DemoCoder said:
demalion said:
There is interdependency, and there is closed interdependency. See my previous post directed to you.
I don't think by any stretch of the imagination can you confuse Linux's "interdependency" with the closed interdependency of Windows.
I was responding to Chalnoth's post about replacing an IE5 component affecting the CD player.
You addressed his example, but not the larger concern. Hence my reply.
Are you going to tell me that BeOS and OS/2 were lower quality than Windows at the time?
OS/2 at the time it was designed was way too heavy for 286/386 machines. The reason they failed was more than just the falling out with Microsoft and MS trying to kill OS/2. It was also because Windows was lighter weight at the time, and IBM was busy pushing their proprietary technologies like MicroChannel and Token Ring. Ask yourself why DESQ and TopView survived so long. OS/2 was first shipped only for PS/2 machines as IBM was trying to take out the clone market. It couldn't interact with DOS memory manager so couldn't run DOS programs, etc. Lots of downsides for the consumer.
I'm talking about OS/2 at the time it failed, after "Warp". The comparison that comes to mind is OS/2 versus Win 95 and later.
Since you didn't answer my question, I ask again, do you say BeOS and OS/2 which failed to compete with Microsoft's OS failed due to "Quality"?
I had first hand experience with the early versions of OS/2 as I was an IBM employee at the time and we were all forced to use it. Conceptually, OS/2 is a great OS, and I loved the Unixy feel of it, but it performed way too poorly and IBM did nothing to get other hardware vendors on board. There were more interested in shipping their own PC hardware with OS/2 drivers.
They did try to get hardware vendors on board, and succeeded to a modest degree. But "nothing" supports your "point" more I guess.
Before you blame MS alone for killing OS/2, perhaps you should look at some of the utterly stupid business moves IBM made during the same period.
I shouldn't have given you so much ammunition to avoid the simple question I asked about whether it failed due to quality or not.
No, I don't blame MS
alone for killing OS/2, though I do blame them for scarcity of companies able to compete for the long list of reasons and examples I've mentioned. Like in that first post to you with the questions I said you hadn't answered.
What about BeOS? Can you answer the question more simply there?
OS/2 fell into the same trap as Apple did. They tried to control both the hardware platform AND the software. Microsoft's "tyranny", for example, is far less than say, Sony's or Apple's tyranny. Steve Jobs singlehandedly killed off Mac clone companies overnight, and now Apple has a monopoly on producing Apple hardware. The result: overpriced, underperforming hardware that looks coool. Oh wow.
We have a similar outlook on Apple's behavior there quite definitely. But because my point is not that Apple or IBM would have been better to be in Microsoft's position, but that it would be better if there was competition based on quality, I fail to see the parallel. That's a lot of text you've typed that talked around that.
Windows NT was too "heavy" for consumers back then also. Windows NT is a microkernel unlike most Unices (except Mach based ones), and offered more "protection" against crashes by isolating even device drivers into their own protected space.
Yep.
However, not running device drivers in RING0 led to huge performance problems on the hardware of that era, as a result, Microsoft couldn't ship NT to the consumer until hardware caught up. Microsoft also moved device drivers into RING0, eliminating some of the context switching overhead at the cost of robustness, but they did this because annoying little 2D/3D gamers were whining about a few frames per second lost, at the expense of less stability of your database server.
I wonder if QNX's driver architecture could have delivered on its promises of stability and performance in a consumer OS?
Around the same time, we had Apple's MacOS and Commodore's AmigaOS, yet two more non-memory protected, easily crashable buggy OSes.
That was a lot of text telling me things I'm pretty familiar with, having used the mentioned OSes and being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each. Now all I'm missing is the connection to my questions, which I presume will follow...(?)
My point is, plenty of companies have tried to design the ultimate OS. Hell, graduate students routinely rewrite them. However, an OS has to match the machine's capability at the time of design, and most consumers simply couldn't afford the extra RAM and CPU lost to so-called "superior OSes". On top of that, simply writing a memory manager, interupt manager, process manager, filesystem, and windowing system does not make what consumers consider a full OS these days. That's the commodity core. What's more important is the APIs, tools, and apps available, and in that regard, BeOS just blows. You can oogle all over the "elegance" of BeOS, but I'm telling you, there are about 50 BeOSes sitting on campus FTP servers. You need more than that.
Ah! An answer to my BeOS question!(?) "The commodity core". Hey, wait, isn't it Microsoft who standardized the "commodity core" such that another OS cannot compete? Do we need to quote the dictionary definition of monopoly to illustrate why increasing the scope of the "commodity core" serves to extend it?
Your beliefs don't seem grounded in any rational interpretation of events of the past I've witnessed or coherent evaluation of the situation as it exists now.
My beliefs are grounded in the fact that I've been working in the industry for almost two decades now. I have worked on almost every Unix you can name, Apple, Windows (various), almost 7 years of Java (a platform unto itself) now, AS 400, OS/2, and many others. I've ran farms of computers on various architectures, and I think I have enough cross-platform development experience to know the relative "stability" between OSes. In other words, I've lived through it.
I'm blinking and trying to recall mentioning the word "stability" in the discussion. If you are going to say Windows is the highest "quality" OS you've ever used, go ahead, don't tapdance around it or substitute another term your are more ready to defend. Oh, and yes, Windows 2k and Windows XP are not really less stable than BeOS, but BeOS has been around for a while. However, the natural extension of your outlook is that we'd be where we are now with Windows if Linux, Mac OS, and BeOS never existed for Microsoft to take note of. Since I can't credit that you'd go that far, I'm still puzzled as to your line of thought.
In any case, I'm using Windows right now, and I've used BeOS, AmigaOS, MacOS....
I'll simply suggest that even just based on the characteristics of OSes that are already old there is plenty of room for improvement in Windows that does not necessitate the further expansion of the "commodity core", and that in an environment other than a monopoly we just might be a bit further along in achieving it.
The event's you've witnessed amount to reading punditry on web pages and TNT Made-for-TV movies.
Hmm....actually my opinion has nothing to do with web pages nor TV movies, but my own experiences. The assumption on your part is rather assinine and useless, as a matter of fact. I would appreciate more time spent providing a rational connection from your experiences to the central question on quality and the benefit to consumers...as I mention, answering the questions in my first post replying to you would be a start.
The event's I've witnessed come from actual experience with the technologies in question and from many of the people who work at the companies who were suing Microsoft. Before you blame Microsoft for everything, you should talk to some of the ex-employees of the competitors they crushed for the otherside.
And where did you get your info "from many of the people who work at the companies who were suing Microsoft"? I assume not web page punditry?
I do find it a bit mind boggling to have this discussion on a forum filled with people directly benefiting from the type of competition Microsoft has spent its lifetime eliminating for itself.
Well, if Microsoft eliminated the competition (per your claims), how did/are we benefiting then? Which companies and competition did Microsoft eliminate that you think should have survived?
Please answer that one.
Your first question doesn't make sense at all. I think why it doesn't seem to represent my stance is obvious, but perhaps I misunderstand your meaning?
For the second, hmmm...that would be a long list of products, but note "That I think should have survived?", however, is a distorted question. What I think is that their ability to compete should not have been impeded by Microsoft's monopoly. That's why monopolies are bad. Is this a concept that is "out there" to you?
Slightly more On Topic, err...it would be disasterious if Microsoft made 3D hardware accelerators.
It would be "disasterious" for Microsoft.
Really? Based on what? Further antitrust legislation aside, they likely could pull it off. What this might do to DirectX development afterwards might be undesirable, but not if your evident satisfaction with Microsoft dictating the pace of development to suit itself was applied. Hmm...if there wasn't an OpenGL, perhaps they might have considered doing it, too.
Perhaps you should go tell Steve Jobs to stop making closed platforms, and ship MacOS X on x86,
Actually, I would if he would listen. Your point?
or rag on IBM for trying to force Microchannel on the industry by using their OS/2 to do it (backfired)
*laugh* If IBM and Microsoft had been one company, they could have gotten away with it.
This is the central problem you consistently seem to avoid.
Yes, Microsoft has tried business strategies to disadvantage competitors in the past. So have Apple, IBM, Sony, and many large manufactures. But the fact that they engaged in these practices does not make their OS inferior. If you have something factual, concrete, and informative about the architectural differences between Windows XP and say, BeOS, that you think makes one BETTER TECHNOLOGICALLY than the other, then please share it.
Well, the simplest "proof" is that Microsoft's OSes continue to evolve to resemble OSes that have come before, which would include BeOS and even some Mac OS features (look at the next proposed Windows file system for one example). An aid in comparison would be the minimum CPU and RAM usage required to execute the same functionality. You've already conceded as much about BeOS and its elegance, but maintained that the "commodity core" as you termed it was the reason for its failure, so I'm not sure what the point would be. Would you enlighten me?
This thread started by bashing Microsoft's code quality, but now has devolved into politics. Let's return to the original point: MS software does/does not suck (compared to X)
The concept that one company being able to dictate the evolution of so many paths of software development to suite its own profitability is less desirable for consumers seems pretty clear cut. I really would prefer to be playing games and typing this under BeOS, but you'd rather dismiss the impact Microsoft's monopoly had on the ability of that OS to exist in the marketplace. To me, this makes me suspect that our discussion is not going to anywhere. Perhaps you could answer that first post I made in reply to you and we could maybe progress there?
Or, we could redefine the discussion and look at what Windows offers us right now and ignore what other OSes have offered us and when and on what systems they achieved it.
