Letters to the editor

Re: "I2O specification"

The I2O specification was kept secret until it leaked. When a copy of the
specification 1.5 accidentally got placed on their public ftp site the game
was up. Had that not happened it would probably never have been released.
I2O was also a scheme to keep hardware specifications secret, control driver
writing and place it outside the operating system.
 
As it happens I2O wasn't a threat because it was committee designed and IMHO
too busy trying to ape the mainframe to understand it.
 
Merced was very different - you only have to imagine the scenario of IA64
leaking early, AMD cloning it and releasing a clone before the real thing
came out to understand why this was done. It didn't have senior powers that
be itching to keep Linux off the machines.
 
Alan
(speaking for himself not Red Hat)

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You're talking about the same man who...

...didn't even see the Internet coming, so shipped the first edition of
Windows 95 without a web browser.
 
Quoting from:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/01/HNgatestalksmus...
 
> As far as Linux goes, Microsoft has seen other potential threats to
> its dominance come and go, Gates stressed.
 
If that truly represents what Trey Gates believes, then he's stuck somewhere
between GandhiCon 1 and 2, while the rest of his company is just passing
GandhiCon 3.
 
    http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/G/GandhiCon.html
 
> OS/2 was supposed to kill us
 
_Microsoft_ once called OS/2 a killer product on their own (Windows, no less)
packaging. Is this doublethink? Go figure.
 
> Unix, in faltering, has lacked the advantage that Windows has had in that
> it comes from one vendor and has one set of instructions, Gates said.
 
That's true on its face for a change, and I call to witness the CodeReds,
Slammers and other symptoms of that dangerous monoculture.
 
> In the area of grid computing, Gates said not all situations are applicable
> for grid,
 
Translation: "we don't have a real product there yet." If they were actually
competitive in the field, he would sing a different tune.
 
> “The bad news is this malware [or malicious software] thing is so bad,”
> he said.
 
See above, under "monoculture" - and possibly "irony" and/or "chutzpah".
 
> phising
 
This is a grammatical error, the term is "phishing".
 
> “We ourselves are not going after the e-voting market or the nuclear
> reactor control market,” Gates said.
 
That's a relief! However, they _are_ going after the nuclear aircraft carrier
market. Oh, well, win some, lose some, I guess.
 
Paul, none of what Bill opined here was news.
 
Gartner inadvertantly revealed last week that (if their figures accurately
represent real life, which is doubtful) Linux has slashed illegal software
copying by at least 20% in many Asian countries, all by itself.
 
That _is_ news - it's an approach to so-called "software piracy" which
actually works, and doesn't build resentment of the organisations
implementing it, nor cause hardship for the end-users.
 
However, the few news outlets which reported it (including InfoWorld,
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/29/HNlinuxpiracy_1...) blindly
pitched it as if Linux had somehow _contributed_ to the problem.
 
Why this fascination with Microsoft and their viewpoint? Why are the
pointless, outdated and generally wrong prognostications of a rich man, or
the empty sensationlism of an attention-starved consultancy considered
newsworthy, while the real world-changing news consistently whooshes right
underneath InfoWorld's radar?
 
Pharmaceutical companies owned by Bill Gates act to block South Americans from
shipping cheap generic anti-AIDS drugs to Africa, and it's not newsworthy. On
the other hand, Linux advocates are helping those same Africans cross the
Digital Divide, claw their way towards economic independence, and it's still
not newsworthy. There's even a whole computer game on the topic
(http://home.gna.org/oomadness/en/slune/), and still silence from InfoWorld.
Yet you publish this inane "Bill's not scared" article. Hello?
 
Cheers; Leon

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