Q: Where can I find This FAQ ?
A: This FAQ is located at http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~pribushg/microfaq.html.
Currently there are no mirror locations.
Q: Can I redistribute, download, etc. this FAQ ?
A: Yes. You can do whatewver you want with this FAQ provided
that you
do not remove the copyright notice.If you want to contribute to this FAQ please
send mail to
[email protected].Any help and contribution to this FAQ is
greatly appreciated and will be credited.
Q: Why did you create this FAQ? Isn't Microsoft powerful enough to wipe
you off the net?
A: Because Microsoft stops innovation in the computer industry by creating
dubious and anti-competitive standards. Microsoft became too large and too
monopolistic to be called a fair company. Some people consider Microsoft to be an
"evil empire" and there is some truth in these words (see
Section 2 of this FAQ.)
Most of their products are too bloated and too buggy. MS OSes (except NT) are simply
pathetic : DOS is nothing more than a collection of file system and process-launching
facilities. DOS API is so inadequate and slow for other things (like display manipulation)
that programmers should (and do) bypass DOS and "play with the iron". There is No multitasking,
no virtual memory, no protection. If you want to access more than 640K of memory (use
Extended) you should either use another OS or use DOS extender. The second option is far
more popular, in fact, Windows (not NT) is actually a DOS extender + graphics API + some
process/memory management facilities.
But even DOS+ Windows cannot be called a real OS because there is only a cooperative
(i.e nonpreemptive) multitasking (DOS heritage) and virtually NO memory protection.
All processes in Windows 3.1 have the same LDT (local descriptor table). It means that
program A can write into the data area of program B, thus corrupting it !