In the Beginning was the Command Line

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Oliver Meyn wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> <http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html>

I'd like him to backup his claim that Bill Gates & Paul Allen came up with
the idea of selling an OS.  Gosh people come out with some rubbish.
There were plenty of OSes for sale when they got in the biz.  Many
hardware platforms had several OSes available for purchase at least a
decade before anyone thought of MS-DOS (and probably a lot more).

How big is the article that the remainder of it is packaged as a zip file?
:)

> This essay will no doubt appeal to many of you (and I'm sure many of you
> have read it), but rather than promoting self-aggrandizement I rather
> like his proposal that M$ isn't actually evil, they're just doing what

The problem is MS had engaged in unethical and in some cases illegal
behaviour over a period of 20 years or more.  This is why the US DoJ and
others keep doing them over in court. I won't go into details as they are
well recorded online.

At what point is it not ok for a company to do something for the sake of
shareholders?  Illegal activitiies count, and to me, so do unethical
behaviours.

> they promised their shareholders they'd do - make them money, and damn
> the torpedoes.  If that happens to cause major headaches for those of us
> who care about how computers are used, well, too bad - go capitalism.

Personally I think pure capitialism can be quite dangerous.  It tends to
transfer power & money into the hands of the few at the expense of the
many.  OTOH, Regulated capitalism can be quite healthy (IMHO of course :)

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert-5LEc/6Zm6xCUd8a0hrldnti2O/JbrIOy at public.gmane.org, zzbrock at uqconnect.net
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