[Gllug] Re: Gates to get Knighthood!!! (Andrew Halliwell)

[Ian Norton]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 03:51:03PM +0000, Steve Nelson wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 15:39:23 -0000, David Abbishaw <David at abbishaw.com> wrote:
> > I'm sorry and I'll probably have millions of people shooting at me for this
> > comment BUT - If it wasn't for Bill Gates PC's would not be as they are
> > today, he is responsible for bringing computers to the masses.  
> 
> Like him or hate him, Mr Gates and his cronies have revolutionised
> computing and society, and while he has been amply rewarded
> financially, I think it is perfectly acceptable to acknowledge his
> contribution with an honour.

He seems like an 'ok' bloke sometimes, It's his company and marketing that
really p*ss us all off. The whole 'get the facts' thing is an example.

If DOS and Windows hadn't been marketed as well as they have, we would
all be moaning about apple or possibly using some funny amiga type thing. One
thing is for sure, There is a very good chance we would still be dominated by
some descendant of the x86 family or some descendant of the 68k/PPC. 

You can probably imagine, that, Andy Tannenbaum would still have been teaching
OS design, and would still have wrote a sort of minix thing for teaching (and
therefore on a cheap machine). So, irrespective of the instruction set, we
would have probably had a Linux write a Freax on a similar machine,

Whether it would all be bigger or smaller this many years later is another
thing...

It's the marketing, not the brand of technology that has driven down computer 
prices. 

Let him have his knighthood :-), Im sure it would be alot less wierd than
seeing RMS at the palace.
-- 
Ian Norton-Badrul

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