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On Mon, 3 Apr 1995, Adam Gaffin wrote:

> > 
> > The openness is driving the industry, but the proprietary systems vendors 
> > are feeding the press.  If Bill Gates spends $2 billion on advertizing, with
> > the understanding that articles favorable to the Internet/Web are damaging
> > to his business, the press won't bite the hand that feeds it.
> Oh, please. 

I did say IF!  When Microsoft was touting LAN Manager, there was lots of 
hype about how insecure and unmanagible TCP/IP was.  Now Microsoft is 
giving away TCP/IP (Winsock).  They still tout SMB vs. NFS, but that's 
another bridge they'll burn later.  Who knows, maybe they will even 
support an X11 driver for Windows NT (like the $500 package from Unipress).

> > Microsoft has kept UNIX out of the market for 15 years through 
> > advertizing and media hype.  When Bill Gates announced Windows (vaporware

> Again, I say: oh, please.  Maybe if 10 years ago, Sun had come up with an
> easy-to-use interface that NORMAL PEOPLE (i.e., non-geeks who don't grasp
> the elegance of hitting control-V instead of the page-down key) could use
The Sparc 1 (68020) was as easy to use as a MacIntosh, and did several 
things at once.  Even Emacs was configured for the PC "page down" keys,
on practically every kind of terminal ever made.

> on something smaller than a SPARCstation, or maybe if all the Unix vendors
Minix ran on an 8086, Linux runs on a 386SX with 4 meg of RAM (try running
NT or Windows 95 on that).

> hadn't spent, what, 10 years, fighting over the exact definition of Unix
> (OSF vs. UI, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), then maybe, just maybe, Unix 
Everybody wanted to add their proprietary enhancements, but the baseline
has generally been very robust and has worked across all of the platforms,
including a few that were proprietary systems with a UNIX veneer.

> might be more prevalent and we wouldn't be worrying about Bill Gates's
> influence on the Internet.

Actually, 15 years ago, Cromemco Z-Dos was a Unix look-alike that ran on 
a Z-80.  There were also Venix, Xenix, and VRTX (all of which looked like
unix), IBM had UNIX for 8086 when they introduced the PC/XT.  This was back
when MS-DOS users were typing into the C:> prompt.

By the time the first implimentation of Microsoft Windows came out, Sun
had a full blown Mouse and Windows implementation, including File Manager.
I remember working with the Sun 1 in 1985 (about two weeks after we got
our Macintosh).

> > If Bill Gates is willing to spend $5 Billion in advertizing to get the
> > media to sensationalize every hacker or intruder, MSN can probably keep
> > the internet at bay long enough to kill any potential commercial competitors.

> Hmm.  Can you point to the ads in which Microsoft is attempting to scare us 
> away from the Internet?  I must've missed them.  All I can remember are 

Microsoft wouldn't put the copy in their paid advertizing, but they might 
buy the space right next to the 3 page article describing the 2 hackers 
that got into unprotected systems and left "Kilroy was here" messages.

Prodigy was even less subtle.  When the FBI caught an infamous hacker, they
made it part of their "Highlights" for about 3 days.  Even O.J. didn't
make the front screen that week :-).

Imagine what would have happened if we sensationalized every car accident 
and car jacking that occured on an interstate.  People would have never
bought cars because the roads were so dangerous.  The internet is often
depicted like some sort of "Electronic Downtown Newark".  It's more like
any other community of 30,000,000.  There are bad apples, but most are
pretty good solid citizens.

When Microsoft was touting Lan Manager, and Novell was #1 Lan vendor, the
press had very little nice to say about TCP/IP or the Internet.  In fact,
even with netscape, there seems to be a great deal of misinformation in
the print media about internet.

> We now return you to our regularly scheduled online-news discussion, 
> already in progress...

This group is about discussing strategies for distributing and browsing
news and on-line publications.  We are confronting yet another attempt
to "Corner the market".

> Adam Gaffin
> Network World, Framingham, Mass.
> agaffin@nww.com / (508) 820-7433
> 

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed Apr  5 14:44:04 1995
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