Re: FWIW - OT MESSAGE HEADERS

Tom Watson wrote:

> IMHO the single best thing that Gates & Co. did was make everyone
> speak the same language.

No, that's not what he did.  He did make most people, particularly the 
most vulnerable people use the worlds worst OS to run their programs on 
(horrible memory protection) and store their files on (horrible file 
systems)  His operating shell (windows) is a horrible interface that is 
hard to work with, hard to analyze, and simply sucks.

> Anyone who remembers trying to pass business files back and forth
> before de facto standardization by msft doesn't miss those days even a
> little bit.

> Please email me if you disagree and I will get back to you with an
> attachment - written in WordStar 1.  

I disagree completely.  The only compatible files amongst applications 
are text files.  If you think MS Word files are compatible, or Excel 
files are compatible with other applications you would be wrong.  If you 
think things are great because EVERYONE is pretty much stuck using Word, 
then you probably think the world would have been better off if Hitler 
won the war and we were are forced to drive Volkswagens.

A good example of compatibility is what this very thread is about. 
Usenet, email, HTML is all open source where anyone can write an 
application such as Thunderbird, Firefox, OE, IE.  When they write the 
apps, they are expected to meet the protocols so everything works. 
Gates has always SCREWED up his code to NOT conform to the standards 
hoping to force everyone to use his crap, just like everyone is forced 
to use his OS's.

Yes, Gates has gone a long way to make EVERYTHING incompatible and 
forcing everyone to speak HIS language.  This is BAD in itself, but 
whats even more grating is his language sucks and barely works.

-- 
Jack
http://jbstein.com