Net gains (moon landing vs UNIX)

Nature Magazine ^ | July 16, 2009 | Nature Staff

[M203M4]

I found the highlighted bit particularly interesting.

It would seem that the "shortsighted commercial interests" of early vendors of proprietary Unix "allowed" Microsoft to deploy to market a software product that had widespread appeal amongst novice computer users. This "tragedy" then assisted in the widespread corporate and public adoption of personal computers. The resulting economies of scale brought by expanding markets for computer hardware were self-reinforcing, driving the price of computing low enough to permit not only the lowly huddled masses to buy computers, but also to permit the evil Bill Gates to distribute charity computers first across American schools, and then across the globe.

Today, horror of horrors, entire computer systems (which can even surf Al Gore's internet!) are available for under $200 (at Wal*Mart no less!).

All of this could have been avoided if the government enforced standardization, and if enough government support for esoteric Unix distros was furnished to price out all newbie-friendly, exoteric operating systems like evil, evil Windows and Apple.

All of this is typed from a free Linux distro...I love Linux, but to pretend the computing boom could have occurred with CLI based operating systems (yes, I know of the boutique early exceptions) is laughable. Apple and Microsoft did for computers what Starbucks did for coffee in America - create widespread consumer demand for what was earlier only a niche market.

[rabscuttle385]

with the Unix clone Linux, written in 1991 by Finnish student Linus Torvalds, coming to dominate.

Two things: Torvalds wrote the kernel, while the bulk of the operating system was put together by Stallman's group, so giving credit only to Torvalds is either a sign of ignorance or prejudice; and it's GNU/Linux, not Linux, grrrr!

[sam_paine]

My initial reaction EXACTLY.

Grandmother test fails on Ubuntu to this day. Grandma’s can view pictures from emails on Windows, no prob.

Even good desktop distros of linux are a little non-intuitive.

[benjibrowder]

OS X Leopard is based off Unix.

[Toki]

Actually it’s a full fledged Unix system (with Leopard anyway, wasn’t until then), only with some modification made with the Kernel and system that are proprietary, unlike Linux.

[Incorrigible]

Nice analysis M2.

In 1969 Bill Gates was in high school writting code routines to help the State of Washington analyze traffic patterns with those air tubes across the road.

[OneWingedShark]

Ancient Chinese Proverb:
“A foolish idea, held by thousands, is still a foolish idea.”

Sorry, but I _really_ don’t like Unix (or its derivatives) as I believe the underlying design principles to be poorly chosen.

[ShadowAce]

[shineon]

What do you prefer?

[major_gaff]

I've worked in Bell Labs and found that this is the attitude of alot of the engineers there, i.e.: 'Everything was so much better before the AT&T divestiture'. My response is that if Ma Bell had not been broken up then we would not have experienced this explosion of growth in the communications industry...computers, cell phones, the internet, satellite apps, etc. would not have happened this quickly...the Ma Bell monopoly would have preferred us to stay dependent on them.

[Uri’el-2012]

OS X Leopard is based off Unix.

All OS X is based on BSD Unix.

Leopard is Unix©

[ShadowAce]

In 1969 Bill Gates was in high school writting code...

In 1969, Bill Gates was 14 years old, and had only been exposed to computers for a year.

I think you've fallen for an urban myth.

[central_va]

To date, I cannot think of a virus or robotic program that has ever harmed even the most sloppily configured UNIX system. Without the root password UNIX is virtually indestructible. Windows is a security disaster waiting to happen.

Also, the X-11 Windows sever is vastly superior, the X concept of exporting a display is foreign to MS Windows(still haven't got to that!). If you don't know what I am talking about then you don't know what you're missing. Window seems so primative compared to X-11

[martin_fierro]

[cynwoody]

Sorry, but I _really_ don’t like Unix (or its derivatives) as I believe the underlying design principles to be poorly chosen.

Windows is built upon similar underlying design principles. It's just a different and inferior implementation — different for both historical and proprietary reasons. For instance, do you think the text escape symbol should have been chosen as the file path separator?

[Uri’el-2012]

I've worked in Bell Labs and found that this is the attitude of alot of the engineers there, i.e.: 'Everything was so much better before the AT&T divestiture'.

I was an MTS in Bell Labs and you are only partially correct.

Had there not been a Bell Labs to break up
the critical seminal work would never have been done.

[ByteMercenary]

What *nix flavors have you tried? I tired of rebuilding my three son’s laptops because of downloaded viruses and installed OpenSuse 11.0. They quickly adapted and are now virus free! Open Office on Suse is just as capable as M$Office and it’s free.

[gjones77]

One other things people seem to forget, is that many of the Unix distributors refused to make a user friendly version for the home market, Scott McNealy was completely against porting Sun Unix over to the home market.

Back in the mid 90’s Sun could of made an OS to compete with Windows, but refused, so here we are.

[AFreeBird]

I had to laugh when the labs started designing modems for Ma Bell to sell and the engineers insited they did not have to have the Hayes command set.

[Uri’el-2012]

The author make no mention of the MULTICS roots of Unix©

Bell Labs dropped out of the MULTICS consortium in 1969.