The "not invented here" syndrome

Yeah, I can only imagine. I went to a bunch of equipment auctions when McDonnell- Douglas was downsizing, before the Boeing acquisition. Very long, boring days, with a bunch of guys from Europe buying everything in sight for prices I couldn't touch.

Quad, MannCorp, Zevatech/Juki, Philips, etc. Here is somewhat odd one on eBay 230070821773 Here's another 230071925719

Here's one I was really HOT to get, but I got sniped at the last second

Shipping these things 2000 miles would be very expensive. That's wey I was hot to get that last one because it was barely within driving distance.

Jon

I rarely go to auctions anymore, I bid mostly online.

OK... If I see anything like that, I will let you know, what would you use it for?

Lots of us here make a living wrangling it, and don't mind helping out. It's been desktop ready, in my opinion, for 3 years. Server ready for

He's got it, he's just such a megalomaniac he doesn't realize it. I see this as a good thing. Gates has set the computing industry back a decade from where it could be.

And a decade ahead of where it would be if he had not "enforced standards" by becoming a do

And a decade ahead of where it would be if he had not "enforced standards" by becoming a dominent player. I've been in the business since the days of CPM and a dozen other competing operating systems - some of which were integrated into the database engine they ran (exclusively) and none of which played well with any of the others. Hardware could not be standardized, programs could not reach critical mass, and every version update required recompiling the programs to runon it - The whole computer world would be like the apple world in that respect - and software (never mind operating systems and hardware, would still cost 5 or more times what it does today. Has his time come? Likely - but let's not underestimate the importance of Microsoft's dominance of the personal computer market over the last 2 decades.Do I agree with Gates' business practices? No. But I respect the acheivements of the company and the influence it has had on the computer industry.

Naturally a lib points to another place than at home. Look at the Windy City a.k.a. Left wing central, Chicago, Ill. for most cop/DA crime and placing innocent people into jails.

Martin Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.

J>

That looks like a good one. Thanks for the tip. I just added it to my Amazon Wish List.

-- Ed Huntress

Your post is cut off, but...I'm glad that the popularity of his software has made the demand for hardware make said hardware cheap due to economies of scale. But, the fact is, people just tolerate and accept as normal the "a virus shut us down", "the computer just crashes, that's how it is", and so on as normal. It's not normal, it's just Windows that does it. No other OS is so fragile to internal and external problems. But, I do gain great joy and profit by helping individuals and businesses to get away from said problems, so for me, it's all good.

Clare, at the risk of comparing 'length and girth', I was in it before CPM or any o.s., for that matter. MS has done a lot but had someone like HP or......... gotten in and written the FIRST, REAL o.s., Gates would still playing whatever he played back then.

My point is that although MSFT has put the computer in every home, his software is crap, has been crap and, I suspect will continue to be crap because he has no neck-and-neck competition. Shove it out the door and make it late, too. Let the peons debug it for us.

B.S. My wife works in a medical office. MAC Medical.Macintosh OS 10X. Crashes all the time. The system goes down MUCH more often than the insurance office I look after, running on Win 2K with XP work stations. Much more often than my home system too (XP Pro network) MACINTOSH - Machine Always Crashes If Not Operating System Hangs. And it's not an Intel Mac - It's not running Microsoft software.

Sounds like Unix (SCO of old) and Novell (nohell). The problem is the programs are TOO COMPLEX. A bit error rate of .00000000001% would totally disable the program. I will NEVER install Beta or first "Gold" editions of ANY software. Don't care WHAT company puts it out. And I will NOT use Norton products any more either. Terminal bloat and extremely poor support.Far cry from the old days when I'd call old Pete up on the phone if I had a problem.Now that Symantec has absorbed Norton, Norton has met the same fate as the rest of the symantec aquasitions. I've personally had a lot less grief from Microsoft products than the crap from what passes for his competition (Corel Word Imperfect, etc)

- when I wait for SP1 before implementing. Microsoft DID have some real crap years ago. DOS 4.X was pitiful, as was Win3 Win3.1 fixed it. 95 was no great shakes, but 98SE was as solid as they come. XP has been rock solid, with the exception of some security problems - particularly with SP2 - but put the Microsoft name on Linux and all the sewer rats will crawl out of their holes and start attacking Linux too - and you can bet if they start looking they will find at least as many holes to start chewing at.

Never thought of myself as a 'sewer rat' for critiquing MSFT but, I will take the promotion, nonetheless.

I did and may continue to do some stuff with microcontrollers and you really don't make mistakes there unless you are controlling Dolly Parton's breast pumps. She wouldn't notice the error in downsizing.

It's the "sewer rats" and other scum that develop the virii and other ways of compromizing Microsoft based systems.

Incredible what could be done with a 4 mhz 8 bit processer and 4k of ram.

It truly is. Now, give yourself 40 + Mhz and 128k of ram and you can accomplish almost any task you wish. Strictly Personal Computer folks think this is hogwash because the pc needs Ghz cpu and Ghz memory to do things and still, the uC has done its tasks many times over before the P.C. has even initialized.

from the other side of the world my experience as well.

win98se and XP sp2 have been rock solid platforms.

just fire up an old dos machine and try to put a supercalc graph into professional write. :-) copy and paste wtf is that? drag and drop???? try to move any data from one applicaton from one application to another with both running. it is easy to see how far computing has progressed when you try that.

the windows of today is an impressive piece of software. (I can remember trialling windows 2 on an xt)

do I miss CP/M, CP/M86, Xenix, SCO UNIX, Concurrent DOS, HPUX, VME, and a few other oddball operating systems. not a bit. Windows XP on a good fast HP hardware platform is a qantum leap forward in productivity over all the previous attempts at computer operating systems.

Do I miss any of the old hardware. not a bit. the white goods transition of the computer hardware industry has made superb reliable capable computer systems cheap and affordable for everyone. This machine took me an hour to setup out of the box and have email running, the internet explorer working and Free agent connected and dowloading usenet. Just getting the ethernet stack working on one of the previous systems I worked with took nearly a week.

In industrial controls the version changes make the software a bit of a handfull to keep systems reliable but we achieve amazing connectivity and truely amazing reliability.

Stealth ( now is it) Pilot

Clare sez:

"... but put the Microsoft name on Linux and all

Very well said, Clare ! Mucho Kudo. You have outlined the situation in a nut shell. No matter how workable and efficient anything becomes there will always be those that can't stand the success of others.

Bob Swinney

I'd be happy to work for them as a consultant and straighten out the problem.

How...jingoistic. A properly maintained Unix system (which Mac OSX is) is solid, and multi-year uptimes are not remarkable. Obviously they're doing something wrong. Seriously, this wouldn't be difficult to diagnose remotely, if they want help, I'd be happy to do some consulting (remotely of course).

Um, the CPU doesn't dictate it running MS software or not. Not trying to bust your chops here too much, but it looks like perhaps your understanding is somewhat limited in this instance.

Both of those are irrelevant in today's world.

What is a bit error rate as applied in this context? Those are words which together, mean nothing. And where do you get your percentage?

That's fine, those of us who understand benefit:risk analysis will continue to do the heavy lifting for you.

Agreed, Norton isn't what it was 15 years ago, that's for sure.

They haven't farked up veritas. At least not yet.

...and was the last solid OS they've released...

See, here is where you are, arrogantly I think, waving your ignorance like a flag. In order to break into a system, you need motive _and_ opportunity. The fundamental design differences, especially regarding the security model, between Windows and the Unix systems, is critical. In Windows, users are allowed to overwrite system files; in the Unix variants, they're not allowed to. This is fundamental architecture decisions here, not feature list stuff.

Right, because hardly _any_ of the systems on the internet now are Unix, is that it? (me: rolls eyes). The reputation you'd gain by writing a linux/unix virus would be huge, so the motivation is already there. It hasn't happened (please don't bother trotting out the 3 experimental proof of concept viruses that Symantec has in their lab, OK?), because the motivation isn't enough - the opportunity just isn't there.

Remember - there's a LOT of eyes on the source code for Linux. The bad guys, looking for holes, are outnumbered by the good guys looking for holes to close. With Windows, you're trusting Microsoft to have the motivation and ability to do so. Their track record isn't so hot.

Most people's experience is the opposite of this.

Is it the Mac itself that crashes, or the third-party medical office automation program? Which version of MacOS are they using?

No OS can make bad application code work right.

Joe Gwinn