From: petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly)
Subject: Re: I hate to tell you this, but...
Date: 04 Oct 92 10:58:21 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corp.

In article <1992Oct3.202903.13653@ultb.isc.rit.edu> rsm8167@ultb.isc.rit.edu wrote:
> >So, from a Windows bigot to all you OS/2 bigots I say:  "Join us!  Feel the 
> >power of the Dark Side!  Together the Universe will be ours!!  
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> The Dark Side indeed:
> 
> ***	MS uses undocumented API calls in their products. When accused of doing 
> 	such, MS denied they were. And then, when it was proven to be true, 
> 	MS just shrugged it off as not important. Fair competition is not 
> 	important when you are on the Dark Side.

So if MS uses undocumented calls, it's evil.  When other people do, it's not.
BTW: people have been using undocumented calls for years.  They only started
doing it with MS products fairly recently, when DOS was released.  Then again,
UN*X is fully documented, 'cause you can get the source code.

> 
> ***	Dr Dos 6.0 had compatibility problems with Windows 3.1, so they went
> 	to MS for help. MS refused to help.
I'm having trouble flaming you, will you help me?


> 
> ***	MS claims they have reduced the number of UAEs. In MS's mind,
> 	renaming a problem is equivalent to eliminating it.
Including more information in the error messages helps people understand
what is going on.  including better parameter checking helps keep
unbehaved apps from bringing down the whole system.  And there was
significant improvement on the number of errors that occurr.

> 
> Wouldn't you rather join your local mafia family than MS's Dark Side? 

Hey, didn't you watch _Sneakers_, the mafia uses MS products too. ;)

> Thanks to IBM, MS's Dark Side days are numbered. If DOS/Windows 3.1 is 
> "kicking OS/2's but", it's because MS is in a position to ram it down people's
> throats. It is very hard to buy a computer without getting Dos 5/Win3.1
> for "free". This is changing however, thank goodness (IBM PS/2 and Dell). 
This is funny, just a few years ago, IBM was the evil empire in most postings.



> 
> I don't believe in the OS/2 versus NT war. Sure the idea of a "Star Wars" 
> between operating systems is romantic, but that's all it is. Unix is not
> dead, and NT is not going to kill it. NT is not going to kill OS/2 either.
> I do believe that OS/2 will gain a healthy market share, and I do believe
> that this COMPETITION will lead to better operating systems in general. That
> is what happens when people have a choice! No single operating system will
> meet the needs of every PC user! The P in PC stands for personal, and the C
> might as well stand for choice.

For the most part, I agree with this.  This "All or Nothing" attitude people
have is somewhat silly, 'cause most commercial OS's that are released with
any marketing at all tend to last a while.


> 
> 			-----------------------
> 
> And by the way, anybody familiar with UNIX will know the true value of
> preemptive multitasking. Does your OS let you walk and chew gum at the same
> time? 
> 
Ahh, this thread again.  Well, I'm quite familiar with UNIX.  I have
a question, though.  Before X, how did you do you're multitasking.
As I remember, you could only really have one single task in the foreground,
and in much of the stuff I did, the background stuff just stood idle while
waiting for me to switch to them.  This is besides system components, of
course, such as the daemons, etc.  Frankly, I didn't use the multitasking
capabilities of UN*X that much, even though I did major amounts of work
on UN*X.  (I'm not counting use of system level stuff like daemons here).

petesk@microsoft.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy