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In article <CBIy2A.Kwx@molly.uucp>, uunet!molly!vlcek (Jim Vlcek) writes:
|> I found the following in last week's ComputerWorld (arriving late due to our  
|> recent move and slow forwarding).  This is an opinion piece by Mr. Ben  
|> Rothke, "network computing manager at the National League for Healthcare in  
|> New York."
|> 
|> While I'm not as convinced of the totality of the outcome of the Great OS War  
|> as is Mr. Rothke, I think he makes some very good points.  In particular, he  
|> ought to be heard by the NeXTophiles and Linux lovers, two groups doggedly  
|> avoiding reality in dreaming of a key role in the OS picture.

Hmmm wouldn't put it quite like that. Don't forget the herds of Atari, Amiga, Solarus, Mac <Insert favorite OS/Computer here (with the exception of DOS, and Windows)> etc owners. Afterall they aren't in the majority either.

|> 
|> Without further ado, here's Mr. Rothke's piece, from p 33 of the 2 August  
|> 1993 ComputerWorld newspaper:
|> 
|>   What's excellence got to do with it?
|> 
|> Many analysts have called 1993 the year of the battle of the operating  
|> system.  I say it's never been anything but a paper war, and the outcome is a  
|> foregone conclusion.

Hmmm I seem to remember the same conclusion being reached about CP/M many years back.....

[...]

|> Let's face it, the driving force in the computer industry is no differenet  
|> from the driving force in any industry.  It's image, hype and appeal to the  
|> herd instinct that counts.  Excellence is entirely beside the point.

I can believe that statement when it comes to folks who don't know computers. But this certainly doesn't apply to most of the people I know.

[...]

|> IS is a service division dedicated to serving the end-user community.  This  
|> is the same populace that turns the publishers of the National Enquirer into  
|> millionaires and Julliard-trained musicians into waiters.  Given that fact,  
|> how can we even wonder why NextStep will never get a serious amount of market  
|> share?

There is nothing more dangerious than:
	- a user with an idea
	- and a programmer with a sodering iron....   8-)

|> 
|> What this all means is that, at least for the next few years, no one will  
|> ever be terminated for standardizing on Windows.  If you happen to work in an  
|> environment where standard graphical user interfaces and common application  
|> programming interfaces are not critical, you'll have the luxury of picking  
|> whatever operating system you think is "the best".  The rest of us will have  
|> to settle for "the winner".

There never has been a winner in the OS war. I maintain there never will be. Here's why. With OSes just as in nature, there is plenty of room for diversity. The world doesn't need just one operating system, because:
	1) Everyone has different tastes
	2) There isn't an operating system that does EVERYTHING, perfectly

There is evidence of this everywhere. 

Tom

-- 
tgall@rchvmw2.vnet.ibm.com  (work -- NeXTMail NOT ok)
_________________________________________________________________________
|o|Tom Gall                  "Where's the ka-boom? There was supposed |o|
|o|Dept 45 N                  to be an earth shattering ka-boom!"     |o|
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|o|006-2 / B209                                            /\___\     |o|
|o|IBM Rochester    3-4558   #include<std.disclaimer.h>    \/___/     |o|

In article <CBIy2A.Kwx@molly.uucp> uunet!molly!vlcek (Jim Vlcek) writes:
>I found the following in last week's ComputerWorld (arriving late due to our  
>recent move and slow forwarding).  This is an opinion piece by Mr. Ben  
>Rothke, "network computing manager at the National League for Healthcare in  
>New York."
>
>While I'm not as convinced of the totality of the outcome of the Great OS War  
>as is Mr. Rothke, I think he makes some very good points.  In particular, he  
>ought to be heard by the NeXTophiles and Linux lovers, two groups doggedly  
>avoiding reality in dreaming of a key role in the OS picture.
>
>Without further ado, here's Mr. Rothke's piece, from p 33 of the 2 August  
>1993 ComputerWorld newspaper:
>
>  What's excellence got to do with it?
>
>Many analysts have called 1993 the year of the battle of the operating  
>system.  I say it's never been anything but a paper war, and the outcome is a  
>foregone conclusion.

	Mr. Rothke's article underscores a belief in the computer industry
that many people are buying into, but I do not, namely that there is a
"war" going on in the OS arena, and that Windows has won it.  This belief
is based on a more ludicrous belief, namely that in the ideal world, 
everyone would run the same OS, the same interface, the same apps.
	There are many NeXT fanatics that believe that it is NeXT's manifest
destiny to rule the desktop, just as every other OS has its own fanatics.
I think that the majority of NeXT supporters do not fall into this category.
NeXTstep has superior technology, and represents a major step forward,
at least so the advocates believe, and that superior technology has a place
serving those who believe they need that technology, or can put it to
good use.  In the "ideal world" all computer decisions would be made on this
basis.  Buy what you need, and take full advantage of it.
	The overwhelming majority of OS purchases aren't made on that basis
and thats too bad.  When someone advocates, or implies, that that situation
is somehow "natural" and should be perpetuated, that person is doing a
great disservice to the computing community.
	For Mr. Rothke, a networking computing manager for the National
League for Healthcare, to imply that his computing decisions are based
on majority rule and not on technical excellence, on what is most common
and not what is most technically capable of meeting his needs, when
he states that capability and functionality are irrelevant, I am shocked.
This is someone in a position of some influence, and he exersizes that
influence by blindly following the herd.
>
>
>IS is a service division dedicated to serving the end-user community.  This  
>is the same populace that turns the publishers of the National Enquirer into  
>millionaires and Julliard-trained musicians into waiters.  Given that fact,  
>how can we even wonder why NextStep will never get a serious amount of market  
>share?
>
>What this all means is that, at least for the next few years, no one will  
>ever be terminated for standardizing on Windows.  If you happen to work in an  
>environment where standard graphical user interfaces and common application  
>programming interfaces are not critical, you'll have the luxury of picking  
>whatever operating system you think is "the best".  The rest of us will have  
>to settle for "the winner".
>

	I remember when the statement was that no one would be terminated
for going with IBM, and in these days, that is no longer true.  And it
took IBM only months to destroy its sheen of invulnerability.
	Mr. Rothke is implying here that he will pick what is more common over
what is best suited to the task.  I find such an assertion reprehensible.
Mr. Rothke obviously has "the luxury" of not being accountable for the
functionality and performance of the systems he recommends, or he wouldn't
have the opinions he does.
	A NeXTstep advocate would point out that Mr. Rothke obviously
also has the luxury of spending years developing and deploying custom
applications when NS apps can be developed in a fraction of the time.
Maybe he thinks that the cost of developing apps for Windows should not
be a factor in choosing an OS.

	I know there are many arguments for standardization on a particular
GUI, with the prime argument being the training problem.  Funny, we
managed to overcome the hurdle of training all those non-windows people
to use Windows, and now people think that cross training from one GUI to
another represents a huge hurdle.  The jump from DOS to Windows is much 
larger than the jump from Windows to Motif, NeXTstep, or the Mac.  So
this GUi standardization argument IMHO holds no water.

	Mr Rothke is one of those people wasting trees penning articles
about an OS "war" which should not be.  Each OS has its merits, and 
succeeds based on those merits.  Windows' two merits are that it is
cheap and that Bill Gates is its saleman.  NeXTstep's merits are that it
is technically capable of tasks outside the bounds of Windows, and
delivers that power to its developers allowing rapid development of
very powerful applications.  It will succeed on those merits, and the
question is whether or not it will succeed well enough to support NeXT
Inc.

	Duane

--
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	Duane Takamine		duane@shell.portal.com
	Island CD Creations	Madd Hacker Productions
	Home of the Sound Site CDROM - nearly 1400 mods on disc

In article <CBIy2A.Kwx@molly.uucp> uunet!molly!vlcek (Jim Vlcek) writes:

>While I'm not as convinced of the totality of the outcome of the Great OS War  
>as is Mr. Rothke,

The "Great OS War" exists only in the minds of those with a salesman's 
mindset or some axe to grind. There's room for everything, including a
small number of mainstream systems and an awful lot of specialized ones.

There are those who need conformity, and see strength in numbers. There
are also those who crave innovation, constantly looking to stretch the
envelope of what can be done. It's a futile task for anyone to deny the
existance, let alone the relevance, of either approach.

>I think he makes some very good points.  In particular, he  
>ought to be heard by the NeXTophiles and Linux lovers, two groups doggedly  
>avoiding reality in dreaming of a key role in the OS picture.

As someone who has recently been taken to task for pointing out the ways
in which Linux lovers have left reality, I find myself defending them in
this context.

I have said before that I don't believe Linux has the capacity to become
a serious contender in the commercial Unix market. However, it (as well
as NeXT, which I also believe will be a commercial also-ran) certainly
*does* have a key role in the OS picture.

One of the big reasons Unix is a reality today, despite all of AT&T's
mishandling of it, is because there has been so much R&D done on it at
universities which played on BSD. Innovation has come from around the
world based on Unix, as a result of this. And some of that innovation
has even crept into MS-DOS. Yeah, MS-DOS, the system that in its early
goings, didn't have PATH variables or hierarchical directories.

All MS-DOS and Windows R&D happens within Washington state. Unix R&D has
been at educational institutions everywhere. This concept has now been
extended with Linux, because it's unencumbered by the old BSD requirements
for AT&T licencing. Linux now allows anyone with a reasonable-horsepower
PC to be a Unix R&D centre!

Innovation resulting from this mass exposure to Unix-style internals can
only help us all, including those in the commercial community. While I
still insist the commercial marketplace will reject Linux and be
lukewarm at best to NeXT, I believe it will borrow/steal many of these
systems' best ideas (as it already has done with Mach and X Windows, for
example). To the person interested in advancing the state of the art,
that's good news all around.

Who knows? Maybe the people who invent the next Mach, or freeware
X.400 e-mail interface, will do it on a Linux box. More than likely!

Microsoft has no such pool of innovation to tap into.

>Without further ado, here's Mr. Rothke's piece, from p 33 of the 2 August  
>1993 ComputerWorld newspaper:
>
>  What's excellence got to do with it?

Well, it has everything to do with mundane things like market share.
Microsoft NT was born because people were outgrowing DOS and Windows,
and Microsoft wants to keep these people in their fold rather than
discover Unix, OS/2, Desqview or something else. Microsoft was *forced*
to do its own innovation.

>Many analysts have called 1993 the year of the battle of the operating  
>system.

This is a convenient way for journalists to invent themselves something
to rebut. It avoids the necessity of dealing with any specific analyst,
whose words probably go a lot deeper than this description.

>I say it's never been anything but a paper war, and the outcome is a  
>foregone conclusion.

Well, he's certainly added his salvos on behalf of this "paper war"...

>Forests have been devastated in the cause of figuring out which of the many  
>operating systems poised for action is truly the best.

...best *for a given task*! No OS is best at everything!!

>Thousands of articles  
>and case studies have been penned constrasting the merits and drawbacks of  
>each, often in minute detail.

And each study is tailored to the needs and biases of those who commission
or write it. If everyone had the same needs, an analyst need only make
up one report and make copies for every client. But that's not how it works...

>I don't know why we bother when what's technically best is so clearly beside  
>the point.

>Let's face it, the driving force in the computer industry is no differenet  
>from the driving force in any industry.  It's image, hype and appeal to the  
>herd instinct that counts.  Excellence is entirely beside the point.

OK, the writer has admitted his biases, which is better than most will
do this explicitly. His Pavlovian reaction to the "herd instinct" is clear.
(Or should I call it a "lemming instinct"? :-)

The driving force in the industry IMO is greed (ie, profit).

Some parts of the industry will accomplish this by being mainstream,
some will get there by being innovative.

>Are Calvin Klein jeans the best out there?  Who cares - Klein jeans are what  
>the people want.

And some people buy them. A year from now they'll be turning their
attention somewhere else. Such faddish consumer loyalty is quite fickle.
On the other hand, there will be always those who resist the "herd
instinct", those who buy coldly based on Consumer Reports rather than
glossy ads.

>Johnny Ramone has sold orders of magnitude more records  
>than Andres Segovia. Does that make him a better guitarist?  Of course not.   

This of course ignores the fact that Segovia inspired many a rock
guitarist, and we might not have had a Johnny Ramone if there hadn't
been a Segovia.

>Any individual of insight discerns that quality and quantity do not  
>necessarily, and most often don't, go together.

But both are necessary. It is disingenious, as this writer is doing, to
suggest there is an either-or battle going on between the two.

>So why do we in the IS business think that the dominant operating system in  
>the 1990s will be the finest one?

Now this writer is starting to bug me. What is most important to any IS
shop may not neceesarily be either the finest one *or* the dominant one.
It's whatever tool fits the need, and the needs can differ from one
installation to the next. Significantly.

Blindly following the pack is no smarter or stupider a tactic than
blindly chasing after the brilliant and obscure.

>We can debate all we want about whether OS/2 is better than Windows or  
>Solaris is better than UnixWare. Deep down, we all know the outcome already.   

Deep down, we don't give a rat's ass.

>Making the best operating system was never Job 1 at Microsoft.  Bill Gates  
>doesn't worry about that because he understands business and human nature and  
>the fact that "the best" and "the most popular" have yet to meet in any  
>industry, let one in IS.
>
>The only thing I can't figure out is why most IS people don't see this.

They do see it. But they also see that sometimes, what you need just
isn't what everyone else needs.

>What this all means is that, at least for the next few years, no one will  
>ever be terminated for standardizing on Windows.

So Windows is the perfect "cover your ass" product. Wonderful. Some
others who actually do what they're paid to do, will actually assess
their needs and choose their tools accordingly. The result may likely
be the same. But maybe not.

>If you happen to work in an  
>environment where standard graphical user interfaces and common application  
>programming interfaces are not critical,

Standard graphical user interface: COSE
Common application programming interface: ANSI, COSE and XPG
Yeah, I can live with that.

>you'll have the luxury of picking  
>whatever operating system you think is "the best".  The rest of us will have  
>to settle for "the winner".

The need to seek a winner at all, indicates to me a lack of
resourcefullness, the inability to see shades of grey.

To each their own. Only the simpletons need see things as winners and
losers. What bothers me is when the simpletons are calling the shots.

-- 
 Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software Ltd., located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
         evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!utzoo!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
     "It costs a lot of money to look as cheap as I do" -- Dolly Parton

In article <CBLopM.IJ0@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>In article <CBIy2A.Kwx@molly.uucp> uunet!molly!vlcek (Jim Vlcek) writes:

>>What this all means is that, at least for the next few years, no one will  
>>ever be terminated for standardizing on Windows.

>So Windows is the perfect "cover your ass" product. Wonderful.  ...

A little unintentional humor there Evan ?

I'd think a door would do a better job of covering than a
window :-)


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.uucp  OR  bill@bilver.oau.org

evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>Who knows? Maybe the people who invent the next Mach, or freeware
>X.400 e-mail interface, will do it on a Linux box. More than likely!

   This is already starting to happen.  Already, we've seen programs like 
term and Seyon come out of the Linux community. 

   Michael O'Reilly's "term" program is a sort of poor man's SLIP
replacement --- it doesn't provide all the functionality of a full-blown
SLIP link, but it lets you do a lot of TCP networking things over a dialup
line, and all without requiring SLIP drivers in the kernel or even any
configuration from the sysadmin of the machine on either end.

   Seyon is a terminal emulator program (ala pcomm), but with an X interface
(nice pop-up menus for dialing, download protocols, etc).  Very nice.
Haven't had a single problem with it, which is more than I can say for
pcomm (not that pcomm was horribly bad or anything, just that it had an
couple of annoying bugs that had been driving me up the wall until I
decided "hey, maybe this Seyon will work better" and it did.) 

   The nice thing is, even though my main Unix boxen aren't Linux, I could
compile and run both term and Seyon pretty much out of the box (out of the
tar file?) on my home machine.  I use them both daily.  

   Dunno about the next Mach, but I recall sometime back hearing about some
people being interested in converting Linux into a single-server to run
on top of Mach, so people could have something Unix-like to run on Mach
while Waiting For The Hurd, Or Something Like It.  I will refrain from
commenting about the desirability of an X.400 mail interface, free or
otherwise. :-)
 

evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:


>All MS-DOS and Windows R&D happens within Washington state. Unix R&D has

Evan, this is untrue.  Alot of the R&D takes place elsewhere.
Microsloth buys alot of the "technology" in DOS/Windows from other
companies, which do their R&D elsewhere (e.g. the UNDELETE stuff
is from Central Point Software, here in Oregon).


>been at educational institutions everywhere. This concept has now been
>extended with Linux, because it's unencumbered by the old BSD requirements
>for AT&T licencing. Linux now allows anyone with a reasonable-horsepower
>PC to be a Unix R&D centre!

-- 
Joe V. Moss                             |   joe@morton.rain.com
Morton & Associates                     |  joem@m2xenix.psg.com
7478 S.W. Coho Ct.			|         - or -
Tualatin, OR 97062-9277                 |  uunet!m2xenix!morton!joe

evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:

>The driving force in the industry IMO is greed (ie, profit).

I don't know; I'd suspect it's more like fear. Specifically the fear
of being Out on a Limb with {Unix, OS/2, NextStep...} when all of one's 
peers are scrambling over themselves to leap onto the Windows NT
bandwagon. Even before we find out whether or not the bandwagon's
wheels are even round ... :-)
-- 
Mark McWiggins      Hermes & Associates		  +1 206 632 1905 (24 hrs.)
mark@hermes.com     Box 31356, Seattle WA 98103   +1 206 632 1738 (fax)

In article <24hb1u$d6b@nwfocus.wa.com>, markmc@halcyon.com (Mark McWiggins) writes:
> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
> 
> >The driving force in the industry IMO is greed (ie, profit).
> 
> I don't know; I'd suspect it's more like fear. Specifically the fear
> of being Out on a Limb with {Unix, OS/2, NextStep...} when all of one's 
> peers are scrambling over themselves to leap onto the Windows NT
> bandwagon. Even before we find out whether or not the bandwagon's
> wheels are even round ... :-)
> -- 

	Give those people time to figure out what band-wagon they
	have jumped onto... These people have absolutely NO idea
	what they are getting themselves into!! Even Bill Gates
	said "if you don't know why you need NT, you probably
	don't need it"..

	Recently at Comdex Atlanta, I saw all those Windows 3.1/DOS 5.0
	zealots praying to the NT god, waving flags, blowing horns
	and having NT tatooed on their foreheads. Bill has them all
	worked up into an NT frenzy. Well their little bubble will 
	burst when they pony up their $300.00 bucks, only to find
	that NT is as much a resource hog as that dreaded UNIX OS...


/* -----							*/
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In article <CBuqFu.J56@cbnewsm.cb.att.com>,
william.c.brown <corey@cbnewsm.cb.att.com> wrote:
>	Recently at Comdex Atlanta, I saw all those Windows 3.1/DOS 5.0
>	zealots praying to the NT god, waving flags, blowing horns
>	and having NT tatooed on their foreheads. Bill has them all
>	worked up into an NT frenzy. Well their little bubble will 
>	burst when they pony up their $300.00 bucks, only to find
>	that NT is as much a resource hog as that dreaded UNIX OS...

Unless they've sped it up by an order of magnitude since the March beta,
NT is even more of a resource hog than UNIX(tm).  NT on my 486/66 at home
is only slightly faster than UnixWare on a 486/33 here at work.

Steve
-- 
Steve Ward, Jr., System operator
School of Engineering, University of Portland
Portland OR
steve@up.edu

steve@up.edu (Steve Ward) writes:

>In article <CBuqFu.J56@cbnewsm.cb.att.com>,
>william.c.brown <corey@cbnewsm.cb.att.com> wrote:
>>	Recently at Comdex Atlanta, I saw all those Windows 3.1/DOS 5.0
>>	zealots praying to the NT god, waving flags, blowing horns
>>	and having NT tatooed on their foreheads. Bill has them all
>>	worked up into an NT frenzy. Well their little bubble will 
>>	burst when they pony up their $300.00 bucks, only to find
>>	that NT is as much a resource hog as that dreaded UNIX OS...

>Unless they've sped it up by an order of magnitude since the March beta,
>NT is even more of a resource hog than UNIX(tm). 

And NT is not multiuser and has little built in communications support like
Unix does.  If those and other Unix features NT lacks were added, NT would
be larger and slower still.

-- 
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  | Mark A. Davis    | Lake Taylor Hospital | Norfolk, VA (804)-461-5001x431 |
  | Sys.Administrator|  Computer Services   | mark@taylor.wyvern.com   .uucp |
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steve@up.edu (Steve Ward) writes:

>In article <CBuqFu.J56@cbnewsm.cb.att.com>,
>william.c.brown <corey@cbnewsm.cb.att.com> wrote:
>>	Recently at Comdex Atlanta, I saw all those Windows 3.1/DOS 5.0
>>	zealots praying to the NT god, waving flags, blowing horns
>>	and having NT tatooed on their foreheads. Bill has them all
>>	worked up into an NT frenzy. Well their little bubble will 
>>	burst when they pony up their $300.00 bucks, only to find
>>	that NT is as much a resource hog as that dreaded UNIX OS...

>Unless they've sped it up by an order of magnitude since the March beta,
>NT is even more of a resource hog than UNIX. 

And NT is not even multiuser nor does it have much comminucations support
like Unix.  Add those (not going to happen) and watch NT get even bigger and
slower.

-- 
  /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  | Mark A. Davis    | Lake Taylor Hospital | Norfolk, VA (804)-461-5001x431 |
  | Sys.Administrator|  Computer Services   | mark@taylor.wyvern.com   .uucp |
  \--------------------------------------------------------------------------/

In article <24ocfb$7l@upsun27.up.edu>, Steve Ward <steve@up.edu> wrote:
>
>Unless they've sped it up by an order of magnitude since the March beta,
>NT is even more of a resource hog than UNIX(tm).  NT on my 486/66 at home
>is only slightly faster than UnixWare on a 486/33 here at work.

I think most comments I've read in the nt news group state that the 
released version is noticably faster - and this is what I found too!
-- 
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