On January 11, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> Sir, you damage your credibility with statements like some you've made here.
> While it's true that the Microsoft products may not be the "best" thing for
> thos of us who are inclined to fuss and fiddle with our computers, they're
> WAY better for those who can't, won't, or shouldn't.
I know this response wasn't directed at me, but I have to take [at
least a little] exception to this.
Microsoft products are teaching (have teached?) the world that
computers (ALL computers) need to be restarted several times each day,
and that this is normal and acceptable behavior. That computers break
frequently, and cause the loss of work. That computers (MODERN
computers) have a bitmapped click-happy interface, and anything that
doesn't is "quaint, useless old technology".
Do you really think these are good things for computer neophytes to
be taught? There are hoards of Microsoft weenies running around who
actually *believe* these things...and with Microsoft teaching them to
shun other technologies, they'll probably *never* understand the true
nature of "computers".
Here's an exaple of the brain-damage that Microsoft is promoting. A
while back, I had a job in which I was designing some custom
microcoded floating-point processors using MSI and LSI chips and
PAL/TTL glue. My grandmother (may she rest in peace) was talking to
her [windows-running] neighbor, bragging about me in typical
grandmother style...when asked what I do for a living, she answered
proudly and accurately, "my grandson is very smart...he builds
computers!" The neighbor, obviously lacking the social skills to
understand that he was being insulting, said "aww, that's
nothing...building them is the easy part. It's LOADING them that's
hard! Maybe he'll get to that level in a few years. Keeping all
those programs from messing up Windows is the really hard part of
'computers'."
I was utterly flabbergasted by this, so much that I was rendered
speechless.
-Dave McGuire
From: healyzh(a)aracnet.com <healyzh(a)aracnet.com>>
>Is there a point to this rambling? Yes, there is! Applications!
>Specifically usable applications are what make or break a OS. If an OS
>doesn't run the Apps a person wants, they're unlikely to use that OS.
There is the key point.
Also most people that like WP didnt' like the later versions MS like look
and feel
despite the features.
Allison
>Q
Really quit Pine?
>Y
Expunge the 75 deleted messages from "INBOX"?
>Y
You sure? Possibly important threads exist.
>Y!
Are you aware that 73 of them are from the Thread: "Nuke Redmond"??
>YYYYYYYYY
Last chance to read them all again before deletion: [Y/N]:
> y
Deleted all 75 messages and kept 238.
>Pine finished. To recover the 73 deleted "Nuke Redmond" messages, enter
the following comm {{{{|||~{{|~|~|~eee~|~|~||qqq|~{|{~{~{{{||
NO CARRIER
John
From: THETechnoid(a)home.com <THETechnoid(a)home.com>
>My point is that OS/2 is everything Microsoft has been saying both Win9x
>and NT are combined plus a lot (like a good, stable design). It is
easier
>to use than any other operating system short of 9x and has a FAR better
>GUI than Windows or anything else at all.
Well, I've looked at only one version OS/2 V3 with all the goodies as of
when it came out. Ran ok and all but apps for it were a bit thin. I
plan to
play more with it once I get it running TCP/IP and a eithernic.
Allison
Whew...sorry Richard, there's just so much flame bait in here I'm just
going to pretend I didn't read it. And I'm not even a Linux fanatic.
-Dave McGuire
On January 12, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> All these complaints about how things are won't fix a thing!
>
> If the LINUX community were interested in providing a service, that is, a
> service for anyone other than themselves, they'd have done the up-to-now
> missing 90% of the work and cleaned up and documented their software.
> Instead, you have a terrible mess of code with comments that hve been
> irrelevant and incorrect for the last 25 revisions, yet nobody's been
> willing to delete them. Generally, design and coding is about 2% of the
> job, debugging is another 3%, cleanup is about 5% and thorough and accurate
> documentation is about 90.
>
> >From what I've seen so far, the LINUX community, though well-intentioned,
> has done little to provide tools useable by the masses.
>
> Instead of lighting that "one candle" they'd rather personalize their
> frustration, resulting, BTW, from their own lack of application effort,
> targeting Bill Gates, whose policies are really no different from those of
> any corporate leader. They're supposed to outdo the competition, trip them
> up, confound their efforts to acquire market share, and just generally try
> to do them in. Gates and Co have done well. What's more, for every LINUX
> user who's even remotely satisfied with what he has, there are thousands of
> Windows-users out there who love their OS. One difference, however, is that
> they (the Windows users) don't have to spend their lives stroking the OS
> just to keep it alive.
>
> Dick
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Tinker" <jtinker(a)coin.org>
> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 7:25 AM
> Subject: Re: Nuke Richmond
>
>
> > "W.B.(Wim) Hofman" wrote:
> >
> > > Folks,
> > >
> > > Can you expect to say to a housewife : This is a Linux cd. Install it on
> > > this computer and I expect you to have looked at these Internet sites by
> > > tomorrow morning? It would have to be some housewife!! Linux needs far
> to
> > > much work still to make it fit for the masses.
> > >
> > > Wim
> >
> > Don't forget the opportunity lost due to M$ predations. Gates didn't
> invent
> > software. He pulled the rug out from under a lot of good effort, using
> > everyone else's work, but trying to protect his own. He poked his finger
> in
> > the eye of standards wherever possible. Standard layers will be the
> foundation
> > of future system elaboration. The fundamental contradiction Gates had to
> get
> > around, was that between "information age" and "proprietory software". It
> is
> > the "rising tide lifts all boats" problem. What is the value of wealth,
> unless
> > you are richer than the next guy? If everybody is rich, who will pick up
> the
> > garbage? When people started passing around copies of his BASIC, Gates
> > realized the problem, and the solution.
> >
> > -- John Tinker
> >
> >
> >
Back in the mid to later 80s when one of the vendors was selling PCs
without MSdos they were forced by MS to make the system so it
could not run dos. I think it was running SCO unix or Novell.
I'm fuzzy on the details as during that time frame PCs, DOS
and their ilk were not on my radar.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Marvin <marvin(a)rain.org>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, January 12, 2001 7:49 PM
Subject: DOS Jumper
>
>
>ajp166 wrote:
>>
>> Those that don't remember the PC cloes with he "DOS jumper" would
argue
>> that Billy was a good boy. Some of us remember!
>
>I don't recall a "DOS jumper", at least by that name. What is it?
>
From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
>
>That's what we pay these senior decision-makers for, folks. They try to
>figure out how to get the other guy out of the way. They try to find
legal
>ways to slit his proverbial, if not literal, throat.
Messrs Gates would nto know ethics if they bit him on the arse. As to
legal
he {microsoft} would try to suborne legality where possible and did every
chance.
Those that don't remember the PC cloes with he "DOS jumper" would argue
that
Billy was a good boy. Some of us remember!
Allison
From: Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com>
>
>You meant this the other way around, didn't you? I have to spend
several
>frustrating minutes each week "stroking" Win98 to keep it alive (i.e.
Well, disperse the frelling defective app! W98(hopefully 2nd edition or
ME)
in the work environment has proven acceptable and solid once the buggy
apps
were booted. We even run office97 on it reliabily. Oh, the worst
offender
IEV5! For the 98 users find 98LITE it can help get the bugs out.
>server, file server, and firewall. All I do on my Win98 box is surf the
>web, listen to Napster, and type documents, and it can't even handle
THAT
>without tripping over itself.
As if any of those are trivial tasks. Napster is not simple nor small.
As to
your text problem, I'll bet your using one of the lightweight word
processors,
lightweight these days is an install file or 9-10 megabytes. Maybe the
worst
offendor and virus programming language WORD and it's VisualBasic.
Why not surf the net with linux? Avoid the OS pain then.
>Windows is like a retarded child.
Now that's offensive, to the learning handicapped that is. I'd have
compared
Windows to Brussel Sprouts that were improperly cooked.
Allison
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
>Finally, whine all you want about Windows it was was the ram rod of
windows
>that made it economically practical to build 100 million computers
exactly
>the same. Linux wouldn't exist if it still cost $10,000 to get a "home"
>computer that was powerful enough to run it.
>
>--Chuck
My $0.02 is:
-That the OS if stable it's meaningless whos the maker.
-The applications that support it are everything.
-Applications that suppost common standard for
text, images, datatypes and related types will dominate.
That's the OS that wins... Users run apps, everyone else argues about the
OS.
Now with that said. I hate MS, I run NT4/WS with minimal MS apps.
NT4 is pretty decent and plenty stable. I dont run Office9x or Off2k
as it's buggy. Like every OS I've used, a good OS can be compromized
by bad apps and well behaved apps will make the weakest OS look good.
In the end a Robust OS makes poorly written and misbehaving apps
more tolerable though still unacceptable.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
> Applications are coming. A few are already here. It's taking a
>while. How long has the Microsoft world had to develop its
>suite of applications?
>
> -Dave McGuire
One big difference, everyone knows what apps are wanted and needed.
The rest of the work is simply coding. The Unix like users are about to
get
a log awaited bonanza for the log standing GUI enviornment.
And the answer still is who cares what OS... so long as it works and the
APPLICATIONS do what is asked.
Allison
