Post #150,913
4/12/04 6:25:38 PM
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"Microsoft is Clueless"
(below is one small extract from a good article - see link - DSM)
[link|http://www.mcpressonline.com/mc/.6aea0c28!more=1#more|http://www.mcpresson...a0c28!more=1#more]
EXTRACT >>>>
Microsoft Is Clueless?
Meanwhile, Microsoft is still struggling with the concept of giving away its paltry proprietary source code. The company is so product-centric that it can't see the forest for the trees. It still believes it sells software products, when in actuality it sells business productivity. And that's why it still can't embrace the open-source movement, except with the simplest of tool distributions: It thinks that if it gives away the source code, customers might actually steal it. It's a consumer-oriented mindset, and it's a consumer-oriented message.
In fact, bearing witness to this small-world perspective is Microsoft's latest marketing message, broadcast on TV and in magazines. Microsoft says it's selling "innovation." But, honestly, when was the last time anybody actually bought an innovative Microsoft product? I'll venture never! And what was the last really innovative thing Microsoft actually created?
Well, maybe solitaire!
<<
Doug M
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Post #150,916
4/12/04 6:35:59 PM
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multiplan, WinNT 3.0
"You're just like me streak. You never left the free-fire zone.You think aspirins and meetings and cold showers are going to clean out your head. What you want is God's permission to paint the trees with the bad guys. That wont happen big mon." Clete
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #150,923
4/12/04 6:49:46 PM
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WinNT 3.0 == VMS reloaded.
WNT is one step removed from VMS as well, and IIRC they even brought in Dave Cutler to mimic it over.
[link|http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/4494/4494.html|http://www.winnetmag...ID/4494/4494.html]
Multiplan was just a knockoff of Visicalc, unless I've missed something in my (admittedly cursory) review of Google.
Nobody wins in a butter eating contest
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Post #150,925
4/12/04 6:55:04 PM
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multiplan shipped before visicalc and WiNNT was nix not vms
I read the book of the winnt development effort. It was Nix on Intel much like the NeXT effort. Unfortunately after is shipped all the nix guys were let go and the code monkeys took it over.
thanx,
bill
"You're just like me streak. You never left the free-fire zone.You think aspirins and meetings and cold showers are going to clean out your head. What you want is God's permission to paint the trees with the bad guys. That wont happen big mon." Clete
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #150,928
4/12/04 7:05:58 PM
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multiplan shipped before visicalc on Apple II?
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Post #150,929
4/12/04 7:06:17 PM
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Bull byproducts!
Windows NT was originally OS/2 (and retained OS/2 code compatibility for some time because it had to run a version of IBM's Lan Manager for the server). IBM told Microsoft if they called it OS/2 they'd sue, so Microsoft named it NT and brought in Cutler to finish it. Cutler had much of it rewritten to be more like VMS.
Multiplan was not out before VisiCalc because VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet ever - in the world ever - and ran on the early Apple II. Dan Briklin presented it as a college project and was told by his prof the concept was entirely absurd. He went ahead and wrote it anyway. SuperCalc, running on CP/M-80 was the first successful imitation of VisiCalc and all others came later.
If you've been reading books that say otherwise, you're reading too many books published in Redmond.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #150,935
4/12/04 7:58:26 PM
4/12/04 8:14:09 PM
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Bingo!
Here is the [link|http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm|link to VisiCalc history] from the horse's mouth.
The original (1981) VisiCalc for DOS (all 27,520 bytes!) can be downloaded from [link|http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm|here] and run in the "DOS box".
Alex
Sacred cows make the best hamburger. --Mark Twain
Edited by a6l6e6x
April 12, 2004, 08:14:09 PM EDT
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Post #150,958
4/13/04 8:17:08 AM
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you are right, multiplan was shipped in 1982
"You're just like me streak. You never left the free-fire zone.You think aspirins and meetings and cold showers are going to clean out your head. What you want is God's permission to paint the trees with the bad guys. That wont happen big mon." Clete
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #151,117
4/14/04 12:14:24 AM
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NT was MS-OS/2 3.0
I was told so in email by Dave Weaver quite some time go when I debated that some long time back. [link|http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2History.html|http://www.os2bbs.co...s/OS2History.html]
1990 - The Schism
In 1990, IBM and Microsoft were still working together on the development of OS/2. Microsoft, however, had found that Windows 3.0 - released in May 1990 - generated more revenue for them and therefore allotted increasingly more resource to Windows and correspondingly less to OS/2.
By late 1990, Microsoft had intensified its disagreements with IBM to the point where IBM decided that it would have to take some overt action to ensure that OS/2 development continued at a reasonable pace. IBM, therefore, took over complete development responsibility for OS/2 1.x, even though it was in its dying days, and OS/2 2.00. Microsoft would continue development on Windows and OS/2 3.00. Shortly after this split, Microsoft renamed OS/2 V3 to Windows NT.
[link|http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/4494/4494.html|http://www.winnetmag...ID/4494/4494.html]
Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface. The success of Windows 3.0 in April 1990 altered Microsoft's thinking and its relationship with IBM. Six weeks after Microsoft released Windows 3.0, Microsoft renamed OS/2 NT as Windows NT, and designated the Win32 API (a 32-bit evolution of Windows 3.0's 16-bit API) NT's official API. Gates decided that compatibility with the 16-bit Windows API and the ability to run Windows 3.x applications unmodified were NT's paramount goals, in addition to support for portions of the DOS, OS/2, and POSIX APIs. From 1990 to NT's public release in August 1993, Cutler's team was in a mad dash to complete NT, and the project grew to involve more than 200 engineers and testers. Figure 1 shows a timeline of the major events in the history of NT.
"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"
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Post #151,900
4/20/04 3:43:46 AM
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Yup SCalc on my Osborne1
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Post #150,926
4/12/04 6:58:10 PM
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Multiplan innovation . .
I remembar Multiplan. It took three to four times as many steps to do anything than it did with any other spreadsheet. That's real (Microsoft) innovation for you.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #150,952
4/13/04 1:20:38 AM
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The VMS and WNT Myth
I use the damn thing every day. Believe me, WNT is not the knock-off of VMS that the Windows people would like to have you think.
Some internal structures have similar names, there are architectural similarities, and that's about it. I am reliably informed that the programming point of view is completely different, too.
This article, on a Windows fanboi website, written by a (admittedly very talented) fanboi, is trying to talk up the reliability of Windows NT by appealing to the VMS heritage.
Worked on you :-)
I mean, for goodness' sake. Look at Table 2, Significant VMS and Windows NT Similarities. You could add a third column and put in $UNIX and then appeal to Solaris' reliability!
Example fragment:
"Both NT and VMS rely heavily on memory-mapped files, especially for mapping the code for executing applications and implementing copy-on-write functionality (because of VAX hardware limitations, VMS provides less efficient copy on demand funtionality). Physical memory management in NT and VMS relies on demand-paged virtual memory."
Now s/VMS/Linux/ (and ditch the bit about VAX)
(Also, what a mingingly shit web page - doesn't render even approximately right in Gecko-based browsers)
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #150,954
4/13/04 1:38:06 AM
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Demand paged virtual memory is esp. no big deal
This is true for any OS that can even be close to be called serious.
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Post #150,957
4/13/04 8:14:23 AM
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Googleism
Didn't bother reading the article further than about three lines in to verify it had what I was looking for - which was the claim that WNT owed some code to VMS.
Hell, even if it didn't, a good chunk of the design DID come from the OS/2 project. How much design do you think Microsoft did, and how much do you think IBM did on that one?
Nobody wins in a butter eating contest
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Post #150,987
4/13/04 10:20:50 AM
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Firsts?
Multiplan shipped after VisiCalc, SuperCalc & Lotus 123 - It was a generic MS-DOS application - the same binary would run on both my PC/XT [PC DOS 2.0] and a Z-100 [MS-DOS 1.11]
[ironicly, the most common platform for the CP/M software was a microsoft Softcard Z80 processor in an Apple II -- microsoft still was spelled with a lowercase 'm' back then]
I first heard about OS/2 3.0 a.k.a. OS/2 NT a.k.a. 'Portable OS/2' and its multiple personalities [Win, OS/2, Posix] atop a 'microkernal' back in 1989 - at the same time I got my MS OS/2 2.0 development kit and a 'Microsoft OS/2 2.0 Seeing is Believing' t-shirt. Both the POSIX and Win personalities were intended for legacy code.
Portability was the major focus, with development on MIPS, back porting to i386 [and later PowerPC and Alpha].
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Post #150,991
4/13/04 10:37:14 AM
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BOOOOOOORING.
But on the interesting side, VMS had clustering in 1983 :-D
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #151,112
4/13/04 11:31:10 PM
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Re multi-personality OS
In early 1990s IBM had product plans for a PowerPC based computer designed to a spec called CHRP (Common Hardware Ref Platform). It was to be backed by a consortium of Taiwanese board makers.
In 1994 we had demo versions of the hardware boxes. Apple had agreeded to the CHRP platform and had a design using PowerPC chips, that was supposed to conform to CHRP (but Apple lost their nerve & backed out of the deal - in all fairness, history suggests they did the right thing - back then Apple were probably in the same boat Sun is today (sinking!) and had they proceeded, they may have sunk completely).
Anyway, the OS that was going to run on this was a microkernel (Mach 3.0) based software system called Workplace OS. The subsequent OS/2 based GUI called 'Workplace Shell' was to be the OS/2 personality. In addition there would be a Windows, & Posix(AIX/Unix) personality. Apple was supposed to be developing an Apple personality that also ran on the Workplace uKernel.
[link|http://www.byte.com/art/9401/sec8/art10.htm|http://www.byte.com/...01/sec8/art10.htm]
The PowerPC chip supported both big-endian & little-endian modes of operation on a page basis. The challenge was the I/O adapters & the i/o driver software. They never did get that part to work to acceptable levels of performance.
The above failures are highlighted in this link ... [link|http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/hotos/scribes/notes/implement-1-discussion.html|http://www.eecs.harv...1-discussion.html]
It was estimated by one person, that the failure of the Workplace OS / CHRP project cost 1 Billion $US (ouch).
Doug M
(who was to be the product manager in Australia, for the box)
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Post #151,116
4/13/04 11:48:34 PM
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My sources agree about the billion number
That's what I've heard too. It's a large part of what killed OS/2 inside IBM, while MSFT control of the means of distribution outside of IBM were doing their work too.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca] [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
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