Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 11:09:03 -0500 From: Tom Rhodes <darklogik@pittgoth.com> To: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Advocacy help for CS professor Message-ID: <3C9B571F.1090101@pittgoth.com> References: <20020322013138.A87120@xor.obsecurity.org> <20020322111245.GA26042@hades.hell.gr>
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Good morning brother Giorgos and community member Charles Burns, recently
the following issue has come up which I think requires my reply or at
least my attention. Also, for those of you who are humor or friendship
impaired Giorgos is not really my brother ;)
>
> Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>This person has the following additude:
>>
>>- Microsoft has money, therefore can buy the best programmers, therefore
>>has the best products.
>>
This right here, and I don't really understand why, really really
upsets me... Why doesn't MS have Marshall Kirk McKusick? I mean, this
guy is smart! Simple, because many of the so-called best programmers do
not really want to work for MS... Hell, even I outsmarted the MS tech
support many times over... And if the hire the ``best'' then why was
their DNS software misconfigured? Their OWN software!!! By their OWN
trained technicians!!! Surely you remember the 3-days of downtime that
hit a few months ago where Microsoft admitted that they misconfigured
their own software... And it took them how many days to get it working,
they finally gave up and sent it over to another company, who has been
running it perfectly fine since... Read more at Wired.com, just search
for Microsoft, and it was a few months ago...
>>- Microsoft is very successful, therefore has the best products (though
>>he is not using the popularity alone as an argument as he does have
>>extensive knowledge of logic)
>>
I don't eat meat, but lets have some fun... WOW!! I guess we should all
eat ball park hotdogs cause that one basket ball player eats them, and
tells us that they are great... I'll tell myself whats great thank you
very much... And apologies that this is a more american product
marketing scheme, but this is the point i'm trying to make:
Microsoft has a huge popularity with many of my In Real Life friends,
mainly you hear them associated with things like ``money hungry'' and
``unknowledgeable technicians'' and of course ``monopoly'' but the list
goes on and on. If your professor has a REAL sence of this ``logic''
then he would not bash something or put it down until he's tried it.
To be honest, I didn't think it was right for a professor to make
remarks of this kind, but what do I know right... I know that all
of the professors that i've ever talked to understood one thing,
personal opinion... Most of them actually liked *NIX because if gave
them the developement environment and power that they needed! You
cannot judge a product by the success of a company... Would you buy a
car that failed all the safety tests, just because the company is
sucessful with its other cars?! I wouldn't! Every company is bound to
have a ``bad'' product. You cannot simply have a flawless record, why,
because everyone is human, and humans are prone to mistakes...
>>- OSS programmers could not possibly be as good as Microsoft programmers,
>>because Microsoft sponsors such things as nat'l programming competitions
>>and hires the winners/hires the best of class from top universities, etc.
>>
Even if I had a PHD in computer science and knew every programming
language in-out like the back of my hand, I would NEVER take part in
in a competition like this... People have more uses than programming,
look at me for instance! I do not understand much about code, but i'm
very good with hardware, and I can explain things in depth... I support
the FreeBSD project by helping them with their documentation efforts,
and Operating System isn't worth anything if you do not have
understandable and knowledgeable people writing this documentation...
Now! If I can just get my spelling better ;)
>>OSS has Greenman, DeRaadt, Torvalds, Hubbard, Lehey, and others which are
>>certainly among the top 100 programmers on earth. How to prove, though?
>>
>>being in the field he uses Eudora because of OE's jaw-dropping security
>>record. I already made the Evolution comparison, but I really need more
Microsoft has always had this dark cloud known as (security issues) just
raining over their heads... Personally, I won't trust anything from
MS, just because I do not wish for critical or important information
to be leaked
>
> The Windows world is not less fragmented though. It's been through changes
> of lesser or bigger importance, from Windows 3.0, 3.1 & 3.11, then Windows
> 95, 98 & NT, up to the current Windows NT, 2000, ME, and XP with their
> Professional, Desktop, Server editions, or what have you...
Backward compatibility!!! Where I work they wanted to throw XP on my
main workstation (this one) which currently and unfortunatly has
Windows 98. I'm scared to have XP on here, not just because its
a resource hog and insecure, and the interface bugs me, but what if
say, a boring day comes along and I want to play doom? Will doom work
on XP (I've never tried it), will other windows programs that i've
grown used to sigfaulting, sigfault in the same way on XP, or will it
be worse... I know thats sort of a humorous answer, but hell...
>
> If you are still reading, after this long post,
> thanks for your attention :)
Your welcome, it was a very interesting arguement, and I felt bad
about snipping it ;)
Maybe the advocacy page could have another part where your information
is thrown in... Maybe we could have a quick let loose on the advocacy
mailing list for ``best arguements on why FreeBSD is a great Operating
System'' and even a ``What has FreeBSD done for you'' area ;) Opinions?
I will not paste your information without any authorization... As if
a request was even required...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Giorgos Keramidas FreeBSD Documentation Project
> keramida@{freebsd.org,ceid.upatras.gr} http://www.FreeBSD.org/docproj/
--
Tom (Darklogik) Rhodes
www.Pittgoth.com Gothic Liberation Front
www.FreeBSD.org The Power To Serve
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