On 02/01/2012 11:55 AM, Ben Scott wrote: > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:38 PM, Michael ODonnell > <michael.odonn...@comcast.net> wrote: >>> Anything old will have its share of historical accidents, to be >>> sure. But there's reasonable design failings, and then there's >>> design by the infinite monkey method. >> You have insulted an infinite number of monkeys. IBM used to >> publish the source codes for their BIOS ... > The design of the IBM 5150 [1] is only the start of the problem. > When everyone and their brother has to solve all sorts of problems, in > all sorts of different ways, things get very messy. > > Note that I'm not saying there's a better way. Much like democracy: > It's the worst form of government, except for all the others. > > Though I do think a little more foresight on the part of IBM and > Microsoft both would have saved us all a lot of trouble down the road. > But then it probabbly wouldn't have the cheap and quick solution IBM > wanted, nor would it have been as accessible to third-parties, and > thus it wouldn't have succeeded, and we would all be complaining about > someone else's cheap design instead. > > -- Ben > > [1] Quite possibly the most appropriate model number in history. At the time, (1) IBM was Big Iron and (2) the desktop computer market was tiny with only a few non-hobby systems available. I don't think that anyone at that time could even envision the market explosion. Bill Gates (and Microsoft) was the primary beneficiary. Many accountants were using Apple ][ computers with VisiCalc, but it was the IBM brand that legitimized the desktop PC in the business market. Once the PC came out with some core applications, such as Lotus 123, the market just grew. But the home computer market was still primarily hobbyist and gamers. even the visionaries who envisioned the Internet (such as Vint Cerf and J. C. R. Licklider and a few others) designed the Internet with 8-bit IP addresses.
-- Jerry Feldman <g...@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:3BC1EB90 PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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