Iowa takes Microsoft to court

[krissel]

At least they haven't given in as other states have. Just maybe they will succeed.
Be sure to check out various links on these pages.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061209135113443

QUOTE

Exhibit 7264. Almost three years ago, on January 7, 2004, Jim Allchin, the senior executive at Microsoft, sent an E-mail to Microsoft's top two executives, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and the subject was losing our way.

Mr. Allchin says, I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products. He goes on to say, I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.

Other MS lawsuits:

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.p...005010107100653

Allchin's blog:

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsv...2/12/title.aspx

Very interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

QUOTE

Gates, "He is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry."

[Gregg]

Go Iowa!

(My son would kill me for saying that, so Go Gophers!)

[gunug]

I had no idea about how Gary Kildall died!  How mysterious!

[kelly]

Go Hawks! I mean Iowa.

Wonder what my share will be?  

[krissel]

Found a lot more on Gary Kildall and how MS became the defacto OS.

I'd read about all the funny business with IBM, DR-DOS, Gates et al in the past but I never really understood the complete origins til I read these articles. Kildall was the real brain behind the computer's OS origin and development. The only claim to fame Gates has is his aggressive business attitude.

QUOTE

IBM then talked to a small company called Microsoft. Microsoft was a language vendor. Bill Gates and Paul Allen had written Microsoft BASIC and were selling it on punched tape or disk to early PC hobbyists, which was probably a step up from the company's original name and goal - they were Traf-O-Data before, making car counters for highway departments.

 After buying the rights to a system with obvious similarities to Kildall's, Gates rewrote and 'tuned up' the code but ultimately it was only 4000 lines. Even at that it was still a mess.

QUOTE

IBM subjected the operating system to an extensive quality-assurance program, reportedly found well over 300 bugs, and decided to rewrite the programs. This is why PC-DOS is copyrighted by both IBM and Microsoft.

QUOTE

The last straw was when the University of Washington in 1992 invited Kildall to attend the 25th anniversary of its computer science program. He was one of its earliest and most distinguished graduates, earning a PhD, yet they had picked as keynote speaker Gates, a Harvard dropout. Kildall says it was this dig that prompted him to write his memoir. "Well, it seems to me that he did have an education to get there. It happened to be mine, not his," Kildall wrote.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...05109_mz063.htm

http://www.digitalresearch.biz/Gary.Kildall.htm

http://www.digitalresearch.biz/HISZMSD.HTM

http://www.digitalresearch.biz/EUBANKS.HTM