Does Linux support DHCP

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

Gerald Feldman wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 GF> I would think that you are most probably correct. Like IBM,
 GF> and the  former Soviet Union, Microsoft likes to claim that
 GF> it invented  something when in fact they probably just
 GF> discovered it. Kind of like  Columbus discovering America a
 GF> few thousand years after the Indians  did? I also was in the
 GF> presence of an IBM executive who made the same  claim
 GF> regarding virtual memory, when in fact IBM was probably the 
 GF> last mainframe manufacturer to actually use it. So, I stand 
 GF> corrected. 

Actually, the U.S. Patent Office agrees with IBM, having issued 4,730,249.  As
with many other things, IBM research labs may really have been first, but the
commercialization of it was left to others.  For decades, IBM had a reluctance
to introduce new technology "too quickly" for fear that they would obsolete
much of their product line and inventory before either they or their customers
could adapt.  This fear has proven to have some basis in fact, as shown by the
way that PC hardware decreases in value to worthless in three years.

It is also worth keeping in mind that the customers for IBM's largest and most
powerful machines in the early days of computing were all defense related, and
much of the underlying technology was therefore secret.  Some of these machines
later became publicly known -- such as the "Stretch" which was as far as I know
the first machine with virtual memory.
 
-- Mike