In my letter to the Minister of Information technology I outline my personal experience with the earliest versions of the internet.
"My modem I bought from Dale in the USA (in 1990) came with BitCom software which was paid for (supplied) by the modem (hardware) manufacturer. It has a number of files including .arc (archive) files which contained the documentation for the system. Phil Katz, who later wrote .zip files contested the ownership of .arc utilities in court but lost. Some of the software was public domain, but the point was who wrote the manual and archived it?
Later modems became internal and became browser software. There was a big legal battle between Microsoft and Sun over whose software JavaScript is/was. Microsoft lost but still uses (distributes) Internet Explorer which they say uses their language JScript, not JavaScript. (This is not correct, the court order prohibits them distributing their browser, which violates JavaScript copyright.) Sun owns JavaScript. but has been taken over by Oracle."
The DOS 5 operating system released by Microsoft in 1991 (we'll get back to that later) was different from other software in that it offered a different type of memory called "Extended" memory as opposed to "Expanded" memory which was an added memory card. Computers of those days, the 80286 and 80386 were an improvement from the 8088, but still nothing nearly as powerful as today's computers. An agreement between Lotus, Intel, the chip manufacturer and Microsoft called the LIMs agreement and referred to in the DOS-5 manual described something called the Microsoft Virtual Machine
There is quite a lot of confusion about what a virtual machine is, but the easiest way to imagine it is as a virtual light bulb. There is no light bulb there, but it performs like a light bulb, putting out light, but not consuming any energy. Virtual memory is a function of the chip design.
"In computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique that is implemented using both hardware and software. It maps memory addresses used by a program, called virtual addresses, into physical addresses in computer memory. Main storage as seen by a process or task appears as a contiguous address space or collection of contiguous segments. The operating system manages virtual address spaces and the assignment of real memory to virtual memory."
If you want to know more about my role in designing a virtual memory which actually works, try here: Later the Microsoft VM became the Java Virtual Machine.
Carefully read the following terms and conditions before opening this diskette package. Opening this diskette package indicates your acceptance of the following terms and conditions.
LICENSE.
A. The program may be used on a single machine.
Phil Katz
CPJ 16th May 2014
BitCom had the right to supply software to run the ISA modems, but they came with a file which was compressed and had to be uncompressed using the unarchive software PKXARC.COM and the manual contained the deliberate spelling mistakes I put in it. PK stood for Phil Katz who wrote the zip software.
MANUAL.ARC Archieved file containing additional documentation for BitCom.
PKXARC.COM Utility program used to un-archieve MANUAL.ARC
BitCom Software Inc., whose address is in the manual as
830 Hillview Court, Suite 160 Milpitas, CA 95035, never paid me a cent, so the software still belongs to me.
A virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (e.g., a computer) that executes programs like a physical machine. Virtual machines are separated into two major classifications, based on their use and degree of correspondence to any real machine:
- A system virtual machine provides a complete system platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS).[1] These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built with the purpose of either providing a platform to run programs where the real hardware is not available for use (for example, executing on otherwise obsolete platforms), or of having multiple instances of virtual machines leading to more efficient use of computing resources, both in terms of energy consumption and cost effectiveness (known as hardware virtualization, the key to a cloud computing environment), or both.
- A process virtual machine (also, language virtual machine) is designed to run a single program, which means that it supports a single process. Such virtual machines are usually closely suited to one or more programming languages and built with the purpose of providing program portability and flexibility (amongst other things). An essential characteristic of a virtual machine is that the software running inside is limited to the resources and abstractions provided by the virtual machine—it cannot break out of its virtual environment.
A VM was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine". Current use includes virtual machines which have no direct correspondence to any real hardware.[2]
Today, "JavaScript" is a trademark of Oracle Corporation.[31] It is used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape Communications and current entities such as the Mozilla Foundation.[32]