May The Best Mode Win
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From: hancock4 on 23 Oct 2009 15:54 On Oct 23, 1:55 pm, gpsman <gps...(a)driversmail.com> wrote: > Was the general premise of the clause unusual, the sale amount > insignificant to DR, were they a bunch of HS kids with no or a crappy > lawyer...? History is full of examples where a company passes up a great opportunity. (And also companies ruined by spending a lot on something that proved worthless.) Western Union had the chance to buy AT&T and passed it up.
From: hancock4 on 23 Oct 2009 15:58 On Oct 23, 3:47 pm, Free Lunch <lu...(a)nofreelunch.us> wrote: > Microsoft > has been lucky many times. Sometimes luck is 'influence' by being in the right place at the right time. I can't argue the above issue. But in general terms trying to be in the right place at the right time, as well as being able to spot an opportunity when it comes along, helps 'influence' luck.
From: Alan Baker on 23 Oct 2009 16:06 In article <b1e037d7-941b-4f67-aa0f-0896fd0f3667(a)l35g2000vba.googlegroups.com>, hancock4(a)bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > On Oct 23, 12:57�pm, Alan Baker <alangba...(a)telus.net> wrote: > > > > A great many small businesses, when asked if they have a product or > > > service, say "yes" when in fact they have nothing. �The business then > > > rushes out to get the customer what was requested. �The business is > > > obviously taking a big gamble, if it works the gamble usually pays off > > > handsomely and the small business grows quite a bit as a result. > > > > That may be, but in this case, what they rushed out to get was a rip-off > > of someone else's product. > > I'm not at all sure I'd call that a "rip off". Gary Kildall did, and could apparently call up a Digital Research copyright message in early versions of QDOS and MS-DOS> > > That is a fact of business life. A great many people become wealthy > by merely acting as the middleman, connecting a seller and buyer. > > For sake of argument, say I need goat's milk. I go to my grocer who > doesn't carry it, but he says he'll get it. He makes phone calls and > gets it. He collects a profit for his work. I benefit by not having > to call around myself to wholesalers or farms, heck I wouldn't know > what farms to call. > > IBM didn't know who made PC software, so they asked Gates. Gates did > know and exploited "leveraged" his knowledge. Wrong. First time around, Gates "shrewd" choice was to send IBM to Digital Research. -- Alan Baker Vancouver, British Columbia <http://gallery.me.com/alangbaker/100008/DSCF0162/web.jpg>
From: Floyd Rogers on 23 Oct 2009 16:49 "Alan Baker" <alangbaker(a)telus.net> wrote > "Floyd Rogers" <fbloogyuds(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >> This statement is contrary to the facts: there were only 5 (can't >> remember >> accurately, but that's +-2) internal APIs used, and they were innocuous >> shortcuts for file open/close/access. They had virtually no performance >> affect, and were made public after they became an issue. >> >> As for timing, outside ISV's had access as early as the internal people. >> Most ISV's that had problems struggled over the difference between >> Windows APIs and the OS/2 APIs that they had been using. The graphics >> and user models were quite different and often affected program >> structure. > > Cites for this? Two things: this discussion is specifically about win 3.1. I tried to for it, but you get flooded by references to the more recent stuff that is about IE, low-level stuff for virus detection, etc., etc, that I couldn't find anything. However, I definitely remember that, of all the apis published in "Undocumented Windows" by Schulman, that only a half-dozen were required by the DOJ to be formally published. You may also want to read chap 12 in "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" where Marlin doesn't mention (and he would have) mass publication of all internal interfaces. I wish I could offer concrete citations (from someplace other than my memory), but it's not important enough to me to pore through the DOJ decision documents. FloydR
From: Floyd Rogers on 23 Oct 2009 16:52
<hancock4(a)bbs.cpcn.com> wrote >On Oct 23, 12:49 pm, N8N <njna...(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > >> > Does it support DOS applications? >> >> Hell, Windows doesn't, anymore. > >Umm, I run my old DOS stuff all the time under Windows. They call it >"command mode" now, but it works fine. No, he's talking about dos-mode games and applications that accessed the hardware via the bios. You're talking about applications that are 32-bit and mirror the capabilities of the MS-DOS command.com (in cmd.exe.) FloydR |