Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:04:17 +0100 From: "Stuart Duckworth" <ITServices@cableinet.co.uk> To: "F. Even" <freebsdlists@elitists.org> Cc: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Microsoft bashers Message-ID: <096353002171b81PCOW034M@blueyonder.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <04ed01c12ebe$b5d84cc0$6501a8c0@elitists.org>
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F. Even wrote: > Now...we don't need to make this a political argument I'm afraid that as politics is the process by which a society decides who gets how much of the available resources; and that government and its various arms are the organs through which society debates and executes those decisions; and it is clear that in the US at least the Government has decided that Microsoft may have or has sequestered more than its fair share of available resources; this is de facto a political argument. > ....esp. since the > scenario you have painted is not necessarily dead on. Quite open to > debate as a matter of fact That would be a political debate. > ....and this isn't necessarily the place for > that. > No, not necessarily. However, the rules of FreeBSDnewbies list state that this is a place for general discussions and quite a few people seem to think that this is an appropriate place for a discussion about the politics of computing. I find that understandable. I am sitting here writing this using Pegasus Mail on a Windows platform because for years that is what I have used. When I first got into computing in about 1976 I used CPM on a Commodore. A little later I got to use Acorn's BBC machines, whose graphics and accessibility were far superior to anything from Microsoft. I looked at Windows then and came to the conclusion that it was an inferior product. I looked at Macs too and found them different from Acorn machines and also superior to Microsoft. As time went on I continued to use Acorn machines, graduating in time to RISC machines, whose software's speed and efficiency far outstripped Microsoft's offerings. My old Acorn Archimedes, which is now lying in a cupboard, had a front end that looked like Windows 95 while Microsoft were still peddling Windows 3.11. I just re-read that and realise that what I should have said was: "whose front end predated Windows 95 in utility and style." So why did I end up using this machine? Simple: economics! 80x86 processors are everywhere and while they are hopelessly inefficient in terms of power than Acorn's RISC machines, they are much cheaper to buy. The development of cheap hardware: RAM, hdd's and so on, made it cheaper to use 80x86 stuff. RISC machines need little RAM and small executables, which was a great advantage when hardware was expensive but is not now. Microsoft is ubiquitous: not because it is good necessarily but because of very effective marketing and "interesting" corporate practices. Having succumbed at last to Microsoft, why am I subscribed to and interested in Unix? I used it at university in 1991 and loved its power, fexibility and simplicity. I want to know more about it and perhaps to use it in the future instead of Windows. It'll take time, I know but I shall nibble away at it and hope to get somewhere with it. I want to persevere also because I dislike being taken for granted by anyone. I feel sometimes that Microsoft, among others, takes me and my money for granted. Something like: "We know you'll come to us because there's precious little you can do about it." I have installed Star Office on this machine and use it and Pegasus and Netscape in preference to Microsoft's products. In time I may be able to use Star Office in a Unix environment, that would be good. I don't know whether Pegasus is available for Unix/Linux but if it is, I can use that there too. Note here though that the software I prefer operates inside a GUI. I don't dislike command line work but for visual pleasure and simplicity of day to day tasks GUI's are better IMHO!!!! This started off about politics. The politics for me, at my own personal level is in that last paragraph: I do not like them to take me and my money for granted. I want to be in a position to decide who gets what of my resources. At a national and global level I worry that power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. I think that the Microsoft corporation may have been corrupted by the power it wields. That worries me. There are other corrupt organisations out there but this would not be the place to discuss them. Stuart. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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