Rex Ballard wrote:
> Microsoft can't break bad habits?
>
> On Jan 23, 10:28 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>> Microsoft 'educational' comic
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Are Bill and the Boyz about to do a Captain Copyright, as the
>> | bizarre and ridiculous cartoon character Access Copyright dreamed
>> | up was called?
>>
>> http://p2pnet.net/story/11101
>
> Keep in mind that Microsoft has been calling computer users "pirates
> and theives" since
> 1977, and they don't seem to care who gets alienated. In 1977, the
> reaction was that most dealers sent back their original copies of
> Microsoft BASIC and told MITS that they didn't like being called
> thieves. Microsoft solved the problem by cutting a deal where MITS
> would prepay for a copy of BASIC for every machine MITS thought they
> would sell (Or, more accurately what Microsoft thought MITS would
> sell). The price wasn't that unreasonable, about $50/machine, but it
> was enough to alienate a lot of people.
>
Back in those days (probably in the late 80s really) MS were turning a blind
eye to pirating, you might even argue that they encouraged it, because all
they wanted was to be on every PC. Get users on Windows then the likelyhood
is that they will continue on windows, even if it is only because there
isn't any alternative any more. The same was true of MS Office.
Star Office, remember the version that was a full integrated system with
office applications, email, browser and directory handling, it was building
in popularity. It could be made the default shell for the user on Linux
because it was so complete. The other major Office suites of the day were
also doing well on MS platforms
But all of that was killed off by MS, not necessarily because MS Office was
better, but because you would get at least parts of the suite bundled with
something else.
There were quite a few years where I didn't pay for any MS compiler or
developer suite, because I had been on MS's records as a programmer, so
every so often a set of discs or CDs turned up. It always said it was an
evaluation but it wasn't really, there weren't any limits with it, it was
always a full copy with lots of extras. Much as they are doing now with the
.NET/MSSQL developer suite.
I must say though that masm and C6 were very usefull for many years because
most of my work was embedded software back then. I was that rare programmer
type who loved the IDE version of masm, it was far too slow for the
machines of the day particularly for a large project, but I liked it, I
think it was because it was one of those very rare IDEs that really was
written with the programmer in mind, rather than simply trying to be
pretty.
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