Can They Do Anything On Their Own?

[NESnerd]

I'm kind of new to the I hate Microsoft world, I suppose. I'm even kind of writing an essay, for my friends, about it. I was just wondering, have they come up with anything on their own? We have Windows, which was based off UNIX. IIS is there wanna-be Apache. They're crappy serverside language ASP, is just complete shit made to compete with PHP. Not to mention all the other shit they put out. Have they came up with anything on their own? It seems strange how much one company can suck so much.

 

quote:Anything Microsoft can do OSS has done and has done better.

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: NESnerd ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by NESnerd:
We have Windows, which was based off UNIX.

I will agree with all of your post except the above line. If they based Windows off UNIX they missed the boat *completely*. Linux on the other hand is based of UNIX (minix). Saying Windows is based off UNIX is like saying a moped was based off the Ferrari.

[NESnerd]

Well, yeah. I mean, UNIX was one of the first OS's out. Windows doesn't look the same or operate the same, but uhm...they're both operating systems. :-D My main point is everything they have made, there's already something like, and Microsoft's version usually just sucks. Like, UNIX based OS's are good, while Windows sucks.

[voidmain]

Just as a side history lesson: DOS was derived from CPM. I'm old enough to have had a taste of CPM and they aren't good memories. Microsoft "bought" the marketing rights to SS-DOS (Seattle Software's DOS) in 1980.  MS built on that until we have the rats nets we know today as Windows.  Of course most of the features in Windows were the result of buying out 3rd party vendors who developed the products MS could not.  And their Internet Exploder was based on NCSA Mosaic which was free and open source.

[Calum]

Well we could fill gigabytes up with what they didn'tdevelop themselves, but what did they bring to the market themselves? The only thing i can think of is BASIC. Wasn't it a Microsoft language? Is it based on DOS commands though? I don't know. It must have been pretty basic though because as program languages go, it seems that many, including BASIC (which had to be altered dependant on which hardware and software you had!) floundered and died while C evolved and adapted. I may be conversing through my behind here though, i was only a nipper at the time after all...

[Centurian]

Hey,

Microsoft has had a few cool programs over the years. One that sticks in my mind is DosShell. It came out in MSDOS 4.01 and it was essentially the predecessor to windows. DosShell was basically a file manager (and a crappy one at that) that would also allow you to execute programs from it and when the program closed you came back to dosshell. Of course we could already do that easily with batch files but to put it in a program was at the time very cool. Back then a hot system was an 8088 with 640K (yes 655360 bytes of memory). DosShell used very little memory (about 80K) when it swapped out to run other programs. This meant that the average user who did not know alot about Dos could still use a computer with out much problems.

With regard to Basic it came out from both IBM and Microsoft. I don't know who had Basic first. Basic is however still a very active part of todays windows. Visual Basic has been used to create more programs than any other language. True alot of them were small crappy programs but none the less VB has been used for more than any other language. Today there are tons of off the wall versions of basic running around. Search the internet and you will find at least 30 different interpretters and about 20 different compilers all using the principles set forth in basic.

The first basic I ever used personally was gw-basic. It was an interpretted language so you could only run a program if you had the basic interpreter installed. Seems like the command line was gw-basic /r <program path and name> that would start gw-basic and auto run the program. Back then alot of people shared basic programs with each other. Some asked for money for their work but most shared program source freely. Either way if you had the source you could run the program because basic was on every computer running either IBM or Microsoft dos.
 
My first computer had 640K of memory and was an 8088. It had a CGA monitor. I paid almost $2000 for it and I was the envy of every one I knew. They all had 512K or 256K of mem and no one else I knew had a cga monitor. I rememebr compiling COBOL on that machine. When I had finished writing a program I would test run it to see if it worked properly. It took at least 30 minutes to compile a 2000 line program. So I would watch tv for a while and when it was done I would check it to see if it worked correctly then make any needed changes and compile again. Repeating the process until I got the program right.

Oh well I am rambling now better quit.

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Centurian:
Hey,

Microsoft has had a few cool programs over the years. One that sticks in my mind is DosShell. It came out in MSDOS 4.01 and it was essentially the predecessor to windows. DosShell was basically a file manager (and a crappy one at that) that would also allow you to execute programs from it and when the program closed you came back to dosshell.

C'mon Centurian, like everything else, DosShell was a day late and a dollar short. I used to use a menuing system called HDM (Hard Disk Menu) that blew DosShell away, and then after HDM came out I think another one called "ArcMenu" came out which was also very good and maybe a little easier to add apps. They both were FAR superior to DosShell.  

HDM also allowed you to password protect application execution (was that the first security in DOS?).  It stored the passwords in the HDM configuration file in encrypted form.  I broke the encryption scheme and wrote a program to read the config file and pull out all the passwords.  I sent a copy of the program to the guys that wrote HDM and they quickly changed their encryption.  Pretty low tech I know but I was proud of it at the time.

[Centurian]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:


C'mon Centurian, like everything else, DosShell was a day late and a dollar short. I used to use a menuing system called HDM (Hard Disk Menu) that blew DosShell away, and then after HDM came out I think another one called "ArcMenu" came out which was also very good and maybe a little easier to add apps. They both were FAR superior to DosShell.  

HDM also allowed you to password protect application execution (was that the first security in DOS?).  It stored the passwords in the HDM configuration file in encrypted form.  I broke the encryption scheme and wrote a program to read the config file and pull out all the passwords.  I sent a copy of the program to the guys that wrote HDM and they quickly changed their encryption.  Pretty low tech I know but I was proud of it at the time.

Hey,

Hmmm that is quite interesting. I did not know of any menuing system prior to dosshell other than the ascii menu and batch file setup. In any case I do believe dosshell was the predecessor to windows. It started Microsoft down the path of "Make computers so easy an idiot can use them" phenominon. A path that Microsoft still follows today because they learned that the average user would rather accept crap than work at excellence.
Unfortunately that is the real reason that Microsoft is where it is today because "we", myself included, have allowed them to be by supporting Microsoft with our own efforts for an easy solution. For that reason more than any other Microsoft has gained ground. In the process "we" have created a monster.

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

You are right about how MS got where they are. It's easy to take the medicine when someone spoon feeds it to you.

I think DosShell came out as a free part of DOS "because" of HDM and other similar menuing programs.  HDM was originally a shareware program and sold for $35-$50. Ring any bells? Maybe this was the start of the tactics they still use today?  Incorporate an inferior product into their OS for free to wipe out any potential competition?

[Centurian]

Hey,

Yes Dosshell was free beginning with MSDOS version 4.01. And here I was under the impression that they had come up with dosshell on their own. I guess I gave them too much credit.

There is a good chance that you are correct. They do practice incorporation of lessor products to weed out the competition. That may be when it began.

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

Kinda reminds me of Jerry Springer. Same shit every night (fat women in underwear making out) but he's still on TV, and Springer's security is *much* better.  But of course Springer has a much smaller market share.

[FuckMSTillTheyDie]

anyone remember Norton Commander, that was one great fucking app, even for DOSperts.

[voidmain]

Yes, that was a really good one too, but it came out after HDM and ArcMenu.

[theangelofdeath69]

gimme good old xtree gold any day.

that was pretty good, then some idiot ported it to windows to make ztree win.  what a waste.

oh, and I have seen windows 1.0, it IS dosshell, with a different name.  hehe

I'm not sure if ASP was after PHP, considering PHP has something called "use ASP style <% tags"     but PHP is still better.  i use php, activeperl AND asp.  (Guess which I prefer!)