Overloaded terms

em

Right, that's how *THEY* use it, but that's not what it actually means. That was my point--these $lackards are using a harmless term to cover their negligence, sometimes bordering on criminal.

the danish word "gift" means both married and poison :P

-Lasse

When I worked on some of the earliest PCs--for minimum wage, and before I could legally work--shipped software NEVER crashed. If it crashed in-house that was a stop-the-company event until found and fixed.

Bill Gates' biggest invention were the ideas that downward compatibility's for suckers, vaporware's a weapon, and bugs are a strategic profit center.

His greatest accomplishment was getting the world to think all of that's normal. Bill showed us that discipline, honesty, and working products aren't needed to "succeed." (Except I don't think he's happy--he always looks miserable.)

And how long were the programs?

Bizarre. Bill Gates made it because IBM's software engineers made sure that DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist tricks.

ws

at DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and g ot it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist t ricks.

"IBM's software engineers made sure DOS was a whole lot more reliable"? IBM wrote *M*S*DOS? That's classic!

DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist tricks.

I heard that IBM did a huge amount of QC on DOS to make it usable. The last version of DOS, DOS2000, was from IBM. I have one around here somewhere.

DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist tricks.

BJT vs. FET "saturation", need I say more?

Tim

ue

hrows

appy

that DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), an d got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolis t tricks.

Gates was a weasel from the start, a nerd gone wild. (Although their early Bill-written BASIC interpreters were pretty neat--quire decent coding.)

IBM hired Gates as a middleman to negotiate a license to Gary Kildall's CP/M. Gates, trusted middleman, played the parties against each other, sabotaged the negotiations, then sold IBM QDOS, an illegal CP/M rip-off Gates bought for cheap. If Gary Kildall had sued, Gates and Microsoft would've been toast.

After that Gates made a living off stealing other peoples' work and being too big to sue, then buying them at the last minute for pennies as a settlement.

All well-known and widely explained. Seek and ye shall find.

hrows

appy

that DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), an d got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolis t tricks.

I miss DOS. I'll have to go LINUX some day, just to get the command line and scripting back.

rows

ppy

that DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist tricks.

It was. When I worked for ITT-Creed in Brighton as a "staff engineer" 1979-

I've just had a quick troll through Wikipedia and can't find any explicit r eference to the episode, but IBM signed the contract with Microsoft for a b unch of software for the IBM PC in November 1980, and announced the product in August 1981. Enough time for a tiger team to do some tidying up.

Bugs always used to be "unintended features"!?

In practice, if an application is useful then it will still sell.

DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist tricks.

????

I use the command line and scripting in Win 7 just about every day. I usually do scripts in Rexx, because cmd.exe is so limited that way, but there's nothing to prevent you from being a command line guy in Windows.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I s'pose the problem is really more that my favorite "all-time most- useful well-written utilities on the planet" crash on WinXP. I like the idea that legacy stuff runs forever on UNIX. Another factor is just general Windows-fatigue.

So, I still run Win3.1 for certain things that matter, on my 1994 HP OmniBook600c. Win3.1 was written for an XT and this baby's got a

Rexx sounds worthwhile. I also have PowerBasic, DOS and Windows, but mostly write stuff on the OmniBook (e.g.complex simulations) for the convenience of using QuickBasic.

Thanks for the reminders.

Diadactifussitude? Are you sure that means the same thing to the man on the street, a linguist, and a philosopher?

I'm not sure what your goal is beyond mere curiosity, but in my professional communications I always try to make it clear when I am using a technical term which meaning I am using, particularly when I am crossing disciplines.

"Energy" and "Power" in common use vs. their specific meanings in physics and engineering -- and the confusion this causes in the debate over energy politics, when you get folks that don't understand.

Have you used the PowerBasic Console Compiler? It's outrageous.

throws

that DOS was a whole lot reliable than it's competitors (notably CP/M), and got it a large enough market share that he could play the usual monopolist tricks.

Sociopaths are often very successful.

My goal? Mostly chatting about electronics and other technical topics, like most others here. Technical communication is an important part of the job, after all.

I agree about having to be clear which meaning you're using--but sometimes it isn't obvious until well into the conversation that the other side is using a different meaning. 'State' is especially prone to that problem--to a gizmo guy it generally refers to a FSM, but to a programmer I take it that it means basically "all data that depends on previous history."

And 'didactifussitude' is one of my favourite joke neologisms, meaning the tendency to insist that other adults follow in every detail the views of One Who Knows Best (didactic + fussy + incongruous noun ending).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs