As for Lakeside, they told my parents way back when that because I stuttered as a child I needed special attention that was beyond them so admission denied. Now this PhD no longer stutters thanks to the nuns at the Catholic school I attended instead. Solution: public speaking on a regular basis. My math teacher was a little nun about four-foot-nothing who, I swear, landed with the marines at Tarawa. She could probably out drink and and out fight most marines! She taught you math and how to shut up when someone is speaking to you and she could spot a promising student a mile away in the dark during a hurricane and know how to push him to succeed. Gotta love those gals in the funky hats!!

If Lakeside were a person, I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire!

Both of Gates’ parents were lawyers.

QED

landlines on December 20, 2008 at 3:20 PM

Sorry to hear that bit of news.

QED

Microsoft wasn’t nearly powerful or popular enough that it was unassailable by a company like IBM.

That’s true but I never said it was because of Microsoft’s power. IBM didn’t have the foggiest idea how to market a better product.

OS/2 failed for some pretty standard reasons – technological problems, difficulties in developing for it, “OS/2 lacked device drivers for many common devices such as printers, particularly non-IBM hardware”

,

Bullshit. It was no more difficult to develop for than was Windoze. The development environment is nearly identical. OS/2′s biggest failing technologically is the Single Input Queue which was a design point insisted on by Microsoft to make it even more like Windows. Device drivers are the responsibility of device manufacturers, not the OS vendor. When you need a device driver for Winblows, where do you go, microsoft.com or the web site of the company that made the device? Now, IBM also had no idea how to court developers, but that is not a fault of the product.

it was expensive, the list goes on and on. Hell, it was a failure while Microsoft was still developing it.

It was only expensive when compared to getting it “free” on your PC. That’s a red herring. OS/2′s failure came as a result of IBM’s bungling but also Microsoft’s treachery. Bill Gates told all his competitors to develop for OS/2 but then went back and told his developers to work on Windows only. Ever wonder why Windows 3.0 didn’t look anything like Windows V2 but it looked a lot like OS/2 V1.1?

The truth is – without Bill Gates greed an ambition computers would not nearly be as far along today as they are. Windows and games (many of which utilized DirectX, another greedy and unscrupulous advancement) helped drive hardware sales, and by extension, hardware R&D.

apollyonbob on December 19, 2008 at 5:57 PM

You’re so deep in the woods you have no idea. I kept my hardware that was running OS/2 for ten years and it performed as well in the tenth year as it did in the first, even though I upgraded the OS several times. Meanwhile, my Windows-running friends had to reinvest in new hardware every two or three years.

This is going on even today. Do you know why every PC today ships with lots of USB ports but you would be hard pressed to find one with a Firewire port? This is because Firewire devices are intelligent in and of themselves while USB devices are dumb and toss the workload back on the CPU in your computer. So, the more USB devices you attach to your computer, the more computer you end up needing.

The bottom line is that Microsoft and Intel have worked the market into a buy-use-buy again scenario that has made Gates the richest man on the planet and we all happily go along with it not knowing there’s a better way.

Hey, you forgot to mention the what we affectionately called the TRASH-80!

Done That on December 19, 2008 at 4:11 PM

I know I came way late to this conversation. So, before the thread dies… :-)

My Dad’s friend had a Trash 80. I was a Sophomore in high school taking a class in basic. I spent one weekend at their house typing in a football game in basic, and then troubleshooting it. I was thrilled that on Sunday afternoon I was able to play the game. It was all text. “1st and 10. Choose your play.” “Screen pass good for 15 yards to the 43. 1st Down..” etc.

I high school we had a teletype in a walk in closet and we would take turns entering our programs that were then run on the computer in Oregon City 10 miles away. (this was 1978) It was a time share, so we had limited time. For the final, I wrote a hangman game that actually worked! I should have gone into computers instead of broadcasting. Maybe it’s not too late. :-)

That would be an Acoustic Coupler Modem.

Since when is holding someone accountable for their actions (in this case, a felony) a “political stunt”? Clinton committed felony perjury to a Federal Grand Jury. Earlier in his Administration, his own Justice Department had in fact successfully prosecuted a (female) Federal employee for…lying about sex under oath. But when he was accused of the exact same thing, his defenders said he was above the law.

Del Dolemonte on December 19, 2008 at 6:13 PM

It was a stunt because they damn well knew they weren’t going to get a conviction. They were guaranteed that by the Dems from the very beginning. But the Republicans put on a show trial anyway, to demonstrate how morally superior they were and to do everything they could to publicly humiliate the President. They should have realized that 1) President Clinton was beyond humiliating, and 2) they were putting a target on their backs, with the Dems holding the biggest gun in the political world–revenge.

It was a stupid, short-sighted blunder on their part. Period. And all because Billy Jeff was getting a fracking blow-job! Yes, it pissed me off that he lied about it. But for the love of everything, the Republicans. weren’t. going. to. win.

Get that through your head. It was a stupid, stupid, stupid power-play, and they lost.

And so did we. In a monumental, epochal, potentially nation-shattering way.

Happy Birthday.

Esthier on December 19, 2008 at 4:54 PM

Holy smokes! Happy Birthday again……….another shot……….

Neo on December 19, 2008 at 6:30 PM

Another Happy Birthday! Another shot then………. Pleasee no more birthday greetings. Am feeling buzzzzzzzzedddddddd

jonkk on December 19, 2008 at 3:39 PM

Happy Birthday! I will do a shot of Tequila in your honor…..as soon as I submit this post!

I have to say, the 800XL ~looked~ like a sexy beast compared to the Atari 400/800 skin jobs. On the downside, it had a feeble 6502, and that stunk worse than even intels CPUs. ‘orrible little 1MHz, memory intensive, toy thingy it was.

I think IBM never realized the value of having a hardware AND software focus like apple did. They certainly saw it on their business side, but they just never “got it” enough to market the value of OS/2 on IBM machines on the personal side. Yeah, IBM was more expensive, much more, still is to some extent today, but their stuff was bulletproof. Heck, I’ve got modern machines today that for serious writing I still use a IBM model M keyboard.

But for marketing, Apple and MS would be a minor players and IBM would be MS and Apple combined today.

IBM and HP still make the most reliable hardware today IMHO.

Not so fast, there. Anybody remember Digital Research DOS (DR-DOS)? Had Bill Gates not been there,…

Kafir on December 19, 2008 at 4:15 PM

As a keeper of things… I have a copy of DR-DOS 6.0 on three disks, and the manual. Man! Can’t I throw anything away.

-Wasteland Man.

BTW Ed, you missed yesterday’s 10th anniversay-to divert attention away from his impending impeachment, Clinton attacked Iraq.

Del Dolemonte on December 19, 2008 at 6:23 PM

Wasn’t it Libya?

The Senate didn’t so much ‘decline to convict’ Clinton as they declined even to try him, contenting themselves with sharing a parental eye-roll with the press over those impetuous kids in the House.

PersonFromPorlock on December 19, 2008 at 5:11 PM

The Democrats in the Senate didn’t even examine the 18 boxes of evidence against Clinton that the evil Ken Starr had assembled. That’s no “trial”, it’s a joke.