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posted by CoolHand on Saturday April 04 2015, @12:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-all-love-microsoft dept.

Alyssa Newcomb reports at ABC News that the software company started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975 is 40 and fabulous and highlights products and moments that helped define Microsoft's first four decades including: Microsoft’s first product - software for the Altair 8800; Getting a deal to provide a DOS Operating System for IBM's computers in 1980; Shipping Windows 1.0 in 1985; Microsoft Office for Mac released in 1989; Windows 3.0 ships in 1990, ushering in the era of graphics on computers; Windows 95 launches in 1995, selling an astounding 7 million copies in the first five weeks, and the first time the start menu, task bar, minimize, maximize and close buttons are introduced on each window.

For his part, Bill Gates sent a letter to employees celebrating Microsoft's anniversary, recalling how far computing has come since he and Paul Allen set the goal of a computer on every desk and in every home, and predicting that computing will evolve faster in the next 10 years than it ever has before. "We are nearing the point where computers and robots will be able to see, move, and interact naturally, unlocking many new applications and empowering people even more. Under Satya's leadership, Microsoft is better positioned than ever to lead these advances. We have the resources to drive and solve tough problems. We are engaged in every facet of modern computing and have the deepest commitment to research in the industry," concludes Gates. "We have accomplished a lot together during our first 40 years and empowered countless businesses and people to realize their full potential. But what matters most now is what we do next. Thank you for helping make Microsoft a fantastic company now and for decades to come."

Some of us may disagree that the company is currently fabulous, but there is no doubt that it has been a force that has shaped the industry for the past forty years.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @01:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @01:28PM (#166378)

    If you mean to say, "based on a fable" as in, "a fictitious narrative", then ok, Microsoft is FABULOUS!

    Fabulous at stealing everyone else's work and presenting it as their own.
    Fabulous at, Vendor lock-in, Shit Licensing agreements, Acquisitions, Litigation, Blacklisting of journalists, Censorship in China, Collaboration with the NSA on internet surveillance, Gay controversy, etc. etc.

    Oh and lets not forget the Intel alliance to force on us a complicated and useless UEFI and secure boot standard.

    /rant end

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Saturday April 04 2015, @03:54PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 04 2015, @03:54PM (#166415) Journal

    "UEFI and secure boot standard" should be corrected as "UEFI secure banning of operating systems we don't control standard".

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Saturday April 04 2015, @05:53PM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday April 04 2015, @05:53PM (#166450) Journal

    Sigh...insightful? Really mods? For classic FOSSie butthurt? Why don't he accuse Gates of being the illuminatgi while he is at it, he could get a +10 for extra bullshit!

    Bill Gates was lucky enough to be around in the part of computing history when many companies were FUCKING MORONIC and Gates was not...tada! There is the answer as to why Gates is rich and their companies are dead. FOSSies can come up with conspiracy theories all they want but I can take any major victory in that company and show that it was immediately preceded by "And then the other guy did something REALLY fucking stupid"...want some examples?

    Apple versus Microsoft in the 80s...The cloners offered Apple the chance to be on every PC but then Jobs did something REALLY fucking stupid, he pissed off the investors with the Lisa which ultimately got him fired AND if that wasn't stupid enough he licensed critical parts of the UI to MSFT because he thought of Gates as nothing more than some lackey. BeOS? They had an OS with a superior GUI and better handling but then the owner went did something REALLY fucking stupid, first he tied it to an AT&T CPU that went nowhere and died, followed by tying it to all things the PPC, which meant his company had to compete with fricking Apple for every chip (yeah fat chance pal) and by the time the cluebat hit him that X86 outnumbered those chips by like 100k to 1 he had already bled through the money, dumbass. Hell this appplies to not just the OS, Office? Wordperfect was royally kicking their ass and then the company did something REALLY fucking stupid and said "Windows? Nah its just a fad, we'll just put out a half ass DOS port that will crash more than it'll run and take their documents with it. I'm sure they'll go back to DOS for OUR product"...nope, stupid. Netscape? Netscape was curbstomping IE even with NS being a paid product until...can you guess what's coming? Yep they did something REALLY fucking stupid and said "I know, lets do a full rewrite from the ground up! And instead of supporting our previous product until this one is actually done we'll just push this one out when its not alpha quality and fix it on the way...people love us, right? I'm sure they'll stick around"...not after the 14th time your browser crashes their PC with a BSOD, moron!

    See? If YOU had company after company eating paste and picking their nose as your "competition" then you too could be as big as Gates. This also explains why Ballmer was such a pathetic failure, he thought that trend would continue forever and tried to run the company like that was the case but the modern Apple and Google? Don't sit around smelling their own farts so the old gameplan just don't fly. If the iPod had come out in the late 80s/early 90s by the Apple that Ballmer was USED to facing? They would have come out with a dozen models and wildly differing price points with no fucking way for the consumer to tell what was better and what was worse so the Zune would have been a cakewalk, if Android would have been invented by say Sun instead? They would have tied it to expensive as hell hardware or tried to make the entire OS a server based thin client and then the craptastic cellular networks would have given WinCE a free shot...but those companies aren't run by dipshits that think the world will go with whatever dumbass plan they come up with because they are sooo damned clever.

    At the end of the day Gates and Co got damned lucky, they had a couple of decades where companies were either run by really old farts that didn't get it or by young "whiz kids" so filled with hubris they thought pretty much any idea they thought up? fucking brilliant. The only thing Gates really had to do was hire damned good OS designers (and sorry but Dave Cutler? DAMN good OS designer, which is why the WinNT line is placed on more new PCs in a day than Linux will see in a decade) and thanks to the other teams being from the Special Olympics he could give the man plenty of time to iron out the bugs, THAT was what he did that was fricking smart, the rest? Hell your grandma could have ruled the world against the clowns old Bill was going up against.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday April 04 2015, @06:11PM

      by Whoever (4524) on Saturday April 04 2015, @06:11PM (#166454) Journal

      While all of that is true, and competitors were often stupid, let's not forget Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior, providing APIs to their office developers that were not available to companies developing competing applications, misleading Novell abut the APIs that would be available in new versions of Windows, etc..

      Ultimately, Microsoft would not exist today if they had not gotten a pass on its illegal behavior from the Bush Jr. administration. The previous administration had won the lawsuit against Microsoft; the only remaining question was sanctions.

      • (Score: 0, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Saturday April 04 2015, @07:32PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday April 04 2015, @07:32PM (#166477) Journal

        Oh bullshit, all of that crap was MSFT trying to CYA because who in the fuck is gonna admit "Yeah if my competition wouldn't have been too busy scratching their own asses I'd have been stomped". The APIs? Meant exactly JACK AND SHIT because we are talking about a time when a PC was if you were VERY lucky 400MHz with 64Mb of RAM. An API isn't gonna magically make that run any faster, you wrote low level and optimized the fuck out of your code? It ran like a scalded dog, you didn't? You called the waahmbulance and blamed it on the API. What would have an API done for Wordperfect? Not a damned thing because they refused to write a new version until 19 fucking 99, fuck my hick ass was able to get a copy of the fricking Win95 beta in early 95, you telling me a company the size of theirs couldn't get shit a hick in BF Arkansas could get off the P2P?

        Nope sorry, just excuses made by losers for being losers, end of story. Every one of those companies WERE at the top of the heap, king shit, Mr. Badass and they blew it because they either did a Palm and decided "Fuck it what we have works now, we'll stick our profits in our pocket instead of our product!" until their product was as dated as DOS or like BeOS and Apple ignored everything the data was saying and hitched their wagons to dinosaurs because of the dinosaur's rep from 20 damned years ago, see BeOS with AT&T, see Apple with PPC which even Jobs said was a stupid fucking move which is why he had OSX running on X86 in the backroom almost from the moment it was in alpha.

        This is business, if you refuse to think? Somebody gonna kick your ass. Google didn't need no steekin API, Apple didn't need no steekin API, all those companies that made billions on Windows software didn't need no steekin API, the API excuse was just that, a fricking excuse. Fuck Netscape 2&3 ran better than IE ever did DESPITE the "magical API"...how you gonna explain that? NS killed themselves by doing a massive rewrite while NOT supporting their previous build until the rewrite was RTM...end of story. The same goes for WordPerfect which could have picked up the damned boxed Win95 and could have come out with a functional port in a year...they didn't because they didn't invest the resources, instead sticking it in their pocket and releasing nothing but the DOS version with a pathetic wrapper (anybody remember DOS4GW? Remember what a buggy POS it was? Now imagine betting the life of your company on that...yeah sorry if you choked laughing there) and it killed their userbase.

          Again greed and stupidity gives your competitors a free shot and THAT is what made Bill Gates rich. It wasn't a "conspiracy", it wasn't "magical APIs", it was companies doing dumb shit that let their rivals get a free pass, no different than how THQ was on top of the gaming world and then threw over 100 MILLION dollars making a fucking drawing pad for the Wii...just plain old retarded behavior, nothing magical or sinister about that.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:05PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:05PM (#166493)

        While all of that is true

        Nope. Some parts are partially true.

        The WordPerfect part is complete bullshit.
        That M$ "partner" was deceived by M$ [google.com] to gain an advantage for M$'s own office products.
        It was a clear case of criminal behavior but, to demonstrate what a sad joke USA courts are, last year when that finally went to trial, the court found for M$.

        .
        The reason M$ has the clout it does is because of IBM's incompetence in 1980.
        The idiots in IBM's Boca Raton facility waited until the last moment to arrange for an operating system for their PC.

        Gary Kildall already had an OS (in fact, he had 2 operating systems and 1 was a multitasking OS).
        The idiots from IBM showed up on Gary's doorstep without arranging for a proper business meeting (IBM's infamous secrecy in evidence once again).
        Gary had another business meeting scheduled for that day.
        The "Gary went flying" story is just Gates being an asshole.
        M$ deceit and customer poaching [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [blogspot.com]
        Another version from "Triumph of the Nerds" [googleusercontent.com] (orig[1]) [pbs.org]

        [1] "we went down the three of us"

        The IBM idiots apparently didn't read the computer hobbyist magazines and had no clue that M$ did NOT have an OS to sell to them.
        Gates exploited cash-strapped Seattle Computer Products and, for a song, got control of their Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS).

        .
        the Bush Jr. administration

        Your knowledge of history needs major expansion.
        USA.gov could have busted M$ during the Reagan administration (or GHWBush or Clinton).
        It seems that you never heard of AARD code [wikipedia.org]
        which would have told you that Windoze isn't compatible with your DR-DOS installation. [twimgs.com]
        (One more M$ lie.)

        Gates and company have always been deceitful and predatory.
        Criminal behavior that goes unpunished spawns more criminal behavior.

        -- gewg_

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:04PM (#166492)

      And to add to what 'whoever' wrote:

      Outright theft - doublespace was stolen from Stacker (court agrees). DOS was a ripoff of CP/M. Windows NT stole from VMS, etc.

      And, sleazy crap like the xor encrypted code in early windows 3.11 that displayed bogus fatal error messages when it discovered Dr. DOS running-- this shit move by MS was discovered by an undocumented DOS / undocumented Windows author.

      You are a Microsoft Shill Mr. Harry Feet, and as much as those paying you want to revise history for better PR, your version is bullshit. Reality is MS is a fucking crap company run by evil* people.

      * Bill Gates tried to steal his partner's portion of Microsoft while his partner was on his death bed -- I think that qualifies as evil. If that is not enough, his "charity" made more money exploiting the people of the Niger Delta than his charity "gave" to those it was supporting the destruction/poisoning of their lands, and murders of.

      • (Score: 2) by TLA on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:55PM

        by TLA (5128) on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:55PM (#166505) Journal

        whoa... citations absolutely needed here.

        --
        Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @11:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 04 2015, @11:31PM (#166520)

        doublespace was stolen
        That one is true. There was monetary compensation to the damaged party.
        This is 1 reason M$DOS 6 versions got all the way to 6.22.

        a ripoff of CP/M
        Nope. The code has been compared.
        This claim doesn't pass the smell test.
        ...and if it had been a ripoff, that would have been on Tim Paterson (one t), who developed that OS.
        M$ bought the code in an advanced state of completeness.

        NT stole from VMS
        It's even more devious than you think.
        M$ hired VMS devs to create NT!!
        Employee poaching!! Non-compete clauses!!

        bogus fatal error messages when it discovered Dr. DOS
        See "AARD" elsewhere in this thread.
        It was in beta versions, but, apparently, their lawyers must have mentioned "prison time" and they took it out before RTM.

        You are a Microsoft Shill Mr. Harry Feet
        You'll get no argument from me on that.

        steal his partner's portion
        Gonna need a cite on that one.

        his "charity" [...] exploiting the people
        The tale of the frog and the scorpion;
        the song about the snake and the tender woman;
        a leopard can't change his spots:
        This phenomenon has been well documented throughout history.
        Gates has been profit-driven all of his life;
        expecting him to stop his predatory practices now would just be naive.

        murders
        Gonna need a cite on that one.

        -- gewg_

    • (Score: 2) by TLA on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:50PM

      by TLA (5128) on Saturday April 04 2015, @09:50PM (#166504) Journal

      +5 most awesome rant I've read all week.

      --
      Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:41AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:41AM (#166572) Journal

        Nope this site has become infested by SJWs and FOSSies, anybody who points out fricking history gets modded down while the batshit FOSSies that calls Gates a murderer? Informative.

        Say what you will about Slash but at least they keep the SJWs to YRO and the FOSSies to the Linux articles, here they are like black mold, just spreading all over the damned place. No wonder the number of posts per article has been going down, others are probably getting as tired as I am of ultra radical left batshit conspiracy crap.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 2) by monster on Monday April 06 2015, @04:27PM

          by monster (1260) on Monday April 06 2015, @04:27PM (#167029) Journal

          While I consider that your repeated moderation as Troll is undeserved (I don't agree with you, but I also don't consider your opinions to be trollish) I still think that your usage of words could be... better selected, to put it lightly.

          If you tend to paint confronting points of view with peyorative words (SJWs, FOSSies) you also condition other people to view your comments in a confrontational way. That may even explain the Troll mod (which costs karma) instead of simply using the Disagree mod, which doesn't. That is the exact opposite of what this place should be, IMHO: Certain topics seem to slide too easily into people yelling at each other instead of listening and debating. That's sad.

    • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 05 2015, @05:45PM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday April 05 2015, @05:45PM (#166706) Journal

      Nice to see nobody has done a thing about the modbombing. The above post has bounced it looks like 3 times so far between +4 and 0. Great job guys.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday April 06 2015, @08:17PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday April 06 2015, @08:17PM (#167149) Journal

        Nice to see nobody has done a thing about the modbombing. The above post has bounced it looks like 3 times so far between +4 and 0. Great job guys.

         
        Have you ever cosidered that jumping to name calling in your first sentence could actually be considered Flamebait?
         
        Or is it all just one big conspiracy?

        • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Hairyfeet on Monday April 06 2015, @11:29PM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday April 06 2015, @11:29PM (#167244) Journal

          Then explain how come it YO-YOs between +5 and -1 repeatedly? Its because of Stalky my little cyberstalker, I have ZERO doubt that if we had access to the modding history it would be only 1 or 2 that have been modding multiple posts of mine down for multiple times...what would YOU call that other than stalking? Extra juicy butthurt?

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.