McNealy Created Millions of Jobs? 363
cahiha writes "In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality. His timeline is something like that in 1992, the industry was focused on 'Chicago' (Windows 95), while McNealy bravely went his own way-- 'the network is the computer.' He goes on to claim that 'There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than [Scott McNealy]. [...] I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions.' I have trouble following his argument: client/server computing and distributed computing were already widely available and widely used in the early 1990s. The defining applications of the emerging Internet were, not Java, but Apache, Netscape, and Perl. Sun's biggest response to Chicago was to attempt to establish Java as the predominant desktop application delivery platform, something they have not succeeded at so far. So, what do you think: is Schwartz right in giving credit to McNealy for creating
'millions' of jobs? Or has Sun been a company on the decline since the mid-1990s, only temporarily buoyed by the Internet bubble?"
What about... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about... (Score:3, Interesting)
What planet are you from? The only site more liberal than Slashdot is Democraticunderground.com. You really must not read anything here if you honestly think Republicans are even in a majority much less in control here.
Re:What about... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a result both sides are going to feel like Slashdot is full of members of "the other side".
I get a sense that the normal course of events is that you usually have a high concentration of one side or the other. Those in the majority commiserate among themselves and only a few braver members of 'the minority' pipe up from time to time. Thus the normal political experience is "we are the natural majority and their side doesn't make much sense" but there are pockets of 'the other side' where you can't really speak your mind.
Slashdot is that oddity where both sides get a good raking over the coals (in part, I think, because of a reasonably strong foreign contingent who often think that they're both off the wall.
Re:What about... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about... (Score:3, Funny)
well... (Score:2)
They shouldn't have been so restrictive about their license.
What do you mean no java in my debian repo !?
they have lost control (Score:5, Insightful)
If Sun had turned Java into an open standard, every Linux system would be using Java now, for both desktop and server apps, many of Java's technical bugs would be fixed, and C# would have ended up like VisualBasic. Instead, Sun's move allowed Microsoft to take the high ground and make C# an open standard. The open source community has created multiple C# implementations and gone to work innovating and improving the platform, as well as integrating it with the Linux desktop. As a result, some really nifty Linux desktop apps are being written in C#. And, as a bonus, there are also open source
BTW, this is a repeat of the NeWS disaster; that, too, was a nice core idea, the design had some serious flaws, the implementation was mediocre at best, and ultimately the industry rejected it because Sun was waffling on whether to open it or not. Sun apparently doesn't learn from their mistakes.
Re:they have lost control (Score:3, Insightful)
It was the Debain distributors who descided not to distribute Java (in opposite like other Linux distros did) and not Suns license restriicting them.
After all there is no practical difference (in most situations) anyway wether I download Java via apt-get after I installed a basic system or if I get it on a CD.
In my opinion Java always was and still is (a more than C#/.NET) open standard.
Sun was waffling on whether to open it or not. Sun apparent
Re:they have lost control (Score:3, Interesting)
It's irrelevant to my point whether there are multiple JVM implementations; it's a fact that Java just isn't being used significantly by Linux distributions. Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and Fedora don't even ship with a compliant Java implementation.
And, yes, I am a C# fanboy because it gets my work done a lot better than Java.
Finally, the JCP doesn't change the fact that people can't implement and change Java w
i realize it's fashionable to bash mcneally (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i realize it's fashionable to bash mcneally (Score:2)
I'd work for scott in a heartbeat.
So would 40,000 others, apparently. Which may be a factor in Sun's recent losses; I wonder if your sentiment will still hold true after Sun has had to 25% of their current workforce [bloomberg.com]. Sometimes technologists don't make the best buisnessmen, and "letting them drive" could be precisely why Sun is in the position it now is in.
Re:i realize it's fashionable to bash mcneally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i realize it's fashionable to bash mcneally (Score:5, Interesting)
Another way of describing SGI's mistake is that they expected Intel to be technological leaders, as opposed to market leaders.
The last CPU that Intel produced that was decent in it's first (or even second) revision was the 8080 -- and even that was mostly because there was very little to compare it to at the time.
Then Zillog came up with the Z80 which Intel cloned with the 8085. There was nothing really good about the 8086 -- in fact my pet theory was then (and is still now) that IBM chose it because it was so badly designed that it would never be real competition for the cash cow that their /360 mainfraim line was (something that couldn't be said about the Motorola and National Semiconductor chips).
Intel then tried to produce a real 32 bit chip -- a marketing driven bastard child that died in infancy. The 80186 and 80286 were attempts to clean up the worst aspects of the 8086 without throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but turned out to be little more than a foul tasting soup.
The '386 solved the problem by emulating the 8086 16 bit mode and providing an entirely new (well, kinda) 32 bit engine, but it wasn't until the pentium that they finally got even that right.
As I remember it nobody came to be a respected mover in the workstation market using an Intel-made chip. SGI and Apple went with Motorola. SGI eventually bought MIPS, and Apple rode the 68000 family for a decade before moving to another Motorola chip. DEC came out with the much-respected Alpha, and IBM/Motorola came out with the RS/6000 -- all of which allowed them to ride out (more or less) the MS/Intell steamroller.
By the end of the '90s I think that it was becomming clear that AMD was better at producing 'Intel' chips than Intel was. The outcome of the 64 bit 'intel' wars was no big surprise to me.
Given that history, I would have been very wary of betting the future of my company on Intel producing an industry-leading chip. History shows that the main thing that the Intel monopoly had going for it was that it was the 'standard' chip for the "Wintel" platform.
Re:i realize it's fashionable to bash mcneally (Score:2)
Ask Slashdot ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither ?
These black & white choices are annoying >_<
Re:Ask Slashdot ! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ask Slashdot ! (Score:2)
Apparently many people have yet to master a property of thinking living beings called "fuzzy logic". Even some software products are better at it...
Millions Of Jobs (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet! Maybe I'll move to India to get one!
Scary headline (Score:2)
Millions of Jobs? Where would they find enough black turtlenecks?
Re:Millions Of Jobs (Score:2)
you can be the garbage collector in almsot any country, it's a job. but that's not really one that you'd want is it
the way i see it, india is committing suicide right now with the low prices on it that they try to give out. hardware and imported software (devel. tools etc.) still cost money, sometimes alot.
besides, i don't know about you out there, but over here it's about getting the stuff ready for the deadline. price is ofcourse a
I think he's probably right. (Score:5, Funny)
With Sun machines, you need an SC specialist, a OBP specialist, a Solaris specialist, and three guys just to install the damn thing.
I'd say they're creating a hell of a lot of jobs.
Sun going suprnova?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sun going suprnova?! (Score:2)
Re:Sun going suprnova?! (Score:2)
Netcraft is dead! BSD confirms it.
You can't give all credit to McNealy ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, then wouldn't one argue that the Abacuses created billions of jobs? How about the person(s) who invention the wheel -- didn't that create zillions and zillions of jobs?
When well we stop giving needless and total credit to one individual who merely happens to be at the right place at the right time. McNealy would not have been successful if many, and many, and many other individuals didn't do their parts directly or indirectly their part -- they too must be singled out if McNealy is.
-- George
Re:You can't give all credit to McNealy ... (Score:2)
Of course, saying 'nobody has made as m
hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
I would say he gets credit for a good product at a good price point when and where it was needed and that did help the economy.
Bill Gates (Score:4, Funny)
Who would of thought that keeping all those Windows machines running would take up so much of the Global 'GDP'...
Repackaged Sun Machines (Score:2, Interesting)
Helped Linux by keeping Unix popular (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think so... (Score:2, Informative)
Despite so many online and network applications, many business users need to function offline.
Jav
Re:I don't think so... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsofts sucess owes more to them squeezing out competitors/partners than anything to do with providing a low cost client. Take a look at the litigation page on Groklaw to see what they are really good at. Remember this is a company who altered Outlook to block a web greeting card company when they wouldn't sell out to them.
The main reason you don't see thin client is because MS supressed the development of Java and reinvented most of its fu
Windows clients are a money sink (Score:3, Interesting)
However, gnome is too customizable for many end-users. One large client rejected the Linux solution because their users kept rearranging their menus until they couldn't find thing
Network computing? (Score:2)
When (former) CEOs start getting these feelings of grandeur, it's a sure sign of dementia.
Re:Network computing? (Score:2)
Yeah, but Sun invented NFS way before 1992, too. And Unix workstations, networked together, in general -- if it wasn't their idea, they were certainly successful in that area before 1992.
I'm not sure what good things Sun has done after 1992, but they and McNealy at least deserve credit for the things they did before that.
Re:Network computing? (Score:2)
Re:Network computing? (Score:2)
Wyse did sell X terminals, but I believe NCD did it first. And they were 1-bit (black and white, not greyscale), at least the early ones were.
But, what do you think people hooked them up to lots of the time? Suns. What do you think served the bootp and tftp protocols so that the NCD could boot? Pretty often, it was Sun machines.
Where credit is due. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where credit is due. (Score:2)
Riding the Wave (Score:4, Insightful)
It is true that for a long time, Java was one of the all-important buzzwords, but it didn't pan out quite as well as it might have.
Sun was important, but not *that* important. CERN was far more important....
-Rob
Re:Riding the Wave (Score:4, Informative)
But it was definitely those relatively innexpensive Sun workstation class machines that powered much of DNS, mail, FTP, and gopher, in the days before the Web, and for at least a couple of years after the Web.
I have to call Sun a *major* contributor. To the extent that we're perhaps 3-5 years further along than we would have been without them, though there's absolutely no way to verify that SWAG.
Re:Riding the Wave (Score:3, Interesting)
No, Sun was not just a small part. Sun was a dominant part of the promotion of 'Open Systems' in the 1980s - encouraging the use of UNIX with documented a
Family Guy Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
What was that Family Guy quote? Didn't it go like this:
Lawyer: So, Mr Griffin, is Brian Griffin a sex-crazed dog or an irresponsible alchoholic?
Peter: Ah,ah...
Lawyer: Drunken lunatic or terrible father?
The world is not black and white. These choices on /. are annoying. Sun is a good company, not a great one, but giving an either/or question with disconnected answers is fallacious.
Die, Dichotomy, Die! (Score:3, Insightful)
True, and true.
Now that is just the kind of oversimplification you're complaining about. Companies are not good or bad, great or trivial. They're profitable or unprofitable, well managed or not, have good products or don't, etc. Sun has done well sometimes in some of these measures, has done badly sometimes in some (often the same) measures, etc. And they've screwed up a lot lately.
Jonathan Schwartz is a hype meister (Score:2)
Re:Jonathan Schwartz is a hype meister (Score:2, Informative)
You mean like Java. What got Sun into trouble was Microsoft sabotaging Java on the desktop. Remember when they brought out an incompatible Microsoft Jave version. Wilfully breaking the write once run anywhere option. The one thing Java was supposed to do well. "McNealy launched a Microsoft and Linux-bashing propaganda campaign."
When someone launches
Re:Jonathan Schwartz is a hype meister (Score:2)
No. It's a dog-eat-dog world. It's sad, I know, but there is no use in whining about it too much. Sun's forte has always been its microprocessor design know-how, IMO. That's where they should have concentrated their passion and resources. And I'm not talking about going head to head against big boys like Intel and AMD. Intel and AMD are good at what they do (within their chosen paradigm) and no third party is going to un
Re:Jonathan Schwartz is a hype meister (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason Java failed on the desktop was because Sun's desktop technologies sucked (and still do); Microsoft may have been planning to sabotage them, but they didn't even have to bother.
Are you seriously sugesting that Suns decline had nothing to do with Microsofts tactics.
I don't know about him, but I certainly am. Some time in the 1990's, Sun m
Perhaps 'shape' not 'create' (Score:2)
Sure, a few might have been created just beacuse java existed, but not many.
If anyone at Sun ever created a job, it was (Score:4, Insightful)
His early yet elegant productivity enabled a generation to create and communicate.
But really, the heroes are the people who wrote the documentation. Because all the technology in the world is useless if the next guy can't figure out how it works.
McNealy never created any job but his own.
Maybe . . . (Score:2, Informative)
He should be on everyone's Christmas card list!
Bill Gates did it (Score:2, Funny)
But seriously this topic has too many hot-button words to not be considered flamebait. Read
Blame him for IE then. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because of Sun, because of Java, we have IE. (and ActiveX, and VBscript...)
McNealymandias (Score:2)
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows: -
"I am great MCNEALYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The CEO of CEOs; this mighty Company shows
"The wonders of my hand." - The Company's gone, -
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Cybertron.
Not anymore than Al Gore (Score:2)
Neither did Microsoft or Windows.
Of course, the author of the article insists that either Microsoft created the web, or that Sun did, and doesn't even consider how it actually happened.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The real innovators (Score:3, Interesting)
And, if I remember correctly, Digital Equipment Corp. (remember them?) coined "the network is the computer" not SUN.
Re:The real innovators (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The real innovators (Score:2)
Thanks for the clarification. I was a PDP-11 RSX-11 commo. and networking programmer in a previous life.... Those were the days, we didn't NEED any high level language and we liked it, etc. etc. old geezer rant.
Re:The real innovators (Score:3, Informative)
No. The people you owe that to is AT&T's lawyers. The reason why Unix became (pseudo) Open Source is that AT&T was a legislated monopoly. Part of their consent decree was that they couldn't go into markets outside of Telephones, and they couldn't supress technology.
This got them into a rather tight bind. When someone asked AT&T
Please... (Score:2)
Sun's Greatest Hits (Score:3, Interesting)
Their greatest failure is not to do much better.
Here is a company with world class hardware and software, and completely failing to exploit the market though "lack of grip on reality" Scott McNealy is definitely in the same league with Ken Olsen in having some bright ideas, but too much ego to make the best of them.
The world is aboslutely gasping for something better than Wintel, and DEC, Apple and Sun had it. Only Apple is only now recovering from the afflictions of Big Ego striking it down. DEC died of Big Ego, and Sun has barely survived.
Sun has a good reputation for quality in hardware and software. Every computer professional and Nerd knows it. Even their support is well regarded. Why are then not trouncing Microsoft and Intel? (I dont know. I am writing this on an Ultra60 running FreeBSD.)
Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality.
Where in reality, the Schwartz article clearly states:
he talked about network computing in a very strange way - he just assumed the future, he'd already moved his entire mindset, and his lifestyle, to the network.
There is nothing in there about McNealy being the only guy able to bring the network computing vision into reality. But he have the vision early on - us old timers clearly remember Sun at that time, and their vision that was very clearly stated.
Is the posting a little sappy? It's very sappy. But it never says or suggests that McNealy single handedly did anything.
He did create a lot of jobs... (Score:2)
If you RTFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
He accurately points out that, when Windows 95 shipped, Microsoft was sweeping all before it, including Apple, which was adrift at the time. It took a lot of balls to say "No" to Windows then.
Too bad Sun didn't make more out of that decision. Apple now has 20% more revenue and half as many employees. The plan seems to have been to milk the Internet bubble forever. "The network is the computer" is just a slogan. There is no special AJAX or WebOS sauce in Solaris.
Schwartz praises MacNealy for holding down job cuts in R&D. But you have to ask "What the hell are 30,000 people doing at Sun?" when Apple somehow manages to make the best personal computer hardware, and personal computer OS software, and the best consumer electronics device on the market, all with one quarter of the number of employees as Microsoft.
Schwartz is very, very smart. He knows he has to make big changes, like getting the open-sourcing of Java right, and figuring out how to use Linux, during his honeymoon time in the CEO position or the chance will be lost.
What Schwartz does not mention is that MacNealy set a bad tone and created problems unneccessarily. Statements like "You have no privacy, get over it." and the inability to get out in front of the Linux parade are the reasons Schwartz is in and MacNealy is out. Hopefully this is the last time Schwartz looks back. He has plenty of very hard work ahead of him.
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:5, Insightful)
I love comments like this! They indicate what a strange reality some slashdotters live in - it almosts make me believe in parallel universes.
I eagerly await other posts from this other dimension:
"Intel - will it ever take off?"
"Windows - how it lost out to Apple"
"Linux - the ultimate game platform".
Actually I guess the message here is that no matter how much you really, really want something to be be true (Java on the decline) this does not make it true.
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:5, Insightful)
And I would lay claim that they really don't. You can combine all the online forums you like but they don't come near the phenomenal combined volume of stock trading systems, banking systems, airline booking systems etc. We are talking of system which individually handle hundreds of millions or even billions of transactions each day. Consider the combined volume of transactions of all these systems....
And before you mention google - that uses a considerable amount of Java as well.
I didn't say that Java is now unpopular in all domains, that is false. But I think that it will degrade because it will not have the ability to adapt like other languages can. If Sun goes down, methinks it would be all over for Java.
Java is constantly adapting, with regular releases with new features (well, new to Java anyway!): Generics, improved concurrency and higher performance for the GUI in Java 5; scripting language support and web services support and far better client side integration in Java 6. How is this not adapting?
Apart from the wild idea that Sun is going down (their annual losses are trival compared to their net worth, and that worth is not largely dependent on share value), there are companies with far, far bigger investments in Java than Sun, like IBM. They are constantly producing new VMs for internal and external uses.
If Sun did 'go down', Java would certainly continue (in fact, IBM could well buy up the rights and open source it!). That is one of the reasons why I find it such an appealing language - it is not a one-vendor language.
And if you want to chide somebody for wanting to overcome the competition, fine. But don't forget that the origin of all open projects is the desire to build a better product, and it's only because we want to be better that we can achieve that. Wanting something is the root cause for it happening. That's not a guarantee, but it's as close as we can get.
I was not chiding anyone for wanting anything. What I was gently ridiculing is a Slashdot speciality - stating what someone might want (for whatever reasons) as if it has already happened.
I want better products - I would rather that more people adopted MacOS that Windows. I wish I could play more games on Linux. I would prefer Java to be open source. However, we have to face reality.
There is not the slightest sign (at least yet) that Java has stopped growing in terms of its adoption - it is still in the growth phase. This may change in a few years, but to say now that 'Java will remain on the path to obscurity' is ridiculous in many ways - it implies not only that Java is going to be obscure, but it is already on that path, which is obviously false.
Like it or not, Java works, and works very well for a very large number of developers. It would be nice if it were open source, I agree, but it seems to me that its current status has had little impact on its adoption, no matter now much open source supporters may wish otherwise.
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? This seems to be a popular opinion on Slashdot, and I'm curious why people need it to be any more open than it is? I mean afaik, the only thing that isn't "open" about it is the spec. If you want to create your own implementation of a JVM you're allowed but it must conform to the spec. This is a very *good* thing IMO. It would really suck if MS had been able to complete its "embrace and extend" manuever on Java (which is what MS has done with the open web standards and browsers) and it would suck even more if there were 5 different JVM's out there and you had to tailor your code to run on each one. You would completely lose the WORA (or you'd have to do all sorts of gimmicky crap to figure out what jvm you were running on -thats a lot of fun with browsers and html, I think it would be even more annoying with code). So I ask again, not rhetorically, but honestly: why open source it? Am I missing something?
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:2)
They have already open sourced J2EE (without the J2SE portion) in the form of Glassfish [java.net].
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's supposed to be 'write once, run anywhere.' At the moment, it's write once, and run on Solaris, Windows, Linux (x86 or IA64 only), Mac if you don't mind waiting a bit, and maybe IRIX if you are lucky. Only very recently have FreeBSD been allowed to distribute the port to their OS. If you look somewhere slightly more obscure, like OpenBSD, then you start to have problems.
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:3, Interesting)
For example there is an app on work that uses a custom schedule app and I want to interface with it. I am learning java and there is no way to interface to the app and customize it without doing OLE/COM or a VBA script.
In portable languages like Perl and Python you can integrate heavily into each operating system if you wanted or remain portable..
Why can't Java have something like CPan and
Le
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:2)
That's called "vision." I hate it when someone invests a bunch of time and resources in something without being sure of its moral superiority and inevitable triumph and then expects more credit than the noble and enlightened people who really believed. I mean, jeez, without my ostentatious certainty, your efforts would have been totally wasted. Wake up and smell the self-actualization.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Keeping Java Closed (Score:2)
And there is Harmony, an Apache project to create an open source Java platform which is certified as Java compliant, so can use the trademark.
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone should be thanked, it should be Bill Gates and Microsoft for making computers easier to use for a vast majority of the population.
I think what the blog article, and the original letter, were saying is that McNealy was right. His vision back in the early 90s was of an open network, where the important thing was the network, not the devices connected to it, and that was the world we were moving towards. It's a world built on open standards with all sorts of room for innovation and differentiation. Schwartz is not claiming that McNealy invented the Internet. He was saying that McNealy's vision of the future was the correct one unlike all those other companies who killed their own R&D and fell into the Redmond camp because they had seen the light (from Redmond and Wall Street).
As for Microsoft... if not Microsoft, someone else would have filled their role. Apple perhaps? Digital Research? Who knows. I don't think Microsoft did anything really brilliant or overly original in GUI design. As for "the Network is the Computer", Microsoft had to be dragged kicking and screaming into embracing the Internet and any open standards that they didn't control. The Internet wasn't even on their radar until Sun, Java and Netscape scared them.
Finally, you have to put Schwartz's blog in context. It was written as a tribute to McNealy, his mentor. The original letter, paraphrased from two years ago, was written to cheer up his mentor when Sun's fortunes were sinking and the Wall Street boys were savaging McNealy. I'm willing to give Schwartz a bit of leeway on the hyperbole.
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say, in recent history, that Sir Tim Berners-Lee did the world a great favor by making HTML so easy to use and forgiving (i.e., not closing a tag doesn't cause the page to crash, unlike syntax errors in 'real' programming languages), then NCSA gets credit for making a great browser, then Marc and Jim deserve credit for stealing all that NCSA talent (and possibly some code) to make a really cool browser, and oh yeah, before I get too far, let's not forget Bob's Ethernet, and whoever made TCP/IP, and I guess we need to include K&R and everyone else who made UNIX, because that's what the Internet has mostly run on through its history. And as great as the network is, it's prety useless without nodes, and Bill Gates' *ahem* methods of popularizing DOS and then Windows has put ten times more nodes out there than all other contributors combined.
But some guy in the corner with a "vision" that just happens to align with what eventually occurred? Fuck him. If anything, that honor should go to Vannevar Bush [theatlantic.com], who, in 1945, had a pretty damn accurate vision of what computing would be like in the 1990s. Considering that he wrote this a year before ENIAC was unveiled, I think we can give him a pass on not predicting network storage.
(On page 4, look for 'memex.')
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, and I'd like to take that one step further. This is leadership change in a large, influential company. Having talked to some Sun people this last weekend, I get the feeling that they don't have a clear picture of what this means for them and their lives. And that might translate into a lack of trust, or a belief that the senior management is confused.
Schwartz was posting as much for the rank-and-file Sun employee and investor as he was for his mentor. He has to show that he's a team player and that he's not just grabbing the reins from somebody who he thought was an idiot. If the rest of Sun believes that the guy at the top thinks the last X years under McNealy has been a waste, then what does that say about their OWN work and sense of worth?
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems largely retarded to take credit for jobs created indirectly, since there's no logical place to draw boundaries in either space or time.
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:2)
But wait a minute... didn't God create Adam? But then where did God come from? A Christian once told me he knew God was real because of the Bible, so God is from the Bible. But who wrote the Bible? This is so bloody confusing.
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:2)
Microsoft could have used their market dominance for great things and truly innovated (not the "copy somebody else and pass it off as their own 'innovation' that MS so often does). Instead, MS treated users to blue screens of death for decades when simple things like memory protection were well known. Crashes became commonplace to where they were just accepted as a
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:5, Interesting)
You kind of lost all credibility... BSDs and Memory Protection are for the most part not related. The only Memory protection errors creating BSDs were in device drivers, the user application model on even Win95 (the hybrid it was) was protected memory.
Windows NT going back to 1992 also has full memory protection, a concept that MS actually did work on the improvement of the technology.
As for MS copying everything, explain a few things. The NT Kernel, nothing existed like it, and nothing since is like it either. Or how about selecting a word and changing the font, you know select and modify that exists in every GUI. It didn't exist prior to MS Word cira 198x, but now you see it used in almost every application and OS. There are literally thousands of things like this that MS was the 'creator/innovator' of, even if you choose to have a revisionist history.
What has Microsoft copied that everyone thinks is a 'copy' of something?
The GUI? Well, Apple and XWindows both copied this from Xerox, as well as Microsoft. Every major OS made now is a copy of the Xerox technology, so how is Microsoft different here?
Windows? It is based on the NT OS technology, something that is unique from both *nix and other OS/Kernel technologies at the time and since. There is nothing like it. It is a client/server kernel technology, not a monolithic or microkernel.
What else has Microsoft copied? The WinAPI, nope, they created it from scratch, the GDI/GDI+, nope again they created it, RTF - kind of a copy, but the document independance was new at the time and MS gave the RTF specs away. XHTML? Nope they were one of the main designers behind it as well.
What else could it be that I hear people refer to all the time that they copied?
Well there is techology like Visual Basic, which had a new GUI IDE model, but Microsoft basically made the creators rich (instead of just stealing their ideas) and bought them out.
MS technologies are actually 'less' copied than Applications and OSes. MS Word was NEVER a copy of Wordperfect, in fact by 1992, Wordperfect was scrambling to copy the concepts that had been successful in MS Word on the Mac for years.
Now should we put the same eye of scrutiny to Apple or even Linux? Linux was a monolithic copy of Minix, and even its technologies and microkernel design go back to what 1983, and if you follow the *nix concepts back to the 1960s.
OSX? The core OS technology Apple advertises that they copied the technology. It is a BSD based interface to a Mach kernel, almost a direct copy in fact of the source. How about even looking at the GUI in OSX? They use PDF/Display Postcript (licensed from Adobe - not their creation), for 3D composition they use OpenGL, which again they were not even a significant contributor to the project. It was SGI technology and later work into moving it to a gaming acceleration API was work done directly BY MICROSOFT.
Kind of fun to realize the OpenGL stuff OSX and all the 'open source' projects use has MS created code in it, but of course MS is the great innovation copier.
Keep repeating the
How about even instead of listening to me, you go look this up instead of just assuming MS is what others tell you it is.
Microsoft and Knockoffs: Yes and No (Score:3, Insightful)
(I personally suspect that the development of NT and the hiring of VMS programmers was a specific attempt to kill DEC which it ultimately succeeded in doing
Re:Microsoft and Knockoffs: Yes and No (Score:3, Insightful)
The DEC Microsoft lawsuit is quite distorted, as it was more about the hiring of the DEC employees and 'fear' that the VMS tech
Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't say they were impossible, especially Win95. Virtually all OSes have the potential for failure in OS level memory protection. It is called a freaking Bug.
You are missing the bigger point, as the prior post acts like Windows included very little or NO memory protection. When in fact it did, especially NT which was developed in over 15 years ago. Want to find a company that didn't put memory protection in until 2000, go look up Apple. This is NOT one area where Microsoft sucked. PERIOD.
IAs for the NT Kernel, it's so suspiciously similar to the VMS and RSX-11 kernels there was almost a lawsuit over it. Of course, this shouldn't be surprising because the primary designer (Dave Cutler) was the same guy for all three!
I actually though you might have looked some of this up, but here is where you start to lose all credibility.
The VMS kernel is a monolithic kernel that supports modules, it is not a hybrid (client/server) kernel like you will find in NT. If any Kernel architecture influenced the NT kernel it was the MACH concept for small low level portability, but certainly not VMS.
As for the lawsuit, this claim I find astounding, as Digital (Owner of VMS and where Cutler also worked) were very CLOSE partners with Microsoft, in fact they showcased their new Alpha CPU at the 1992 Comdex running an unreleased WindowsNT. (I was actually there, so quote me on this.)
If Digital had any intention of bringing litigation to Microsoft over the design of NT, there is no record of and actually record to the contrary.
VMS was a very simplistic OS technology, especially at the time NT was written.
Are you just trying to blow smoke, and if so up what? Or do you assume that all of us here are 15yr olds and were NOT around during the 80s and 90s?
Selecting a word and changing the font? Have you conveniently forgotten the Macintosh?!
Here is where you lost all credibility, what are you a child?
MS Word was RUNNING on the Macintosh when the select and modify concepts were written by Microsoft and adapted by other applications on the Mac in the subsequent years.
Are you the only person in the world that doesn't realize that MS Word was more popular on the Mac than on the PC, until like 1993/1994 when the success of Windows 3.1 was becoming substantial?
(Here is a Hint when looking up the Mac history, office based applications like MS Word, MS Excel, Adobe PageMaker where the key APPLICATIONS that gave the Mac credibility in Office and business environments.)
Yes, Apple (1978-1983 with the Lisa) and MIT (1984 with X-Windows) both copied the modern GUI from Xerox. Of course, their development efforts were simultaneous and independent. Microsoft (1985 with Windows), however, is in a bit of a different time scope.
Again you think we are children. Gates announced Windows for the IBM PC and started development on it almost at the exact same time Apple started working on the GUI for Lisa. (Go look up history, here is another search tip, look up Comdex Windows Lisa Apple)
Apple's big lawsuit against Microsoft was based on a few specific items that were not common to Xerox. Apple was using 'copyright' law because the success of Windows hurt their sales, especially in people that bought Mac to run MS Word and MS Excel which they could now but a Windows PC and run.
"Client/server kernel technology, not monolithic or microkernel"? Do you have any idea what you're saying? I'm guessing you haven't taken an introductory class in operating system design. Please take a few minutes to view Wikipedia's informative article on the subject. In short, there was and still is plenty like it.
Actually I do know a little bit about kernel technology, but you seem to be able to only recant words from wik
Not really SELF-aggrandizing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, it's not really self-aggrandizing. McNealy didn't say it himself; it was said to him by an employee buttering him up after some bad press.
I don't agree with the conclusion either. Honestly, the article itself even admits that no one was listening to McNealy when he was pushing the whole "the network is the computer" idea. Everyone saw it as a transparent bid to get people to buy expensive servers and expensive dumb workstations as part of the repeatedly "next thing" thin-client model.
Even today when people spend 90% of their time on their PCs surfing the web, checking email, etc., the network isn't the computer. Applications are all still hosted on the local machine with the exception of webmail clients. There's a growing industry of AJAX-based application services websites, but they haven't come to dominate yet, and they're over 10 years too late and way too different from Sun's marketed model for McNealy to claim any credit anymore than Jules Verne could take credit for us finally going to the moon.
Re:Not really SELF-aggrandizing... (Score:5, Insightful)
What an amazing statement. I take it you don't do any remote banking, your workplace doesn't use one of the Web based CRM or system management apps, etc.
Fair enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I use both online banking and web apps at work. I see your point. Fair enough.
I tend to think of the web essentially as a data store and batch system whereas most of the interactive content creation tools are all still based on the local PC which requires more expensive and capable hardware than the thin-client model says is necessary. Until PC
Re:Not really SELF-aggrandizing... (Score:2)
Re:Feh. Fuck that. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I do.
No single person stands alone. Linus would have remained in obscurity if the GNU project hadn't existed, and also if Minix hadn't existed. And neither of those projects stood alone either.
Re:Feh. Fuck that. (Score:2)
Somehow, I don't see Linus as the 'real innovator, and leader of the Free world.' For innovation, his kernel comes close to last. It was a copy of a design that originated at AT&T twenty years earlier, and that AT&T design was based on earlier models. For innovation in kernel space, you'd do better to look at people like Matt Dillon, Andrew Morton and Andrew Tanenbaum (who, by the way, had one kernel and userland to his name when Linus started
Re:Feh. Fuck that. (Score:2)
In the late 80's, there was some question as to who was going to be the dominant player. The commodization of the PC had not yet happened. Apple had a good machine in the Mac, bussinesses were being rebuilt on it and
Re:Feh. Fuck that. (Score:2)
Not very surprising, since the Internet was developed long before Linux ...
Re:1jobs (Score:2)
Re:stock is up (Score:3, Insightful)
On one level, this sort of short-sighted thinking makes me want to throw things. It's not good for the industry, and it's not good for the country. But the market is what it is. Given the speed at which capital flows these days, I don't see it changing.
Which begs the