Microsoft

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2007, Ronnie Gauthier wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:26:27 -0400
>Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 22:25 +0200, Dirk Moolman wrote:
>> > I saw on the news tonight, that a judge overseas (in Europe), stood by
>> > the previous ruling of 2004, that Microsoft must make more information
>> > available to other companies, to allow them to integrate their products
>> > into Windows.
>> > 
>> > My personal opinion is that linux will eventually overtake microsoft,
>> > and become the word software leader.  I just don't know how far off that
>> > is.
>> 
>> <IF>, like if the raging debate over on the Fedora list is any
>> indicator, there could be a distro that could remain rock solid for a
>> length of time, linux would have already won. Ric 
>
>Why it will be years, if ever, before Linux can say "We're close".
>
>MS products are not designed by geeks but by marketing type pinheads who
>dictate what code the geeks will write. This results in products that
>for the most part simply work, at least for the clueless user. Now we
>are not talking about their server products here but OS and apps for the 
>mainstream everyday clueless user.
>
>Linux products are designed by geeks for geeks and marketed by geeks to 
>geeks. The average clueless user does not fit into that concept in any
>way, shape or form and wont ever fit it. When a Linux distro gets a pinhead
>and the geeks listen you may then find an acceptable linux product.

By and large most computer interaction isn't designed for the
average human to use and understand easily.  I'm currently
reading an excellent book on this, ``The Inmates are Runnint the
Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore
the Sanity'' by Alan Cooper which seems to echo things I've said
many times about software being developed by people who don't
understand the problems they're trying to solve (e.g. accounting
software which doesn't follow the work flows of Real Business).

Most people accept Microsoft's unreliable, insecure, and
generally horrible systems because they don't know any better.

>But that is not very likely as the vendors that need to be on board for 
>such a thing to happen just refuse to open their source up to the Lunux
>community.
>
>The last problem is $$. Linux is free and there is no way to afford the
>pinhead and his/her marketing method of development and deployment for
>the desktop environment.

There have been a couple of distributions that have attempted to
be solid products for business, Caldera and SuSE/Novell, but the
geeks have expressed disdain for them.  20 years ago we selected
SCO Xenix and later Unix for commercial applications, not because
it was technically superior to other *nix systems, but because it
was designed to be a stable, if boring, base.

Bill
--
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