Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 10:56:35 -0700 From: mike allison <mallison@konnections.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk>, dennis <dennis@etinc.com>, Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) Message-ID: <335A58D3.4C3199AA@konnections.com> References: <3933.861467275@time.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > We're still at the stage where all the solutions are imperfect and > don't even begin to approach what people *really* want (HAL 9000), so > we get to play the same games that early "doctors" played - The scarey thing is that the Doctors REALLY aren't that much smarter. The Chemists are getting smarter, the scientists are smarter, but there's a big gap between the chemistry and science AND the doctor. Doctors are still much more naturopathic than we might like to admit... Computers, the same. We're not much better off in the user realm than we were with Mac OS 7.0. Sure, there are some smart people who do cool things, but they're far from the user. What was the quote on the hill during the Year 2000 Problem discussions: These systems we're designed in the 50's, 60's and 70's to last for 10 years, but we're still depending on them. That's reality. Over all, we're just now seeing widespread implementation of GUIs at most every level and we're not sophisticated enough to take out those command line backdoors where all the real work is done. My sister, who is a city accountant, recently asked me how to transfer Wordperfect files from their PC tapes to their RS6000 mainframe Unix. They had spent hours trying every command and combination in the book. I asked if they tried `TAR' and she said "yeah, I think, but I don't know what that is.." I said Tape ARchive, you know, transfer things from Tape..." She thought it was cool that there was a program to do that... but couldn't use it. > > Basically, yntil we've got HAL and I can simply walk around my house > and dialog with the computer or have it generate complex images on any > of my high-definition televisions (I figure HAL and HDTV will come out > around the same time ;), I'm going to have to pay a lot of money for > less than I want. That's called a marketing opportunity. :-) > > Yes, however, our problem is that we don't have BOTH and we really > should. I guess that was my point. The GUIs are nice for people who just want to get things done and abstract themselves from the H/W. But we still need access to all the tools and H/W features... > That would truly be the best of both worlds, and the only thing I've > seen which actually comes remotely close is OS/2. It actually has a > decent network suite (very Berkeley-ish and probably ported from it) > and one of the best X servers for a non-UNIX platform I've ever used. > Of course, we all know what's happening to OS/2.. :-) > > Jordan I actually like OS/2. My same hardware seemed to interact with the INet much faster through OS/2's software. I thought it was nice, but again, there were few apps native to OS/2. In the long run, you were running Dos/Windows apps and might as well have been running Dos... -Mike
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