Richard Reynolds wrote:
17 years and we dont have BETTER, we have an alternative. Its still not
BETTER! its nice, and in many ways it is better, but its not BETTER.
Spoken like a Windows brainwashee.
For starters, Microsoft has been tail-end Charlie for a long time now.
Firefox became so much better that even Microsoft had to move. Let me
turn your argument around so that you undestand how specious it is: "7
years and we don't have BETTER! Internet Explorer 7 is nice, and in
many ways it is better, but its not BETTER!"
You argument, boiled down, is "Linux isn't compelling enough to make me
learn something new." Fair enough. I don't make the students in my
classes switch away from Windows if it works for them, either. You are
both poorer for you decision, in my opinion, but it's your call, not mine.
And, by the way, there are better operating systems. People would argue
that OS X is much better than Windows. BeOS was certainly better than
Windows at handling multimedia and still maintaining interactive rate.
The *nix alternatives almost always stomp on Windows for both stability
and security. In fact, one of the untouted benefits to using Windows
virtualization is the isolation of OS bugs relative to application bugs.
When Windows crashes, you can get at the actual failure point and
check what happened. For some reason, people don't seem to need this on
the *nix systems. And Microsoft's ability to handle Asian languages was
so bad, for so long that a 20-year-old word processor appliance (and its
later conversion to software) staved off Microsoft for better than a
decade in Japan. I can go on and on and on.
Windows is only demonstrably better in a single dimension--popularity.
Even if you consider *drivers*, which so many people tout as a Windows
benefit, many of the drivers on Linux for the *same hardware* are
better. The issue is documentation-not quality of programming.
Lets try it this way how can we compete with toyota if everyone is
building a better mousetrap! toyota (M$ in this example) already has a
car everyone recognises, its got great economy, (low enough running
costs), has a higher resale value vs its buying value. a NEW competitor
to toyota cant come out with an ((insert your fav worst car)). even if
you can get it in your choice of 2 to 4 seats, 3 to 6 cyclinder engines,
air/auto ......
You need to go study your history a bit. Toyota and Honda didn't just
spring up as an alternative to GM/Ford/Chrysler. They were subsidized
by the government for a long time while they sucked.
So, the government should embark on a 20-year program to fund the next
competitor to Microsoft, right?
Luckily for us, there seems to be a legion of programmers who already
did so.
-a
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