Getting Hung Up on the Apple-Microsoft War

[Chong Yu Meng]

On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 21:09 -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> (the corporation l-o-v-e-s to pay software licenses - gotta
> have someone to kick around if you're too dumb to make it work). 

In Singapore, even if you paid those licenses, you may not get the
support that you think you are entitled to. I once had an engineer who
*literally* placed a hand on a malfunctioning server and proclaimed it
healed! (not kidding!) Another engineer asked me how to enable IIS (long
story, don't get me started) to serve web pages, when his company
provided a ASP/.Net-based software "solution". Several engineers I met
could not even install their own product, or do it competently.

You Americans have it good. I don't know if I've said this before, but
the one thing I noticed on my two trips to the US, in 1993 and 2001, was
the incredible prosperity of the place. I've been to San Francisco,
Phoenix and Atlanta and I was just amazed at the gleaming buildings, the
well-stocked pantries with bagels (first-time I tried bagels) paid for
by the company (no such thing in Singapore -- you buy your own food!),
and the data centers full of expensive hardware and properly licensed
software. When you call for help, you will get someone who is
knowledgeable and diligent who will come in and fix things instead of
manufacturing excuses. 

I remember thinking: where does the US make all that money to spend on
staff benefits and incredible resources? I was reminded of something I
read a looong time ago, about how one German soldier remarked,
enviously, that Americans seemed to have an endless supply of artillery,
bullets and chocolate! 

-- 
Pascal Chong 
email:  chongym at cymulacrum.net 
web:    http://cymulacrum.net
pgp:    http://cymulacrum.net/pgp/cymulacrum.asc

"La science ne conna?t pas de fronti?re parce que la connaissance
appartient ? l?humanit?. et que c?est la flamme qui illumine le monde."

-- Louis Pasteur
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