Brief History Of Linux (#17)
Terrible calamity
IBM chose Microsoft's Quick & Dirty Operating System instead of CP/M for
its new line of PCs. QDOS (along with the abomination known as EDLIN) had
been acquired from a Seattle man, Tim Paterson, for the paltry sum of
$50,000. "Quick" and "Dirty" were truly an accurate description of this
system, because IBM's quality assurance department discovered 300 bugs in
QDOS's 8,000 lines of assember code (that's about 1 bug per 27 lines --
which, at the time, was appalling, but compared with Windows 98 today, it
really wasn't that shabby).
Thanks in part to IBM's new marketing slogan, "Nobody Ever Got Fired For
Choosing IBM(tm)", and the release of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program
that everybody and their brother wanted, IBM PCs running DOS flew off the
shelves and, unfortunately, secured Microsoft's runaway success. Bill
Gates was now on his way to the Billionaire's Club; his days as a mediocre
programmer were long gone: he was now a Suit. The only lines of code he
would ever see would be the passcodes to his Swiss bank accounts.
Terrible calamity
IBM chose Microsoft's Quick & Dirty Operating System instead of CP/M for
its new line of PCs. QDOS (along with the abomination known as EDLIN) had
been acquired from a Seattle man, Tim Paterson, for the paltry sum of
$50,000. "Quick" and "Dirty" were truly an accurate description of this
system, because IBM's quality assurance department discovered 300 bugs in
QDOS's 8,000 lines of assember code (that's about 1 bug per 27 lines --
which, at the time, was appalling, but compared with Windows 98 today, it
really wasn't that shabby).
Thanks in part to IBM's new marketing slogan, "Nobody Ever Got Fired For
Choosing IBM(tm)", and the release of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program
that everybody and their brother wanted, IBM PCs running DOS flew off the
shelves and, unfortunately, secured Microsoft's runaway success. Bill
Gates was now on his way to the Billionaire's Club; his days as a mediocre
programmer were long gone: he was now a Suit. The only lines of code he
would ever see would be the passcodes to his Swiss bank accounts.
Related:
- MS-DOS /M-S-dos/ n.
[MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A
clone of CP/M for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by
hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Produc
who called the original QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and is said to have regretted it ever since.... - Brief History Of Linux (#17)
If only Gary had been sober
When Micro-soft moved to Seattle in 1979
most of its revenue came from sales of BASIC, a horrible language so dependant on GOTOs that spaghetti looked more orderly than its code did.... - MS-DOS:: /M-S-dos/ [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] n.
A {clone} of {{CP/M}} for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since.... - Brief History Of Linux (#18)
The rise and rise of the Microsoft Empire
The DOS and Windows releases kept coming, and much to everyone's surprise,
Microsoft became more and more successful.
This brought much frustration to computer experts who kept predicting the demise of Microsoft and the rise of Macintosh, Unix, and OS/2.... - What If Bill Gates Was a Stand-Up Comedian?
1. None of his jokes would be funny.
2. Subliminal message hyping Microsoft and Windows 98 would be inserted throughout his performance.... - patch
1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code,
usually as a quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or
misfeature.
A patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program.... - bug n.
An unwanted and unintended property of a program or
piece of hardware, esp.
one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of feature.... - IBM /I-B-M/
Inferior But Marketable; It's Better
Manually
Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Moveme... - CP/M /C-P-M/ n.
[Control Program/Monitor; later
retconned to Control Program for Microcomputers] An early
microcomputer OS written by hacker Gary Kildall for 8080- and
Z80-based machine
very popular in the late 1970s but virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981....
