In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 24 May 2006 10:17:50 +0100
<1716383.l9Pad6TFF6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Imagining a day without Microsoft
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | "[Microsoft] didn't establish [its standards] in a nice sort of way, but
> | they are the basis for a lot of things that we use and do with computers."
> |
> | Today you can send a Word document to anybody in the world and expect them
> | to be able to open it. According to Meadow, it takes forever for people to
> | agree to these kinds of standards.
> |
> | Josh Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting, says,
> | "Downloads for [StarOffice] would bring the Internet to a screeching halt."
> `----
>
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/23/78519_22OPreality_1.html
I'm not sure of the proper context -- one issue here
is that without Microsoft some other Evil Entity(tm)
would probably have taken over since the underlying
conditions were conducive thereto back in the early 80's
or thereabouts.
That could have been Apple Computer. :-) As it turns out
that's exactly the conclusion of this article.
Nevertheless, Word is now a de facto standard. (I would
hope it becomes an actual one, since so many tools depend
on it -- including OpenOffice, if only to be able to
import files.) Eliminate Microsoft and reassign its
approximately 61000 employees to other firms, and one
still has issues with archived Word files.
I'm not at all sure regarding "specialty buckets" (did
he mean boutiques?). Nor is Outlook the only package
used to communicate -- WebEx in particular is used for
live presentations, and Bat and Eudora have been mentioned
in other posts. On the Linux side Evolution, Balsa, mutt,
pine, and mailx are available, with varying amounts of
functionality.
As for wormspreading -- are we hypothesizing that Microsoft
the firm is vanishing (rendering Microsoft software
obsolete but usable) or all Microsoft software vanishing
(rendering computers unusable until that software is replaced,
either by OSS or by "specialty boutiques")?
The quote below is mildly annoying:
We would also find out how bad the Linux and Apple
vendors are at providing patches, compared to what
[customers] got used to from Microsoft, [John]
Pescattore [vice president for Internet security at
Gartner] says, adding that Microsoft is much better
than Apple and Linux at delivering security patches. If
you keep getting into car accidents, you know how to
fix dents.
Uh...correct me if I'm wrong here, gentlepeople, but aren't some
of those "dents" in Internet Explorer still unfixed?
"Good technology is transparent and invisible,"
[Marty] Cooper [Motorola cell phone inventor] says,
and we havent gotten there yet.
Linux looks fairly transparent to me. ;-) It's not there yet
either but it's closer than Microsoft.
A *lot* closer.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Windows Vista. Because it's time to refresh your hardware. Trust us.
|
|
