Re: techwr-l digest: November 08, 2001

Subject: Re: techwr-l digest: November 08, 2001
From: Chris <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 10:44:36 +0100

Arrgh!!! Free market vs monopoly always makes me cringe. Especially when you throw in references to biology like "survival of the fittest".

Keith Cronin says:




The problem with that idea is that the "average computer user" (who is NOT
the same as the average tech writer) does not want another OS.
The average user wants two things - something that works, and something that's advertised alot. If users *only* wanted something that works, then MS Word would be much smaller and more stable than it is today. But they also want something that's advertised alot - i. e. the latest and"greatest". In this environment, the notion of "value" becomes suspect.

One is
enough.
[snip... what if the world had multiple video formats]


The garden variety home computer user doesn't want that either. And they
make up the majority of the market. We techies are specialists; it makes
sense that we might prefer specialized tools. But to force new OS's on the
unsuspecting (and undesiring) public is to punish them, not to help them.


You mean like forcing bigger and more complicated OSs on them when all they do is surf the web, write term papers, and play games? You mean beef everything up until they have to buy a GHz machine just to read their mail? I don't see how the current process of planned obsolesence is any less punishing than sticking two or three OSs on a machine - or at least providing the OSs on a disk. BTW, my mother in-law *does* like to noodle with her computer. She *does* want to know about the OS and how it works,etc. Unfortunately, nobody has figured out how to make lots of money teaching her. So she satisfies the urge by keeping databases on all manner of strange daily details, merging them into documents, using an odd macro once in a while, and clogging the net with the resulting attachments.

I will remind you that the big argument against Unix (the winning argument for Windows) was that Unix was too complicated. I'm here to tell you Win 2000 is easily as chaotic as Unix, if not more. And it's much less robust - I freeze once a day. Once a week the OS wipes out a file when it rebuilds the FAT (after one of my daily freezes). Without a degree from MS University, I'm all on my own trying to figure out why my ethernet won't function if I start my machine with my printer already turned on (plug-n-play is the culprit).
I for one can't accept that Windows won because it's the best. I know this is an old song, and deprecated on this list. But as a writer, I can't let comments about survival of the fittest get hung on this issue. In the first place, diversity of life forms increases the chances of survival for all life forms. In the second place, techology isn't sold in a free market, religious claims to the contrary notwithstanding. The MS practice of threatening manufacturers is a case in point. In the third place, lots of garden-variety users are interested in Linux over here in Europe. Why? Because it's free and/or cheap. And it's interesting.

Finally, as specialists, I would say we have every reason to look at alternatives, and explore those which may be better. The enlightened consumer will, as ever, take note and take advantage of our work on the frontier. That's how consumers got their hands on computers in the first place. The next war is going to be between Java and .NET. MS is already going to their big *business* base (not your stated average user) and selling them on it. They're already buying up services (currently on Java) that are compatible with the space the see for .NET. They're effectively trying to take an open standard and replace it with a proprietary one - since Sun refused to let them make proprietary changes to Java. In this "free" market, they have the money to do it. (Remember, Word is ubiquitous at least in part because installed for free on so many machines.) The only thing that could stop them, aside from internal catastrophe, is political force of one sort or the other... Either grass-roots support of Java (and the small companies refuse to sell out), or the Gvmt steps in (not something I advocate, BTW). Figure the odds on either. I'm reading up on C# (selling out already?).

cud


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