Electrolytics question

As you just said, you remember the *app* crashing and freezing.

DOS was (is) basically a program loader and control of the machine goes to the app so unless, in it's brain dead stupor as it crashes, it hands control back to the CLI then that's all she wrote.

I'm not usually given to disagreeing with the majority of what you say, Michael, but in this case, I'm with Flipper. Surely, you can't live your life worrying about retrospective 'what ifs' can you ? Almost no piece of modern life could ever have existed if this sort of life model had been applied to it at the outset. Again, you are talking very specifically when discussing computers in terms of networks and professional use. I don't dispute that there are operating systems out there now, and that there have been others in the past, that more specifically address a set of industrial problems / requirements for computing functionality. There may well also have been other OSs poised to be released (unleashed?) on the public, which may have been better at the time than Windows, or may have grown to have been better.

However, the fact remains that they didn't make it to market in time, or they weren't promoted 'ruthlessly' enough by their creators. As a businessman myself (allbeit a very small one), I can't knock Gates for having done this. At the time, MS was a relatively small company. Its ultimate success comes from the fact that at its head was a technically extremely competent person, who was also a visionary businessman.

As far as the 'net goes, I can't see it ever being controlled in the Draconian way you suggest that it will be. It is just too large, lumbering, international and unbelievably complex to police in any way that is at all practical. Governments like to make noises about this sort of thing as part of their "we're doing something about it" public side, but on their private side, they know that in reality, there's probably nothing that they can do to change anything about it. If they could, and it was that easy, they would have long ago stopped all of the fraud that goes on. You must also realise in this context, that a government's hold on its tenure, is fragile at best, and they won't, for the most part, have the balls to interfere with anything that keeps the people under their 'control', docile, compliant, and happy. The 'net is such a drug to entire populations from kids just about old enough to sit in a chair, to grannies just about strong enough to carry their laptop into hospital with them ...

And, like it or not, this is facilitated by the presence of that global 'standard' Windows, running - for the most part - quietly and satisfactorily on the vast majority of machines.

But, had you have put these items in front of them *before* they had experienced the graphic UI of Windows, and found that it was very easy to learn icons and mousing, I would venture to suggest that they would have had considerable difficulty. I too have a lot of experience of citizens from a generation ago, trying to cope with technology, and for a very great deal of them, operating today's technology is a serious challenge. Hell, even MY generation can't work a lot of the stuff. In just the last couple of weeks, I have had in for repair, two fairly straightforward items of home entertainment equipment, both with 'faults' being caused by a lack of understanding of the equipment, leading to functions being disabled in menus.

Arfa

Perhaps I should have defined 'freedoms'. As with any example of a fast proliferating phenomenon throughout history, disorder and threats to perceived community order always produce regulation, restriction, taxation and elimination. These reactions are often mitigated if the phenomenon is at its outset responsibly deployed.

Please read John Walker's "Digital Imprimatur"; the creator of the very popular first generation VoIP program 'spreakfreely' was very concerned about the trends that now concern me and as a result stopped development and support of his program. His lengthy statement is here:

Heck, I have much more mundane worries that consume my worry budget; I just felt compelled to join this discussion ;)

Debate over the reasons for MS' success is abundant and consensus really doesn't yet exist; I was just pointing out that under other circumstances you may have been thanking Gary Kildahl or someone else ;)

I hope and pray that you are right, but I fully expect to see forms of taxation, regulation, pricing structures, and monitoring that effectively end today's libertarian Internet.

In alt.internet.wireless Jeff Liebermann recently speculated: "I've used the Wi-Fi hindsight example sufficiently that I've thought about what wireless would be like in 2018. Visualize the DHS (Dept of Homeland Security) running all communications and where you are required to positively identify yourself before being allowed to use the public airwaves. Meanwhile, spread spectrum bandwidth will be auctioned by the megabyte in real time by the FCC, where user fees have replaced spectrum auctions. SDR (software defined radio) will have taken over, and every user can have their own protocol, optimized for their specific application. More horror stories when I have time."

Michael

cheap, just add some.

It's not the same thing at all.

upgrade it a little. Memory is cheap and is the main factor preventing a newer OS from functioning well.

I switched that off. Yes it was a silly idea, presumably intended to cover up some security problems.

Never tried it.

That is very useful. I don't have to peak under things to see stuff underneath.

I lost zero software. Including some dodgy stuff I though M$ would prevent operating like CloneDVD.

What about managing TSRs?

DOS simply loads TSRs, it doesn't 'manage' them.

they bascially took care of themselves.

Sure they did. Most remained in the system RAM, and used resources, until you rebooted. Very few did a clean exit when they were finished.

Then what gives each program time on the CPU?

TSRs just hooked into DOS's keyboard handler, and responded when a particular key combination was pressed, usually ALT-something. When this key combo was pressed DOS would hand control to the TSR. When you "exited" the TSR, control was passed back DOS (or whatever other app was running at the time the ALT-something key was pressed).

DOS was merely a program loader, a disk formatter and some related utilities. Everything else was left up to the apps - memory management, printing, video, serial comms, etc. That is why each word processor come with it's own printer drivers.

that's because they weren't designed to finish.

the inteerupt table (or nothing).

BIOS's keyboard event interrupt, well, some did.

I wrote a few that used the 18.2Hz timer interrupt or the 1024Hz RTC interrupt.

well, no. when any key was pressed the TSR would check it and decide if it needed to take further action.

actually dos had rudimetary serial comms and would provide every application with a file handle ( number 3 or 4 - I forget which) opened on (almost always) COM1

That's what SR in TSR meant 'Stay Resident'. Some tied up other resources they were no longer using as well, because they were so poorly written.

They hook interrupts, and after the interrupt handler in the TSR is finished it passes control back to whatever had the interrupt before, which could be another TSR that loaded first.

Not DOS. It's basically a program loader... plus some rudimentary drivers and file system handling.

In original form there's only 'one program' so the job of giving "each program time" is trivial. The one program gets it... all of it... minus driver interrupt handing

The ability to have "more than one program" was, in fact, the purpose of some TSRs and *they* did the 'handling' because DOS had none. But you couldn't run just 'anything' with them. They allowed you to 'popup' some of their utilities (programs) without having to exit the 'main' program you were using with one example being "sidekick," which had it's own notepad, calculator, calendar, and dialer 'programs' built in. Only one was 'running' at any time, though,

The other approach was program 'suites' (MS Works being an example) and, in that case, the 'suite' handled it's own resources. But as far as DOS was concerned it was one program.

TSR's could be problematic because there was no 'standard', per see, so they could, and sometimes did, interfere with each other.

Windows (1, 2, 3) 3.1 was a sort of 'big TSR' and you got 'windows' by executing win.exe. Or you could put it in autoexec.bat to start it up automatically.

The screen shot is of someone with a super duper system for it to be equipped with a gargantuan 500Meg hard drive. Maybe even a 66Mhz

'Exit" windows and you went back to the DOS prompt.

courteous

cheap, just add some.

I was being generous but you're right. It's slower even with twice the memory.

just upgrade it a little. Memory is cheap and is the main factor preventing a newer OS from functioning well.

some security problems.

You have to guess/presume?

Good choice. No reason to make it slower than it already is.

What a joke.

Besides not being able to read anything through the 'transparent blur' even if you could the odds that something 'useful' would, by happenstance, be in just the right spot under the border makes it useless.

operating like CloneDVD.

Glad to hear it but unless you imagine they made Vista for just you then your fortunate luck doesn't mean anything.

Actually the sigs are stupid. I hadn't read them until he mentioned it, but they are very, very stupid.

Really, I rather like them.

Graham