[rescue] A bit of Fun

[Michael A. Turner]

> It is debatable how much windows pre-95 can be called an OS.  
> However, I
> think that MS BOB is clearly not an OS.  It didn't do any OS 
> like tasks
> to my understanding.  
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
>
	
	Well it could be that BOB could be called a windows manager over an
OS, ala Gnome and such. I have never had my hands on a copy to find out. As
I understood it, it did do a fair bit of control of the system. The idea was
that a user setup a room and then clicked on items in the room to perform
tasks. From looking around a bit with goodle though it appears that bob was
an plication that ran on windows 3.1 and 95 and may be out of the runnuing.
More info for those curious can be found at
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob.html . There is video of it running on tech
tv at
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtell/story/0,24330,3316324,00.html 

	As far as I can tell Microsoft does not even admit this little
episode happened. Interesting bit of trivia, the lead project manager for
BOB was Mrs. Gates herself. At the time she was the future Mrs. Gates and
had not subcumed as yet. Also this is were those anoying helpers in office
came from , rover is there, but thankfully not clippy. Also here is another
funny blurb about it

	"The May/June 1995 issue of InfoSecurity News reports that Microsoft
Bob (Microsoft's "user-friendly" front end to Windows) has a "feature" that
if you mistype your password three times in a row, it concludes that you've
forgotten it, and asks if you want to change it. The Microsoft product
manager says "It's not really an attempt at security" (no kidding!)." 

	so as you can see this product may have been the start of the end of
everything for microsoft. They have taken their design cues from it, their
add ons from it, and that last bit proves they have followed it's security
ideal..
	
	So I move this from worst OS to worse application (maybe worst
windows manager?).

Michael A. Turner
Systems Engineer WHRO
michael.turner at whro.org
http://www.whro.org