Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Peter T. Breuer]

Peter, if you are serious, and not just pulling our legs, your memory is
failing.

Well, it might be a bit off. I am talking about 1986.

MS-DOS 1.0 came out in August 1981; SunOS 3.0 in February 1986.

Seems about right.

So what version of msdos was around at that time? Obviously I didn't
use it!

Sun Microsystems was incorporated (with four employees) in February 1982.
There never was a SunOS 3.8. (SunOS 3.5 was succeeded by 4.0.) And I'm

It seems to me that I was using 3.x. Maybe it was 3.1? I seem to
remember an earlier major ... was there a 2.8 or 2.9?

not sure what you mean by "Sun 360"--a Sun 3/60, maybe?

Seems likely. I recall it as a Sun 360m. "Monica" by name, following
the cpu serial number, mncaxxx (or something close). "Sun 3" definitely
rings a bell.

Peter

 

[John Bokma]

Jeroen Wenting wrote:

<cut>
At the time you "PC" guys where hacking around monochrome green and a
bit lighter green screens I was doing multi-media editing on my Amiga
600. So perhaps we should state that we would have been a lot further
if not an incredible amount of cool technologies where bought by MS
and then simply put in the freezer to protect their future market
share.

You mean like the lamp that keeps burning forever, like Philips has?

Although Commodore where never serious competitors,

Because there programming skills were as worse as MS? I mean, their
BASIC had only 2 instuctions: PEEK and POKE?

they had
some "intern" difficulties, too bad but life goes on.

Yup, same for Acorn. Their RISC work station was the fastest computer
available for home users at that moment.

To go on, stable version of truly free unix likes where released
around 1994 that was in the same time MS was working on their super
stable released windows 95 and a slightly better NT 3.5 and let me not
forget OS/2 warp 3.0 .

I'm not a MS basher,

Yet you call NT slightly better compared to Windows 95. So you have no
clue what you're talking about.

hey I make money of them administrating them,
however to state that if we didn't had MS we would been in the IT
stone ages is blatantly wrong,

Now there is truth.

I think we would have been a lot
further

No, since companies are just companies, not little gods like some want
them to be.

then where we are now. Perhaps we even had a other mainstream
architecture like sparcs and powerpc's.

But "crippled" like Intel.

 

[Michael Heiming]

Amazing, I thought Xah Lee was the only one able to fit so much BS in one
sentence.

You them to have a talent to piss-off people with just a single
terse contribution. ;-)

Yeah, right.

Good riddance!

 

[Michael Heiming]

[..]

Sun Microsystems was incorporated (with four employees) in February 1982.
There never was a SunOS 3.8. (SunOS 3.5 was succeeded by 4.0.) And I'm

It seems to me that I was using 3.x. Maybe it was 3.1? I seem to
remember an earlier major ... was there a 2.8 or 2.9?

Looks like SunOS 1.0 came out February 1982, according to:

http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html#05

Kudos to the one who did the work!

 

[John Bokma]

You them to have a talent to piss-off people with just a single
terse contribution. ;-)

Only if their contribution is utter BS and I point this out.

 

[Michael Heiming]

Only if their contribution is utter BS and I point this out.

Dunno what's so BS about the possibility that the wintel mafia
works hand in hand, M$ introduces a new OS and Intel faster CPU.
People need to use the first, luckily both come bundled with the
latest PC people just need to buy right now. Iirc this is called
marketing, you don't seem to have much clue about.

BTW
Thx for reminding me to actually kill-file you.

PLONK

 

[Martin P. Hellwig]

John Bokma wrote:

You mean like the lamp that keeps burning forever, like Philips has?

No more like all the hydrogen technologies that shell has in their
possession for the last decades and only recently has begun to restart
those projects.

Because there programming skills were as worse as MS? I mean, their
BASIC had only 2 instuctions: PEEK and POKE?

eehm Amiga?

Yet you call NT slightly better compared to Windows 95. So you have no
clue what you're talking about.

So I see you never worked serious with 3.5 .

Now there is truth.


No, since companies are just companies, not little gods like some want
them to be.


But "crippled" like Intel.

Yeah right sparc is crippled...

 

[Matt Garrish]

Dunno what's so BS about the possibility that the wintel mafia
works hand in hand, M$ introduces a new OS and Intel faster CPU.

Your presumption that poor coding has anything to do with CPU development is
absurd. There may be times that M$ has to wait on faster chips before
pushing new technologies or Intel has to wait on M$ before pushing new chips
(like their 64bit chips that probably won't be get over-hyped until the next
iteration of Winblows rolls around), but that's hardly evidence of the two
working hand-in-hand.

People need to use the first, luckily both come bundled with the
latest PC people just need to buy right now. Iirc this is called
marketing, you don't seem to have much clue about.

Er, that's not called marketing but a software/hardware bundle. Marketing
would be the propaganda that tries to convince you that you need both. When
you have no option that's not marketing but a monopoly, which sort of brings
this all full-circle...

Matt

 

[Michael Heiming]

Your presumption that poor coding has anything to do with CPU development is
absurd. There may be times that M$ has to wait on faster chips before
pushing new technologies or Intel has to wait on M$ before pushing new chips
(like their 64bit chips that probably won't be get over-hyped until the next
iteration of Winblows rolls around), but that's hardly evidence of the two
working hand-in-hand.

Doesn't really matter who is providing faster something that'll
need or provide more power, the other will catch up soon, just to
keep the game going.

Er, that's not called marketing but a software/hardware bundle. Marketing
would be the propaganda that tries to convince you that you need both. When
you have no option that's not marketing but a monopoly, which sort of brings
this all full-circle...

Ops, sorry. Having no option is M$ marketing (monopoly) for the
usual user. Glad to see you got my point. ;-)

 

[John Bokma]

PLONK

So you think you can make points by PLONKing people? Grow up and get a
life. You can learn from listening. You'll learn nothing from ploinking.

Oh, and I am not amazed, since people who claim utter BS is right, plonk
people who don't agree.

 

[John Bokma]

John Bokma wrote:


No more like all the hydrogen technologies that shell has in their
possession for the last decades and only recently has begun to restart
those projects.


eehm Amiga?

Eehm: Acorn Archimedes?

So I see you never worked serious with 3.5 .

Yeah, that's it, I am sure.

Yeah right sparc is crippled...

Yeah, right: Sparc is the ultimate goal in processor design, the best of
the best. You think it would have been that good if it was a mainstream
processor?

 

[Tim Roberts]

Microsoft isn't evil, they're not a monopoly either.
If they were a monopoly they'd have 100% of the market and there'd be no
other software manufacturers at all.

This is wrong. The dictionary definition of a monopoly is when a
manufacturer has all or nearly all of a market. Microsoft DOES have a
monopoly on PC operating systems.

That, in itself, is not necessarily illegal. However, Microsoft then USED
that monopoly power to stifle their competition, and that IS illegal.

Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about browser
wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year
market. Why would you risk anything to own it?

Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more powerful
than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb
mainframe terminals.

Utter hogwash. Computer hardware would still have followed the path it
did. I suspect we'd all be using WordPerfect or AbiWord on some kind of
Unix clone, and I also suspect application integration wouldn't be as
commonplace as it now is, but it's silly to credit Microsoft with the
ubiquity of powerful computers.

 

[steve]

TROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

 

[John Bokma]

Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about
browser wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion
dollar a year market. Why would you risk anything to own it?

Opera seems to be making money with it. Also, Firefox gets money from
Google kickback. Maybe MS had a similar idea in mind, but it failed
(remember how they wanted to add ads to keywords in webpages?)

 

[David Schwartz]

What you call "clever marketing" the DOJ calls "monopolistic
practices". The courts agreed with the DOJ. Having had several large
PC manufacturers refuse to sell me a system without some form of
Windows because MS made it impossible for them to compete if they
didn't agree to do so, I agree with the courts and the DOJ.

Go down to your local car dealer and see if you can buy a new car
without an engine.

DS

 

[David Schwartz]

Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about browser
wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year
market. Why would you risk anything to own it?

It really isn't that hard to understand that web-based applications that
work in any browser on any OS threaten to make it irrelevent what OS you're
running. MS has a strong interest in making sure it's important to be
running on one of their OSes.

DS

 

[John Bokma]

It really isn't that hard to understand that web-based
applications that
work in any browser on any OS threaten to make it irrelevent what OS
you're running.

And it's even easier to understand that your statement is nonsense.

It doesn't matter which Linux distribution you pick, all use the Linux
kernel. On all I can run OpenOffice, and get the same results. Yet people
seem to prefer one distribution over one other.

MS has a strong interest in making sure it's important
to be running on one of their OSes.

Maybe *they* do have a point .

 

[joe]

And it's even easier to understand that your statement is nonsense.

It doesn't matter which Linux distribution you pick, all use the Linux
kernel. On all I can run OpenOffice, and get the same results. Yet people
seem to prefer one distribution over one other.

He was talking about the browser war, and gave a pretty good reason
why it was important. So you respond by pointing out that people
choose a linux distribution for personal (non-technical,
non-marketing) reasons. I think I missed the connection.

Maybe *they* do have a point .

Which is?

Joe

 

[Matt Garrish]

This is wrong. The dictionary definition of a monopoly is when a
manufacturer has all or nearly all of a market. Microsoft DOES have a
monopoly on PC operating systems.

That, in itself, is not necessarily illegal. However, Microsoft then USED
that monopoly power to stifle their competition, and that IS illegal.

Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about browser
wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year
market. Why would you risk anything to own it?

It may not be worth loads of money in-and-of itself now (don't forget
Netscape wasn't always free, though), but if you control how people view the
Internet you can make a lot of money in other ways, especially if you build
your browser into your operating system and warp standards so that people
who design sites take advantage of the proprietary features. Eventually the
hope is that your OS and browser will become the only means of accessing the
internet. And if your OS and browser are the only way to access the
Internet, who in their right mind would use another system?

Matt

 

[David Schwartz]

And it's even easier to understand that your statement is nonsense.

To you, if you don't understand it.

It doesn't matter which Linux distribution you pick, all use the Linux
kernel. On all I can run OpenOffice, and get the same results. Yet people
seem to prefer one distribution over one other.

Right, and that's what Microsoft wants to avoid. They wants to make sure
people *have* to choose a Microsoft operating system to get their
applications to work. He doesn't want most applications to work the same on
all operating systems. MS was afraid the browser would replace the operating
system in the sense that it would be the target platform for applications.

Maybe *they* do have a point .

Well, they have their vision of the future of computing, and you can bet
all things made by Microsoft are at the center of it.

DS