My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee? Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?
peakester

wrote:

My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee?

Were he my son I would try to show him that there is far more satisfaction
in doing what one can to help those in need than in asking what others are
doing.

Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?

It seems that you are jealous of Gates' success and that your son has
learned it from you.

--
================================================== ======================
Michael Kesti | "And like, one and one don't make
| two, one and one make one."
mrkesti at comcast dot net | - The Who, Bargain

wrote:
My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee? Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?
peakester


http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm

--fletch

gates has given more money than anyone ever to charities.. you're asking
thew wrong question.. I want to know what Kanye West is doing with his
millions from his crap.
wrote in message
oups.com...
My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee? Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?
peakester

On 8 Sep 2005 01:17:03 -0700, wrote:

My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee? Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?

He and his wife started a charity a few years ago, after criticism
(I forget from who) of "not giving enough to charity." It seems they
ARE giving to help Katrina victims:

http://gatesfoundation.org/

peakester

Michael R. Kesti wrote:
wrote:

My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee?

Were he my son I would try to show him that there is far more satisfaction
in doing what one can to help those in need than in asking what others are
doing.

Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?

It seems that you are jealous of Gates' success and that your son has
learned it from you.

Thank you for being my moral judge. I just asked asked a question, it
was not a criticism. Please feel free to inform me further of how I
should live my life and send me a postcard of the glass house you live
in.

--
================================================== ======================
Michael Kesti | "And like, one and one don't make
| two, one and one make one."
mrkesti at comcast dot net | - The Who, Bargain

wrote:
Michael R. Kesti wrote:
wrote:

My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee?

Were he my son I would try to show him that there is far more satisfaction
in doing what one can to help those in need than in asking what others are
doing.

Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?

It seems that you are jealous of Gates' success and that your son has
learned it from you.

Thank you for being my moral judge. I just asked asked a question, it
was not a criticism. Please feel free to inform me further of how I
should live my life and send me a postcard of the glass house you live
in.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I am sure jealous of Gates' success.
If I could become a multimillionare by selling bad software that I bought
at a discount elsewhere and not providing proper support for it, I sure
would.
--scott
(who talked to Mr. Gates in 1978 and was told that the HP 2101 was not
a good machine and that even though he sold a version of BASIC for it,
he didn't intend on actually fixing any of the bugs in it.)


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Ben Bradley wrote:
He and his wife started a charity a few years ago

And have pumped a considerable amount of cash into it. There are people
who can be criticised legitimately for not giving back; Bill Gates --
despite my many complaints about his company's products -- is not one of
them.

Find a better topic to attack him on, and PLEASE find a better place to
do it.

Scott Dorsey wrote:


I can't speak for anyone else, but I am sure jealous of Gates' success.
If I could become a multimillionare by selling bad software that I bought
at a discount elsewhere and not providing proper support for it, I sure
would.

Nah, you have more class than that.

I'm jealous because I didn't buy stock in MS in 1995 when Win 95 came
out :-)

Mr Soul

Joe Kesselman wrote:
Ben Bradley wrote:
He and his wife started a charity a few years ago

And have pumped a considerable amount of cash into it. There are people
who can be criticised legitimately for not giving back; Bill Gates --
despite my many complaints about his company's products -- is not one of
them.

Find a better topic to attack him on, and PLEASE find a better place to
do it.

I am aware of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. I did not attack
him, I asked a freakin' question. If you re-examine my initial
question, you will find that I simply relayed a question that my son
asked as a matter of information. I referred to him as Mr. Money in a
sense of cynicism but not criticism. I am in awe of Bill Gates and his
accomplishments. I read the book about his rise and was thoroughly
impressed.

I am dumfounded by the attitude of moral and technical criticism
sometimes displayed on this group. Please don't be so inclined to read
something in that is not there and please don't bother to be my moral
judge.

wrote:
I am in awe of Bill Gates and his
accomplishments. I read the book about his rise and was thoroughly
impressed.

What book would that be? I've been wanting to look further
into what he did besides milk a very high profit cash cow.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

I'm sorry I didn't by MS stock in 1982 when I found that my PRC work cohorts
who actually knew something about computers were buying MS-DOS rather than
IBM's CPM. Then again, a little of that money should have gone into Lotus
too, because it was the reason people were buying MS-DOS.

Maybe I'd have a U87 by now! g

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
http://blogs.salon.com/0004478/

wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm jealous because I didn't buy stock in MS in 1995 when Win 95 came
out :-)

Mr Soul

"Dr. Dolittle" wrote in message
...

Dr Dolittle - or whatever name you are using today.

You are on notice to cease and desist forging an address on our domain as
your from address.

Complaints filed with appropriate authorities.

Apologies to other users of these groups - Dr Doliitle does not have an
account with us.

"Bob Cain" wrote in message
...


wrote:
I am in awe of Bill Gates and his
accomplishments. I read the book about his rise and was thoroughly
impressed.

What book would that be? I've been wanting to look further
into what he did besides milk a very high profit cash cow.


Despite theories about how he started.. he actually created that cash cow..
not the computer industry.. but the monster of Microsoft. Which I am
indebted to for 20 years of a vairly good livin'


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

In article .com,
wrote:

I'm jealous because I didn't buy stock in MS in 1995 when Win 95 came
out :-)

Mr Soul



Be sure to sell it when it peaks in 2000! ;

MSFT ain't done squat for anyone holding it for the past 6 years. Kinda
hard to believe, eh?





David Correia
www.Celebrationsound.com

Roger W. Norman wrote:
I'm sorry I didn't by MS stock in 1982 when I found that my PRC work cohorts
who actually knew something about computers were buying MS-DOS rather than
IBM's CPM. Then again, a little of that money should have gone into Lotus
too, because it was the reason people were buying MS-DOS.

Huh? People were buying MS-DOS because it was shipped with
the computers they bought from IBM. IBM never employed CPM.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Jona Vark wrote:

Despite theories about how he started.. he actually created that cash cow..
not the computer industry.. but the monster of Microsoft. Which I am
indebted to for 20 years of a vairly good livin'

IBM created that cash cow. Gates' wagon was just hitched to
it. Had the Boys From Boca been able to get even the
slightest support from IBM for an internally written OS (the
PC was an outlaw, skunk works project) we'd never have heard
of Gates. It was IBM's failure, not Gate's brilliance that
hitched him to that cow.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

On Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:40:05 GMT, "Jona Vark" wrote:

That was his 15 minutes of Fame.... to complain like Al Sharpton!

I give credit to Mike Myers, for not going too over the top on facial
expressions. He was probably like... oh what now!



gates has given more money than anyone ever to charities.. you're asking
thew wrong question.. I want to know what Kanye West is doing with his
millions from his crap.
wrote in message
roups.com...
My 12-year old son asked me yesterday what Bill Gates was contributing
to the Katrina melee? Anybody heard anything regarding Mr. Money?
peakester

On 8 Sep 2005 15:29:44 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I am sure jealous of Gates' success.
If I could become a multimillionare by selling bad software that I bought
at a discount elsewhere and not providing proper support for it, I sure
would.
--scott
(who talked to Mr. Gates in 1978 and was told that the HP 2101 was not
a good machine and that even though he sold a version of BASIC for it,
he didn't intend on actually fixing any of the bugs in it.)


You shag one sheep.... :-)

Bob Cain wrote:
Roger W. Norman wrote:
I'm sorry I didn't by MS stock in 1982 when I found that my PRC work cohorts
who actually knew something about computers were buying MS-DOS rather than
IBM's CPM. Then again, a little of that money should have gone into Lotus
too, because it was the reason people were buying MS-DOS.

Huh? People were buying MS-DOS because it was shipped with
the computers they bought from IBM. IBM never employed CPM.

When you bought the computer from IBM, you could either get PC-DOS for
forty bucks, or you could get CP/M-86 for around $500. Most folks did
not take the Digital Research route.

For some reason yet unknown to me, the PC became phenomenally popular
and DR missed out on the whole thing. They later came up with a more
reliable MS-DOS clone called DR-DOS, which got them sued out of existence.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Bob Cain" wrote in message
...


Jona Vark wrote:

Despite theories about how he started.. he actually created that cash
cow..
not the computer industry.. but the monster of Microsoft. Which I am
indebted to for 20 years of a vairly good livin'

IBM created that cash cow. Gates' wagon was just hitched to
it. Had the Boys From Boca been able to get even the
slightest support from IBM for an internally written OS (the
PC was an outlaw, skunk works project) we'd never have heard
of Gates. It was IBM's failure, not Gate's brilliance that
hitched him to that cow.


naw.. IBM was simply in at the forefront They did very little development on
their own. They did not take PCs seriously enough. No matter what you think
of Gates.. MS has been innovative and productive.









Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

To address the original question...

I have no idea how much -- if any -- Microsoft will contribute to Katrina
relief and rebuilding. However, it will match up to $12,000 of employee
contributions.

That's right -- $12,000. Not $120,000, or $1,200,000, or $12,000,000.

I'd like to think that was a typo. Microsoft could donate $12M without even
blinking.

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Bob Cain wrote:

Huh? People were buying MS-DOS because it was shipped with
the computers they bought from IBM. IBM never employed CPM.


When you bought the computer from IBM, you could either get PC-DOS for
forty bucks, or you could get CP/M-86 for around $500. Most folks did
not take the Digital Research route.

I was involved with those things from the gitgo and have
absolutely no memory of that. That troubles me. :-(

I checked it out, though and you're absolutely right. From
Wikipedia:

"Rather than licence CP/M-86 from Digital Research (as the
other 8088-based computer makers had done) IBM chose to
equip disk based IBM PCs with PC-DOS as standard, and offer
CP/M-86 as an extra-cost option. (PC-DOS, for practical
purposes, could at that time be regarded as essentially
identical with MS-DOS. Both products were based on Seattle
Computer Products QDOS, itself a legally questionable clone
of CP/M.)"


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Bob Cain wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Bob Cain wrote:
Huh? People were buying MS-DOS because it was shipped with
the computers they bought from IBM. IBM never employed CPM.

When you bought the computer from IBM, you could either get PC-DOS for
forty bucks, or you could get CP/M-86 for around $500. Most folks did
not take the Digital Research route.

I was involved with those things from the gitgo and have
absolutely no memory of that. That troubles me. :-(

I checked it out, though and you're absolutely right. From

I wasn't involved with them. I made fun of them. I asked "why would
anyone in their right mind pay that kind of money for a closed-buss piece
of crap with nonstandard disk drives? You can get a Godbout 8086 S-100
machine with real 8" drives for less money than they're charging for this
thing." For a year or so, people seemed to agree with me but then the
thing just took off like a rocket.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Well, one guy decided he could spend some of his money to help. And it
seems like a pretty good plan:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...nal/TopStories

or Google Frank Stronach Katrina to read other articles.

(Yes, he is the father of Cdn. politician Belinda Stronach, who has
made the news in various ways, including being a "friend" of Bill
Clinton's).

Mark

Jona Vark wrote:

naw.. IBM was simply in at the forefront They did very little development on
their own. They did not take PCs seriously enough. No matter what you think
of Gates.. MS has been innovative and productive.

Innovative? It took until 1995 for MS to introduce real pre-emptive
multitasking, which was 1960s technology. We won't even TALK about
how long it took them to get to the 1970 level of virtual memory technology.

These are the folks who resisted the introduction of the internet and who
fought against putting IP hooks in the kernal.

We don't need any more innovation like this.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 10 Sep 2005 23:45:35 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Jona Vark wrote:

naw.. IBM was simply in at the forefront They did very little development on
their own. They did not take PCs seriously enough. No matter what you think
of Gates.. MS has been innovative and productive.

Innovative? It took until 1995 for MS to introduce real pre-emptive
multitasking, which was 1960s technology. We won't even TALK about
how long it took them to get to the 1970 level of virtual memory technology.

These are the folks who resisted the introduction of the internet and who
fought against putting IP hooks in the kernal.

We don't need any more innovation like this.

Here's one of Microsoft's most recent attempts at "innovation:"

http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=208

--scott

Scott Dorsey wrote:

I wasn't involved with them. I made fun of them. I asked "why would
anyone in their right mind pay that kind of money for a closed-buss piece
of crap with nonstandard disk drives? You can get a Godbout 8086 S-100
machine with real 8" drives for less money than they're charging for this
thing." For a year or so, people seemed to agree with me but then the
thing just took off like a rocket.
--scott

Yeah, IBM's entry was the imprimatur that business had
awaited. They couldn't have gotten a Godbout 8086 S-100
past the bean counters, but a box with the IBM logo on it
slid right on in.

PC/MS-DOS was the least of the lot. It was the name IBM
that moved it.

Gates' one stroke of smarts (and luck that IBM corporate
office wasn't overseeing the contracts) was to get a license
that permitted MS-DOS. But then, who wouldn't have at least
tried for a non-exclusive license. That took no particular
genius given his prior market placement.

Anyway, I'm looking for a good history of MS and Gates that
might persuade me that he is something special rather than
just lucky for being in the right place at the right time.
Recommendations appreciated.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

naw.. IBM was simply in at the forefront They did very little development
on
their own. They did not take PCs seriously enough. No matter what you
think
of Gates.. MS has been innovative and productive.

Innovative? It took until 1995 for MS to introduce real pre-emptive
multitasking, which was 1960s technology. We won't even TALK about
how long it took them to get to the 1970 level of virtual memory
technology.

These are the folks who resisted the introduction of the internet and who
fought against putting IP hooks in the kernal.


MS doesn't innovate anything, except hooks that require you to use other MS
products and sales/marketing agreements. They copied, bought, and borrowed
virtually every new feature ever added to their products. I doubt they have
had more than a dozen truly innovative ideas since 1984.

-John O

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

I wasn't involved with them. I made fun of them. I asked "why
would anyone in their right mind pay that kind of money for a
closed-buss piece of crap with nonstandard disk drives? You can get
a Godbout 8086 S-100 machine with real 8" drives for less money than
they're charging for this thing." For a year or so, people seemed
to agree with me but then the thing just took off like a rocket.

Yeah, but it didn't have the majik 3 letters on the front.

I can remember talking to a corporate DP type just after the PC was
shown. His comment was like, "I can't believe they would try to sell
such a pile of crap, but I will be buying about 10,000 of them over the
next few years."

He did to.

--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.

Scott Dorsey wrote:
When you bought the computer from IBM, you could either get PC-DOS for
forty bucks, or you could get CP/M-86 for around $500. Most folks did
not take the Digital Research route.

For some reason yet unknown to me, the PC became phenomenally popular
and DR missed out on the whole thing. They later came up with a more
reliable MS-DOS clone called DR-DOS, which got them sued out of existence.

No, it did not. Almost the reverse, in fact.
You see, MSDOS was based on QDOS (which they bought in). QDOS stole a lot
of code from DRI's CP/M, to the extent that when it came to court, Gary
Kildall was about to summon a '(C)1976 Digital Research' message from MSDOS.
DRDOS was not a 'clone' of MSDOS, it was essentially a different fork of CP/M
that was compatible with MSDOS.
IMHO this was a good time for the PC.. you could choose which OS you wanted
to run from three or four competing vendors, and pretty much all off-the-shelf
software would simply work.

What killed DRDOS was Windows 95, by and large. Windows 3.1 ran on top of
MSDOS, but it could also run on top of DRDOS (which I did at the time).
When Microsoft bundled MSDOS as an integral part of Windows 95, DRI lost
most of their market. At this point DRI was owned by Novell, and they
essentially lost heart and dropped the product line at that point.

In late 1996, Caldera bought the rights to DRDOS (or Novell DOS as was) and
resurrected the product line using many of the original UK engineers.
Development was done in a converted barn in the outskirts of Andover, Hampshire.

The original plan was to release all the source code, essentially putting the
product out to pasture. The massive demand changed their minds on this and
only a few chunks of source code were released before they backpedalled and
tried to push the software for the embedded market. This worked reasonably
well, and things like Partition Magic used DRDOS for rescue boot disks and
the like.

The other motivation for Caldera US was to sue Microsoft for killing their
product.. some believe that this was the real reason for resurrecting DRDOS,
and to be sure, when it looked like they were going to win the court case,
they killed off Caldera UK and left DRDOS for dead once again.

The story hasn't quite ended, because DRDOS has been bought by someone else
now.. http://www.drdos.com/

Disclaimer: I did my year-in-industry as a kernel developer for Caldera UK.
Lots of fun and interesting things happened there, like the DOS web browser
'DR-Webspyder', and a utility that allowed Windows 95 to run on top of
DRDOS. I curse the day I did not 'borrow' a copy of that program.

Cheers,

--scott



--
JP Morris - aka DOUG the Eagle (Dragon) -=UDIC=-
Fun things to do with the Ultima games http://www.it-he.org
Developing a U6/U7 clone http://ire.it-he.org
d+++ e+ N+ T++ Om U1234!56!7'!S'!8!9!KA u++ uC+++ uF+++ uG---- uLB----
uA--- nC+ nR---- nH+++ nP++ nI nPT nS nT wM- wC- y a(YEAR - 1976)

What killed DRDOS was Windows 95, by and large. Windows 3.1 ran on top of
MSDOS, but it could also run on top of DRDOS (which I did at the time).
When Microsoft bundled MSDOS as an integral part of Windows 95, DRI lost
most of their market. At this point DRI was owned by Novell, and they
essentially lost heart and dropped the product line at that point.


One additional factor might have been Microsoft's licensing arrangement with
hardware manufacturers. I worked at Heathkit/Zenith Data Systems in those
days, and the deal was that ZDS had to pay MS a licensing fee for *every* PC
that left the building, whether it contained MS-DOS or DR-DOS, or nothing.
Naturally, ZDS didn't encourage DR-DOS because they would have to pay for
two OS's, and couldn't always pass the cost along. I imagine the deal with
other PC vendors was the same.

-John O

JohnO wrote:


What killed DRDOS was Windows 95, by and large. Windows 3.1 ran on top
of MSDOS, but it could also run on top of DRDOS (which I did at the
time). When Microsoft bundled MSDOS as an integral part of Windows 95,
DRI lost
most of their market. At this point DRI was owned by Novell, and they
essentially lost heart and dropped the product line at that point.

One additional factor might have been Microsoft's licensing arrangement
with hardware manufacturers. I worked at Heathkit/Zenith Data Systems in
those days, and the deal was that ZDS had to pay MS a licensing fee for
*every* PC that left the building, whether it contained MS-DOS or DR-DOS,
or nothing. Naturally, ZDS didn't encourage DR-DOS because they would have
to pay for two OS's, and couldn't always pass the cost along. I imagine
the deal with other PC vendors was the same.

Quite right. While that didn't actually kill them, it definitely impeded
their market penetration substantially and was probably one of the things
that drove them to be acquired by Novell.


-John O

--
JP Morris - aka DOUG the Eagle (Dragon) -=UDIC=-
Anti-walkthroughs for Deus Ex, Thief and Ultima http://www.it-he.org
Reign of the Just - An Ultima clone http://rotj.it-he.org
The DMFA radio series project http://dmfa.it-he.org
d+++ e+ N+ T++ Om U1234!56!7'!S'!8!9!KAW u++ uC+++ uF+++ uG---- uLB----
uA--- nC+ nR---- nH+++ nP++ nI nPT nS nT wM- wC- y a(YEAR - 1976)

"JohnO" wrote in message
...
naw.. IBM was simply in at the forefront They did very little
development
on
their own. They did not take PCs seriously enough. No matter what you
think
of Gates.. MS has been innovative and productive.

Innovative? It took until 1995 for MS to introduce real pre-emptive
multitasking, which was 1960s technology. We won't even TALK about
how long it took them to get to the 1970 level of virtual memory
technology.

These are the folks who resisted the introduction of the internet and
who
fought against putting IP hooks in the kernal.


MS doesn't innovate anything, except hooks that require you to use other
MS
products and sales/marketing agreements. They copied, bought, and borrowed
virtually every new feature ever added to their products. I doubt they
have
had more than a dozen truly innovative ideas since 1984.

-John O



There is no doubt tto me that this attitude is not based in any fact but
instead some kind of corporate envy, hatred, animosity of some
sort.Regardless of the paths you wouldhave preferred MS to take.. they
created the monster.

Regarding multitasking and virtual memory being 60's and 70's technology..
Well it is preposterous to claim that the first
PC OSs _should_ have had those features. THe only arrived with 64k! . And
remember.. it wasn't until 14 years after MS did it that Apple FINALLY
followed suit. It wasn't until OSX that memory management for macs arrived.

Jona Vark wrote:

Regarding multitasking and virtual memory being 60's and 70's technology..
Well it is preposterous to claim that the first
PC OSs _should_ have had those features. THe only arrived with 64k! .

Why not? The competition did. There were many systems with real multitasking
available for the 80286 AT, including the UCSD P-System, and Xenix. This
was long before Windows 95.

Hell, you could buy a TRS-80 Model 16 computer with real multitasking and
real virtual memory at RADIO SHACK back when the PC was new. RADIO SHACK.
When your operating system is being compared unfavorably with a Radio Shack
product, something is really wrong.

Hell, I had ten simultaneous users in 256K on an RSX-11 machine a decade
before the PC came out. Not 256M, but 256K.

And
remember.. it wasn't until 14 years after MS did it that Apple FINALLY
followed suit. It wasn't until OSX that memory management for macs arrived.

So? Just because Apple couldn't design a reliable system doesn't make it
any better that Microsoft couldn't.

At least Apple finally got on the ball with the Mach kernal.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

MS doesn't innovate anything, except hooks that require you to use other
MS
products and sales/marketing agreements. They copied, bought, and
borrowed
virtually every new feature ever added to their products. I doubt they
have
had more than a dozen truly innovative ideas since 1984.

-John O



There is no doubt tto me that this attitude is not based in any fact but
instead some kind of corporate envy, hatred, animosity of some
sort.


That's a pretty broad stroke you've painted. But no, I use a ton of MS
products, mainly because I have to use standard tools...not because I'm in
love with the company. They make some great software, but to characterize
them as innovators is to fall victim to their PR Bull**** Machine.

"I'm the education president." "We're innovators." Same thing. ;-) Ask the
people in the trenches who've lived and worked there long enough to remember
life before either.

-John O

On 12 Sep 2005 22:18:03 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Jona Vark wrote:

Regarding multitasking and virtual memory being 60's and 70's technology..
Well it is preposterous to claim that the first
PC OSs _should_ have had those features. THe only arrived with 64k! .

Why not? The competition did. There were many systems with real multitasking
available for the 80286 AT, including the UCSD P-System, and Xenix. This
was long before Windows 95.

Hell, you could buy a TRS-80 Model 16 computer with real multitasking and
real virtual memory at RADIO SHACK back when the PC was new. RADIO SHACK.

I suppose that predates the Amiga, which is often touted as the
first microcomputer with a pre-emptive multitasking OS. Perhaps it was
the first microcomputer with a pre-emptive multitasking OS and a GUI.

When your operating system is being compared unfavorably with a Radio Shack
product, something is really wrong.

Hell, I had ten simultaneous users in 256K on an RSX-11 machine a decade
before the PC came out. Not 256M, but 256K.

And
remember.. it wasn't until 14 years after MS did it that Apple FINALLY
followed suit. It wasn't until OSX that memory management for macs arrived.

So? Just because Apple couldn't design a reliable system doesn't make it
any better that Microsoft couldn't.

I think it's sad that technically they (all of them) COULD have,
but they were likely prevented by other things (compatibility with
previous software, internal politics, whatever...).


At least Apple finally got on the ball with the Mach kernal.
--scott

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Jona Vark wrote:

Regarding multitasking and virtual memory being 60's and 70's
technology..
Well it is preposterous to claim that the first
PC OSs _should_ have had those features. THe only arrived with 64k! .

Why not? The competition did.


Simple answer.. 90% of the PC users simply didn't 'require' it. Not that
they might not have benefit from it.. they simply didn't 'need' it.
Microsoft had its sights set on so many other things that I suspect
multitasking was projected for development later in the cycle of Windows.
Remember that the competition was the Mac. not any other platform. As you
have pointed out there were other operating systems available for the AT
which did have these features.. of course they did not emerge as the most
popular operating systems.

With respect to the TRS-80. Apparently it wasn't that fine of a machine. It
has been gone for decades. Although I was an Apple / Commodore / IBM / Atari
developer in the early 80's I was never asked to consider any products for
the TRS-80 because , other than a few features that you mention, it was a
miserable piece of trash. I believe it earned the nickname Trash-80 rather
quickly.

Ben Bradley wrote:
On 12 Sep 2005 22:18:03 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
Jona Vark wrote:

Regarding multitasking and virtual memory being 60's and 70's technology..
Well it is preposterous to claim that the first
PC OSs _should_ have had those features. THe only arrived with 64k! .

Why not? The competition did. There were many systems with real multitasking
available for the 80286 AT, including the UCSD P-System, and Xenix. This
was long before Windows 95.

Hell, you could buy a TRS-80 Model 16 computer with real multitasking and
real virtual memory at RADIO SHACK back when the PC was new. RADIO SHACK.

I suppose that predates the Amiga, which is often touted as the
first microcomputer with a pre-emptive multitasking OS. Perhaps it was
the first microcomputer with a pre-emptive multitasking OS and a GUI.

There were dozens of microcomputer systems at the time, from guys like
Altos and Charles River Data Systems, that used some flavour of 16-bit
Unix. They weren't as cheap as the Amiga, though, and they didn't have
any gui.

Was the Atari ST system, GEM, really multitasking? I remember seeing a demo
of it when it was first announced but I never really played with the thing.

And
remember.. it wasn't until 14 years after MS did it that Apple FINALLY
followed suit. It wasn't until OSX that memory management for macs arrived.

So? Just because Apple couldn't design a reliable system doesn't make it
any better that Microsoft couldn't.

I think it's sad that technically they (all of them) COULD have,
but they were likely prevented by other things (compatibility with
previous software, internal politics, whatever...).

Right, and that's what is so shameful. I want a bumper sticker that says
"My operating system was easy to use in 1972."
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."