RE: IBM loses its Unix license - Jun. 16, 2003

["Hall, Philip" <phall@xxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> At that time, Windows 3.11 was the de facto standard,
> and as a multi-tasking OS it plain sucked.  No memory 
> protection, no inter-process communications, and only
> the most limited of multi-tasking constructs.

Oh how I hate to nit-pick, but there's nothing to watch on TV, so sorry Joe...

There was memory protection in all commercial versions of Windows (3.0, 3.1 and 
3.11 aka; Windows for Workgroups). If you ever got a GPF message box when 
running applications, there was the memory protection mechanism coming into 
play - GPF remember, was the TLA for General Protection Fault. Windows 2.0 (the 
version where Windows still looked like the GEM rip-off) however was a whole 
other kettle of fast moving sharp objects...

Inter-process communications were also in existence for Win3.x, There was that 
lovely DDE for starters, then the very tasty OLE for seconds, and mmmmmm my 
favourite - mapped files for afters !

But you're dead on correct about the 'multi-tasking' or aka; first come, first 
to hog the CPU forever.

--phil