Interview With Bill Gates

[Buck]

Over at The Inquirer, an article entitled: Microsoft's Gates dampens Longhorn OS fever, another amusing jab at Bill Gates is taken when it comments about the interview Bill had with NE Asia online, stating:

". . . Gates wobbling on about how the operating system doesn't know anything about people. Well, you can say that again Bill. People get totally infuriated with your operating systems from time to time, and wonder how, for example, the Irish railways can run on a VMS system for 17 years
without a re-boot, while sometimes 17 minutes is good for Windows OSes." - © 2002 Breakthrough Publishing Ltd.

Although I'm not against Windows, I thought the example quoted was too good to pass up.

Am I becoming like Jehh and just posting news stuff now?

 

[Corvair]

". . . Gates wobbling on about how the operating system doesn't know anything about people. Well, you can say that again Bill. People get totally infuriated with your operating systems from time to time, and wonder how, for example, the Irish railways can run on a VMS system for 17 years
without a re-boot, while sometimes 17 minutes is good for Windows OSes." - © 2002 Breakthrough Publishing Ltd.

Although I'm not against Windows, I thought the example quoted was too good to pass up.

Though there is a bit of hilarity to the above, may I ask you one question: HAVE YOU USED VMS? I did for years thoughout the 1980s up until about 1991. It was a bit painful to use. Otherwise, it was stable.

 

[Cliptin]

Though there is a bit of hilarity to the above, may I ask you one question: HAVE YOU USED VMS? I did for years thoughout the 1980s up until about 1991. It was a bit painful to use. Otherwise, it was stable.

I used CMS through most of college does that count?

 

[Dïscfärm]

Though there is a bit of hilarity to the above, may I ask you one question: HAVE YOU USED VMS? I did for years thoughout the 1980s up until about 1991. It was a bit painful to use. Otherwise, it was stable.

I used CMS through most of college does that count?

I recall using CMS in either IBM VM or MVS aeons ago. Otherwise, I once had a CMS (brand) SCSI hard drive; a monsterous full-height 5-1/4" 10 MB external unit connected to a Macintosh Plus. (argh)

 

[Mercutio]

My UNIX-y opinion of VMS is that the environment is unusually verbose. I don't have any operator experience on a VMS system, but I've know of a couple of old VAX machines that probably have a half-inch of dust on them, happily whirring away, still doing whatever the hell they do.

The local Purdue campus has an 8-way AlphaServer(!) running OpenVMS. They use it to teach the freshmen BASIC. That's it.

 

[CityK]

HAVE YOU USED VMS? I did for years thoughout the 1980s up until about 1991. It was a bit painful to use. Otherwise, it was stable.

Was using it up until last Oct until I left my job...granted I didn't know how to use it other then for what I needed. Running on a VAX 8200, serving 8 on site and 3 remote client workstations...like Mercutico's observations, the VAX had a inch of dust on it but kept going and going and going .....

 

[Cliptin]

HAVE YOU USED VMS? I did for years thoughout the 1980s up until about 1991. It was a bit painful to use. Otherwise, it was stable.

Was using it up until last Oct until I left my job...granted I didn't know how to use it other then for what I needed. Running on a VAX 8200, serving 8 on site and 3 remote client workstations...like Mercutico's observations, the VAX had a inch of dust on it but kept going and going and going .....

Last month we downed the last VAX we had on site. Before we took it down we had to transfer all available backups from reel (I guess its called, the indivitual reels were 10" across and the tape had a tail) to QIC. There were about a hundred reels. Yuck! The fun part was watching the shredder company's machine eat the reels.

 

[Explorer]

I recall now using CMS with IBM VM (IBM VM/CMS).

As for DEC VMS, I used 32-bit VMS on VAX 8x00 hardware, not the later (64-bit) OpenVMS, which is easier to deal with with the intoroduction of GUI. But before VMS came out, I used RTOS on DEC PDP/8 and PDP/11 hardware. I don't miss any of that crap in the slightest.

 

[Splash]

By the way, I once met THE Bill Gates. This was back around 1988.