[Simh] Simh on Windows - long startup delays and long shutdowndelays

[Eric Schmucker]

> On 17-Dec-07, at 5:27 AM, Gregg Levine wrote:
> 
> > On Dec 17, 2007 1:43 AM, Eric Schmucker
> > <Eric.Schmucker at verizonbusiness.com> wrote:
> >> I just don't accept the argument that MS employees are sitting
> around
> >> thinking of ways to lock programmers into their OS and tools. I
> >> don't want
> >> to start an argument about this
> 
> No need: Courts have repeatedly found this to be the case.

I just read this Wikipedia page and I can't find any mention of lawsuits
that address technical choices programmers have made. That's probably
because it's not illegal to compete, even harshly, and make products that
aren't compatible with competitors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

I don't know why Microsoft gets beaten up on this so much. All the RDBMS,
Java Application Server, Web Service Toolkit, CORBA ORB, Browser, Unix
vendors, etc try and put in custom must-have features to keep their
customers happy, and yes to keep them from switching to competitors. Is this
such a surprise? They pay lip service to follow standards and do so up to a
point. You may not be able to find a for-profit company that doesn't do
this. Expecting MS to do something that no other company has done and then
be bitter at them for it doesn't make sense.

Portability/compatibility in HTML is possibly a bigger thing than in C these
days. But no matter how much people have complained about it, none of the
major browsers render HTML/CSS in a consistent way (even excluding IE). It
would be nice, but it is just too much to ask all those companies with their
own priorities to work together. They will always first please their own
loyal developers and users. They are all (Apple, Sun, Oracle, MS, etc.)
going to look after number one while saying they are working toward
standards.

If I was a programmer that worked on applications that had to be portable,
it would annoy me also, but it's unrealistic to expect it to change.

> 
> >> since it's very off-topic and I don't feel
> >> that strongly about it. ...
> >>
> >> The fact that Simh runs on so many systems is quite a feat and I
> >> respect and
> >> praise all the developers who make it possible. But I don't envy
> >> them trying
> >> to use the C RTL calls whenever possible to make it portable.
> 
> Win32 is hardly a step towards portability.

No argument there. I didn't think I even hinted it was.