CompuServe Thread

Uh, Gus, when you said "NT is the first thing close to a true multitasking, multithreading OS," you meant to follow that with "from Microsoft," right? Even then, though, you'd be wrong, since OS/2 was originally from Microsoft as well. (NT was in fact going to be OS/2 3.0 before the IBM/Microsoft split!) And let's not forget NeXTstep, which has been doing things since 1.0 way back when (I believe it's up to 3.x, with a 4.0 due out soon, and these are HONEST version numbers unlike NT "3.5" which is really 1.5 since there never was a 2.x or 3.0 and its "3.1" is really 1.1) that Windows NT won't even BEGIN to be doing until Cairo! Things like true object orientation throughout the system and by far the easiest and most efficient professional development system available on any platform anywhere. Microsoft has always had a nasty habit of claiming "firsts" long after other companies had actually pioneered those things. I still remember guffawing when Microsoft claimed that QuickBASIC 4.0 would be the first incrementally-compiled BASIC for personal computers, and the first microcomputer BASIC to have user-definable variable types. You see, I'd been using BASIC09 (runs under OS-9, an INCREDIBLE operating system designed back in the early 80s for the 6809 8-bit CPU that did multitasking and multi-USER and had about 80% of the functionality of UNIX and yet ran on a machine with only 64kB of RAM and still had lots of RAM left over, and could boot from a single-density floppy disk!) and it'd been doing both of those things for years before Microsoft even had QuickBASIC 1.0, let alone 4.0! I've learned that when it comes to claims of originality and innovation, Microsoft's veracity record is right up there with Rush Limbaugh's as seen by F.A.I.R., or Bill Clinton's as seen by Limbaugh. I don't think Bill Gates has honestly INNOVATED anything since Altair BASIC and even _that_ wasn't all that original (BASIC had been around awhile and most of Gates's extensions came straight from DEC's PDP-11 RSTS BASIC-plus). (Yes, I know this message is referring to something posted months ago. But we got tired of waiting for Compuserve to come out with the 14.4kBps Shreveport node promised for January which STILL isn't available, and we really don't like paying so much extra just because Compuserve still treats Shreveport as the Nation's Largest Hick Town (its population is over half a million in the Metropolitan Statistical Area). Finally, TymNet opened up a 9600bps node, so we're using that while we're waiting. Every month, we'd GO PHONES and view Network Announcements/Pending Additions and see that the Shreveport node's promised Implementation Date has been changed to the new month. Which means that the only real information we get from that display is what month it currently is, and we can find THAT out by glancing at the calendar on our wall!)