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Date:      Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:31:42 -0800
From:      "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
To:        "Ben" <ben@cahostnet.com>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: FreeBSD and Linux (More Questions!)
Message-ID:  <000701c0ab87$44517e60$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
In-Reply-To: <02c401c0ab03$fd58ca00$6102a00a@nhqadmin17>

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>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Ben

> What are the industry
>standards?

Ben, this may sound like a nasty vicious statement but it's the truth -
your making the _classic_ and I mean _classic_ mistake that all of
those new to the the computer industry make.

Simply put - there ARE NO standards.  At least, not in the way that you
WANT them to be.

The computer industry is NOT like it was 20 years ago, it is 1000 times
vaster.  I can remember when I was 15, and it was actually possible at
that time to "know everything worth knowing" at least in the PC desktop
arena  (although we didn't call them PC's then)  That is why the userbase at
that time was so adamantly for standardization on a single platform and
software OS - because we all felt that the market was still graspable,
and we wanted the standardization to keep it graspable.

Today, however, your fooling yourself if you believe for a second that the
computer industry is a homogenious collection of hardware and software.
If you learn nothing else, know now that even if you spent every waking
second of your life simply learning new things in the computer industry, you
could never hope in your lifetime to possess more than a small fraction of
all the computer knowledge worth knowing.  In fact, by the day that you die
the sum total amount of things to know about in the computer industry will
have been multiplied by 100.  You will go to your grave knowing a smaller
percentage of things in the computer industry than you know today, even if
you die the worlds greatest software developer

It frankly makes absolutely no difference WHAT platform that you choose -
you could pick FreeBSD and spend your life on it, or Linux and spend your
life on it, or Solaris and spend your life on it, and AS LONG AS YOU KNOW
WHAT YOUR DOING you will be very employable for the rest of your life.

"Industry standard" today is nothing more than a meaningless marketing term
used by salespeople to try to convince the weak-minded to abandon a current
solution and switch to a new one.

Ted Mittelstaedt                      tedm@toybox.placo.com
Author of:          The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide
Book website:         http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com



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