Mail Archives: opendos/2000/10/31/17:04:38
Hi Bob,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert W Moss" <domanspc AT juno DOT com>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 6:18 PM
Subject: Re: A little history
> There are definitely not to many Mr. Nice Guys out there anymore.
>
> Bill Gates is so paranoid, and has been since his early days
> with the old Basic tapes, (when he walked in to the PC Users
> Group meeting in San Jose and threw a tantrum because some of the members
> were giving away copies of his paper tape Basic program, and he
> wanted $15 for them) that he has gotten together with most of the
What a real creep! I never heard that one before. This was a group of
hobbyist that got together and the only PC was the Altiar 8800. Someone had
written a program for it to play music on a radio! You turned on an AM radio
and placed it close to the computer and it would pick up the RFI from the
computer and it had a seriers on tones porgrammed into it. was the first
thing that anyone ever got it to do.
Gates had aboslutly no rights to ever sell BASIC. How he managed to drop
through the holes in the legal system I have no idea. Mr Allen had made an
8080 emulator on a DEC PDP 10 for the 8008 CPU. They loaded that up on a
GOVERNMENT owned computer at Harvard University and recoded it for 8080
instruction set. Then gates used a copied and converted the PUBLIC DOMAIN
BASIC into the emilator written by Allen. He then copied to paper tape and
took it to Albuquerque and tried it on the Altair at Mr Roberts MITS
business site. God forbid, it actually worked. Gates literally stole the
public domain software and used created his basic on a Univeristy computer
that was own by the governement. That violated a ton of laws. Too bad there
is a statute of limitations else he could be sued for everything he has,
because everything he has came from that illegal operation he pulled off.
> big software companies to more or less standardize all software
> licenses. I believe he was also the main man behind getting the
> "Software Police" setup, where they can get a rumor from a
> disgruntled employee, and then go into a company site
> and shut down the complete business operation while they
> inventory each and every pc, server and workstation for installed
> software. If you cannot show proof of license for all your software
> they can fine large amounts for each piece of software. They eve
> threatened to shut down the US Military on several bases. When I
> was working for the Us Navy we had to keep track of each computer
> on the base with current location and log of each piece of software
> on the machine, and pull spot inspections at least once each 6 months
> to make sure that there were no personal programs, or shareware, or
> non-reported software on any of the computers. When you have up to
> 5,000 pcs and are subject to $50,000 dollar fines for each piece of
> unauthorized software, it can put you out of business real fast.
This really is not fair. But when the government gets involved they don't
care. They have such big egos anyway. I often take personal software and put
it on company computers. However when I leave, I always renove it all,
because they would not have proof of License. While I am their I can always
bring in the originals and prove ownership. But some disgrunted jerk could
put something on the system and not remove it if he is fired and turn them
in. The government can even remove the computers.
> I have read some licenses that allowed you to give the software to
> another individual as long as you notified the software company of the
> transfer, and transferred all the books, disks, and copies to the new
> user, but in a large company they usually buy licenses for a certain
> number of users and the IT Office has to keep track of each installation
> and remove or install each application where and when needed. They
> only get Master CD's for the software and they may or not get any books
> for the users. It is then up to the company to train it's people and
> keep
> track of the licenses.
This is a big crock of crap. A lot of software that have x number of
licenses will detect when you have reached the limit of X and not allow
another copy to be installed. All software companies should be forced to do
this. In a large company it is very hard to keep track of stuff. Where I
work several years ago was a big company. What they did to get around this
was to buy a site license. Unfortunately if you read the fine print it has
to at a single location. Some companies may have building spread all over a
town. I was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This is the home of
Collins Radio Co. They had buldings and factories all over town. My mother
used to joke about it and say: "Everytime someone would move out of their
house Collins would buy it"<g>.
The whole problem is GREED.
My original license for MS BASIC for my BASIC in ROM for my OSI PC stated
that I would only have to pay for License BASIC one time. What a crock, I
had to pay it again for my APPLESOFT BASIC (Wriiten by MS) for GW-BASIC in
DOS, OBASIC in DOS, Quick BASIC 4.0 and who know how many other times I have
paid for it!
> I am sure they would love to get in to each and every home PC but, just
> last year, there was a kibosh put on the software they had installed in
> Windows which allowed them to look into your PC whenever you went
> looking for an upgrade for software, and inventory all your software to
> check for registered copies. Most people think that is an invasion of
> privacy, and I am sure a lot of people have never registered their
> software
> anyway, because they think it will never be a problem.
I think the only MS software I actually sent the card in and registered was
WINDOZE 2.0 for my 286. The only reason I sent that in is because there was
nothing at all on the first disktte and I stated that on the registration
card. I never heard a word from MS and they never send me a good copy of
that diskette. So I figure they never read those things and probably just
dump them into file 13. All of my Central Point Software is registered
because I am a vAr and got the software real cheap and orfder it directly
from them.. Other than that very little of my software is registered. Some
is now because it is done automatically through the internet. But I never
bothered to send in those cards. I think those are an ivasion of privacy.
The ask a bunch of stupid questions that I do not care to answer. I put
"NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS" on anything like that I send in! INCLUDING the
censes. I do put the pertinent information they ask for. never did get one
this year though.
> Maybe, someday, we'll all just get along together.
>
> Until then, remember Kentucky Fried Computers had to change their name to
>
> North Star and then there was IBMC or Itty Bitty Machine Company.
> Once Bill Gates was asked to dress up and he said "I can't wear Armani
> suits.
> Steve Jobs wears Armani suits."
<BIG GRIN>
Well Linux may just do that!
Pat
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