Re: The Great Debate V. What have changed ?

From: Beth (BethStone21_at_hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com)
Date: 03/11/04

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    Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 19:19:26 -0000

    T.M. Sommers wrote:
    > Beth wrote:
    > > things actually went _backwards_
    > > for the PC with the MS-DOS command line still being dominant until
    > > Windows 95, a decade after Apple...
    >
    > It is worse than that. The 80386 came out in about 1985. Ten
    > years later W95 still was chock-full of 16-bit real-mode code.
    > MS did not get around to producing a completely 32-bit
    > protected-mode OS for consumers until XP came out.

    Agreed; I've said before that to say Sir Gates held things back a
    decade was probably being "kind" to his evilness...

    > > No, what caused the "revolution" originated in the Department of
    > > Defence as they created an internal network designed to survive a
    > > full-on nuclear attack...as the forwardslashes in the URLs
    testify,
    > > this stuff is primarily UNIX-based (late '70s on a PDP-11 is where
    C
    > > and UNIX come from :)
    >
    > Unix did not get TCP/IP until about 1982. Before that (and
    > after, too) Arpanet hosts were a variety of other systems,
    > including the original custom IMPs from Honeywell. Remember when
    > the Simtel archives were on a DECSystem20 at White Sands Missile
    > Range, and you had to ftp using tenex mode?

    Woah! Don't go too far back here...I was only born in the mid '70s...I
    certainly wasn't FTPing to some missile range...we'll take your word
    on this, T.M. :)

    > The URL did not come along until the late 80s. By that time,
    > Unix had mostly taken over the net.

    Yeah, only around then was I aware of these kinds of things...hence
    why I mentioned this UNIX stuff...as, to me, I _don't_ "remember"
    prior to that - before my time - and, hence, from my perspective, it's
    always been UNIX regards this stuff :)

    > > "mass-market"...CD quality sound is, by the way, delibrately
    designed
    > > to run at 44.1KHZ because human hearing is within the 20HZ to
    20KHz
    > > range and you need to double that because sound is the _movement_
    of
    > > air so you at least need two values to define a movement to create
    a
    > > sound...hence, 20KHz doubled is 40KHZ and they added 4.1KHZ just
    to
    > > delibrately go a little beyond the actual limit to make sure they
    > > properly crossed it
    >
    > You actually need a sampling rate more than twice the frequency;
    > not much more, but more. And 20kHz is not a hard limit; some
    > people do hear higher frequencies.

    Well, I did kind of say "go a little beyond the actual limit" to make
    sure it really does work...which is why it's not 40KHz but 44.1Khz, to
    add on that "extra"...and, yeah, it's not a hard limit but being able
    to sense such high frequencies isn't quite the same as actually
    needing them for music and speech and so forth...in fact, as you
    approach the limits of your hearing (either end), the sound becomes
    more and more difficult to sense...though not actually reducing in
    volume in reality, it can "sound" that way to your ears...and, in
    music, the only things that approach the higher end of the scale are
    "white noise" things like cymbal crashes, rattles in a snare drum,
    etc....

    It helps the "realism" of the reproduction but it's not greatly
    important to cover the entire range...after all, look - well,
    actually, _listen_, of course ;) - at the old telephone lines which
    cut out a whole bunch of frequencies and stuff...though you can
    clearly hear when something comes across a telephone line from its
    "sound", it's perfectly adequate for the application..."loud and
    clear" enough that most people won't really notice that, yup, they
    _don't_ cover the full range of human hearing...

    Plus, of course, your hearing range gets smaller the older you get,
    anyway...hence, though you're quite right that 20Hz-20KHz as the
    "range of human hearing" _is_ more "representative" than some hard
    limit (everyone has a different range, in fact...in a science class at
    school, in fact, the teacher got a speaker and a wave generator and an
    oscilloscope and then simply turned the dial real slow from the low
    frequencies to the high frequencies and everyone was to say when they
    could start to hear the sound and when they couldn't hear it any
    longer..._everyone_ had a different set of limits...I was, in fact,
    had among the biggest frequency range...bet, though, if you tested it
    now - after all the loud music, standing next to loudspeakers in
    concerts...as well as simply being older and there's nothing anyone
    can do about that one...everything eventually goes one day - then I'd
    not do nearly so well :)...but this gets quoted as the rough range of
    hearing for people...it's also real convenient that it's twenty in
    both cases, just different units (one can suspect that it's been
    "rounded" delibrately to make it this happen to be convenient to
    remember ;)...

    Anyway, I think I made my point and you've helped to confirm it:
    Microsoft have far from "innovated the computer revolution"...if
    anything, they did nothing but sit around waiting for all the hard
    work to be done elsewhere, creaming off all those profits, profits,
    profits from other people's ideas for themselves...and, at worst,
    there's a clear case that Microsoft actually conspired in _stopping_
    it happening perhaps up to a decade earlier...

    The building blocks of the "computer revolution" - the 'Net, Email,
    GUIs, etc. - had existed all that time...the sole thing that happened
    with Windows 95 was that Microsoft finally got around to putting these
    things together in the PC (_badly_; The reason why Windows is so poor
    on the security front is that the internet was NOT part of the design
    at all...and they've been basically trying desparately to "patch"
    their inadequate designs (it's not just the internet, the GUI is
    poorly designed too) up to a reasonable standard ever since...and, in
    a sense, though Microsoft sold Windows 95 with the internet as a big
    selling point, they kind of only thought that stuff up near
    release...the code was, as always, a butchered version of the last
    release - Win3.x - which was written with probably little to no
    consideration of "internet security" whatsoever)...

    As noted, the PC had had 386 processors inside it since
    1985...perfectly capable of "32-bit" and "full pre-emptive
    multi-tasking" and so forth (to make sure everyone's on the same page,
    it was with the '386 that the registers were extended to their "EAX"
    32-bit versions...protected mode already existed on the '286, in
    fact...but it was certainly there - and in "32-bit" glory - with the
    '386...in fact, on the "protections" front, Intel haven't really added
    anything new in that direction - except the "SYSENTER" stuff, which is
    actually about trying to speed it up for OS calls, as they can see a
    bit of a "weak link" there, as I like to point out from time to time
    myself...and minor "expansions" like a 4MB as well as 4KB "page size"
    but, then, none of the OSes actually bother to use this that, even
    though it's there, your machine almost certainly _ain't_ using it that
    it might as well not be there - that, strictly, it was _ALL_ invented
    for the '386...the '486 and Pentiums have mostly worked on improving
    the raw speed of the chips and introducing parallelism - again,
    speed-orientated - with nothing fundamental that means that Microsoft
    couldn't strictly have begun to do all of this stuff way back in
    1985)...why was it only a _decade_ later that Microsoft finally
    released something that could actually do these things? As I say, it
    probably took them this long simply to _comprehend_ the ideas that
    they were _stealing_...

    The sum "contribution" of Microsoft to this was their _money_...the
    Windows 95 advertising campaign was, basically, the biggest product
    promotion in all of human history up until then (and probably still
    is, even today...once they'd hooked everyone up, even Microsoft don't
    try to "outdo" themselves with advertising on that kind of scale for
    new versions of Windows or anything)...

    If you like, what really happened was that Microsoft grabbed all the
    great ideas that they could understand from elsewhere, threw it into
    "Windows 95" and then sold it and sold it like nothing on Earth has
    ever been sold before...there were numerous "stunts" pulled in every
    country on Earth that represented dollars to Microsoft to promote
    it...in the UK here, for example, Microsoft bought "The Times" for the
    launch date...that is, they struck a deal to pay the entire cost of
    the paper for the entire day so that it was simply _given away for
    free_ to the public...the condition? Well, a special "Windows 95
    pull-out" supplement with articles full of nothing but stupidly kind
    words about how much of a "miracle" of technological wonder that Win95
    was...how strange that even their "technical editor" was failing to
    mention the whole "386 came out in 1985, Windows 95 only bothers to
    even begin to use these hardware facilities - _badly_ because tons of
    the code was _still_ not actually 32-bit or running in protected mode
    at all - a _DECADE_ too late" thing...how strange! Couldn't have
    anything to do with the "Faustian pact" with Microsoft that they have
    an entire day of _guaranteed sales_ (because Microsoft would buy
    _every_ copy regardless) where every copy they printed was already
    money in the bank, whether anyone read it or not...couldn't have
    anything to do with "The Times" realising that this "promotion" of
    their newspaper being 100% free for a day (though the Windows 95 stuff
    was only really in the supplement, Microsoft's deal was to pay for the
    whole thing...so, yeah, you got a free newspaper for the day...mind
    you, travel on the train or tube in London and you can get yourself
    hundreds of free newspapers because people leave them behind
    everywhere...but you kind of get the point, I trust ;) and the
    "promotion" that this also offers their newspaper...in that context,
    you can see why they'd take the "Faustian pact" with Microsoft because
    it could benefit them greatly too, just by allowing themselves to ride
    the Microsoft wave...

    As I said in the other post, the Windows 95 TV adverts - which, if you
    look closely, tell you _NOTHING_ about the OS whatsoever...it's all
    people smiling inanely at a computer monitor, as if on some really
    strong "happy drugs" and, how interesting, we're not priviledged to
    see what it is that they are staring hypnotised at...then Microsoft
    flashes pretty primary colours at you and everyone dances and
    celebrates...what is the fuss all about? Oh well, the advert _doesn't
    bother to tell you_...it just works on the "hypnotic suggestion" of
    "Windows 95 = happy-happy-joy-joy dancing Loving beautiful craziness
    miracle!" and doesn't ever bother with anything so dangerous as
    presenting facts...oh no, DON'T touch those facts, as they would
    distract from that "happy drugs" feeling!! - had the Rolling Stones
    tune "Start it up" playing in the background...the significance of
    this is that the Rolling Stones _refuse_ to have their music used for
    advertising...it's tacky and damages the reputation of music to be
    linked to some cheap plastic products...but Big Bill picked up the
    phone and direct dialled Mick Jagger to beg for the music because, of
    course, "Start it up" was the perfect tune to have for their whole
    idea of promoting things via the "Start" menu (highly ironic...the
    "Start" menu is the awful "Program Manager" that dominated pre-95
    Windows, which even Microsoft finally shelved away as a simple menu in
    the corner because it was clearly inferior to the standard GUI
    interfaces that _everyone else_ implemented for over ten years before
    Microsoft finally woke up ;)...and he did another one of his trademark
    "bluffs"...Bill: "So, Mick, how much do I have to pay for it?"...Mick
    (actually being sarcastic because _no-one_ ever pays anywhere near
    this much for a piece of music...after all, you can do a "sound-alike"
    or a "cover version" for no cost at all): "ooh, such-and-such
    million"...Bill: "Okay, that's a deal!"...Mick: "Huh?!? What? You're
    really going to pay that much?"...Bill: "Sure...and you've just given
    me a 'verbal contract' that I've recorded so you've got to give it to
    me legally...oh, by the way, I was willing to go four or five times
    more than that...so, I reckon I've just got myself a bargain"...Mick
    was probably pissed off at all this for a while until the big
    Microsoft cheque turned up...well, after all, there are far worse ways
    to be "conned", aren't there? I mean, oh dear, I've been totally
    scammed! He's giving me millions of dollars!! The evil cad that he
    is...

    Microsoft's contribution was the "Second Coming" advertising
    campaign...the most magnificent triumph of outright bribery and
    blackmail over common sense, in order to simply ensure that Microsoft
    forever "owns" the futur...a kind of "oh crap, someone might beat us
    to it with all this 'internet' and 'Email' stuff because it's really,
    really popular with those who already know about it...let's throw in
    some crap half-implementation of it and then promote it with the
    'Second Coming' advertising campaign to ensure that it _FOREVER HAS
    THE 'MICROSOFT' STAMP ON IT_"...

    The success of their bribery and hypnotising campaign is
    tremendous...people everywhere - even those who should know better -
    praising Sir Bill for "inventing the computer overnight" or
    whatever...how I had to spend ages actually pulling out documentation
    to _prove_ - to "de-hypnotise", as if I was trying to break him out of
    some "cult" organisation - that "32-bit" did NOT mean, as Microsoft
    advertising suggested, that networking was "more reliable" simply
    because the computer's registers were - finally, a decade too late -
    being fully used...better algorithms and better code can make things
    "more reliable" but, in fact, if you're sending more data then there's
    _more_ chance of things going wrong, not less...and then having to
    "prove" that all Microsoft were doing was using the machine to the
    capabilities it had had for the last decade...note that Pentiums were
    out by the time Microsoft finally started to attempt to begin to use
    the '386 features properly...that's not only a decade too late, we're
    also talking _two generations_ too late in hardware terms...think it's
    gotten any better? Just as "minimum requirements: Pentium" was a _LIE_
    on the Windows 95 box (it would run like a dog - I mean, it was bad
    enough when you _did_ meet the requirements - but a '486 _could_ run
    Windows 95...hence, there was NOT any "Pentium-specific" code inside
    the OS or it wouldn't have ran at all ;)...you can be assured that the
    "i386" folder name for PC-based systems that Microsoft use isn't all
    that far off the mark...DirectX has some MMX and 3DNow! stuff, if it
    discovers these things, in the "software rendering" part of DirectX
    (which, of course, _won't_ actually be used at all in 99% of cases,
    when you've got a good 3D video card that does all this stuff even
    faster still in hardware)...the rest has probably _one_ or _two_
    "WBINVD" instructions...and probably NOT because it needs it but just
    to delibrately crash earlier processors to help the _pretence_ that
    it's fully using the machine capabilities...because the old "a 486 can
    run Windows 95, despite what the minimum requirements says" fiasco is
    something they don't want to repeat...hence, one Pentium-only
    instruction in the boot sequence that does nothing useful and it's
    like: "See, look? Windows makes full use of all the Pentium
    capabilities, which is why it crashes if you don't have a Pentium!"...

    "Every crowd has a silver lining"
    [ P.T. Barnum (and, arguably, Sir Bill Gates III too ;) ]

    Beth :)

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