Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!redsox!campbell
From: campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: When you have to go as fast as possible
Message-ID: <598@redsox.UUCP>
Date: 4 Mar 89 03:49:00 GMT
References: <4434@freja.diku.dk> <3200001@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Reply-To: campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell)
Organization: The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Lines: 27

In article <3200001@hpsemc.HP.COM> gph@hpsemc.HP.COM (Paul Houtz) writes:
}   Careful, Karl.  MS-DOS may be sold by one vendor, but it runs on more,
}different machines than Unix.   MS-DOS run more programs than unix, and 
}the number of MS-DOS users dwarfs the number of Unix users.

Sorry folks, I just couldn't let this one go by.  "MS-DOS ... runs on more,
different machines than Unix."  That's utterly ridiculous.  It runs ONLY on
Intel 8086-family chips.  Period.  MS-DOS will *never* run on anything else
(sigh, I know about the various software emulations of the 8086, big deal...)

By the way, it is my strong contention that there is really no such thing as
an MS-DOS user.  There are 1-2-3 users, and Word Perfect users, and Autocad
users, and dBase users, but these folks don't give a flying fuck whether
their application runs under MS-DOS, Multics, or Mach.

The real users of systems (as opposed to applications), and by systems I mean
the combination of a hardware architecture and operating system environment,
are application vendors.  The folks who have to write the applications are
the ones who are, quite justifiably, fed up with primitive junk like MS-DOS
and the 8086 architecture and are pushing hard for 32-bit machines with real
operating systems like Mach.  The users won't really care until it becomes
clear, as it gradually will, that the truly nifty new applications require
32-bit machines with multitasking operating systems.
-- 
Larry Campbell                          The Boston Software Works, Inc.
campbell@bsw.com                        120 Fulton Street
wjh12!redsox!campbell                   Boston, MA 02146