Well, one could put it more dramatically
- consider the case that when your neighbor starts booting his/her PC, your PC will stop working,
freeze and crash, and additionally his/her will not boot.
That is, IBM/DEC/SUN actually tried to make computers which communicated, while DOS-WinCrash
was more optimized for personal, isolated wxnking. (nothing wrong with that, as long as neighbors
are not too much disturbed, paying their utility bills or whatever)
The telecom history is littered with "point-to-point" solutions which never worked, spread except
between those two points, this was actually the most important factor in why CCITT, now ITU, took
over from Bell-copy-me-if-you-can-standards as well as "defacto" standards (typical examples
modems, especially fax-modems, T1, 56-64kbps, etc,etc, roaming GPRS handsets just the latest)
That is, will be interesting to see how Microsoft will adapt to having to "connect", not just
with itself, locally, but also to others.
I am "forced to admit" that I had to switch from using ethernet along a common coaxial
cable to the less demanding point-to-point plus hub system, tired of searching for that
one ethernet card which clogged up the whole common cable, better to isolate every
user in his/her own little disconnectable cable.
Microsoft must have fun dreaming of a day they introduce a new words-feature, so
that one upgraded user will cause all non-upgraded to crash, within 20 miles, and
globally if interconnected.
Anyway, they missed out on both ethernet and internet, even "WinModems" and are still
struggling to make anything crashproof, or at least fail-safe, handling multi-tasking,
simple audio and video, and especially in cleaning up the dirt of long time ago closed
processes, without an unlimited supply of memory and regular reboots.
But who knows, maybe they can re-educate all of their managers and engineers??
Ilmarinen
Well, I have always enjoyed how they have handled the BIOS, VGA, SCSI,etc guys who
they trust to do the tough (embedded) stuff, to interface to something else...
Btw, win2000, XP users should bless VMS every fourth hour they get by without rebooting,
but it was tough to get the simple basic ideas of VMS even partially moved into WinCrash.
(the reason VMS was so popular was that it crashed less than IBM, some smart solutions)
And all along, Intel have tried to (almost) provide all the hardware, CPU functions to at least try
to build a functioning system, WinCrash-and-Doze just decided not to use most of them. (That SPOX thing
was even worse, really funny for a DSP guy)
Anyway, in terms of motherboards, the history is also littered with "strange" motherboards,
but luckily they just behave strangly in the provacy of their own little board (except if
the integrate stuff to make them connect to other motherboards)
Hmm, listnening to CNBC, funny how they get disturbed with funny ringtones these days,
even some funny rythmical RF-jazz salutes, the ones coming from active GSM handsets
and lousy audio-studio-equipment. |
