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640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

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Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#51

Post by qubex »

johansch wrote: post #27
nsxwolf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this myth keep getting pushed - by tech people no less? Bill Gates emphatically denied ever saying it and no one has ever come forward with a scrap of evidence he actually said it.

Guess: it was perpetuated because lots of tech people hated him and what he did to the industry and to computing progress in general. He has since gotten way, way better PR handling though. Just look at the way Reddit absolutely adores him nowadays (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs). Heck, even on HN there's enough young people who have no idea how much this one individual repressed computing progress ov…

I’m a child of the eighties, I grew up in the nineties, I remember waiting in line for my boxed copy of Windows 95 one August night in 1995, I remember ruling at Microsoft’s antitrust case (as related in WIRED), I remember how Slashdot featured an icon of Bill Gates with Borg add-one, but... I absolutely love the guy now and wish he would run for President (I am not American, just terrified).

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#52

Post by weaksauce »

ikeboy wrote: post #13
krylon wrote: post #7

As for the alleged Bill Gates quote, I read somewhere (Deep C Secrets by Peer van der Linden, I think, but I am too lazy to look it up), that "640k ought to be enough for anyone" did not mean that it was enough for anyone for all times. I am not a fan of Bill Gates, but he is not stupid. And at the time he - allegedly - said it, 640k of RAM was (for a single user!) was indeed a lot! Compare that to the 64k of the C64…

What I don't get is, if this multi-decade-old software is valuable enough to be used today, why isn't it valuable enough for someone to have written a replacement in the intervening decades? Surely every plant like this would pay something for the ability to run on modern OSes, and presumably there are enough plants using this kind of software to recoup the cost of development?

They can certainly buy new plcs and new hmis to interface together and do things but it's not like a program written for one plc from one manufacturer is interchangeable with one another. the plc code is fairly close to assembly language and it's written for one particular plc with a particular wiring. I could do it but it does take time and money to complete and even then you lose a bit of institutional knowledge codified by the original codebase. Having delved into plc programs built by others(even with comments that get stripped out if you don't have the original source file and instead download it from the plc directly) it's not easy to do. They certainly do still sell new plcs for industrial automation but the programs are typically bespoke.

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#53

Post by qubex »

johansch wrote: post #44
hota_mazi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs) You seem to have a pretty prominent chip on your shoulder regarding Bill Gates. Gates has donated billions of dollars of his fortune to charity and he's largely credited for having eradicated malaria through these efforts in multiple countries. It's hard to find a good reason to dislike someone like that.

How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing. Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place? (I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)

I never liked Bill Gates when I was a power user in the nineties and early 2000s but it really is amazing that one could offset his contribution to disease eradication and his philanthropy generally with some aggravation about his business’ tactics and nebulous what-ifs about what might have happened if he had not been on the scene or had behaved differently. (Moore’s Law would did it’s thing anyway, whether he was there or not, and even with him there, Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway.) Do you really think the annoyance of a free browser warrants indicting his post-business career?

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#54

Post by hota_mazi »

johansch wrote: post #44
hota_mazi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs) You seem to have a pretty prominent chip on your shoulder regarding Bill Gates. Gates has donated billions of dollars of his fortune to charity and he's largely credited for having eradicated malaria through these efforts in multiple countries. It's hard to find a good reason to dislike someone like that.

How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing. Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place? (I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)

> How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing

Please no ad hominem attacks, focus on what I said, not how old I am.

But if it matters to you, I wrote my first lines of code in 1979 on an Apple ][ and I've lived through the exact same times you did.

I find little point in speculating on what could have happened that didn't, I focus on reality and what people have actually achieved in their life time.

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#55

Post by johansch »

qubex wrote: post #53
johansch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing. Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place? (I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)

I never liked Bill Gates when I was a power user in the nineties and early 2000s but it really is amazing that one could offset his contribution to disease eradication and his philanthropy generally with some aggravation about his business’ tactics and nebulous what-ifs about what might have happened if he had not been on the scene or had behaved differently. (Moore’s Law would did it’s thing anyway, whether he was t…

You're very naive if you think that Microsoft's market abuses was limited to web browsers.

This is way too non-inclusive, but at least it's something:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/302767/9-companies-microsoft-d...

In the 80s Microsoft under Bill Gates was extremely fierce. Silicon Valley software companies lived in constant fear.

There was a bunch of well-documented market abuse using the control of the OS (MS-DOS).

Further reading:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#56

Post by qubex »

johansch wrote: post #48
lamp_book wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not Bill then Bob. At least he's doing some good in the world with that cash instead of hoarding it for him and his family. If it weren't for him, how long would have malaria persisted?

I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him. Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma. I can quite easily see the appeal of this. Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation p…

I’m not American but I wish he would decide that the situation there warrants ’philantropy’ and would this casually pour a billion or so into getting himself the Democratic nomination and the presidential election just for the sake of ousting Trump I’m a Battle Of The Billionaires (alleged, in Trump’s case).

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#57

Post by tigershark »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #32

Anyone remember Wing Commander game that required exactly 640K of conventional RAM?

I Never played wing commander but I don't think it is possible. With dos 6.22 using DOS=HIGH,UMB and loading everything possible in high memory and removing all the non essential stuff gave you 622k free memory if I remember correctly. I managed to get more only "cheating" using a boot disk from the dos version bundled with windows 95, but even in that case you couldn't get more than 635k of free conventional memory.

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#58

Post by hota_mazi »

johansch wrote: post #48
lamp_book wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not Bill then Bob. At least he's doing some good in the world with that cash instead of hoarding it for him and his family. If it weren't for him, how long would have malaria persisted?

I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him. Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma. I can quite easily see the appeal of this. Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation p…

> I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him.

Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you?

I don't really care what his motives are, I just look at the results of his contributions and there is no doubt in my mind he will be remembered as someone who was instrumental in saving millions of lives and advancing our civilization.

> Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days.

I profoundly disliked him as well back in the days, especially since I was a hard code Amiga fan.

As opposed to you, I have changed my opinion based on additional data.

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#59

Post by johansch »

hota_mazi wrote: post #54
johansch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing. Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place? (I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)

> How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing Please no ad hominem attacks, focus on what I said, not how old I am. But if it matters to you, I wrote my first lines of code in 1979 on an Apple ][ and I've lived through the exact same times you did. I find little point in speculating on what could have happened that didn't, I focus on rea…

It wasn't an attack (heck, wtf, I was just asking your age, maybe stop over-dramatizing?); I was trying to find out if you had some sort of personal experience or was just parroting the newer reddit hivemind.

Re: 640k Really Is Enough for Anyone

#60

Post by johansch »

hota_mazi wrote: post #58
johansch wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him. Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma. I can quite easily see the appeal of this. Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation p…

> I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him. Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you? I don't really care what his motives are, I just look at the results of his contributions and there is no doubt in my mind he will be remembered as someone who was instrumental in saving millions of lives and advancing our civilization. > Many, many people disliked him after his pre…

> Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you?

Well, yeah.

I think we'd be at least 5 years further into the future in terms of software than we currently are, possible 10, unless he hadn't abused the markets so gravely.

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