gizmodo.com — A decade and a half ago today, Bill Gates unveiled Microsoft's first operating systems. Oh, it wasn't for sale yet?no, no, it's still only 1983 and we wouldn't see Windows on store shelves until 1985. But that didn't stop the young heart throb Gates.
Nov 10, 2008 View in Crawl 4
boomshankaNov 11, 2008
they didnt steal it from Xerox, instead Xerox said to jobs and others, he come look at this cool stuff we are doing which included the GUI, mouse and object orientated programming. Jobs asked if they could use it and Xeroxs execs said sure.. we arent going to use it where just a photocopying company. The developers at Xerox were furious but as management paid there bills and made the decisions what could they do. Rather than steal it was one of those rare opportunities where it evolution occurred.
benbenmanNov 11, 2008
Except if the OP had an iPhone....?
hairysandwichNov 11, 2008
@thePTS:Have I seen other platforms do what Microsoft does? In a word, Yes.In more words:What about the "get a Mac" campaign, that's pure propaganda. In any of those commercials you won't even see a screen-shot of mac programs etc. It's simply bashing Microsoft Windows. What many a Linux user would call FUD. It could be argued that Microsoft are the masters of FUD. But they aren't a charity, they are a corporation. They do what ALL corporations do. They try to maximize their own profits and promote their own software, just like apple does. The only difference is optics, when MS does it, it's evil, when apple does it, it's great, because MS is evil remember?Google does the same thing, do you think it funds Firefox development out of the good of it's heart? No, it does so to undermine IE and hurt it's rival Microsoft. Now that chrome is out, I wonder if they will be so generous with their funding. If chrome takes off, I think the money will stop.What about the GPL? That is an admitted attempt to undermine proprietary software. The linux community does have motivation, it does not care solely about moving computing forward. There is a definite anti-Microsoft vitriol that exists in the FOSS community. As for having an inferiority complex: I do not. Nor am I a Microsoft Fanboy. I dual boot as well and have the latest version of ubuntu on my machine. However ubuntu isn't windows. It lacks windows usability. However for the price (free), it is excellent, but it is excellent only when seen in that light. Would I pay the same price for ubuntu that I've paid for windows? No. I have been following Linux over the years and first taste of Linux was Red Hat. I hated Red Hat Linux. I don't hate ubuntu, Linux has come a long way. It's not quite there yet, when it gets there I have no qualms about ditching my windows and only running linux.You: "I _DO_ know what I am talking about. But I guess that makes me "elitist", so I shouldn't talk about that?"No, knowing what you are talking about does not make you elitist, a condescending attitude does however."As a gamer, obviously, Linux or Mac isn't enough. This is mostly due to the Microsoft dominance."No it's not. Microsofts dominance is because they make it easy to write for their platform, and therefore they have a TON of software for their platform both free and proprietary. Also if I write software for the Microsoft platform it also means I can earn money from sales of software and associated services. This is not necessarily true on the linux / OSS "platform" if you will, where I can earn money from selling the software binaries (or so I believe) but I'm not sure many linux users would pay for my binaries when they can have my source code (assuming I provided it). I'm also fairly certain that there are many linux users that will not use non-free or non-GPL software. I imagine that this "business model" if we can call it that is unpalatable to many software companies, who choose instead to make non-free software for Windows and earn decent money doing it. Microsoft has also made the smart move of partnering with hardware vendors to get it's OS installed on their machines. Instead of pissing and moaning about Microsoft, the Linux community should do the same. Namely: Produce decent software that's as functional and usable as windows software, and get their OS pre-installed from the get go on hardware vendors machines (like Dell's ).
acknotswNov 11, 2008
Most companies that donate stuff to non profits spell out exactly how big you can be to qualify.tao52nyc, what program did you get your adobe software through? We can't qualify for adobe donations because we also run a health clinic, how odd is that?. I've spoken to them several times about non profit discounts which we do qualify for, but I've never been able to get a straight answer about pricing for that. They just want to send me demos and talk about price later.
rogerstrongNov 12, 2008
>>Visual Studio is a horrible toolActually it's an excellent tool.
rogerstrongNov 12, 2008
Do you mean the DRM that's used when you play a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disk? Any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player for XP or any other OS comes with the same DRM.Likewise, your iTunes music has the same DRM on XP or a Mac.
rogerstrongNov 12, 2008
No, Microsoft gets the credit for DOS. QDOS wasn't ready for prime time - but it gave Microsoft something to show IBM. Then they did substantial work on it to get it ready for release.But it wasn't Microsoft's first OS either.Microsoft was originally a Unix shop. Its first OS was Unix for PC's - Microsoft Xenix. Xenix had some interesting enhancements (multiple virtual consoles -- later inherited by Linux, record-locking facilities for database programming, user-friendly menus, etc). A guy named Linus much later essentially replicated all the major design decisions that Microsoft put into XENIX for the PC but using an independent codebase. You could call Microsoft the "father" of Linux, just to annoy people. (To provoke hissy fits, mention that Apple's first Unix-based OS was Microsoft Xenix on the Apple Lisa.)After OS/2 and later Windows NT became Microsoft's high-end OS, Xenix was spun off to SCO as SCO Xenix, which became SCO Unix when they got the naming rights. (Microsoft had contracted out to SCO for much of the original Xenix development. This isn't the lawsuit-happy SCO of today - that's a different company which bought the name.)In 1990 Microsoft was still shipping DOS software that installed into bin and etc directories. (The mscdex diskette for example.)
lockdeltzNov 13, 2008
Windows at it's core was always a broken down version of CP/M. Microsoft was never innovative, had they not been around, the OS industry would be much better. Innovating operating systems like DR-DOS, BeOS, and Amiga are now dead.
romeo971987Mar 31, 2009
i will also suggesting this thing... have a look on <a class="user" href="http://www.crazyfriendz.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.crazyfriendz.com</a> and c full detail...