Some corrections...
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| Author | Content |
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| macb Nov 06, 2005 12:51 PM EDT |
Hard to believe that this post isn't just a troll, but in the event that it is from someone with a very short memory, or someone too young to know any better... "UNIX people seem to hate the company that made the PC available, popularized it, took it to other countries around the world, made it user friendly, gave people an opportunity to make a living, simplified programming and made it possible for Linux to exist by giving Intel a market." IBM popularized the PC, and a lot of companies writing software for it (ever hear of Lotus?) made it the de-facto standard. Microsoft had a part in this from the software side, but they were GIVEN that authority by IBM and at the time when the concept of a PC was being developed Microsoft didn't even exist. "Do you really think Intel will abandon Microsoft? Not ever." "If they're smart, they'll know who buttered their bread." You are correct that Intel and Microsoft have had a symbiotic relationship over the years. Some would say this rises to the level of illegality. It is no coincidence that each new version of Windows requires you to buy a new PC. Unless you are an employee or stockholder of Intel, this should not make you particularly happy. Since I switched to Linux I no longer have to buy expensive computers and can afford instead to have a computer in every room, guest computers and computers for special purposes and in many cases I got these systems for almost nothing. They run circles around Windows and I'm thrilled with them. My Windows using friends are however not so happy with their recent purchases and often tell me that the "machine" itself is buggy and slow, when both you and I know that the problem is with the software. "Intel has done dumb things in the past and Microsoft always forgives them." You seem to be confusing Microsoft with the Catholic Church. In spite of what you might have read in the popular press companies are not people. They don't have lovers quarrels, kiss and make-up, or have to sleep on the couch when they stayed out too late drinking. It may no longer be in the interest of either company to tie their futures to one another. Countries around the world are just itching to become competitive with us (the USA) in both hardware and software. You can build a perfectly useful PC without Intel components and run it completely without Microsoft software. The extent to which the two companies work together actually scares people off. Nobody likes being locked into one vendor, much less two in the same area. The way PCs are being used now in business actually make the old mainframe days seem cheap by comparison, and much of what people like you think of as "new and exciting" are just re-inventions of things that were around in the 70s. They built on the shoulders of giants, but the technology itself, once you get past faster clock speeds and denser pixels, is nothing revolutionary. In the future these two companies will have about as much relevance to computing as RCA has to the home entertainment business today. "Also, the business world represents a much bigger user base than governments. They won't give up in Microsoft. They never have." Uh... when I started working with government the standard was Novel networks, Wordperfect for word processing, and Lotus for spreadsheets. Let me guess... History is not your strongest subject in school, right? When the US government over a period of just a few years standardized on Microsoft products the effect was devastating for the "old guard" companies. Government IT people are not risk takers (in fact I'd amplify that and say that some of them are total boneheads). They watch what businesses do and gradually form a consensus about what is "good enough for government work". But governments also represent (unfortunately) a large percentage of our GNP (and in the rest of the world even more so). That means that private companies, particularly those that do business directly with government, have an incentive to match toolsets with government. If world-wide Linux use gets even as high as 20%, government IT people are going to feel safe about standardizing their departments on it. I don't think that the choice will ultimately be between Windows and Linux, it will be between open standards and closed. Once governments realize how important open standards are to them, and once they figure out that Windows will NEVER be secure, no matter how long it remains Microsoft's "top priority" they will be open to alternate solutions. "I write all my code on my XP Pro workstation and load it up to this LAMP + tomcat that my client has. What does he care if I use Linux to write code or not?" Well, if you are writing your code for the server side, congratulations for seeing the light. If you are writing your applications for business or government at the desktop level, you are about to be a dinosaur. There is nothing wrong with doing development on a Windows machine, other than that you are much more likely to deliver the product to your customer with a big fat virus in it (it's been known to happen). Of course, if they re RUNNING the application on anything but Windows they are probably safe. "I'm glad you have something to obsess about. What would you do with all your free time anyway?" I don't see that you are any less obsessive based on this post. What do you care if some people like Linux, BSD, or OS X and may prefer one of those to Windows? Are you one of those people who drank the MCSE Kool-aid? Those tests are expensive for all the doors they open aren't they? I retired early thanks to money I saved during my mainframe days. I got tired of all the re-invention and sloppiness of the PC world. If you want to know the future for PC "experts" such as yourself, read up on what happened to all the switchboard operators back when everyone was getting their first telephone. It's not a sustainable model for half our population to be in the DP industry and as using a PC becomes no-big-deal like using the telephone ("HEY... push buttons, no need to talk to an operator!) a lot of "elite" computer folk are going to have to find a real job. "PS - I don't mean to be rude, but you have to admit something's wrong with this picture in the Linux part of the open source world." Think nothing of it. People have been arguing about what the best software is since software was invented. If it wasn't for that, we'd all still be arguing about whether tube-based stereo components are better or who had that badest hot-rod. For far too many people computing is more of a hobby than a business (that is part of the problem with PCs) and as long as that is true, there will continue to be food fights over it. |
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