Frisbee®
Tue Jun 27 15:10:29 CDT 2006
"MitchS" <firstinitlastname@nospam.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:eKZsARimGHA.4164@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> "JaR" <jrderby@lakabux.com> wrote in message
> news:pan.2006.06.27.19.31.05.879702@lakabux.com...
>> On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:25:09 -0700, kpg cast into the ether:
>>
>>>
>>> I blame Bill Gates.
>>
>> You can't do that anymore. He's running for saint.
>
> He only needs 3 more miracles and death.
His first miracle was this (from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall):
In 1980, IBM approached Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its
upcoming IBM PC. Legend has it that Kildall snubbed the IBM representatives
by going flying in his Pitts Special (an aerobatic biplane) for several
hours. Although widespread, the story is generally not accepted to be true
because it was Kildall's wife, Dorothy, who handled business negotiations,
not Kildall himself. Another story has it that IBM representatives wanted
Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy
considered overly burdensome. Kildall associate Gordon Eubanks has said that
the non-disclosure was signed, but that Kildall was not enthusiastic about
porting CP/M to the IBM PC's 8088 processor[1]. IBM related the story to
Bill Gates, who was already providing the ROM BASIC interpreter for the PC,
and Gates offered to provide an operating system as well, but he did not own
one at the time. Seattle Computer Products was building a computer around
the new Intell 8088 chip, and they needed a operating system for it. Tim
Paterson, one of their employees, wrote QDOS, which stands for "Quick and
Dirty Operating System." Gates obtained rights to it and licensed it to IBM,
thus beginning MS-DOS/PC-DOS.