In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Sgt. Bilko
<bilko@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:10:46 -0400
<46d58e7a$0$16398$88260bb3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> "Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1763206.QyqhjER23T@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Linux works just fine, thank you very much!
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | These aren't state of the art by any stretch any more, and there is no
>> way
>> | either could run Vista. But with contemporary Linux distributions, they
>> are
>> | more than capable of soldiering on.
>> `----
>>
>> http://blogbeebe.blogspot.com/2007/08/opensuse-works-just-fine.html
>>
>
>
> Yet the "advocates" here have a never run out of excuses for why Microsoft
> continues to dominate the desktop.
>
There are no excuses here. Microsoft dominates because
they have many advantages -- some of them legitimate,
some of them maybe less so -- for the developer and for
the user.
[1] Superior marketing: Their budget runs into the
tens of millions. Who here doesn't know about
the multicolored butterfly? Thought so. Who here
doesn't know about the Butterfly Man? There you go.
Who here doesn't know about Vista? A success
story marketing-wise no matter how one spins it.
As one can see, they're getting their message out.
One might quibble as to what that message precisely
*is*, and whether the product matches what they're
advertising, but the message clearly is getting out,
especially since "vaporware" has been honed to a fine
art when it comes to Microsoft; people will wait for
years for a new version of Microsoft tools.
[2] Superior tools: Time was when Word was best in the biz.
In some ways, it still is; the word processor market
has basically dried up and left Word holding most
of the chips. Excel has no competitors, except for
open-source offerings. Ditto for Powerpoint. I don't
know about Project or Visio. Internet Explorer and
Mozilla are still fighting it out; Firefox is but the
latest. However, Firefox is burdened by the additional
install/load time on Microsoft platforms; with IE, one
just clicks and there's the browser. Convenience!
(See #5.)
[3] Superior platform: Windows is a superior platform for
hosting these tools and enabling their marketing.
Not because of its technical prowess -- there's
been tons of reams written on where it falls down,
and it falls down rather often -- but because it's
Microsoft's. They can change it whenever they wish,
and there have been those in the legal realm that
suggest they should split the business into two parts
so as to stop giving Microsoft that advantage, and
give other players a fair shake.
[4] Inferior expertise: Not on the part of Microsoft, mind
you; their brains are even now feverishly working
on the Next Big Thing(tm), presumably -- but on us.
Do we know what's going on underneath our computers?
I (hopefully) might have a fighting chance, and I can
read source code. But that's because I've been doing
this for a very long time. Perhaps everyone else
should know what C and C++ look like, and maybe the
vagaries of Java and C#. Perhaps not. But a computer
isn't a toaster, declarations from certain fruit-based
competitors notwithstanding. :-)
[5] Superior convenience: Plug it in, and it works.
(It'll blow up later.) Install Windows, and one's in
for a world of pain, but most OEMs suffer that pain
on your behalf to deliver to you a superior (or at
least profitable) product. Install Linux, and marvel
at how easily it installs -- but *someone* *still*
has to install it. This is changing as vendors start
offering Linux preinstalls -- some have been offering
them for awhile, and to its credit Dell is trying
to see how carefully they can walk that fine line
between their contractual agreement with Microsoft,
and the complaints of the FOSS community that no big
vendor offers Linux on their systems.
[6] Guaranteed revenue: Microsoft encourages OEMs,
apparently, to do one-partition "no share"
installations. These installs make Linux's job
harder: not only does Linux have to install, but
tools and procedures also have to be acquired or
developed to change that one-partition "no share"
to a multi-partition "go share" system. The simpler
way is to slick the Microsoft OS off the face of the
system, which of course means that license is lost
forever, but the revenue is not; Microsoft has already
collected.
[7] Embrace, extend, extinguish: I frankly don't know who
writes these twisted specs on occasion, but a Bactrian
camel, as Kadaitcha Man puts it, would probably be
the result, and the specs certainly look like a lot
of humps have been deliberately put in to appease
certain parties. HTML 4.01 in particular has that
<OBJECT> tag, and obsolescence of <APPLET>, which
is Java's baby. To be fair, <OBJECT> does allow for
more generality, but it sure looks like someone threw
a sop to someone else.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#h-13.3
XML also has some weird quirks in there; the strangest
one is arguably the <![CDATA[ ... ]]> construct.
However, xmlns:name= interpretation and control
character restrictions also rank in there. I sure
hope nobody seriously considers xmlns:name1:name2:...=""
as a construct, but one does wonder.
These are the more legitimate uses. A slightly less
standard one involves the contenteditable='true'
attribute in IE. This non-standard attribute allows
the user, in IE only, to edit the text in a <div>
or <span>, if set to true (it can also be set to
'inherit', which presumably copies the value from a
parent element's attribute); under certain conditions,
presumably, the value can also be sent back to the
server.
Useful, to some extent, but there are arguably better
methods of handling the problem.
http://www.htmlref.com/Reference/appa/elements.htm
contains standard and non-standard extensions for
each HTML element. It also contains non-standard
but widely used elements such as <embed> and <xml>
(yes, the latter is a tag in IE!).
For some reason, they did not include IE's
conditional text construct <!--[if (conditional) IE
(version]>...<![endif]-->, and the bastardized reverse
conditional construct <![if !IE]>...<![endif]> which
IE skips and other browsers, since they don't quite
know what to do with the tag, simply pass it, and its
children, along. XML does not tolerate such silliness.
Client-side IE javascript has some very weird quirks
as well -- convenient to those that know them, but
quirky nonetheless. For example, in the tag
<a href="/index.html">blahblah</a>
a.getAttribute("href") will reportedly return the full
page pathname in IE, but only "index.html" in Mozzie --
or such is my understanding from a webpage whose URL
I've now lost; I've not tried it myself yet. Grrr!
Given the relative naivete of individuals who use
their computers, and the convenience of the extensions
developed for IE, most developers will naturally and
inevitably prefer IE (especially since IE is highly
marketed -- see #1) -- unless other things intrude such
as security issues, or a desire to be as standard as
possible so that one doesn't get "locked in". It is
worth noting, however, that a standard is merely a
declaration of desired behavior published in a known
place; the more authoritative the known place (e.g.,
the World Wide Web consortion or ISO as opposed to
The Ghost In The Machine's little vanity website --
which I really need to fix up at some point :-) ),
the more likely others will pick it up and use it.
However, IE and Word are *de facto* standards, since
they are very very widely used -- and therefore can
be depended upon, to some extent. And Microsoft is
a very well-known place, and rather authoritative if
one is looking for information on their own products.
[8] The well-known devil: Linux is an unknown. This is
changing but for now Microsoft has marketed to us a
well-known, if faulty, set of solutions, which one
can work with and around. For example, CTRL-ALT-DEL
"fixes" most problems. The BSOD -- technically known
as a "stop screen" -- has been well documented.
Various other behaviors are catalogued, and fixes
made available on various websites, some of them
Microsoft-sponsored.
Change out Microsoft? How does one fix Linux problems?
It's going to be harder than pressing three buttons, in
most cases. (I just had to work around a new monitor
at work, for example. It took me awhile, but at least
with Linux I have the confidence it will stay fixed
until I tinker with it again. But I'm slightly unusual
in that respect. :-) It's a rather nice monitor, too.)
[9] TCO: There is some truth to Microsoft's ad campaign
-- and some, well, not-so-truth. But initial
acquisition cost is only part of the management
problem. Microsoft is cheaper because it's well-known;
everyone knows how to fix it. (Or so they think.)
This translates well into cheaper consultancy fees and
other such issues. Of course, a good consultant may
use Linux or FreeBSD anyway, bypassing a large chunk
of the problem related to malware by using hardened
solutions as opposed to Microsoft Windows, Marshmallow
Security Edition(tm). But there are other solutions
that still allow the use of Windows; the simplest ones
involve firewalling hardware.
[10] Guaranteed support: This might be pure FUD, but Linux,
since it's a relative unknown (#8), might be construed
as the "oh, you're on your own" option. (Presumably,
this actually isn't that much of an issue, especially
on Gentoo, with Gentoo's bug reporting system. Also,
Google and Yahoo! allow for searching for the more
common issues.) Contrariwise, Microsoft provides support
for their products -- call up a line, complain, get some
variant of help, if that help isn't in India trying to
parse one's message. But never mind; Microsoft offers
support and companies might like that.
Welcome to the New World Order.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Windows. When it absolutely, positively, has to crash.
--
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