Can you guess what this is?

  • Thread starter Thread starter asj
  • Start date Start date
Jim Richardson said:
Apache serves more sites than ever before, IIS, has lost over a million
sites in the last year, it's down in raw numbers, and market share,
Apache, is up in both raw numbers, and market share.
Click to expand...

That's fine, but what bothers me about the celebration of
this, is that the reasons of celebration are very negative.

Nobody is *for* Apache. Everybody is *against* MS. They
wouldn't care who won, as long as MS lost.

This is narrow-minded, bigoted, pathetic... The only reasonable
interpretation any fair-minded person can put on this is "jealousy",
and that is not something to be proud of.

Sure, MS has done lots of evil things. But that doesn't explain why
other evil-doers are not reviled nearly as much or with as
much passion. Therefore the only valid explanation seems to be
jealousy of success (apart from some people who are motivated
by the guilt of ripping off pirated copies.) And those are
very poor motives.

I would prefer more _real_ choices in the PC market. ("Free" doesn't
count as _real_, because you are at the mercy of hobbyists
who do "volunteer" labor to benefit multi-million dollar corporations,
just for some primitive ego satisfaction, therefore exposing
themselves as essentially irrational.)

But I don't want those choices at the price of becoming blinded
by prejudice.
 
soft-eng>
soft-eng> I would prefer more _real_ choices in the PC market.
soft-eng> ("Free" doesn't count as _real_, because you are at the
soft-eng> mercy of hobbyists who do "volunteer" labor to benefit
soft-eng> multi-million dollar corporations, just for some primitive
soft-eng> ego satisfaction, therefore exposing themselves as
soft-eng> essentially irrational.)

The world is an irrational place.

Personally I write free software, because having written it for my own
purposes, I have nothing to loose by releasing it. I write it for my
benefit, not anyone else's. I release it for my benefit as
well.

Ultimately, though, I don't always want choice in the PC market. For
instance the standard hardware architecture of the PC denies
choice. But I couldn't care less about hardware, so I don't care about
choice here. I don't really care about operating systems that much
either, so long as they do what I want. For my requirements, this
means linux, as windows is too much effort. Other people will differ.

Software is commoditising. What I really want from most of my software
is stability. I don't want new versions. I want something that is
familiar now, to be familiar in the future. I think its going to be a
few years yet.

Phil
 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.advocacy.]
That's fine, but what bothers me about the celebration of
this, is that the reasons of celebration are very negative.

Nobody is *for* Apache. Everybody is *against* MS. They
wouldn't care who won, as long as MS lost.
Click to expand...

Bull. I am "for" Apache, it's a great webserver, it does it's job well,
letting me do mine. I have sites that handle millions of hits a day, and
sites (vhosted) that handle several hundred vhosts. Apache works *great*
for me. I love it. If there was something better for this task, I'd use
it, but for me, there isn't. Apache is the best tool for the job.
This is narrow-minded, bigoted, pathetic... The only reasonable
interpretation any fair-minded person can put on this is "jealousy",
and that is not something to be proud of.

Sure, MS has done lots of evil things. But that doesn't explain why
other evil-doers are not reviled nearly as much or with as
much passion. Therefore the only valid explanation seems to be
jealousy of success (apart from some people who are motivated
by the guilt of ripping off pirated copies.) And those are
very poor motives.

I would prefer more _real_ choices in the PC market. ("Free" doesn't
count as _real_, because you are at the mercy of hobbyists
who do "volunteer" labor to benefit multi-million dollar corporations,
just for some primitive ego satisfaction, therefore exposing
themselves as essentially irrational.)

But I don't want those choices at the price of becoming blinded
by prejudice.
Click to expand...


you proceed from a false premise, see above. I use Linux because I like
it, because it works for me, because I prefer it. Not because it's "not
MICROS~1 " I used to use Excel, (mostly) liked it. Now I use Gnumeric.
If Excel were available on Linux (well, it sort of is, with crossover)
I'd still chose Gnumeric.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/YfTsd90bcYOAWPYRAjU5AKDQpJ2f7uvQR47rCRvcMm+KuiX+KwCePJp6
l3UoQ0R9czQl7nXp/F2Cpu8=
=Lvaj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
soft-eng said:
That's fine, but what bothers me about the celebration of
this, is that the reasons of celebration are very negative.

Nobody is *for* Apache. Everybody is *against* MS. They
wouldn't care who won, as long as MS lost.
Click to expand...
I don't quite agree. I think Apache's success is something to celebrate
in its own right. It shows that open source software really can succeed
in its own right.
This is narrow-minded, bigoted, pathetic... The only reasonable
interpretation any fair-minded person can put on this is "jealousy",
and that is not something to be proud of.
Click to expand...
I tend to dislike all monopolists, bullies and criminals - and not by
any means because I'm jealous of them.

And that's before you figure in the little things.

- The amount of work lost to crashes, hangs and BSODs.
- The incredible hassle of trying to compensate for Microsoft's utter
failure even to try to make its products secure.
- The deliberately misleading public statements and press briefings.
- The policy of systematically saying different things to different
people.
- Having to pay $500 to a vendor to read its propaganda - I had to buy
Office to read some information a Microsoft contact sent me.
- The systematic desecration of the English language - everything is
"great" or "cool", and each new release of Windows contains 700 "new
technologies".
- There's lots more, but your time is precious.
Sure, MS has done lots of evil things. But that doesn't explain why
other evil-doers are not reviled nearly as much or with as
much passion.
Click to expand...

Sure it does.
MS has done a lot more, bigger evil things.
And MS is a lot bigger itself, meaning its evil acts affect more people
in a bigger way.
And it is a monopoly, meaning that even government relies on its
products - and thereby becomes even more inefficient and unreliable.

I would prefer more _real_ choices in the PC market. ("Free" doesn't
count as _real_, because you are at the mercy of hobbyists
who do "volunteer" labor to benefit multi-million dollar corporations,
just for some primitive ego satisfaction, therefore exposing
themselves as essentially irrational.)

But I don't want those choices at the price of becoming blinded
by prejudice.
Click to expand...

"Prejudice" and "discrimination" are two words that have been
undeservedly blackened by their connotations.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with being prejudiced against
corruption, greed, bullying and cynicism.

It is good to discriminate against the inferior product, and in favour
of the better one.

If people weren't prejudiced against a company that has been found
guilty of deliberate, systematic criminal wrong-doing - and,
incidentally, a company that did its best to con the very court that was
trying it - those people wouldn't be worth spit.
 
: Sure, MS has done lots of evil things. But that doesn't explain why
: other evil-doers are not reviled nearly as much or with as
: much passion. [...]

If the number of "hate" pages is anything to go by, Microsoft is currently
being beaten to the title of most hated company by the SCO Group:
Click to expand...

There's a difference? I hadn't heard.
 
:>: Sure, MS has done lots of evil things. But that doesn't explain why
:>: other evil-doers are not reviled nearly as much or with as
:>: much passion. [...]
:>
:>If the number of "hate" pages is anything to go by, Microsoft is currently
:>being beaten to the title of most hated company by the SCO Group:

: There's a difference? I hadn't heard.

Well, if you think SCO is Microsoft's sock puppet - then it really /is/
a landslide.
 
Tom Welsh said:
Sure it does.
MS has done a lot more, bigger evil things.
And MS is a lot bigger itself, meaning its evil acts affect more people
in a bigger way.
Click to expand...

You are making MS to be a lot more relevant that it is. With
MS, it's all about money. Somebody losing it, somebody making
it. People make it out to be very important and sinister because
there are a lot of marketing spinners out there, whose companies
are losing out to MS, and who therefore have been spinning
like crazy to the gullible public.

But people who are capable of thinking rationally, would
consider Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney cartel a
much more truly relevant force in terms of the people
of the world. And would be able to see the anti-MS
hysteria as just that; hysteria. Nothing MS as
a company does is globally significant in a very
serious way -- anymore than IBM's "evil ways" (marketing
spinner types used to weave webs about IBM's "evil ways"
in early 80's when IBM was pre-dominant in the computer
industry) had any far-reaching effect. (I am not saying
IBM didn't have evil ways. Maybe they did. But even if
they did indeed use to get contracts by scaring their
customers with FUD and falsehoods, or by taking customers
out to lavish lunches and not because of product strength,
or by tying customers into their product lines,
still it had no serious effect outside the computer industry.
And sooner or later the tied-in customers did manage
to escape to "workstation"s and "pc"s, causing the former
monopoly IBM to re-invent itself.)

Ultimately, it's all just industry in-fighting, with
innocent bystanders roped in, in the name of "doing good"
by writing free software for some of the in-fighters
(who mostly fight every bit as dirty as MS, and would actually
like nothing more than to become monopolies themselves,
preferably without the DOJ noticing; or at least having
the current administration at the helm if the DOJ
did notice.)
 
Jim Richardson said:
you proceed from a false premise, see above. I use Linux because I like
it, because it works for me, because I prefer it. Not because it's "not
Click to expand...

There is indeed a small number of people who benefit
directly from free software. But this is a "secondary"
market, much smaller in size than a "primary" market.
It can only sustain a very few people, realistically.
 
Phillip Lord said:
soft-eng>
soft-eng> I would prefer more _real_ choices in the PC market.
soft-eng> ("Free" doesn't count as _real_, because you are at the
soft-eng> mercy of hobbyists who do "volunteer" labor to benefit
soft-eng> multi-million dollar corporations, just for some primitive
soft-eng> ego satisfaction, therefore exposing themselves as
soft-eng> essentially irrational.)

The world is an irrational place.

Personally I write free software, because having written it for my own
purposes, I have nothing to loose by releasing it. I write it for my
benefit, not anyone else's. I release it for my benefit as
well.
Click to expand...

Maybe. But there are lot of government and semi-government
employees who write it on public money, simply because they
can get away with it through strange self-justifications.
Ultimately, though, I don't always want choice in the PC market. For
instance the standard hardware architecture of the PC denies
choice. But I couldn't care less about hardware, so I don't care about
Click to expand...

Choice means choice, without even having to know what
the details are. (What is hardware? What is OS?
Why should I care? I just want choices, and what
it does for me. Without me needing to learn
arcane primitive command sets because it is
a "good thing". According to somebody or the other.)
Software is commoditising. What I really want from most of my software
is stability. I don't want new versions. I want something that is
Click to expand...

Sure. Cars are stable. And have choices. And new versions.
 
Back
Top