On Sun, 10 May 2009 20:10:46 GMT, Owen Duffy wrote:

The early versions of Excel did have very good compatibility. One cannot
say that about OpenOffice, last time I looked it did not support VBA,

VBA support was added in Open Office 2.x:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

"Ralph Mowery" wrote:

Microsoft got so big the same way Walmart did. They put out a
cheeper product.


What cheaper product was that? After CP/M and similar OS's died
decades ago, the earlier PC-DOS and later Windows were the only
commercially distributed OS's available unbundled from hardware. Thus,
Windows really had no significant competing product to be cheaper
than. The hardware to run those Microsoft OS's was occasionally
cheaper, but Microsoft had no great influence in that.

stewart / w5net

On Sun, 10 May 2009 23:35:41 +0200, noname wrote:

"Ralph Mowery" wrote:

Microsoft got so big the same way Walmart did. They put out a
cheeper product.

What cheaper product was that? After CP/M and similar OS's died
decades ago, the earlier PC-DOS and later Windows were the only
commercially distributed OS's available unbundled from hardware.

SCO Xenix. Microsoft started Xenix *BEFORE* IBM arrived and bought MS
BASIC. IBM wanted an operating system, so Bill Gates sent them to DRI
for CP/M. When IBM and DRI couldn't agree on anything, IBM came back
to Bill Gates. Bill knew that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer
Products had something called Q-DOS (quick and dirty operating
system). QDOS was suppose to be a temporary kludge while waiting for
DRI to deliver CP/M-86. PCDOS grew so quickly, the Xenix was put on
the back burner for a while. Eventually, Xenix was licensed to SCO,
IBM, and others. It was far more expensive than PCDOS or MSDOS but
also far more useful and reliable. For example, Xenix had support for
RAM above 1MByte, long before EMS/XMS arrived for PC-DOS. I still
have customers running SCO Xenix 2.3.4. Xenix also had a rather
fanatically loyal following. When SCO tried to promote Open Desktop
as a Xenix replacement and proceeded to try and kill Xenix, the
dealers almost rebelled. It took over 10 years for Xenix to fade
away, mostly because of simple neglect.

There were plenty of other Unix v.7 ports by other companies at the
time (long before Linux).
http://www.levenez.com/unix/
For example, IBM and DEC both sold Venix on their low end hardware in
1984.

There were also a mess of general purpose non-Unix and non-DOS
operating systems (not tied to hardware) released over the years.
Minix, GEM, GEOS, QNX, Netware, OS/2 are the ones I can recall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_systems_timeline
Most of the general purpose OS's were roughly in the same price range
as MSDOS. Therefore, price was not a major factor in their demise.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

"noname" wrote in message
...
"Ralph Mowery" wrote:

Microsoft got so big the same way Walmart did. They put out a
cheeper product.


What cheaper product was that? After CP/M and similar OS's died
decades ago, the earlier PC-DOS and later Windows were the only
commercially distributed OS's available unbundled from hardware. Thus,
Windows really had no significant competing product to be cheaper
than. The hardware to run those Microsoft OS's was occasionally
cheaper, but Microsoft had no great influence in that.

stewart / w5net

The very first operating systems were either DR or MS products. MS was
cheeper than the DR product.
Then MS incorporated softwear like Double Space (big lawsuit over that so
win 3.11 came out ) Internet explorer is standard now. Pushed out many
other internet programs.

Jeff Liebermann wrote in
:

On Sun, 10 May 2009 20:10:46 GMT, Owen Duffy wrote:

The early versions of Excel did have very good compatibility. One cannot
say that about OpenOffice, last time I looked it did not support VBA,

VBA support was added in Open Office 2.x:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA


Thanks, that is good to know... I will try it out.

73
Owen

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Yep. In 1981, CP/M-86 was better than PC-DOS 1.0. I was there.

I was there also. Some of the future CP/M-80 guys
worked for Intel while I was there. They tried to
get Intel to develop their ISIS-80 software
development system program into an open architecture.
Intel decided most of the money to be made was in the
hardware chips and that there was not much money to be
made in microcomputer operating systems and computer
boxes.

Those high-caliber software guys moved from Silicon Valley
to Digital Research over on the Pacific coast and the rest
is history. Intel could have been the behemoth supplying
the microcomputer chips, operating system, AND the
computer box.
--
73, Cecil, IEEE, OOTC, http://www.w5dxp.com

On Sun, 10 May 2009 19:25:13 -0500, Cecil Moore
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Yep. In 1981, CP/M-86 was better than PC-DOS 1.0. I was there.

I was there also. Some of the future CP/M-80 guys
worked for Intel while I was there. They tried to
get Intel to develop their ISIS-80 software
development system program into an open architecture.
Intel decided most of the money to be made was in the
hardware chips and that there was not much money to be
made in microcomputer operating systems and computer
boxes.

Not exactly. Gary Kildall and others wrote some simple games for the
4004 that ran on what later became a development system. They tried
to get Robert Noyce to sell it. Nope. Noyce thought there was more
money in digital watches which Intel never produced. At the time
(1971) nobody had the slightest idea of what to do with a general
purpose microprocessor. Even the dynamic RAM business was almost an
accident when Intel discovered they couldn't sell micros without the
necessary glue chips and memory. In it first few year, Intel didn't
have the slightest idea what they were going to manufacture.

Somewhat later, he tried to hang some storage onto an MCS-4 chipset
demo board with limited success in adapting his PL/M operating system.
That morphed into CP/M in order to distinguish it from the Intel
effort. There's probably something on the topic in the book "Fire in
the Valley". Worth reading methinks:
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Making-Personal-Computer/dp/0071358927
Ouch. It seems to have become a collectors item. I think I paid $10
for my paperback edition. (Someone stole my hardback edition). At
least the used copies are affordable.

Those high-caliber software guys moved from Silicon Valley
to Digital Research over on the Pacific coast and the rest
is history. Intel could have been the behemoth supplying
the microcomputer chips, operating system, AND the
computer box.

Yep. I'm not sure they could have handled the rapid growth in too
many areas. At the time, Intel's gross was growing about 40% per
year, which is about at the limit of which they could fund growth with
revenue and loans. To diversify into adjacent areas would have
certainly been opportunistic, but would have drawn resources better
spent on cranking out chips. Diversification through acquisition is
safer. Craig Barrett tried unsuccessfully to diversify the company,
while Paul Otellini sold off divisions and diversions. Intel does
well with its core business, but not much elsewhere. Remember the
Santa Clara bubble memory division (with the giant plastic bubble in
place of a picture window in conference room)? That's where the term
"economic bubble" may have originated.

It's interesting to note that the general purpose operating systems
that were *NOT* tied to a hardware platform have survived far longer
than those attached to a manufacturers hardware. Apple OS/X is an
exception in that it's 75% portable (Mach) Unix, and about 25%
proprietary Apple. It would not have survived in it's original MacOS
form. Well, OS/X is a somewhat portable operating system:
http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook

All this has something to do with antennas, although the connection
currently escapes me.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sat, 09 May 2009 19:32:57 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

I beg to differ. Microsoft bashing seems to be the national sport in
computers.

It wasn't a sport that was invented for Microsoft, however. They came
by it honestly.

Yet, they're the most successful computah company in
history.

Arthur Anderson had the same reputation for bookkeeping; GM for
building cars; GOP for ... well that's Noah's flood under the bridge.

In addition, they did it without any ties to proprietary
hardware.

Never heard of the IBM PC?

They must be doing something right.

This would only provoke the enumeration of companies listed above.

In my never humble opinion, 99% or more of what MS releases is done
correctly and works well. The 1% that doesn't is what we're all
complaining about.

99% is actually pretty abysmal. Ma Bell could rightfully claim 5 9s
(99.999%) for service generations ago. Software bugs that 1% of your
user base encounters are evidence of incredible sloppiness.

Having to guess (before you break the seal) which 1% is broken is like
playing Russian roulette ever day for a year - and hoping to live to
Christmas.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Richard Clark wrote:
snip
99% is actually pretty abysmal. Ma Bell could rightfully claim 5 9s
(99.999%) for service generations ago. Software bugs that 1% of your
user base encounters are evidence of incredible sloppiness.

snip
73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

And those days are gone, but not the way you'd think. Current Ericsson
cell switches in Europe run ERLANG, one of the successors of PLEX, and
they are getting 11 9's or better.

ERLANG is a very interesting language and has been released as open
source. See

http://erlang.org/

tom
K0TAR

On Mon, 11 May 2009 18:41:31 -0500, Tom Ring
wrote:

ERLANG is a very interesting language and has been released as open
source. See

http://erlang.org/


Hi Tom,

Tell me more (a quick synopsis). My group has been working on the
Netflix Prize in Python.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC