scholia

9 ms·

31.
by scholia 9y ago
Microsoft was trying to get companies to write Windows software in 1986-87. At the time, it argued that developing for Windows was developing for OS/2 PM. Borland, Ashton-Tate and Lotus refused. In late 1987, Philippe Kahn said "P
32.
by scholia 9y ago
> everyone, including Microsoft, had been pushing OS/2 up until that point. True up to a point. From at least the early 90s, Microsoft was trying like crazy to get companies to write Windows software instead ;-)
33.
by scholia 9y ago
The number of bugs found reflects the number of users and the range of equipment they are using. There are probably more bugs in most non-Microsoft applications, it's just that they don't have enough users to find them....
34.
by scholia 9y ago
> Why did IBM even go to Redmond, WA in the first place? That's not a mystery: it went to license Microsoft Basic, which was the most widely recognized Basic of its day. It dated back to the MITS Altair. So IBM would have gone to
35.
by scholia 9y ago
"No one ever got fired for buying IBM" probably pre-dates the creation of Microsoft. The saying was based on the fact that IBM, like the 7th Cavalry, would ride in to rescue large accounts if they screwed up. I never heard it said
36.
by scholia 9y ago
I think CA was correctly described as a "bottom feeder"... It was a scavenger that extracted the remaining value from failing and failed companies. I'm not saying it was bad for the ecosystem ;-)
37.
by scholia 9y ago
I don't think Microsoft really thought about the server market until NT4 came out, and people started using the "desktop" version on small servers.... However, the Unix business was a huge mess at the time. First, the all ven
38.
by scholia 9y ago
Sorry, my mistake. I was inadvertently thinking of what Microsoft charged PC manufacturers for pre-installation. The retail copies included extra charges to cover boxes, discs, distribution, the retailer's margin, support, returns etc.
39.
by scholia 9y ago
Not really a BUT, is it? Times changed.... Microsoft and IBM started the development of OS/2 because IBM wouldn't support Unix. (Microsoft had the most widely used Unix of the day, in Xenix.) IBM required a proprietary OS and had
40.
by scholia 9y ago
I don't disagree with your comment, but I'd like to introduce a small refinement.... > Rather, what people should realize is that back in 80s it was IBM who was the monopolist, and it was Microsoft who became the monopolist IB
41.
by scholia 9y ago
It looks better as a graph ;-)
42.
by scholia 9y ago
Unfortunately, OS/2 could barely load on the PCs of the day (it started swapping while loading), it had very little software, and cost a ridiculous price (from memory, something around $500). You had to vape your PC to run it. By contr
43.
by scholia 9y ago
IBM was by far the largest IT company of the day and came up with this long-range plan called SAA (Systems Applications Architecture). SAA tied together all IBM's enterprise systems (except the Unix ones) and it mandated IBM's v
44.
by scholia 9y ago
Gates by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews is a much better book. Bigger, better researched, better written, and a lot more accurate. (Paul Andrews worked for the Seattle Times and Microsoft was his beat. I guess he just had more and better co
45.
by scholia 9y ago
True ;-) > Man OS/2 Warp was going to be AWESOME and than the infighting killed the whole thing. :( OS/2 Warp was actually the IBM monopoly's last concerted attempt to kill little upstart Microsoft. One of IBM's sen
46.
by scholia 9y ago
Word also started out as a Mac program. It just happened to have the same name as an old DOS program. Microsoft's original DOS spreadsheet was called Multiplan.
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by scholia 9y ago
> When Windows 95 first came out, it crashed daily on my computer and friends of mine had the same experience. Sometimes it crashed multiple times a day. It was perfectly possible to run Windows 95 without it crashing. I ran it for aro
48.
by scholia 9y ago
Fantastic. Many many thanks.
49.
by scholia 9y ago
Though you lose multi-process operation, I think....
50.
by scholia 9y ago
> No matter how many tabs I have open they remain usable size They were! I think they've shrunk, though that might be an optical illusion... And I can't see a simple way to make them bigger (simple as in: not editing the css
51.
by scholia 9y ago
I searched but failed to find a substitute for that....
52.
by scholia 9y ago
I have seen him being very responsive to paying customers and his charges are reasonable. However, it seems he did get deluged with delicious users whining at him after he saved that service, and you wouldn't reasonably expect a one-ma
53.
by scholia 9y ago
Or maybe they are showing you what most people want, on the grounds that most people search for the same stuff. In the context of billions of users doing billions of searches, HN readers could be fairly extreme outliers...
54.
by scholia 9y ago
You could try the Verbatim setting, which is under Tools | All results.
55.
by scholia 9y ago
It's quite amusing to compare Google search results with and without the word PORN.
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by scholia 9y ago
There's also Dave Winer's "river of news" site with various tabs including Tech, NBA and Movies http://radio3.io/rivers/ Protopage is somewhat similar to Readspike and you can add your RSS feeds of
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by scholia 9y ago
How likely is it that someone would describe Lenovo Service Engine or Lenovo Accelerator as Chinese spyware?
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by scholia 9y ago
You could boycott Lenovo-branded machines while not boycotting ThinkPads. As far as I know, ThinkPads have been beyond reproach. It's a valuable brand for Lenovo, and it acquired the whole IBM division, not just the name. I managed to
59.
by scholia 9y ago
Great point! Luckily I didn't buy any of the models that included that feature (and none of them were ThinkPads) or I would have had to run Lenovo's LSE Windows Disabler Tool from https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/gb&#x
60.
by scholia 9y ago
You also don't see why someone should jump in to correct a wrong statement? Either way, the potential for damage wasn't that obvious: it could have happened to any company. (Employees often make commercial decisions without unders

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