> 11.04, actually. It definitely feels faster in use.
I had it up to my nose with new shiny on Fedora. I'm too friggin' old to
keep up with that pace. :) Ric
Ric Moore
--
Ric Moore
> I was 10. I didn't have any money to shell out. Not even pocket money.
>
> But that doesn't change the key points here, I don't think!
I think it does. Even FOSS had to have roots back to a "beginning".
During the early days, you either had licensed software or you had the
HomeBrew Computer Club notion of free software... everything shared,
exchanged, improved upon and shared again. It was just FREE, period. The
legal insanity we have today isn't as it was in the mid 70's. It wasn't
until some guy called Bill Gates lost his top at the HomeBrew folks, who
shared (stolen) his code, that anything lying around wasn't free to
share. Now, even what is free is codified into a legal structure mostly
known as the GPL.
But, "Free and Open Source Software", which is what FOSS means, didn't
start with the FSF by any stretch. When I typed in "Hunt the Wumpus"
from the latest Byte or Computer Age magazine, there was no proclamation
in the rem statements concerning some sort of license, ~it wasn't an
issue~. Out of pure courtesy, I dutifully typed in the contributors name
in the remarks. And then spent hours getting his version of Basic
running on Apple Basic. Once I managed to get it running, I gave copies
to all of my friends, with no qualms. I saved them from doing a bunch of
typing. Is that not FOSS as well? Or, does FOSS mean entangled in a
death struggle with property rights? While I'm not thankful for becoming
old, I did grow up in very interesting times. So, my take on "how it
was" is because I was there. Please, don't poo-poo my first hand
experiences. You could be taking notes, instead. :) Ric
Michael Comperchio
> On 20 May 2011 18:55, Michael Comperchio<michael.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 05/20/2011 01:49 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>> On 20 May 2011 18:39, David Gerard<dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 20 May 2011 17:49, Liam Proven<lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
>>>>> ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
>>>>> IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
>>>>> ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
>>>>> operating systems.
>>>> IBM still makes x86 servers. They're high-quality rackable kit, but
>>>> still technically PCs.
>>>>
in my attempts to get a lit up keyboard like Abby's I now own a similar
kinda thing....
And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though
I'm pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came
with CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS...
but it was 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a
backup that won't restore anymore...
again, the point is that is was what the user experienced that drove the
industry... and that was 'IBM PC'... vs 'Macintosh'... the underlying
hardware was aimed at running the 'PC' stuff. So, when you say the
Rainbow was not IBM compatible, you are wrong. The code I wrote on the
rainbow, with a simple recompile, ran on the PC's Limited computer I
replaced the Rainbow with. Direct screen writes and all.
Michael
Liam Proven
Yeah yeah yeah! I did all that sort of thing, too. I suspect most
40something+ computery types did. And yes, I tended to keep the
original author credits in there.
But that was not Free and it wasn't Open Source. That really /did/
start with Stallman and the FSF, because the important thing is to
*codify* /what/ rights you're giving away (& thus also what you're
not, which ones you're keeping) & which obligations you're placing on
those who take your code and use it.
In the early '80s there was crap like people taking magazine listings,
typing 'em in, changing the name, putting it on tape and selling it. I
got suckered into things like that myself.
The big innovation of Stallman & Co was the GPL, and that was
/important./ It's a big deal, it matters. It's not just giving stuff
away, it's not PD or freeware, it is something else, something
different.
If you don't recognise that, then the failure is with you, not in the
definitions of Free Software or Open Source.
It may not seem like an important difference to you, but that just
means you're not seeing it, because it really is.
Liam Proven
> On 05/20/2011 02:08 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> On 20 May 2011 18:55, Michael Comperchio<michael.c...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 05/20/2011 01:49 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 20 May 2011 18:39, David Gerard<dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 20 May 2011 17:49, Liam Proven<lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
>>>>>> ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
>>>>>> IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
>>>>>> ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
>>>>>> operating systems.
>>>>>
>>>>> IBM still makes x86 servers. They're high-quality rackable kit, but
>>>>> still technically PCs.
>>>>>
Ahh, sorry - my mistake. Was getting my Michaels muddled up; that's
why I was talking about accessibility and so on - I thought I was
replying to Michael Haney. Apologies.
> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though I'm
> pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came with
> CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS... but it was
> 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a backup that
> won't restore anymore...
Nah, I think it must have been MS-DOS, from Microsoft, not PC DOS from
IBM. But then, until after v6 or so, they were basically identical
except for the copyright statements!
The salient difference being that there was a version of MS-DOS for
IBM-compatibles, and a DEC version, and a Victor version, and an
Apricot version, etc. - and they were not interchangeable.
A disk from one *MS-DOS compatible* might not even boot a different
make of MS-DOS compatible, whereas all PC-compatibles were essentially
the same - and still are.
Connect the right drive, you can boot a Core i7 into MS-DOS 3.3 and
quite possibly into MS-DOS 1.0. I've run a dual-Athlon box under
MS-DOS 3.2 and DR-DOS+ from the early 1980s. :¬)
> again, the point is that is was what the user experienced that drove the
> industry... and that was 'IBM PC'... vs 'Macintosh'... the underlying
> hardware was aimed at running the 'PC' stuff. So, when you say the Rainbow
> was not IBM compatible, you are wrong. The code I wrote on the rainbow, with
> a simple recompile, ran on the PC's Limited computer I replaced the Rainbow
> with. Direct screen writes and all.
Ah, but that recompile is the all-important part! If the same *binary*
ran, that's clone-level compatibility. If it needs a recompile, it's
not.
I mean, for example, look at AROS, the Amiga Research Operating
System. It's an x86-32 OS for PC-compatibles (although there are other
versions), but it is *source-code* compatible with AmigaDOS 3.1 for
the original 68000-based Amiga.
Michael Comperchio
> On 20 May 2011 23:17, Michael Comperchio<michael.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 05/20/2011 02:08 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>> On 20 May 2011 18:55, Michael Comperchio<michael.c...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 05/20/2011 01:49 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>>>> On 20 May 2011 18:39, David Gerard<dge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On 20 May 2011 17:49, Liam Proven<lpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> IBM was a big nasty closed proprietary company. Still is, in many
>>>>>>> ways. But the PC was something different for it. It exploded beyond
>>>>>>> IBM's control, they tried and failed to get control back, and
>>>>>>> ultimately they left the market. IBM no longer makes x86 computers or
>>>>>>> operating systems.
>>>>>> IBM still makes x86 servers. They're high-quality rackable kit, but
>>>>>> still technically PCs.
>>>>>>
>> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though I'm
>> pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came with
>> CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS... but it was
>> 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a backup that
>> won't restore anymore...
> Nah, I think it must have been MS-DOS, from Microsoft, not PC DOS from
> IBM. But then, until after v6 or so, they were basically identical
> except for the copyright statements!
>
> The salient difference being that there was a version of MS-DOS for
> IBM-compatibles, and a DEC version, and a Victor version, and an
> Apricot version, etc. - and they were not interchangeable.
>
> A disk from one *MS-DOS compatible* might not even boot a different
> make of MS-DOS compatible, whereas all PC-compatibles were essentially
> the same - and still are.
>
> Connect the right drive, you can boot a Core i7 into MS-DOS 3.3 and
> quite possibly into MS-DOS 1.0. I've run a dual-Athlon box under
>
>
I have a core I7... 9+gigs of ram... which is why I can have the XP Pro,
and now a win7 VM running... and for another current discussion... I can
still hand code win *.rc and win32 sdk stuff ... just don't have the
time or inclination to learn X coding
>> again, the point is that is was what the user experienced that drove the
>> industry... and that was 'IBM PC'... vs 'Macintosh'... the underlying
>> hardware was aimed at running the 'PC' stuff. So, when you say the Rainbow
>> was not IBM compatible, you are wrong. The code I wrote on the rainbow, with
>> a simple recompile, ran on the PC's Limited computer I replaced the Rainbow
>> with. Direct screen writes and all.
Again though, the industry was driven by compatibility... Didn't matter
the underlying hardware (wow, I just did a google search on direct
screen writes and got nothing pertinent!)... so long as the BIOS running
the machine conformed to the "STANDARD"... and they did. It didn't
matter about having to recompile... sorta' like the FOSS world where you
distribute source to compile on your platform...
> Ah, but that recompile is the all-important part! If the same *binary*
> ran, that's clone-level compatibility. If it needs a recompile, it's
> not.
>
> I mean, for example, look at AROS, the Amiga Research Operating
> System. It's an x86-32 OS for PC-compatibles (although there are other
> versions), but it is *source-code* compatible with AmigaDOS 3.1 for
> the original 68000-based Amiga.
>
It's true about the recompile... but... as a coder, that was
irrelevant... the code ran unchanged... I miss those days... they were
the 'glory' years!!!! all the stuff we had to learn... there was no such
thing as a 'network guy' or a 'DB guy'... or as 'support department'...
we did everything...
I miss my Amiga... though I did get an email recently about a company in
Germany releasing form factor similar machines...
Ric Moore
> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though
> I'm pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came
> with CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS...
> but it was 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a
Didn't the DEC Rainbow use the 8086 and ran both CP/M-86 and DOS? Ric
Michael Haney
> On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 18:17 -0400, Michael Comperchio wrote:
>
>> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though
>> I'm pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came
>> with CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS...
>> but it was 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a
>
> Didn't the DEC Rainbow use the 8086 and ran both CP/M-86 and DOS? Ric
>
I often wonder what the world would have been like had a cheaper,
single user version of Unix had been on the first IBM PC rather than
MS-DOS. Where would we be right now in terms of computer technology?
Liam Proven
> On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 18:17 -0400, Michael Comperchio wrote:
>
>> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though
>> I'm pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came
>> with CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS...
>> but it was 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a
>
> Didn't the DEC Rainbow use the 8086 and ran both CP/M-86 and DOS? Ric
Worse - it was madder than that. *Both* a Z80 *and* an 8088, with 2
separate buses, communicating through 62KB of shared RAM.
Arguably slightly more sophisticated than the barking Commodore C128,
with both a 6502 and a Z80.
(The fascinating Secret Weapons of Commodore site details /dozens/ of
unreleased CBMs. Some would have been much more sensible than the
C128. The 5y later C65, for instance.)
Liam Proven
> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 9:52 PM, Ric Moore <waywa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 18:17 -0400, Michael Comperchio wrote:
>>
>>> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though
>>> I'm pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came
>>> with CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS...
>>> but it was 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a
>>
>> Didn't the DEC Rainbow use the 8086 and ran both CP/M-86 and DOS? Ric
>>
>
> I often wonder what the world would have been like had a cheaper,
> single user version of Unix had been on the first IBM PC rather than
> MS-DOS. Where would we be right now in terms of computer technology?
HP tried something very much like that - the HP Integral PC.
Specs:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!msg/net.micro.hp/AZB_krQtUtc/CG68G4VTF3wJ
Brief rundown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Integral_PC
It was a weird $5000 kinda-sorta luggable 68000 machine with the first
ancestor of HP/UX on it - the kernel in ROM and the utilities on disk
- and a very primitive GUI.
Very odd, very expensive, very limited. And this was 1985, after the
Mac and the IBM PC-AT, but before the Atari ST or the Commodore Amiga.
In 1981, when the PC came out, commodity technology just couldn't make
a single-user Unix machine affordable. It was about a decade later
when that became viable, when a 386 with 4MB of RAM and a 40MB hard
disk became vaguely affordable if you were moderately well-off.
The mid-to-late '80s efforts from Acorn, Commodore, Apple and so on
were either horrendously expensive, horrendously limited, or often
both.
Nah, in the early '80s, Unix was too much for any affordable home or
personal computer.
The big what-if I like to consider is this.
The FSF considered building their GNU UNIX around the BSD-4.2 kernel
in about 1988. It took 'til 1991 for BSD-4.4 Lite to come out, the
first version with all the AT&T code removed and therefore freely
distributable. But the GNU Project didn't need or want all the
userland - they just needed a kernel. BSD-4.3 would have been enough.
They thought about it and decided not. They started work on their own,
microkernel-based HURD instead, and nearly 25y later it's still not
finished or working. If they'd gone with BSD, they might have had a
working, free Unix by the end of the '80s. The computer world might
look very different today. I find it an intriguing thought.
But then, what if Alan Turing had not been punished for his
homosexuality and had lived?
Or what if Charles Babbage had not kept getting distracted and had
finished the Difference Engine No. 2 in 1850 or so? It would have
worked - there are 2 of them now, built in modern times using
Victorian engineering techniques and materials. He would have made
enough money to begin work on the Analytical Engine and the Victorians
would have had working steam-powered mechanical computers by the late
19th century!
Ric Moore
> On 21 May 2011 02:52, Ric Moore <waywa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 18:17 -0400, Michael Comperchio wrote:
> >
> >> And my apologies for not getting the spaces and slashes right... though
> >> I'm pretty sure I'm right about the OS being PC DOS... the Rainbow came
> >> with CP/M (slash probable wrong)... and I had to go out and get DOS...
> >> but it was 27 years worth of alcohol ago and those brain cells are on a
> >
> > Didn't the DEC Rainbow use the 8086 and ran both CP/M-86 and DOS? Ric
>
> Worse - it was madder than that. *Both* a Z80 *and* an 8088, with 2
> separate buses, communicating through 62KB of shared RAM.
>
> Arguably slightly more sophisticated than the barking Commodore C128,
> with both a 6502 and a Z80.
>
> (The fascinating Secret Weapons of Commodore site details /dozens/ of
> unreleased CBMs. Some would have been much more sensible than the
> C128. The 5y later C65, for instance.)
Heh, my Televideo server did just that, ran cp/m with a z-80 and cp/m-86
with an 8086. It ran MP/M... a file server networked version of CP/M.
All told I had over 30 CP/M machines in a collection. I had 5-6 mini's
too. The house was busting at the seams. The garage, too! I stuffed two
IBM System 34's in there, along with a System 38. Later on I got the
Unisys 5000/90 monster, and it still ran like a top ...and spun my
utility meter like one, too! It used 220v 60amps at bootup. I could only
start one harddrive at a time without popping a breaker. :) Ric
Phil Groschwitz
>
> Heh, my Televideo server did just that, ran cp/m with a z-80 and cp/m-86
> with an 8086. It ran MP/M... a file server networked version of CP/M.
> All told I had over 30 CP/M machines in a collection. I had 5-6 mini's
> too. The house was busting at the seams. The garage, too! I stuffed two
> IBM System 34's in there, along with a System 38. Later on I got the
> Unisys 5000/90 monster, and it still ran like a top ...and spun my
> utility meter like one, too! It used 220v 60amps at bootup. I could only
> start one harddrive at a time without popping a breaker. :) Ric
>
servers in at their homes. During the great Y2K days there was a lot
of S/38 and AS/400 consulting work. I came across a lot of guys who
had small AS/400's in their basements. Even the smallest used a lot
of electricity. The physical space the S/38's and earlier took is
amazing.
Today a very large Power 895 looks like a large refrigerator (without
the disk enclosure) but that can support 10 separate sizable LPAR's.
The machines you were are talking about supported ONE!
Phil
Michael Haney
A place I used to work for in Troy, MI has an AS/400. The machine was
the size of a large refrigerator laid on its side. It has a built-in
terminal on its top, and set off on one side of the black case. They
used telnet to access it and ran Peachtree on it.
Ric Moore
I had leased about 1/2 of a city block worth of deserted old down-town
buildings, which included a bank and an old theater. The cost for
insurance is triple unoccupied as for being occupied, so we "made a
deal".
I had three-phase 220v 200 amp service. Even had an elevator. So, I
pushed a lot of my old gear into there (the former bank building
complete with a walk-in vault) and did the loft-living thing using the
entire second floor, with my own small parking lot and a steel loading
dock. Heh, that's where my grill was parked and outdoor furniture. My
view from my "deck" was the downtown parking lot. After 5PM, I had
downtown to myself, so I could play my stereo wide open if I cared to. I
had a 6" water main, so pressure for my shower was ~never~ an issue. I
had interior brick walls and the old iron window frames. God, it was
good to be single.
They offered to sell me that real estate and finance it, but it was FULL
of asbestos tile and the boiler room in the theater was practically all
asbestos covered. I just stayed the heck out of there, as I was
practically paid to keep it all closed. A couple of years later, it got
hit with the wrecking ball, and the "Home for Wayward Computers" had to
close. Yes, they closed paradise and put up a parking lot, by bulldozing
the remains and paving it all over.
So, I just dropped a 220 line from the panel, with a 60amp breaker, to
the Unisys 5000/90. I ran it one month, was staggered by the electric
bill, and after only turned it on to play with or show off. It had 4
68020's and about a meg of memory. Across all 4 of the harddrives (two
to a 800# cabinet plus a reel-to-reel tape drive) I had one gig of
storage. It was about 1/4 million new. Actually using tar, as God
intended it to be, was so cool with the tape drives. But, just turning
it on was like a space shuttle launch, you had to go down the tic list
and follow that exactly. I keep my eyes out when driving though these
little southern towns for another deal like that. :) Ric