On Jan 5, 10:21 am, "DFS" <nospam@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Thufir wrote:
> > On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:05:05 -0500, DFS wrote:
> >> Can't fool us, don't fool yourself. If the money was right you'd
> >> stampede for the MS front door next Monday morning.
> > You see everyone as a prostitute, the rest is just haggling?
Reference, Winston Churchill asked a Lady (titled) if she would go to
bed with him for $1 million (which today, would be more like $100
million), and she said "well, that's a lot of money for one night, I
supposed I would". At which point, Churchill asked "Would you go to
bed with me for a shilling?". The woman, quite offended, said "What
do you think I am, a prostitute?". At which point, Churchill said
"Madam, that fact has been established, now we are just haggling over
price".
The story has also been attributed to George Barnard Shaw, Benjamin
Disraeli, and even Ben Franklin, (who knows who actually did it
first?). The point was that all of us have a point at which we will
do something we otherwise wouldn't do.
> That's one way to look at it (doing a job you hate just for the money), but
> many cola "advocates" have ethical standards far below the lowliest
> streetwalker.
> See Rex Ballard
To begin with, I'm not a whore, I'm a courtesan (I really enjoy my
work). I also get very well paid, and even though I could probably
make more in other ways, the combination of job satisfaction and good
income is hard to beat.
I've never kept it a secret that I do use Windows, AND I use Linux.
Although I would love to see the day when I could install Linux and
would never need Windows again, it's not the case today. On the other
hand, I do have Linux on all of my laptops, either as the primary or
secondary (VM) operating system. I also have Linux on several
servers. Most of my engagements are primarily using Linux and/or
UNIX, usually AIX or Solaris, and Windows plays a minor role in
integrating some third party vendor of a Softwware As A Service
offering.
I've been using UNIX since 1982, and Linux since 1993. I made my
first "PC" (microcomputer) in 1977, sold one of the first TRS-80
Computers in late 1977 (before it was officially released), I used
CP/M, MS-DOS from 1.0 to 6.0, Windows (from Windows 286 to XP), and
I've even taken Vista for an unpleasant test drive ($2700 computer
that was Vista compatible, and it couldn't run Aero-Glass).
In my 30 years in computers I have had a number of remarkable
opportunities to be at the leading, and even sometimes the bleeding
edge of technology. My particular talent throughout the years has
been the commercialization of bleeding edge technology (moving from
reseach project to production deployed product).
There have been a few versions of Windows that were completely
painful.
Windows 3.1, very cute and easy to understand, but it crashed all the
time. At one point, I had a team of 12 people working where we could
see each other, and every time Windows would crash, we would raise our
hands and say "Crash" in a voice loud enough so that all of the other
members of the team would hear. I kept a tally, and calculated the
averages over a month. It seemed that Windows was crashing an average
of 4 times per day per person. Sometimes the crash was a general
protection fault, other times, it was a deadlock caused by running
applications in overlapping windows.
Of course, I had also managed to obtain second PCs, such as an
80386/16 at Dow Jones, and an 80486/66 at McGraw-Hill, which I used as
secondary workstations. Those were as reliable as a craftsman
wrench. About the only time I would use Windows was to pretty up
documents that needed to be given to an external partner or executive
in Word format.
Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5. The only reason I got it was
because the Vice President misunderstood the license, and thought that
Client Access Licenses meant that I could install it on a Client PC
from NT server. It took about 2 days to lock the machine up so badly
that I couldn't get back into it. I had to reinstall it twice, and
when I tried running 3rd party Windows 3.1 applications, nothing
worked. Clearly this was not ready for "Prime Time", but the VP
didn't like hearing that.
Windows 95 (first edition). Windows 95 wasn't too bad, but still had
a bad habit of crashing. The first PC I used it with only had 8
megabytes of memory. When I added another 8 megabytes, things
improved slightly, but not enough to trust it. When Windows 95B came
out, it was much more stable, and worked pretty well on PCI hardware
( was still buggy as hell on VLB hardware).
Windows NT 4.0 prior to service pack 3. This was another painful
experience. I had installed NT 4.0 on a machine with a Cyrix
processor, and only 32 megabytes of RAM. After numerous Blue Screens,
I finally upgraded the memory to 64 megabytes, and about 2 weeks
later, installed Service Pack 2, and melted my Cyrix processor.
Eventually, I saw coverage of similar problems in ComputerWorld, and
replaced the Cyrix processor with an AMD processor, but it still
wreaked. When Service Pack 3 came out, the processor was at least
tolerably useful.
Windows ME. This is one of the few times when I actually paid extra
money to purchase an "Upgrade" to the previous product (Windows 98).
Several members of my family hated it so badly they replaced it with
Linux (as did I on all but one of my Windows machines)..
Windows 2000 was great. I still think it was the best operating
system Microsoft ever made. For some reason though, they couldn't
resist the temptation to f*ck it up by trying to squeeze more money
out of users by forcing them into XP. I guess the big problem was
that Microsoft had already promised free upgrades to NT 5.0 (Windows
2000) to any corporate customer who purchased NT 4.0 corporate
licenses. Many corporate customers were threatened with cancellation
of all support unless they upgraded to XP, at a substantial increase
in the support contract rate (triple). Eventually, Microsoft did back
down, but not until after several large corporations ordered their
CIOs to come up with a plan for migrating to Linux.
Windows XP was a downgrade from Windows 2000. I doubled the RAM and
it still wasn't enough. Even when I quadrupled the RAM it was still
painfully slow. I don't know how Microsoft managed to make Windows XP
such a pig, but I was sure they couldn't do any worse.
But I was wrong, Vista was worse. I've heard that a dual-core 2 ghz
processor with 4 gigabytes of RAM, it performs almost as fast as
Windows XP with a single 1ghz processor and 512 megabytes of RAM. I
tried it with 4 gigabytes, but it seems that there is a complex
installation patch and upgrade sequence required to get it to
recognize the 4 gigabytes, without declaring you a pirate and
disabling your PC. Worst $200 I ever spent.
Fortunately, I have been able to use the previous version of Windows,
AND a workstation loaded with Linux, to remain productive while we
waited for the gap to close. Still, I'm not holding my breath on
Vista. Vista seems to rank up there with Windows NT 3.1 and Windows
ME as one of Microsof'ts big time turkeys.
I'm pretty clear about what I advocate. I want to see Linux displayed
on Retail shelves. Let people make an informed decision between the
two by comparing both in a retail environment, where they can freely
try both, and choose whichever works best for them.
I also want to see corporations use desktop virtualization to put
Linux and Windows on the same PC. They can't always scuttle Windows
completely, but giving every employee the ability to choose and use
their favorite will at least open the door to competition in the long
run.
I want to see users given the information required to make an informed
choice. Let the OEMs tell consumers which computers will, and which
won't, support Linux. Let them provide that information in their
advertizing, in their order forms, in the information displayed at the
retail store, and even on the computer itself. Give us this
information down to the component level.
Rex Ballard
http://www.open4success.org
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