To: cfimx who wrote (21005 ) 10/12/1999 1:55:00 AM From: JC Jaros Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 64865
Microsoft isn't even in the story! The story is UNIX. Perhaps it always has been. ...i lOVE this comment. It's so...YOU. Yeah it is twister. And missing the big picture is so *YOU. I know you use your computer for highly intensive P/E number crunching. My experience is different. I bought my first PC in 1989. I found myself spending most of my 'computer' time on Prodigy group mail (online community) and later GEnie group mail (online community). In 1990 I installed my first BBS (online community). Later that year, I began working with a fellow I met online on the a development of a BBS program and network (online community). The growth of that DOS network BTW, is a growth record that still stands. In less than 15 months we grew the network from 5 boards to 1200, becoming second in size to Fido (which was really huge). The program itself was all about max configurability, multiple network formats (we had this vision for this inter-connected 'multi-net' <g>). The program had scripting and even available source code. In retrospect, what we were doing was recreating a poor man's UNIX on DOS! Years later when I first discovered Linux, it was like finding the Holy Grail. Networking, community, all of the things we were doing back then were actually built into the UNIX operating system. Retrospectively, the only reason we all didn't run Unix back then was the COST. As it turns out, this 'network' and 'online community' thing has gotten even bigger now relative to the installed base of PCs than it even was way back then. The difference was people then were turning their XT, AT and 386 computers into dumb terminals. Nowadays, people turn monster Pentium computers into Web Browsers. In both cases BTW, it's all about open standards. In the old days, we paid Ma Bell the big bucks (out of pocket) to carry our network data (messages, mail, files). We got hip to Usenet enough (late in the game) to write a network utility that used the WaffleBBS engine to bring down newsgroups and more significantly piggy back our data onto. Unix was there all the time. We just didn't know how to leverage it. I left the program in 1992 at the apex after a local hard drive crash and concurrently meeting my blonde nurse with the nearly perfect breasts (Whom I am now married) <g>. Anyway, what was true then is true now; UNIX runs the show. -JCJ Oh yeah, and one more thing: In the not too distant future, thanks to SUNW, my wife will be driving an SL500 convertible. *Your wife will know what a P/E ratio is.