QUOTE (t_skraggs Sep 23 2004 @ 03:27 PM) |
QUOTE (Trisman Sep 23 2004 @ 01:52 AM) | M$ is a lot like the Roman Empire. They dont that much in the way of innovation, they simply emulate that which their competitors do. |
I think you are forgetting that they are who brought us the computer industry in the first place. It's ok, though. I'm sure DOS outdates 90% of the people on this board. I'd like to argue a case with Windows as well, but I cannot remember if Windows came out before MacOS. I'm guessing it did, because I don't think the "Mac" was even around at that time. I believe the IBM/MS competitor was still Apple at the time of Windows launch.
I just can't remember, and I'd rather state that I can't remember than come up with some bull**** argument as you did. I have also believed that it was mainly MS that helped launch the internet. Again, I doubt the majority of the people on this board even remember the original internet. Even when "we" were connecting to the "internet" we weren't really sure how it was different from BBSs, and there were only a handful of sites available.
The way MS started was by INNOVATION. You argue that the MS you know now doesn't innovate. That's fine. You're obviously young and don't know how MS became a giant in the first place. But, did Sony innovate? Did Nintendo innovate? Did either of those companies innovate at the start? Did Sony simply take someone else's tube TV and say "let's make a better product?" That's the Sony I remember. I don't remember them coming up with innovative products -- but I do remember that they were the BEST at one time.
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Fifrst off, if you read your history, the original DOS was created by IBM for their 8086 processor in 1980. Depending on where/when you saw it this was known as QDOS, 86-DOS, SCP-DOS, or just simply DOS. This was then bought by Bill Gates and Paul Allen for around $50,000, and licensed to IBM as PC-DOS 1.0. Also with this deal, MS became the only supplier of operating systems and compilers for FORTRAN, BASIC, 86-Asembly, as well as a couple others I cant currently remember, for Intel microcomputers. I will give you that Gates invented both the File Allocation Table, and BASIC, but this is when Gates was with Paul Allen working out of the garage on their Altair, and doesn't represent the current state of state of affairs. Two men working out of a garage is quite diffrent than one of the top ten multi-national corporations.
Also, for your unbased claims concerning my age and how that pertains to computers, my first computer had a Z-80 and ran CP/M for an operating system. For those who don't know, CP/M was the predessor to DOS.
QUOTE (t_skraggs Sep 23 2004 @ 03:37 PM) |
... and I wasn't even going to talk about your comparison to the Roman Empire. You'd better take a history class, my friend. Better yet, since you appear to be a part of the newer "everything handed to me" generation, just watch TV. Watch the Biography Channel, A&E, and the History Channel. The Romans were very inventive as a society. I believe it was the Romans that invented the aqueduct, a highly innovative method that required very advanced engineering skills. Not only did the Romans use the ARCH to sturdy their buildings and elevated aqueducts, they even used tunnels to bring water into just about every city in the Empire so that every city had fresh water.
Shoot, even playing the game Civilization would teach you more about history than you apparently already have. Oops, that is before your time as well. Sorry. |
I have taken a Roman history class, as well as two years of Latin. And since apparently more explanation is required here you go. Case in point, in the first Punic war, the Romans couldn't defeat the armadas of Carthage, the Carthaginian ships were better. The Romans were lost until a lone Carthaginian ship was washed ashore by a storm. Thus the Romans took this ship, and made hundreds of exact copies of it. They then overwhelmed the Carthaginians with the sheer numbers of boats. Also, the Romans had a toal of perhaps forty names to choose from.
By the way, the arch was invented by the Etruscans, the Romans simply "borrowed" it once they invaded them. And yes, while the created aquaducts, it was simply this converstaion:
Roman Senator 1: "How do solve this problem of getting water to people?"
Roman Senator 2: "I know, lets build a bigger version of something we already have. Yes we have walls, lets build a wall about 10km long to connect the resivour to our city, using technology we assimalted from the Etrusacans."
Roman Senator 1: "You mean the arch?"
Roman Senator 2: "Yes, exactly."
So, long story short, Romans were the masters of using others' technology to its best as is MS.