[LINK] Vista Casts A Pall On PC Gaming

[Marghanita da Cruz]

brd at iimetro.com.au wrote:
> Quoting Marghanita da Cruz <marghanita at ramin.com.au>:
> 
>> brd at iimetro.com.au wrote:
>> <snip>
>>
>>> IMHO Linux is an OS, Windows can never be. Windows was a marketing 
>>> tool which
>>> has reached its natural end of life.
>>
>> <snip>
>> BRD,
>>
>> IMHO your conclusion is correct but not your assessment of Windows.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Are you suggesting that
> Windows is an OS?
> 
>> We should acknowledge the contribution of MSDOS, MSWindows/Office and 
>> the IBM PC in the history books - I was there too.
> 
> 
> MSDOS was never an operating system it was a program loader. Microsoft 
> has never
> developed or even bought/stolen/adapted an Operating System in its life. 
> It has
> always developed and marketed software with the express intention of
> eliminating its opposition.
> 
> There are so many aspects of MS software that is just really bad Computer
> Science it is amazing that it has been so successful. The fact that Mr 
> Gates is
> seen as a "computer whiz" rather than a very astute business man speakes 
> volumes
> about other business people, politicians and the media.
> 
Bernard,

It is not the quality of the operating system that I am disputing
either. I started work, bright eyed and bushy tailed after studying
computer science - where we used a Unix machine which taught you to save
edits regularly in case it crashed.

My first job, in 1982 entailed decommissioning the card reader and
replacing it with a PC for data entry. (Northstar running CPM). It also
entailed maintaining an econometric model of the economy written in
Fortran (and legend would have it backed up on cards under the bed of
the Econometrician) on a Bureau Cyber - where you had to do explicit
memory management.

We could also discuss the merits of Pascal vs
Fortran...something else I learnt in Computer Science. And they let me 
attempt to implement the econometric model in Pascal on the 
PC...needless to say, I didn't get very far. Next Job, moved a Fortran 
Royalties program from a Cyber to a Prime Mini computer running Primos. 
Kept compiling and getting different results, brought in a consultant 
who pointed out a bug in the Fortran compiler....

In 1988, I encountered the Digital Rainbow - quid each way ran MSDOS and
CPM Used a Vax/VMS to enable PC and MAC users to share files...

BTW, also listened to the debate about the quality of sound on vinyl vs
CDs and Analog vs Digital Audio.

Not sure, why I suddently recall my  grandmother's advice, you can take
a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
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