The vendors had no interest in alternatives.

What they wanted was a place in the lucrative market that had evolved around the IBM PC and PC clone.

In the eight bit era there were many competing operating systems in the home market. If you needed an office machine, CP/M was your first and most likely only choice.

The IBM PC was designed to make the transition to the 16 bit world as painless as possible for the both users and developers. Third party software support for the MSDOS and IBM PC was strong from Day 1 and evolved rapidly over the next two years.

--- and by decades end had eclipsed everything in sight.

The Mac doesn't make its appearance until 1984 --- with barely enough resources available to support the Mac GUI.

The OEM MSDOS/Windows system install meant you had a marketable product that could be sold in the millions --- tens of millions --- hundreds of millions of units ---- at a mass market price.

Dell and the rest were crying all the way to the bank - any genuine interest they might have had in selling alternative operating systems in the home and SPHO markets could be measured with a teaspoon,

Linux in the nineties was simply not a mass market OS.

But the easily affordable commodity hardware built for the MSDOS and Windows ecosystem were god-sent to the geek who wanted to experiment with Linux.

This is the home system I purchased through TigerDirect and other sources a few years back now. There have been many changes since, including a replacement desktop, but nothing that would invalidate the point I am trying to make here.

HP PC Desktop Refurbished.
Not a high end Windows gaming machine but with very credible specs overall.

22" HP LCD HD Monitor.
Mid-Line HP Multifunction Printer Refurbished
APC UPS

Microsoft HD LifeCam.
Logitech Sound System
Logitech Joystick

Internal Expansion HDD (Retail)
External HP USB 1 TB HDD.
Cable Modem (Leased)

I had this beast up and running damn near as fast as I could unpack the boxes and connect the cables.

Walmart --- with its enormous purchasing power --- spent about a decade trying to make a go of the OEM Linux desktop --- an ever-changing merry-go-round of obscure Linux distros running on no-name brand hardware with bottom feeder specs.

Your savings over a far more credible and competitively priced Windows product from the Acer, HP or Dell?

$25 to $50.

The system bundle from HP would likely include a style and performance matched monitor and printer.

Walmart never came within light years of solving the problem of selling plug-and-play peripherals to the newbie Linux user.

PC sales took off like a rocket with the introduction of the OEM system install at the wholesale price.

The balanced and tested configuration of hardware and software that worked out of the box. --- and was sold as a mass retail product under a single - unified - warranty.

Not the kit of parts that appealed only to the hobbyist or the IT pro.

If it worked, it worked. If it didn't, it went back to the store. The buyer wasn't obliged to diagnose hardware and software conflicts or borked system installs --- or pay for the privilege of having these problems solved for him

The BBC launched in 1922. The World Service on shortwave in 1932.

In the states, PBS's "Masterpiece Theater" has been importing or co-producing productions by the BBC since 1971.

The match has to be plausible.

The false positives that so agitate the geek are likely to be discarded very early on.

Because they simply won't make sense when you look at the suspect's age, sex, physical condition, proximity to the victim, proximity to the crime scene and so on.

---- a fact which would not be discovered in the autopsy of a crudely mutilated victim?

The front end is where open source tends to fail. Falls flat on its face. Have you ever wondered why?

MS DOS was revolutionary because it sold to all comers at 1/5 the list price of CP/M 86.

The PC built from modular components sold at mass market prices and which snap into place like LEGO blocks begins here.

-----

IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer in 1981 and followed it with increasingly capable models: the XT in 1983 and the AT in 1984. The success of these computers cut deeply into the market for S-100 bus products.
As the IBM PC products captured the low-end of the market, S-100 machines moved up-scale to more powerful OEM and multiuser systems. However throughout the 1980s the market for S-100 bus machines for the hobbyist, for personal use, and even for small business was on the decline.
By 1994 the S-100 bus industry had contracted sufficiently that the IEEE did not see a need to continue supporting the IEEE-696 standard. The IEEE-696 standard was retired on June 14, 1994. S-100 bus

The geek has been running this tired old nag around the track since 1995. It was a bullshit argument then and it is a bullshit argument now.

The price of the mass market OEM system install is and always has been a trivial part of the expense of owning a home PC. There will be the monthly bills for broadband services, the expense of consumables like ink and paper...

The home user has different needs and values than the office worker --- to say nothing of the office manager. These markets began to diverge as early as the introduction of the Apple II and with the introduction of Windows 95, the divide had become a chasm as broad as the Grand Canyon.

The home market is a tough nut to crack - and it isn't just about the games.

The 4K monitor at a mass market prices implies the sale of 4K HDTVs and 4K HD videos --- HEVC encoded ---- at a mass market price.

Risky to who, exactly?

I discovered as an adult that I had received radiation "treatments" as a kid and test subject in one of the AEC's more adventurous and ethically questionable clinical experiments.

For decades now, I have had to pay very close attention to any changes in my thyroid.

No customs stamp, no delivery.

Bitcoins are a medium of exchange. They do not make your transactions invisible.

The majority of gamers may be female ---- but the majority of gamers who post to Slashdot are male --- and much more easily stereotyped as arrested adolescents than adults.

I first heard about Slashdot when I was still dependent on AOL, a dial-up modem and an affordable toll-free regional calling plan.

Then and now when the geek speaks about women, I can't escape the feeling that I have been teleported back to the high school locker rooms of 1964. The only pandering on this site is to the geek's own adolescent sense of manhood,