Actually, since I got my first BBC micro I've been of the Acorn
tradition. The operating system I "know" is Risc OS which nowadays
revolves around StrongARM, network computers and so on.
(It was a "clean-slate" design that came out for ARM chips in '88:
memory protection, modular, extensible, fast graphics, very nice GUI
but only cooperative "multitasking". From the start it had a better
interface than Windows does today although that gap is closing: some
parts of the Windows '95 interface that hadn't already been lifted
straight from Apple and NeXT are astonishly similar to Risc OSisms...)
Anyway, my knowledge of Unix is very limited due to never having
needed to look under the hood in the past eight years. My knowledge
of DOS and Windows are limited due to never having been able to figure
out how they were supposed to work. I'm just resigned to constant
crashes and reboots when forced to use a Microsoft product. Is it not
a sad statement that an electrical engineer with 20 years experience
of computers and programming (my Dad) and a whipper-snapper computer
scientist (me) just *cannot* get your so-called OS to do a damn thing?
>Generally I can fix the "problems sometimes" after a few minutes [...]
>Maybe it's because I'm *really* really smart, even smarter than you,
>why, so smart that I can fix Windows problems as well as Unix problems.
Yeah right.
>[...] I find NT to be the Land Rover/HMMV in the OS auto sales lot. [...]
And how many processors does it scale to? All the way from one to two?
You can keep your two-wheel jeep and see how far you get but for
"industrial-strength" I'd prefer an eighteen-wheel truck, thanks. Why
don't you telnet over to cosmos.jpl.nasa.gov to see if those 1024 Alphas
are running NT? Marketing issue, my ass.
Bye,
Rob.
.-. Robert.Harley@inria.fr .-.
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