Christie's Likens Microsoft's Work On MS-DOS To Einstein's Work In Physics 110
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: "If Einstein paved the way for a new era in physics," explains auction house Christie's in a promotion piece for its upcoming offering of 150+ "objects of scientific and historical importance" from the Paul G. Allen Collection (including items from the shuttered Living Computers Museum), "Mr. Allen and his collaborators ushered in a new era of computing. Starting with MS-DOS in 1981, Microsoft then went on to revolutionize personal computing with the launch of Windows in 1985."
Christie's auction and characterization of MS-DOS as an Allen and Microsoft innovation comes 30 years after the death of Gary Kildall, whose unpublished memoir, the Seattle Times reported in Kildall's July 1994 obituary, called DOS "plain and simple theft" of Kildall's CP/M OS. PC Magazine's The Rise of DOS: How Microsoft Got the IBM PC OS Contract notes that Paul Allen himself traced the genesis of MS-DOS back to a phone call Allen made to Seattle Computer Products owner Rod Brock in which Microsoft licensed Tim Paterson's CP/M-inspired QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $10,000 plus a royalty of $15,000 for every company that licensed the software. A shrewd buy-low-sell-high business deal, yes, but hardly an Einstein-caliber breakthrough idea.
Christie's auction and characterization of MS-DOS as an Allen and Microsoft innovation comes 30 years after the death of Gary Kildall, whose unpublished memoir, the Seattle Times reported in Kildall's July 1994 obituary, called DOS "plain and simple theft" of Kildall's CP/M OS. PC Magazine's The Rise of DOS: How Microsoft Got the IBM PC OS Contract notes that Paul Allen himself traced the genesis of MS-DOS back to a phone call Allen made to Seattle Computer Products owner Rod Brock in which Microsoft licensed Tim Paterson's CP/M-inspired QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $10,000 plus a royalty of $15,000 for every company that licensed the software. A shrewd buy-low-sell-high business deal, yes, but hardly an Einstein-caliber breakthrough idea.
You mean it was copied? (Score:2, Informative)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
I agree.
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uh, yes that's because it's physics not mathematics. and of course if you're wrong about the physical mechanism of action (however you interpret that), you don't get credit just because it happens to be of the same functional form as the answer. you're basically grade-grubbing history.
the quadratic equation was solved literally thousands of years ago so yes, the equation as stated has no mathematical novelty whatsoever. why would you think otherwise?
That's the Wrong Answer (Score:2)
Sorry, you didn't get the right answer, you got 2x the right answer. We don't count those.
Actually in physics, if you get two times the right answer then we count that as the wrong answer as my students have found out on many ocassions.
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Christies - Inventing equisite backstories profit (Score:5, Insightful)
How to profit as a top end auction house: Extrapolate an exquisite backstory from its meager roots to a global media worthy headline in order to increase auction prices.
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Its called “marketing”. Sure it reeks of hype and bullshit. And I’m sure you can still call it marketing.
If it doesn't reek of hype and bullshit, it's likely not marketing...
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De Pretto's vibrating ether is not a precursor to special relativity.
The fact that he did stumble upon a ridiculously wrong derivation of the equivalent principle doesn't mean Einstein fucking copied him.
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Edison not Einstein (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Edison not Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)
Gate's "moment of brilliance" was when he realized that "good enough" really was good enough for most of their prospective customers. While everyone was trying to write the perfect operating system, the perfect office suite, RDBMS, etc. Microsoft released products that did most of what their customers wanted fairly reliably at a price that wasn't too outrageous. Perhaps if Peter Norton had been able to turn off his quest for perfection and release a product early we'd be swearing at Commander rather than Windows today.
Re:Edison not Einstein (Score:4, Informative)
There was a massive, vibrant market of small machines at the time, filled with "good enough". The IBM PC was released in August 12, 1981. There were already a multitude of janky, good enough OSs out by that point. CP/M. AMOS, whatever the ZX81 ran, TRSDOS, and so on and so forth. Even unix (unics) was originally a cut down "good enough" take on MULTICS, built for small, obsolete machines.
Billy didn't invent the concept of "good enough".
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Luggable, indeed. There was one of those tucked into a corner of the server room at my first real computer job, missing a power cable. It would probably be worth something today.
Huh, guess not. Just looked on eBay, they have a bunch for sale for not-outrageous prices.
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His main moment of brilliance was when his mother became an IBM executive. That gave him the access and influence to become a vendor for an established company despite having barely any track record.
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A far better comparison would be Edison and the light bulb. He bought a patent, copied several of the improvements others had made
Edison didn't invent the light bulb, but he tested over 3,000 different designs before he found and patented a practical light bulb that could be used in the home. He was nothing if not persistent.
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A far better comparison would be Edison and the light bulb. He bought a patent, copied several of the improvements others had made
Edison didn't invent the light bulb ....
That was the OP's point.
Re:You mean it was copied? (Score:5, Informative)
At first, E=mc^2 is not the actual equation, Albert Einstein derived. That would have been (mc^2)^2 = E^2 – (pc)^2, of which E = mc^2 is a special case, if the impulse is zero.
Secondly, Albert Einstein's seminal work lies not in deriving the equations of Special Relativity. Those are known since 1893, when Hendrik Antoon Lorentz came up with the Ether theory of Light, whose Mathematics were worked out mainly by Henri Poincaré. And indeed, Henri Poincaré until his death in 1912 claimed to be at least the co-inventor of Special Relativity. And indeed, until today we are talking about the Lorentz factor 1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) and of Lorentz transformations of Timespace.
And thirdly, Albert Einsteins real contribution to Physics was deriving Special Relativity from first principles, namely from James Clerk Maxwell's equations of Electrodynamics, and Hermann von Helmholtz's Conservation of Energy principle. Hence his work, where he first published Special Relativity, was titled "On the Electrodynamics of moving bodies", because he was postulating that there should be no difference between moving a conductor in a stationary magnetic field or having a dynamic magnetic field around a stationary conductor. James Clerk Maxwell's equations in the form known at the time handled both cases differently, and Albert Einstein developed Special Relativity to unify both descriptions.
Yes, Albert Einstein's work is unique in Physics, because he overcame the idea of a medium for electromagnetic waves and turned light propagation from a mechanistic idea to a relativistic theory. The equations derived from his theory were at least partly known before, but no one had an idea why they were the way they are. Albert Einstein managed to explain them without the introduction of additional entities like Ether or something similar.
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Yes, Albert Einstein's work is unique in Physics, because he overcame the idea of a medium for electromagnetic waves and turned light propagation from a mechanistic idea to a relativistic theory.
True, but it was already on shaky ground after the Michelson-Morely experiment.
Things were moving in that direction, and it would have been found by someone.
But people love the idea of a lone renegade flipping the tables in the temple and turning over the old order in an act of brilliance and ushering in a new era.
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Yes, Albert Einstein's work is unique in Physics, because he overcame the idea of a medium for electromagnetic waves and turned light propagation from a mechanistic idea to a relativistic theory.
True, but it was already on shaky ground after the Michelson-Morely experiment.
The first Michelson-Morley experiments predate Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's Ether theory by more than a decade, in fact, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz together with Henri Poincaré came up with their concept as a reaction of the Michelson-Morley results, because in their theory, the speed of light is already constant in all directions. Hence they needed the Lorentz transformations of Timespace, which they didn't call Timespace yet at the time. This idea dates to 1907, when Hermann Minkowski took Henri Poincar
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Exactly. Microsoft never innovated anything, except for ways to annoy its users and rip off its customers. That's what they have always excelled at, and it has been very remunerative.
Agreed (Score:5, Funny)
Einstein’s physics revealed the existence of black holes that sucks you into infinity, MS-DOS revealed an operating system that infinitely sucks.
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Funny)
Einstein’s physics revealed the existence of black holes that sucks you into infinity, MS-DOS revealed an operating system that infinitely sucks.
Nailed it. And with a theory damn near anyone can confirm. Nice.
the auction docket (Score:2)
This is easily explain when you look at the auction docket:
1) cannabis, 500lb lot.
2) cannabis, 750lb lot.
3) letters to Einstein from a groupie, never delivers, six-count
4) cannabis, two tons
5) early pc-dos source printout, 217 pages
6) cannabis, uhm, lots of it, dude!
All stored together in room 257, where the announcements were also drafted
But STILL... (Score:5, Funny)
MS on the other hand is STILL wrong.
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This proves that Einstein was really a woman, and Microsoft is really a man.
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Oh hey, the 1980s called and want their jokes back. Would you mind picking up next time?
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They 1980s were a wonderful decade.
You're not the first one to tell me my jokes are bad. My wife reminds me all the time!
Okay guys, just remember (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole reason Christies exists is to try and sell items for the highest amount they can - both for their own customers and for their commission on those sales. Building up interest in upcoming sale items is part and parcel with that.
This is pure marketing, in other words. Don't read too much into it.
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Lots of gullible money out there, you're right. Pump and dump auctioneering at its best. Tim Patterson did a reasonable port. I have an ancient copy. But let's not permit facts from getting in the way of making profit.
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Whatever Dice can do to stay relevant and get that sweet, sweet engagement for advertisers, I guess.
You see advertising on Slashdot? What kind of a geek are you anyway?
Of course, none of us here is immune to Slashvertisements...
MS-DOS == Einstein ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF-aaagh! Segfault. Ctrl-Alt-Delete
There, now I feel much better. Comparing Microsoft's work on MS-DOS to Einstein's in physics is so wrong, it's not even false equivalence. In fact it's so wrong, it's not even wrong.
The PC became popular in spite of Microsoft, not because of them.
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i mean it is quite possible that having to overcome the sheer fractal shittiness of getting anything to work at all on microsoft dos might have gotten some talented people into programming and even given them careers.
for all the jokes, microsoft's "laissez-faire" attitude toward their consumer ghetto certainly marked a generation of computing.
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for all the jokes, microsoft's "laissez-faire" attitude toward their consumer ghetto certainly marked a generation of computing.
Marked it with what - the number of the beast?
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"My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man..."
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It is all relative.
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MS-DOS was simple enough that idiots could use it without finding it too imposing. As anyone who tried to learn Linux before it had a decent GUI could attest, that's exceedingly important. If end users can't figure out how to use it without a training course they're not going to want to have anything to do with it.
The PC became popular because people could use it.
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Aren't we talking about a time where you stuck your floppy in the machine, turned it on and it booted to your program? It's how it worked on the Apple // and very easy. Had 31 char file names too.
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Yep, and cost twice as much (or more) than an IBM-clone, for half the power, and you couldn't add any programs or hardware to it if it weren't first approved by The Steves so the selection of (generally much more expensive) programs and equipment was limited.
Ease of use is important, but so is cost, ability to expand and upgradability. This is why Apple computers have rarely exceeded 10% of market share, unless there were some specific ability like graphic design that it was good at businesses couldn't jus
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Huh? The Apple II+ clone I had was fairly cheap at the time, I had no Apple branded peripherals at first, which with the II being so open, as designed by the Woz, was easy to do. I had a memory card bought from a company called MacroSoft, a Z80 card bought from a company called MicroSoft, a no name parallel port card hooked up to a generic dot matrix printer, an 80 column card from I forget the company, a clock card, generic floppy controller and 2 generic disk drives, both clones of the Apple hardware and
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MS-DOS was simple enough that idiots could use it without finding it too imposing. As anyone who tried to learn Linux before it had a decent GUI could attest, that's exceedingly important. If end users can't figure out how to use it without a training course they're not going to want to have anything to do with it.
Most of the command-line operations in MS-DOS and whatever shell you used then in Linux were not all that dissimilar. You could use either without formal training but it still helped to be trained, no matter what OS you were using.
The PC became popular because people could use it.
No, the PC became popular because IBM made the first one. Their name meant a great deal, compared to the then-unknown upstart called Apple. And IBM made the PC in a way that was very different from their other products. They were in a desperate hurry to enter the game. Instead of
Re: MS-DOS == Einstein ??? (Score:3)
I agree with most of your comment, but it's probably wrong to underestimate MS's role in making DOS what it became. Yes, both MS and IBM suck, but in the PC's case, they both did enough things right to ensure its runaway success. MS, for example, popularized and substantially improved an obscure 8086 OS, SCP's QDOS, without really stealing anything from Mr. Kildall except his customers. Remember that DRI was in the same marketing position as MS enjoyed later, for years, yet they squandered it, and in the en
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... MS, for example, popularized and substantially improved an obscure 8086 OS, SCP's QDOS, without really stealing anything from Mr. Kildall except his customers.
In simple terms, they didn't steal it from Kildall, they stole it from SCP who stole it from Kildall.
It does seem that SCP wrote QDOS with sight of the CP/M source, and then MS bought it from them for peanuts under false pretences. MS also poached the developer, Tim Paterson. MS settled with SCP out of court later over the deceit for an undisclosed sum, but it was probably just a bigger bag of peanuts.
Re: MS-DOS == Einstein ??? (Score:2)
There was no steal involved, in any of the directions you mentioned. Tim Paterson only copied the API of CP/M, which was abundantly described in the CP/M manuals. He admitted using the CP/M manuals before a court of law. The lawsuit found that he did nothing wrong, and that he didn't use the source code of CP/M.
Microsoft didn't lie to SCP. They only didn't tell them that the customer they were needing QDOS for was IBM. And according to the agreement they had with IBM, they couldn't disclose that information
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Still, Microsoft only paid $25K upfront for QDOS and only $15K of that was to secure the rights to allow Microsoft to sell licenses specifically for the IBM PC. IBM reportedly spent $250 million to launch the IBM PC [ieee.org], which generated $1 billion in revenue for Big Blue in just its first year. So, while perhaps not a 'steal' in a legal sense, certainly 'a steal of a deal'!
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Bill Gates is like "ein Stein" in that he brings to mind a guy with only one testicle.
Physics at the Singularly (Score:5, Informative)
Abort, Retry, Fail?
It's like saying (Score:3)
It's like saying Bill Gates is a genius. Where do people come up with this nonsense?
Re:It's like saying (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Gates was a genius. As are lots of other rich people. Just not always genius in the intellectual ways that we tend to associate with genius. He never saw breakthroughs that others did not, nor did he invent anything. But Bill Gates was a genius for being at the right place at the right time and persuading others to do things for him and others to buy things from him. His computer programming skills were at best average.
Elon Musk is also a genius in similar ways. He's definitely no rocket scientist, nor is he an engineer. He certainly doesn't know anything personally about making cars, except what his engineers have told him.
There are many others including Steve Jobs. Luminary figures who of themselves really weren't all that amazing or personally responsible for innovations, but certainly took credit for them.
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I'll allow that Gates, Musk, Jobs, and their ilk are geniuses at making business decisions.
Genius can be measured or recognized in many ways, not just IQ tests. Wayne Gretzky might score modestly on one, but put him on an ice rink with a hockey stick and he'll demonstrate he's a genius. (Well, maybe a few decades ago, he retired in 1999 after all.)
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Musk can make whatever business decisions he likes and his fans still support him. Like they defend his ridiculous Tesla Cybertruck.
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So Stalin was a genius?
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In some ways perhaps. An evil genius to be sure.
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Bill Gates was a genius for being at the right place at the right time ...
Elon Musk is also a genius in similar ways.
What BS. As it happens I have been in the right place at the right time on a couple of occasions and am well off for it now, but I don't call myself a genius, I call it luck. Gates didn't go into computing because he saw a bright future for it, but because it grew out his hobby. FWIW, in the 1970s everone who was the least bit technical, not just Gates, could see that computers had a bright future.
As for Musk, the only genius he has is at selling things; he has little other aptitude. He was set up by l
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I must say that my opinion of Bill Gates went up a lot when I read that he published a mathematics paper at university on a "pancake sorting" algorithm.
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/e... [bbvaopenmind.com]
https://www.npr.org/2008/07/04... [npr.org]
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His early code was actually quite nice
That's not what I've heard [folklore.org].
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Still, based on the code I've seen, Gates was a fine programmer (although again, optimizing for the things he cared about. Readability and organization could be improved.)
Revisionist history (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Christie's Likens Microsoft's Work On MS-DOS To Einstein's Work In Physics"
Oh, total barf. Christie's needs to take a class in computer history. MS-DOS was essentially just a port/update of CP/M. Both were super primitive compared to Unix. Comparing that to ANY work of Einstein is disgusting. At least Microsoft did something ACTUALLY interesting at the time, they licensed Unix to port as Xenix, which was also released before MS-DOS.
Also, at the time MS-DOS was released, Microware OS-9 was already developed and vastly superior. And it ran on commodity hardware not long after.
The only thing MS-DOS really had going for it was the HUGE advantage of being in the IBM marketing/network/distribution umbrella.
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And the only thing the PC market had going for it was the clones spewing out of Taiwan. Which later reformed into some of the biggest contract manufactures in the world.
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And what did Microware cost? And how easy was was it to use? And was it available when IBM launched the much-ballyhooed IBM-PC? And how many applications useful to commoners did it support?
Timing isn't everything, although it is important. More important is that it fills a need that customers have for a price they can pay, and Microware (or any of the other myriad OSs available at the time) didn't.
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Oh, total barf. Christie's needs to take a class in computer history.
Why would they want to take a class in computer history? The class they took in bulsh... er... marketing, seems to be paying off handsomely!
Incredible (Score:2)
These people deliberately overlook UNIX just so they can get an argument started.
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Yes. This exactly. Unix deserves this kind of honor. MS-DOS should never have happened.
Alternate headline (Score:2)
Christie's Trolls Slashdot and Anyone Who Was Involved in the Personal Computing Revolution
You know I get that they are building hype (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's numerous antitrust violations have set computing back at least 50 years. If our government wasn't so stupidly corrupt because our voters keep making decisions based on moral panics we would have vastly superior computers. It's just one more thing we gave up and got Jack shit in return
Commercial success (Score:2)
There's something to be said for successful commercialization of existing technology. For example, underlying Internet technologies had been around for many years, but organization, legal, and market changes were needed for commercialization in the 1990's. And commercialization made a huge difference and pushed the way for motivation of future technologies.
There was nothing technically innovative in DOS, just like there was very little technical innovation in the iPhone. However the non-technical changes ma
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Regarding iPhone. I think touch screen with no keyboard is arguably a tech inn
A photocopy of Einstein's 2nd cousin. (Score:2)
Isn't DOS a clone of CP/M made by somebody who wasn't even working for MS at the time?
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Kind of. There were a lot of CP/M clones around, mostly because it was so expensive, some of the people here on SlashDot helped to write some of them. Allen happened to know some people who had an adequate version that would run on IBM hardware, so they licensed it, made some modifications, added MS-BASIC, and took it to IBM, where Gates' mother had a contact.
One of my former roommates worked with Patterson on a project, Peter asked him if he felt cheated. He said, essentially, "No, that's about what it
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Isn't DOS a clone of CP/M made by somebody who wasn't even working for MS at the time?
Yes. It was written by Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products. It was bought from them by MS for peanuts (in a typical MS fraud - MS later settled with SCP out of court), and Paterson himself was poached to port it to the IBM PC. It was written for the Intel 8086 processor but the IBM PC used the inferior 8088.
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When fine art hype and old tech meet... (Score:2)
What stunningly bad marketing. Look, Microsoft did do a lot of stuff, but even the most strident fan would find it hard to compare it to a fundamental breakthrough in physics.
I use a lot of Microsoft stuff, but I know the success of a lot of players in the early PC years was on the back of really shady stuff.
They really are trying to bring in collectors that have no idea of the history of computing here, I think.
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Of course they are, people who are so disgustingly rich that they're invited to a Christies auction who are interested in the history of computing already have their collections.
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There's nothing of innovative on MS-DOS (Score:2)
The REAL thing MS-DOS bought to the table was allowing clone machines to run dos compatible software, instead of keeping the insanely stupid closed system model.
Its more like France on WW2 (surrender to the nazis, backstab em until they're dead) than einstein.
Re: There's nothing of innovative on MS-DOS (Score:2)
Actually, this was one of the CP/M features that was retained in DOS.
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The REAL thing MS-DOS bought to the table was allowing clone machines to run dos compatible software,
That was down to IBM. They could/would not make all the PC components themselves so they allowed other makers the rights to do so. This was also because IBM did not take PCs seriously anyway. They kept the BIOS secret though, thinking that would keep the monopoly, but someone (Compaq I think) reverse engineered it.
Like a middle school orchestra performance (Score:2)
You encourage your child for their effort, but nobody, NOBODY, other than a parent ever *wanted* to go to a middle school orchestra performance. Does anybody *want* to go back to MS-DOS?
Einstein, on the other hand, was a true maestro.
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You encourage your child for their effort, but nobody, NOBODY, other than a parent ever *wanted* to go to a middle school orchestra performance.
Actually, in junior high I had a big crush on one of the flutists...
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Good point. This is a category I missed, of people who want to go to a middle school orchestra performance.
right! (Score:3)
dos, a mediocre (even for its time) old operating system that was cheaply made, well marketed, built with no vision towards the natural progression of computer hardware, helped bump start the personal computer revolution. used by home users that were unable to acquire better equipment. was almost immediately surpassed and obsoleted. nobody ever looks and says 'we should do it this way, because that's how dos did it and it worked great' (this something you could say about literally any operating system except dos).
einstein's contributions to physics continue to amaze and challenge our perceptions of reality to this day, and are referenced in every damn text book regarding physics ever written. they have become a solid benchmark both what we should know and for what we do not know, and surpassing those theories on the quantum level, which is still not done the better part of a century later, is a holy grail that when we find it will completely transform our society.
mhmm
Fuck Christies (Score:2)
Nuff said.
CP/M was really good (Score:1)
Sure, MIcrosoft [lies].
IBM stole parts of CP/M to make PC/DOS.
MIcrosoft stole that to make MS/DOS.
Niether PC/DOS or MS/DOS were operating systems.
Windows 3.1 was close but by then AmigaDOS was a real OS with an HAL, memory abstraction, devices, and kernel services.
Microsoft has always been nothing. They are still nothing. They are the reason that scamware, malware, and spyware exist... because they want to remain compatible with the crap of 1995, not fix things.
Rot in hell.
Re: CP/M was really good (Score:2)
Lots of incorrect information and baseless accusations. For starters, IBM stole nothing. They were an OEM customer of Microsoft, like all the others. Microsoft copied the API's and some general system concepts from CP/M, and this is not considered theft (confirmed by the courts). Windows 3.1 is even less of an OS than DOS, and what alternatives did exist? The old-timers probably remember the sh!t-show that was the Unix world back then, with the copyright debacles and the endless Unix wars between vendors.
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Microsoft Windows was an application, not an operating system, for years. Windows 3.X, Windows 95, these were all apps that hosted apps. Eventually Windows was a native boot, and therefore an actual operating system.
The history of the litigation and schism in Unix has its own story, a host and workstation approach that eventually failed as the Mac and Windows-boot apps became debugged and richer in applications. This also had the effect of draining energy from more proprietary CPU infrastructure towards the
Backslash (Score:1)
When Microsoft bought the rights to PC/DOS and made up MS/DOS and used the backslash they created a new culture.
Since then mentally challenged people everywhere wonder what a "backslash" is, and call a slash "forward slash" and do other mental gymnastics.
The backslash has no syntactical purpose except in Microsoft's "we can't write good software" world.
And here we are. Microsoft created the world's largest malware magnet by converting regular people into users of the worst system ever.
Re:Backslash (Score:5, Informative)
From wikipedia: The earliest known reference [to backslash] found to date is a 1937 maintenance manual from the Teletype Corporation with a photograph showing the keyboard of its Kleinschmidt keyboard perforator WPE-3 using the Wheatstone system.[3][4] The symbol was called the "diagonal key",[5] and given a (non-standard) Morse code of ._.._
In June 1960, IBM published an "Extended character set standard" that includes the symbol at 0x19.[4] In September 1961, Bob Bemer (IBM) proposed to the X3.2 standards committee that [, ] and \ be made part of the proposed standard, describing the backslash as a "reverse division operator" and cited its prior use by Teletype in telecommunications. In particular, he said, the \ was needed so that the ALGOL Boolean operators (logical conjunction) and (logical disjunction) could be composed using /\ and \/ respectively. The Committee adopted these changes into the draft American Standard (subsequently called ASCII) at its November 1961 meeting.[4]
These operators were used for min and max in early versions of the C programming language supplied with Unix V6[7] and V7.[8]
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If there ever was a username perfectly suited for a topic at hand... this would be it... :D
We all work together. (Score:2)
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And the nonsense goes on (Score:2)
Non technical people who are trying to sell something often make absurd statements
MS-DOS was not an operating system as we know it today. It was a very simple piece of software, more like an extended BIOS than a real OS
It was not an innovative technological achievement. Mainframes had sophisticated operating systems for years before the PC was invented
It was barely good enough to start the PC revolution, but it deserves its place in history
cheaper hardware sold MS-DOS (Score:3)
It was IBM PC clones that helped the PC take off. Sure MS-DOS was what a lot of them ran but it was affordable hardware that made the revolution.
Iâ(TM)m sick of this folk tale (Score:1)
Yes, Gary was a genius and CP/M was revolutionary for its time (1970s). He had his chance with IBM and didnâ(TM)t want to play ball. DOS quickly surpassed CP/M in not just market share but capabilities (subdirectories, pipes, etc). I run both on retro computers today and there is a clear difference.
The âoestolenâ claim is complete BS. Anyone can download the code and see that for themselves.
And yes I know that UNIX had pipes and subdirs first and this is clearly acknowledged in the DOS 2