haha, rise your hand if you are getting old when reading this :-D
Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
151–160 of 218 posts
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> writing a few thousand lines of assembly was what it took to launch a successful software company. Yes, but that assembly was not DOS, and it wasn’t easy. Microsoft purchased the DOS code, they didn’t write it. Of course, they did develop and modify DOS. But that was a clever (and lucky) business deal, not a technological accomplishment. The real beginning of Microsoft was earlier, with Allen, Gates and Davidoff wr…
Imagine if the University had sued for their share of the IP and that was created using their resources… It’s funny because I thought Jobs/Wozinak got their initial funding from selling phreaking boxes. And more recently, Anthropic engaged in criminal copyright violations with only a slap on the wrist. Feels like a common theme of every “great” company having its origins from a “boost” resulting from criminal activit…
Stanford had shares in Google because they had the rights to the PageRank algorithm.
They sold their shares in 2005
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-02-fi-calbr...
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
We need a better system. We tried communism and that was shit, so this is the least bad system we have.
The Russian empire tried communism. It was better than what they had before or since.
The Chinese tried communism. It worked far better for them than what they had before.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
I think you overstate the power of money. Of course it helps. But it’s far from everything. Just look at the number of rich kid fuckups or CEOs with poor backgrounds. It’s just one component that smooths risk and occasionally provides a starter network, but it’s not everything.
>CEOs with poor backgrounds.
What's the percentage here?
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
The day they would make Windows 2000 codebase open source (or source available) would be the day I could die happy (although I'd probably be long dead anyways by the time there's a glimmerof chance of it happening). What a beautiful, smooth-running operating system it was.
And what would you do with the Windows 2000 source? It's 32 bit x86 code and the driver model for Windows has changed significantly since those days so it wouldn't run on modern x86-64 hardware anyway. Maybe it would run in a VM but I wouldn't care to bet on it.
Port it to 64-bit, obviously; the NT kernel has already been ported to a few non-x86 architectures.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if the University had sued for their share of the IP and that was created using their resources… It’s funny because I thought Jobs/Wozinak got their initial funding from selling phreaking boxes. And more recently, Anthropic engaged in criminal copyright violations with only a slap on the wrist. Feels like a common theme of every “great” company having its origins from a “boost” resulting from criminal activit…
Stanford had shares in Google because they had the rights to the PageRank algorithm. They sold their shares in 2005 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-02-fi-calbr...
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Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when I realized I had been using Microsoft all along through my Commodore 64.
The Commodore 64 got me started in computers, back when I was in grade school. Countless late nights programming in BASIC. All this time I never knew BASIC was licensed from Microsoft. Thanks! "Commodore licensed BASIC from Microsoft in 1977 on a 'pay once, no royalties' basis after Jack Tramiel turned down Bill Gates' offer of a $3 per unit fee, stating, 'I'm already married,' and would pay no more than $25,000 for…
I still have my C64 (it only needed some capacitors replacing a few years back) from about 1984ish but for me it was just a games machine although I did type in an awful lot of machine code from books later on.
I still remember the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) thing and low pass, high pass and band pass for sound and have some unlikely memories about graphics primitives too for a middle aged bloke!
My original Quickshot II still works. You might bear in mind Daley Thompson's Decathlon was popular in the UK back in the day and it was designed to destroy joysticks.
My C64 now has a USB interface ...
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you overstate the power of money. Of course it helps. But it’s far from everything. Just look at the number of rich kid fuckups or CEOs with poor backgrounds. It’s just one component that smooths risk and occasionally provides a starter network, but it’s not everything.
>CEOs with poor backgrounds. What's the percentage here?
.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
I think you overstate the power of money. Of course it helps. But it’s far from everything. Just look at the number of rich kid fuckups or CEOs with poor backgrounds. It’s just one component that smooths risk and occasionally provides a starter network, but it’s not everything.
Well of course. To be a CEO from a poor background, you need to work your ass off making wealthy friends early.
That's why going to an elite school is such a lifeline for people from bottom quartile backgrounds. Getting the opportunity socialize with people born at the top and be treated as a peer in an institutional environment is invaluable. That alone is worth the price of admission.
It doesn't have to be your parents, but it has to be someone with money who already knows you, trusts you, and feels like you identify with them and their interests.
Of course, you could also work your way up slowly and prove your mettle through decades of dedicated service to your employer. But I'm not sure how you'd be able to build that long track record of likability and trust to be able to raise millions based on work history when that entire history is a 3 month internship.
One can't even blame the VCs. If you're investing in things that are often partially fraudulent by design...
...do you want the getaway driver for the pump-and-dump to be a family friend you've known a long time, or a stranger that might not be a good "culture fit" for what the valuation game often becomes?
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
We need a better system. We tried communism and that was shit, so this is the least bad system we have.
Automation makes full employment detrimental if not outright impossible.
Say before tractors it took 100 men to farm enough for 1000 people.
With tractors 20 men can farm for 1000.
With automation 1 man can farm for 1000 if not significantly more.
Open Source Robo Communism is the way to go imo. Sure a handful of engineers have to maintain the robots, and build new ones. And a few jobs will remain human only.
But we could easily get to 80% of the population being free to make art and dance