A group of state attorneys general urged a federal judge on Tuesday to hold Microsoft to a 2002 antitrust settlement another five years so that the company can't stymie embryonic Web 2.0 rivals of its Windows operating system. According to six states - California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts - and the District of Columbia, Microsoft could use its Internet Explorer browser as a 'chokepoint' to block moves that might unseat Windows dominant position on the desktop. 
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Member since:2007-01-27
I've never run VMS, but know that its developers and implementers have written all code lines that Dave Cutler has ever created out of the operating system, replacing them by better implementations.
One thing that allegedly remains unmatched by any other operating system is its architecture independent and totally integrated clustering support.
OpenVMS doesn't do failover, period. It just works. I think Linux and Solaris stand to learn much about how to implement this the right way.
Member since:2006-01-02
Time and solidity were also factors in Cutler's development of VMS. He had only two years or so to write it and they shipped with zero known bugs. And it was coded in VAX assembly. Given a longer amount of time and good C compilers, VMS could have had better algorithms in certain places. But the overall design is pretty unique and was different from the UNIXes of the time. As I've heard and seen, Cutler has a talent for writing code that performs well while being readable and straightforward. You can certainly sacrifice the second and third items for performance, but that's only appropriate when you have a system that works.
Member since:
2005-07-15
VMS is actually a rock solid platform. Marketing or lack thereof can make or break a company, regardless of the quality of the products.