[LUAU] Balmer wants Unix?

[Jim Thompson]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=2042

audio here: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/z/e/200510/ballmergartner.mp3

Quoth Balmer (around 29:25 in the mp3):


> "The day I come in front of the Gartner audience and say we have a  
> better Unix than Linux, that'll be a good day, we're not quite  
> there yet."

WTF, over?

Did Balmer just say in front of a bunch of Gartner goons that they're  
going Unix in order to defeat linux?

And if its *really* "Unix", which one?

FreeBSD?

Does MSFT buy Apple?  (Naw, there would be all kinds of anti- 
competitive claims.  Dept of Commerce would never let that deal go  
through.)

Sun?

Softway Systems?  No, they already bought them - and incorporated  
Interix into Windows.

SCO?

Perhaps  this is why MS has been feeling around for ways to  
monopolize Unix (SCO lawsuits) or at least throw their competitors
off-balance, particularly the Linux juggernaut.  Maybe MS will just  
finish buying out SCO but I don't think SCO's unix is acceptable as a  
market-dominator (hasn't been so far for SCO.)

Maybe this is why we're hearing less about the SCO lawsuits, or maybe  
this is BECAUSE the SCO lawsuits have fizzled and so this is Plan B.  
Or maybe the lawsuits were an attempt to explore wiping out  
competition for an MS/Unix. Or maybe they'd just pick up SCO's IP and  
fork a different Unix. Or maybe mentioning SCO is a total red herring  
on my part.

Or maybe this is just a continuation of the old "a better UNIX than  
UNIX" claim Microsoft made about NT a while back, where I guess the  
first occurrence of "UNIX" meant "an OS that can support the same  
kind of applications UNIX can, even if it doesn't do so by offering  
UNIX APIs directly" (although with Interix's UN*X subsystem replacing  
the old "contractual obligation POSIX subsystem" from NT, maybe they  
*can* offer them directly and make it easier to just run those apps  
on Windows;

Then again maybe it's not true and Ballmer is either totally  
confused: Unix as synonym for OS or Server OS or he just means his  
better OS
than Unix, MORE UNIX THAN UNIX ITSELF! We've OUT-UNIX'ed UNIX!

Or he's referring to some kind of POSIX API on Windows having deluded  
himself much in the same way an American car manufacturer might
imagine they're having their lunch eaten by foreigners because the  
competition produces more red cars.  Yeah, that must be it...forget  
reliability and stability and security and non-insane allocation of  
hardware and software resources...it must be that pesky open() call  
which is sending MS to its doom.  Unix becomes a cargo cult at  
Redmond...film at 11.

I'm waiting for the day when they fully implement eniW and support  
running, say, Linux - or Solaris x86, or... - binaries on Windows).

Steve-o also emphatically claims to have "never thrown a chair",  
(around 2:50) too.

jim

p.s.  Someone should tell that bloggernaut it's "row to hoe", unless  
perhaps you work in a caviar factory.