Working with useful computers (was: What's your specialty?)

Quothe David Woyciesjes, from writings of Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 10:39:24AM -0500: Therein lies the problem: People who know better, yet, are willing to purchase Micro$oft products and work with them. If enough people refused to use the blasted Micro$oft rubbush, more people who know better than to work with it would have an income instead of reading about more and more positions requiring people to use that broken-by-design software. If one collects classic computer systems, then shouldn't one be learning from them and using that knowledge as a guide for what one, and one's employer, purchases and uses? For example, most of us here have knowledge of useful operating systems, which sets us apart from the average unfortunate boss'-butt-kissing deindividualized biz'droids who have been brainwashed to equate Micro$oft with adequate and useful computer software and operating systems. Has anyone here given any serious thought to combining what we know about all of the various classic operating systems, what works well, what doesn't, etc., and using what we know to create a new operating system that's fun to use, extremely hackish and extremely reliable? Something like a UNIX-AOS/VS--VMS hybrid, for one example. Wouldn't it be fun to take that a step further and design hackish computer hardware? Just think of the good that this would do for the world. It would make many people happy instead of them being frustrated by annoying computer systems. Ideally, this new system would use some sort of new-fangled bit-slice ICs with miniature vacuum-tubes in them (which no one manufactures, yet, alas), wired up to create a user-microprogrammable system, like a very fast, 72-bit PERQ CPU. :-) Full schematics and software source code would be delivered with each system, as well as flow-charts. This would form the basis of the "tech support" for the systems. If all computer users had to understand the systems they used, and were presented with adequate, well-written, documentation, few people would ever need to telephone "tech support." Just my two cents worth... :-) -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.