Conference back40::soapbox

    
    Tom Ralston says that all is fair in the "free" market...
    
    ;^)
    

    
    
    Is this true? I wonder why MSN and Netscape both work find on
    my system.
    
    Where did you hear this?
    
    

    OEM Magazine, November, 1995, p18 Tech Law column, by Richard H. Stern

    Another Microsquash trick, over the years, has been to use undocumented
    features of the system to enhance the behavior of their applications. 
    They would then, in the next point-release of the system, change the
    documented interfaces, thereby forcing everyone else to scurry around
    and release new applications, while the old Microsquash apps just kept
    on truckin' - as much as any Microsquash app can truck, anyhoo.
    
    The federal investigation into Microsquash's alleged monopolistic
    practices turned that one up.  Microsquash denied having done it, but
    they also signed a consent decree saying they'd never do it again.

    
    Not directly related to the base note, but interesting. One of
    my clients was telling me about a service he used to subscribe
    to. Microsoft, at one time, had a developer support service that
    cost something like $15,000, but offered UNLIMITED technical
    support calls.
    
    So, some little company in Boston sent Microsoft $15,000 and
    then hired a dozen or so people to sit on the phone and call
    Microsoft all day. For a fee, other local developers could pay
    them to call Microsoft and ask technical questions...
    
    Apparently Microsoft caught wind of this scam and stopped that
    service...
    
    -b

    
    
    
    .5 That happens against Digital all the time.
    
    
    

re:.1

Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk! ;^)

    ^Note 596.1 by TROOA::COLLINS
    
    ^Tom Ralston says that all is fair in the "free" market...
    
    First, you lie and I don't mean it in the SOAPBOX sense. Second, your
    lack of knowledge concerning free market principles is quite evident.
    
    So that even you can understand, there are many things not acceptable
    or moral, that wo/men can do in a free market, the main one being
    dishonesty. Though I find Bill Gates in general to be a great value
    producer in society, anything that he does, that doesn't reflect
    complete honesty, should be exposed. 

Hey Doc!

That ain't sleazy.

That's an (other) opportunity for 'strategic partnership'.

Cut out that liberal whining!

    
    .8
    
    No need for any fancy, high-tech lures where Tom is concerned...
    
    The plain old Red Devil works just fine.
    
    :^)
    

    
    << The plain old Red Devil works just fine.
    
    well, I'm sure it is a nice little vacumn cleaner, but I prefer 
    Hoover uprights. tyvm

    RE: .10
    
    Smells kind of fishy.  :)

    re .0
    
    As I understand it, some IP stacks such as Trumpet have their own
    non-standard WINSOCK.DLL and have the poor judgment to store it in
    the WINDOWS directory rather than their own directory. While
    Microsoft would have been nice to have issued an informative message
    when doing the rename, I've always been annoyed by applications that
    toss their own DLLs into \WINDOWS, making it hard to clean up after
    them when you try to deinstall them. (How many of the DLLs in
    \WINDOWS are actually being used by anyone after a couple of years
    of system reconfiguration?)

    
    RE : -1
    
    Spot on!
    
    -b

>    renames it to WINSOCK.OLD, and creates a new WINSOCK.DLL that just so
>    happens to permit only MSN software to be used.
    
    p.s.  This latter part (permitting only MSN software to be used) is
    *not* true. I've got W95 running on my notebook with MS's IP stack,
    and most normal IP applications from whatever source ... including
    Netscape and KEAterm's Telnet ... work just fine.
    
    I certainly agree that Microsoft is due a lot of criticism in a
    number of areas, but in this case it's 95% FUD.

    WINSOCK?  Wazzat?  DLL?  Wazzat too?  On my computer, all the TCP/IP
    apps just go through MacTCP.  MacTCP talks to the serial line though
    InterSLIP, but it could just as easily be MacPPP.  The Mac in my office
    uses EtherTalk.  All I did was tell MacTCP what the Internet connection
    was, by clicking on one icon in a selection window.
    
    Thse things all work, with no special funnies or files that have to be
    mucked with or overlaid or renamed.  Most of them share configuration
    information collected by Internet Config.  What is so hard about this,
    that PC vendors can't do it?

    Anything Microsoft does in software can be reverse-engineered and
    productized by smarter, more nimble software engineers in smaller,
    faster companies.  Arguably this is what the first truly high quality
    TCP/IP software for VMS, Multinet, did.  Digital's own product was
    suddenly able to support DECwindows, and Multinet figured out the
    undocumented interfaces and used them to do what UCX could do; and
    documented it better.  Microsoft may outsmart some; and yes, it is a
    slimey trick.  But not all competitors will be stymied by it. 
    
    DougO

 >Date: Tue, 21 Nov 95 16:17:28 PST
 >From: anneli (Anneli Meyer)
 >Subject: An interesting URL.
 >
 >----- Begin Included Message -----
 >
 >Forwarded-by: [email protected] (Brent LaVelle)
 >
 >In trying to save time navigating the web I guessed this url:
 >http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/dejagnu/ and got a humorous message.
 >I wonder if people at Microsoft can read http://www.delorie.com
 >which works for me.
 >
 >Here is the message:
 >
 >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 >403 Forbidden
 >
 >Your client does not have permission to get this page from this server.
 >
 >If you are attempting to access this site from the Microsoft domain, you
 >are being forbidden because Microsoft Windows just damaged a large number 
 >of files on my boot drive, and Microsoft scandisk just made it worse. It 
 >took me an hour to restore the damaged files from my backups. I'm sick and 
 >tired of the crap Microsoft peddles as Real Software and I'm doing my part 
 >to discourage you.
 > 
 >
 >Mail from Microsoft will be deleted without a reply. 
 >
 >DJ 
 >----- End Included Message -----

    I love it.  Publishers restricting access from bad citizens, rather
    than parents stepping in between suicide-prevention lit and their
    teens.  This is the way the Internet will work!
    
    DougO

    
    I was web-surfing a few weeks ago and came across an X-files
    page (I don't watch the show, but I was curious...) which
    led to some other page that had been set up to look like a
    secret government installation... complete with password
    security that accepted virtually any X-files-related keyword
    you typed at it (my friend Joe, who was sitting next to me
    at the time, was the one who supplied the various keywords,
    otherwise I wouldn't have gotten anywhere with it).

    The page had all this stuff about being "top secret" and "you
    are unauthorized to be here; the FBI has been notified and
    will be arriving shortly..." Clearly a joke.

    Anyway, they had a lockout on the page for anyone from an AOL
    account because, as the page explained, AOL subscribers are
    too damn stupid to differentiate between a joke and reality,
    and the webmaster got sick of answering questions from AOLholes
    who wanted to know if the FBI was really on their way...

    -b

    Simpletons On Line. Good grief!

    RE: .16

>    WINSOCK?  Wazzat?  DLL?  Wazzat too?  On my computer, all the TCP/IP
>    apps just go through MacTCP.  MacTCP talks to the serial line though

    Dick,

    Are you implying that a closed, proprietary system is better than an
    open one?  Why is it that Apple is able to win that argument so much
    easier than we are?

    -- Dave-who-has-a-fat-Mac-and-a-Wintel-box

    .22
    
    No, Dave, not at all.  First of all, MacOS is not closed and
    proprietary in the way you think.  There are many hundreds of
    commercial companies and many thousands of freeware and shareware
    producers designing control panels and system extensions for MacOS, so
    clearly there's no closed-box problem.
    
    All I'm pointing out is that with MacTCP around, the third-party
    companies don't keep having to reinvent the wheel - things already
    work, they work well together, and they don't step on each other's toes
    the way so many Wintel add-ons do.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it -
    and the Mac's TCP/IP access is clearly not broke.  Or broken.
    
    I know a guy whose business is troubleshooting TCP/IP networks.  His
    carry-about computer is a Mac because the TCP/IP troubleshooting tools
    for Mac are more powerful, more reliable, and easier to use than the
    ones for Wintel or UNIX� boxes.

    Actually Dick I do understand the MacOS and how closed and proprietary
    it is.  I worked for a company that was an "offical Apple developer"
    when the Mac first came out.  The company got a few of the first model
    out (128K version).  I held out and bought in to the one with a
    whopping 512K (the same amout as the cache on my Wintel machine).  At
    the time they brought out the Mac, Apple did a wonderful job of laying
    out guidelines for developing 3rd party software for the Mac.

    The problem is that you're reading my "closed" and "proprietary" as
    negatives.  I don't consider them to be.  Can you buy (well, until
    recently) a Mac (compatible) computer that wasn't manufactured by
    Apple?  Can you realistically run anything but MacOS on a Mac?  By a
    number of definitions, this makes the Mac closed and proprietary.

    I personally see a lot of closed and proprietary arguments surrounding
    the Mac vs Wintel that parallel VMS vs UN*X -- but that also raises the
    question (which I admit to stealing) "Who ever said that open means
    useful?"

    -- Dave

    .24
    
    > Can you buy (well, until
    > recently) a Mac (compatible) computer that wasn't manufactured by
    > Apple?
    
    Yes.  For several years during the late '80s and early '90s a company
    called Outbound made superb Mac-compatible laptops.  They used Mac ROMs
    for their machines, however, but this at least ensured that their stuff
    was 100% compatible.
    
    > Can you realistically run anything but MacOS on a Mac?
    
    Yes.  Apple's own UNIX� variant, called A/UX, works quite well on Macs,
    and there's another, far more robust UNIX variant called MachTen that
    also runs on Macs.  MachTen is (surprise) based on the Mach microkernel
    architecture, and it is so well integrated that you can use MachTen
    apps to manipulate Mac files or Mac apps to manipulate MachTen files.

Wasn't/isn't Apple the company who're generally not very cooperative about 
revealing various functions of their operating system, making certain things 
quite tricky for software developers?  I could swear I remember reading 
something to that effect a few years ago...

Chris.

    .26
    
    > Wasn't/isn't Apple the company who're generally not very cooperative
    > about revealing various functions of their operating system, making
    > certain things quite tricky for software developers?
    
    Yeah, you're right, they're terribly close-mouthed.  That must be why
    there is a multivolume (20 or so) set of thick reference manuals called
    _Inside Macintosh_ that describe in EXCRUCIATING detail how everything
    in MacOS from soup to nuts works and how to write programs for the Mac. 
    It's available in hardcopy to anyone with the fairly significant
    scratch, and it's available on a CD-ROM for something under $100.00.
    
    There's also another hefty document called the Macintosh _Human
    Interface Guidelines_ that lays out the way producs should be designed
    to maintain the MAc look and feel.
    
    Nah, Apple doesn't want anyone knowing how to design products for Mac.
    Right.  Of COURSE there are a few bits they leave out of the massive
    public documentation, same as Digital and same as Microsquash, because
    that's what makes MacOS a saleable product.

    RE: .25

    Ah, so you have a choice of various _Apple_ OS's to choose from, the
    same ones who make the hardware.  Sounds like a VAX.  Remember I still
    think its a good idea.  Provides for consistency and allows users to
    make intelligent guesses about that which they don't know based upon
    that which they do (whereas in the UN*X world, if you don't know the
    command you're looking for, forget it).

    The tightly linked hardware/software combination they insisted on also
    allows them to poke fun at installing DOS programs under W95.  True
    plug-n-play requires those types of tight controls.


    RE: .26

    When the Mac came out, Apple had a program for 3rd party software
    developers that included classes in how to write for the Mac and, as
    Dick said, they nearly gave away _Inside the Macintosh_.  They were in
    a sufficient hurry to get the information into the hands of the
    developers that the first cut of ItM didn't have a useable indexing
    system.  You would look up the routine or whatever in the index and it
    would say page QM-3.  Unfortunately, where QM was in the 2 volumes (the
    original only had 2 volumes) was anybody's guess.

    Apple wanted/wants people to develop for the Mac.  That doesn't make it
    open or non-propritary.

    -- Dave

    P.S.  I wonder if my two volume set of Inside the Mac is worth anything
    as a collectors item.

Okay guys, I only asked!  Ta for setting me straight anyway... must've been
thinking of someone else, I'll have to try to remember who it was now...

Chris.

    .28
    
    > Ah, so you have a choice of various _Apple_ OS's to choose from...
    
    Sorry, MachTen is not an Apple product.  But gee, with a Wintel machine
    you have a choice of Microsquash operating systems (DOS, Windoze,
    Winlose95, or Windoze NT).  It's too bad they're not really mutually
    compatible.  Or you can install a UNIX� system - but you'll play hell
    getting it to work seamlessly with your DOS applications and files. 
    Looks suspiciously like the situation for the Mac, if you ask me,
    except that MchTen works smoothly with the Mac stuff.

Dick, don't forget OS/2.

    Yes, Gerald, I remember OS/2.  Yet another operating system that is not
    really compatible with the other Wintel systems.  True, it's made by a
    different vendor, but hey, I'll install MachTen and Motif on my
    PowerBook, and I'll have an industry-standard, XPG-compliant, portable
    operating environment.  One that works, by the way...

    RE: .30

    I really hope you aren't expecting me to defend Wintel.  I won't do it,
    especially when you have to worry about IRQ conflicts between your
    modem and your CD-drive, will upgrading your sound card break any of
    the other cards you have in your system, if you install the latest
    version of software product FOO will it break software product BAR, ...

    I like the closed, proprietary architecture of the Mac.  It makes it
    simple and easy for the end user.

    -- Dave

    The justice department is now looking into the issue presented in .0,
    according to a recent news report.

    
    .0 appears to have occurred to a PC two cubes away from me.
                                                             

    You mean two stalls away from you.

    
    <neigh>
    

!Joan notes from a toilet?

Just about! (he *does* sit as close to the toilet as one possibly could, 
without actually being in the stall)

    
    It hasn't helped me catch the toilet-seat messer.
    

You should post the sign:

	"If you sprinkle when you tinkle,
	 Please be neat and wipe the seat!"

        Ah, Mr. Catheter Problem, I forgot about him!

    You should post the sign:
    
    	"If you gop when you plop,
    	 Please be kind and use a mop!"

re: .34/0

Seems like that strategic partnership is well underway...