Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 11:37:55 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <15370.26355.292711.525268@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <002501c17ab3$07f0f0d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <000301c17a40$8fc78dc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <010d01c17a44$98b491e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C08A204.3CA7014C@mindspring.com> <002e01c17a5f$f2b34040$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <000c01c17a7c$4de06710$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15369.53.739857.967952@guru.mired.org> <000a01c17ab0$266fabd0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15369.20345.689585.495352@guru.mired.org> <002501c17ab3$07f0f0d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> types: > Mike writes: > > Yes, but I'm buying Intel products. MS's business > > practices cost me money even though I *don't* buy > > their products. > And Intel's don't? That's not what Cyrix or AMD would say. Could you provide something to back that system up? I've priced name brand hardware both with and without MS software, and the identical hardware was more expensive without the MS software - and involved me doing more work to use it. Worse yet, I couldn't get it without an MS mouse, even though I'd hate to use the thing. Or are you referring to Cyrix and AMD paying licensing fees to Intel? In that case, I *am* buying something from intel - whatever was licensed from them. In the MS case, *nothing* from MS was in the system - and it cost more money. > > That's sort of like saying that the spread of > > Christianity during the middle ages has no influence > > on it's popularity today. > Windows was a completely different environment from MS-DOS, and initially Apple > did windows better than Microsoft. There were many chances for destiny to shift > in the direction of some other company, but thanks to good decisions by > Microsoft and egregiously poor decisions on the part of certain other companies > (such as A****), Microsoft retained the lead. Windows may have been a completely different environment from MS-DOS, but it would run MS-DOS software. That's made it "good enough" to be worth using for MS-DOS users, whereas options that didn't do that weren't. That's the proprietary trap again. > > Being the default OS on the first desktop computer > > acceptable to the IT industry is hardly "trivial". > Nobody even remembers CP/M. I've already mentioned it on this thread, so that's not true. I remember it. I also remember MP/M, OS/9 and Flex. However, none of those were acceptable to the IT industry, as they came from "fly-by-night" companies that you couldn't depend on being around next year. > > They have continued to make good decisions > > on a regular enough basis to have not lost > > that dominance. > In other words, their initial decisions concerning MS-DOS did _not_ determine > their success for eternity, in direct contrast to what you assert above. No, their initial decisions concerning IBM were essential to creating the environment that made them what they are. If they didn't own what IBM was going to turn into the defacto standard desktop OS for business, they'd still be a small company turning out mediocre (aka "good enough") language processors. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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