Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Inside the Rivalry

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Inside the Rivalry

Al Jazeera (2017)

Film Review

This is an intriguing documentary about the notorious rivalry between Apple founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Despite their personal war over Microsoft’s alleged patent infringements, they collaborated on both the Apple and the MacIntosh computer.

The two men were similar in both dropping out of college and both having big issues with interpersonal relationships. Jobs, together with his friend Steve Wozniak, is credited with inventing the first true personal computer (PC), the Apple, in 1976. Gates and his friend Paul Allen were more focused on developing the software needed to make personal computers user friendly. The first Apple computers ran on Basic, the programming language Gates and Allen created for the Altair microcomputer.

Gates would later develop MS-DOS, an operating system written in Basic. It was designed to run on IBM personal computers and IBM “clones” designed by IBM’s competitors.

Gates, notorious for profiting off the inventions of other inventors (see The Inside Story on Bill Gates and Microsoft), also “appropriated” the graphical user interface Apple created for the MacIntosh in designing the Windows operating system which replaced MS-DOS.

Jobs introduced the Mac, the first PC to employ a graphical user interface (GUI), in 1984. This new feature made the Mac even user friendly (ie usable by people with a non-science background) than the Apple. Jobs always maintained Gates stole the GUI Windows is based on when they collaborated on the Mac.

The film also explores Jobs’ tyrannical management style, which in 1985 led the Apple board to fire him. His subsequent involvement with Pixar, the first company to produce full length animated feature films (eg Toy Story), would make him a billionaire overnight.

Eventually Apple, on the verge of bankruptcy, invited him back and he oversaw the production and release of the fabulously successful ipod, ipad and iphone.

In 2008, Gates began winding down his role at Microsoft to enable him to work full time at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The filmmakers suggest the decision relates in part to growing pressure he was experiencing from anti-trust lawsuits.

Jobs died in 2011.

The video can’t be embedded for copyright reasons but can be seen for free at the Al Jazeera website: Steve Jobs Bill Gates Rivalry

Linux: Escaping Microsoft’s Clutches Via Open Source

The Code: The Story of Linux

Directed by Hann Puttonen (2011)

Film Review

This documentary tells the story of Finnish programmer Linus Torvolds and his creation, in 1991, of the open source operating system Linux.

In contrast to Microsoft Windows, not only is Linux be freely downloadable off the Internet, but the source code used to run it is freely available for other programmers to improve on. In the last 26 years, millions of programmers from all over the world have helped improve on Linux. As a result, Linux-based operating systems are far more reliable than Windows and Mac operating systems that profit from keeping their source code private. They are also far less prone to security flaws (such as the one Wannacry and similar ransomware prey on).

In addition to greater reliability, many Linux fans are philosophically opposed (as I am) to the practice of limiting access to software and source code to those with the ability to pay for it. This directly conflicts with World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a free Internet access to everyone regardless of income or status.

The filmmakers maintain that Linux (as a freely downloadable operating system) represents the biggest transfer of wealth from the industrial north to the third world. Its easy access is also largely responsible for China’s impressive IT advances.

Although anyone can download Linux free from the Internet, most users prefer to access it through Red Hat and similar commercial entities specializing in installing Linux and providing technical support to its users. Linux is also the operating system of choice in home appliance computers.

Steve Jobs: Lost Interview with Late Apple Founder

Earlier this week Maori TV featured a remarkable interview with the late Apple founder Steve Jobs. The interview occurred in 1996, eleven years after he was forced out of Apple and founded a new computer platform company called NeXt. The videotape vanished and then mysteriously surfaced shortly after his death in 2011.

A year later he would sell NeXt to Apple. Then with the company 90 days away from bankruptcy, he would be recalled to be Apple’s CEO. Over the next eleven years he would oversee the introduction of the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iTunes and the iMac, turning Apple into the world’ biggest company.

Jobs is credited with launching the personal computer revolution, with his creation of Apple computer in 1976. In 1984 he made desktop publishing possible with the release of the MacIntosh, the first personal computer to incorporate a graphical user interface.

I was intrigued to hear him discuss his motivation for starting Apple and pushing the company to innovate with new products. He maintains money is a really low priority for him – what really drives him is the excitement of collaborating with really brilliant people

His views on Microsoft, which he describes as “the MacDonald’s of the computer industry” are also really illuminating.

This video, which can’t be embedded, can be viewed at the Maori TV website for the next two weeks: Steve Jobs Lost Interview

The Myth of Internet Security

Web Warriors

National Geographic (2008)

Film Review

Web Warriors is a documentary about the vulnerability of major computer-controlled power, communication, transport and military grids to attacks by hackers, viruses and worms that have the potential to bring regional and national economies to a standstill.

The goal of the film is to confront viewers with the stark reality that the Internet was never designed to be secure. The World Wide Web was never designed to be an engine of commerce or to safeguard bank and other financial data. At present, it’s still virtually impossible to design a 100% secure computer network.

The video opens by exploring the likelihood that the August 24 blackout that shut down the eastern US and Canada for two days in August 2003 was most likely caused by a computer worm attack, rather than a “programming error,” as claimed by company officials.

It goes own to identify other Fortune 500 companies shut down at various times by hackers, including Yahoo, Ebay, Dell, CNN, Amazon, Amtrak and Air Canada. Most companies try to cover up incidents of cybercrime so as not to alarm their shareholders or customer base.

Microsoft’s monopoly on the operating systems used in commercial computer networks (ie they all use Windows) significantly increases their vulnerability to hacking, viruses and worms.*

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*This was seen recently in the critical infrastructure in countries all over the world shut down by the May 2017 WannaCry Ransomware attack. See WannaCry Ransomware Everything You Need to Know

The Inside Story on Bill Gates and Microsoft

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside

By Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller

Henry Holt (1998)

Book Review

Can be downloaded from from Open Library

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, co-authored by former Microsoft programmer Marlin Eller, is mainly about Gates’ mercurial and inconsistent management style. While highly unflattering to Gates, Barbarians simultaneously refutes Justice Depart claims that Microsoft deliberately tried to squash competitors by stealing their innovations. The authors make out it was all just a coincidence – that Gates was too disorganized to carry out such a conspiracy. I don’t buy it.

Eller was one of the original programmers at Microsoft in 1982 when the company had only two hundred employers. They had more than 20,000 when he left. The programmer was principally involved in the development of Windows, the graphic interface Microsoft copied from VisiOn and the Apple Macintosh. The launch of Windows ultimately enabled Microsoft to monopolize the software market (competitors’ software wouldn’t run on Windows).

As Ellers describes it, the birth of Windows was a long painful saga, plagued by Gates’ mismanagement and numerous blind alleys costing the company hundreds of million. Microsoft had no systematic quality control over Windows. They seem to have mainly relied on customers to inform them of bugs and security flaws post release.

Eller repeatedly depicts Gates ordering his programmers to reverse engineer software created by other companies. Thus I find it hard to believe it was pure coincidence that Microsoft put Netscape out of business by creating Internet Explorer (which they copied from Netscape) – especially when Internet Explorer team left a giant “E” on Netscape’s front lawn the night before they launched Internet Explorer 4.0. Attached was a card that read

“Good people should feel so BAD! Best wishes – the Internet Explorer team.”

The book also details Microsoft’s longstanding legal problems, including numbers copyright infringement lawsuits and a longstanding battle with the Department of Justice over unfair competition and violation of anti-monopoly laws.***

The reader comes away with the sense that Microsoft’s only unique innovation was MS-DOS* and the BASIC programming language Gates created enabling computers to talk to one another. I’m inclined to agree with Justice Department claims that he used his wealth and monopoly power to pressure manufacturers to load Windows onto new computers. This, in turn, squeezed out competitors who designed software for other operating systems.

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*Shortly before their 1999 acquisition by AOL in 1999, Netscape created the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. The foundation, in turn, rewrote the source code for Netscape Navigator. The latter would be used to power Mozilla’s open source Firefox browser. Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000 and as chairman of the board in 2014.

**DOS (short for disk operating system) is an acronym for several computer operating systems that are operated by using the command line. MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 including the partially MS-DOS-based Microsoft Windows.

***Microsoft’s battle with the Department of Justice is ongoing.

Open Source and Sustainability

As strange as it may sound, switching to Open Source operating systems and software can save a lot more carbon emissions than changing your lightbulbs.

I myself have switched to Firefox (instead of Microsoft Explorer) and Open Office (instead of Microscoft Word) and plan to download Linux soon to replace Windows. As a community organizer for 30+ years, Microsoft has been the bane of my existence. Most of the activists I work with use MS Word (and before that MS Works) to create documents. Predictably Microsoft has come out with a new version of Word that is unreadable by older versions. Clearly this is a calculated maneuver to force customers to continually purchase new upgrades.

Opening Pesky Docx Files

This time, however, I followed the advice of a fellow Green Party member and downloaded Open Office, provided free by Sun Microsystems Open Source software. Thanks to the Open Source movement, every time Microsoft comes out with a new word processing program, Open Office offers upgrades to translate the new program to either Open Office or an older version of Word. Not only does it open those pesky docx files, but it creates spreadsheets and slideshows and allows you to save graphics as either PDF or JPG files. It probably does lots of other things I haven’t discovered yet.

The other great thing about Open Office is that, like other Open Source software, it runs faster than Microsoft programs, crashes less and is less much likely to have security problems. This is because Sun Microsystems makes Open Office code freely available for other programmers to improve and build on. Computers aren’t like soup. By involving more people in creating code, you make it far more likely someone will find all the bugs and security problems.

Download Open Office Free at https://www.openoffice.org/

New Zealand residents have their own Open Office site: http://www.openoffice.org.nz/

How Open Source Reduces Carbon Emissions

So, people ask me, how does this reduce carbon emissions? There are obviously small energy savings (related to DVD production, packaging, transportation, etc) when an individual downloads software instead of buying it off the shelf. However the big emissions savings occur when large companies that maintain vast amounts of data switch to Open Source. Recently the Bank of New Zealand vastly reduced their energy costs and carbon emissions by converting their front end systems to Open Source.

They save money and energy by  speeding up and simplifying their data processes with a single (Red Hat Linux) program, instead of relying on three or four programs for different functions.

Companies Going Open Source

In response to the global recession, the immense cost savings is leading many government agencies and Fortune 500 companies to switch to Open Source for part or all of their data processing. The best known are BART (Bay Area Transit System), Burlington Coats, CISCO, Conoco, the Mobil Travel Guide (Exxon’s consumer website), Royal Dutch Shell, Panasonic, Hilfiger, Toyota Motor Sales USA, US Army, US federal courts, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Post Office.

Countries Going Open Source

Third world countries are also benefiting from Open Source cost savings. Brazil was the  first to mandate Open Soft systems for all their government offices.  In 2013, 16 third world countries (Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, India, Kenya, Guatemala, Botswana, Rwanda, Togo, Lesotho, Mali, Ghana, Namibia and Chad) saved over $100 million dollars by installing Open Soft software to track their health care workforce.

Open Source Design: Reclaiming the Commons

Engineers, architects and climate change activists in the Open Sustainability movement are expanding Open Source Design beyond its computer applications to ensure the rapid spread of ideas and technologies that reduce energy use and carbon emissions.

Examples include

1. Open Source green architecture and renewable energy technologies
2. The Creative Commons – a nonprofit California organization devoted to expanding the range of inventions and creative works available for others to share and build on.
3. Singularity University – “a grand scheme to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies to address Humanity’s Grand Challenges.”
4. Public Library of Science – a nonprofit open access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals, with the eventual goal of making all scientific medical research freely available to the public.
5. Wikipedia – a free open source encyclopedia (which I discuss in my next post).

photo credit: guccio@文房具社 via photopin cc

The Early Internet Vision: Public and Free

Linux: Free Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Windows

Guest Post by Steven Miller and Satish Musunuru

(Part 2 of a five-part series on the corporatization of Internet surveillance.)

Back to the Future

Back in the early 1990s, the Internet was barely beginning. Everyone was dazzled about the possibilities of a universal communicator, where any could connect to any other individual or any other thing for free. The US Post Office was prepared to offer universal connectivity to everyone. Infinite global networking was on the agenda. The natural cooperative human instinct was in ascendency.

The basic elements of what would become the Internet had all been developed for free, outside of corporations, and had been given away to the public with no concerns for making private profit. The different technologies built upon each other through the efforts of a highly distributed network of engineers all over the world. Each piece built upon the foundation laid by another.

TCP/IP was created as a basic protocol to communicate between computers (3) and was available to everyone, although funded by ARPANET, which was a project of DARPA, which was and still is part of the Defense Department. These days DARPA is working on different technologies, like drones.

TCP/IP established the foundation on top of which came email, which uses protocols such as SMTP, POP and IMAP. The key thing is all these use TCP/IP for the actual transmission. HTTP which is the basis for the WWW also uses TCP/IP. So do Instant messaging and everything else we’ve come to enjoy using.

TCP/IP led to email and HTTP. Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN, the European nuclear lab, tied the free software TCP/IP (for establishing domain protocols) to the free software for standardize common text for every computer – HTTP. augmented by the equally-free APACHE server, and created open public access for anyone through WWW protocols. A server stores information and sends it to multiple clients when they request it. This is what’s happening when we open our browser and go to weather.com. Then Berners-Lee released the web to the world as HTML markup language in 1989. This standardized web page building and linking. (4)

Suddenly computers anywhere could talk to each other. Soon the University of Illinois gave away MOSAIC – a free graphic interface. The open-source movement added Firefox – a free web browser. The basic open-source platform language LINUX spread around the world and is even grudgingly used by Microsoft.

Corporations for years had constrained the development of digital technology so they could make a private profit off selling privileged access to information. Berners-Lee designed the Internet so that it would be free:

“I had designed the Web so there should be no centralized place where someone would have to ‘register’ a new server, or get approval of its contents.”  (5)

The idea was to establish open peer2peer networks, where the computing power, and therefore the choices, resides at either end. The most popular search engines massive servers, on the other hand, keep that power in the center, and use algorithms to determine which sites are featured first.

Since a server is centralized, it opens the door to the notion of customers. At this point, the contours begin to change as corporations start figuring out this Internet thing and start releasing their own products as competitors to freely available open source products. Corporations moved in for the kill.

The next stage in this trend is in the development of the browser. MOSAIC was the open and free alternative. But Microsoft came along with its own closed Internet Explorer and started giving it away for free with Windows. Mozilla then developed a free and superior open-source browser. Corporations struggled to develop a browser superior to this, but it now carries the bulk of Internet traffic.

Why do corporations give hardware and software away for free? Because they see a lot more profit potential in getting other corporations and citizens locked into their ecosystems. The race is to become the platform. Apple has successfully done this with their complete line of hardware/software products, which are notoriously closed to external developers. Now corporations began to exert control.

Background and Notes

3)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

4)  Larry Lessig. The Future of Ideas. 2001 , p 52 – 57

5)  Lessig, op cit, p 44

To be continued.

Reposted from Daily Censored

photo credit: aid85 via photopin cc

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water and other public resources. You can email him at nanodog2@hotmail.com

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Satish Musunuru draws upon his training as an engineer and his experience as a professional in Silicon Valley to understand the relationship between technology and corporate capitalism and how it has brought us to the ecological and societal crisis we find ourselves in. You can email him at guruji323@hotmail.com