[tlug] Re: [CoLoCo] RESPECT MICROSOFT

["Gernot Hassenpflug" <aikishugyo@example.com>]

"Lyle H Saxon" <llletters@example.com> wrote:

>On 8/12/07, David L. Willson <DLWillson@example.com> wrote:
>> /../  For now, though, we have a lot
>> of work to do.  We need to show people that our operating system is
>> easier to use AND it does everything theirs does.  We're not there yet.
>
>This is true, but I sometimes wonder why people expect it to be
>/../ , while on the other hand
>they put up with all manner of problems with their brand-W machines.
>The problems on the brand-W boxes are overlooked, but Linux must not
>only be perfect, it must be better than anything else in each and
>every way before it will be considered?
>
>> Work.  /../  Inter-operate with them now.
>
>I agree, with a couple of caveats /../  Basically,
>the world needs the hardware component of computers unquestionably,
>but the world simple does not need Microsoft. /../

My point of view is based on having a workable, stable, predictable
system, not a name-brand with certain brand-related features that
stand out. Sort of like the difference between a laboratory in the
West being named after its research content, with computers named
fairly arbitrarily but consistently across time, whereas in Japan a
laboratory is likely to be named after a professor, along with the
machines, thus creating brand over content. Something must not just
work, it must fail -- fail in such a way that it remains usable, or at
least preserves the user's content even at the expense of itself. Here
is a story that illustrates this, for you military buffs out there. An
account of a Russian tank commander Dmitry Loza talking about a
critical difference between the M4 Sherman and the T-34 in Soviet
service. A pretty scary scenario. Let me just hypothetically equate
this with any number of possible data loss scenarios when the OS has a
severe hiccup. Original is at:
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=28759

"For a long time after the war I sought an answer to one question. If
a T-34 started burning, we tried to get as far away from it as
possible, even though this was forbidden. The on-board ammunition
exploded. For a brief period of time, perhaps six weeks, I fought on a
T-34 around Smolensk. The commander of one of our companies was hit in
his tank. The crew jumped out of the tank but were unable to run away
from it because the Germans were pinning them down with machine gun
fire. They lay there in the wheat field as the tank burned and blew
up. By evening, when the battle had waned, we went to them. I found
the company commander lying on the ground with a large piece of armor
sticking out of his head. When a Sherman burned, the main gun
ammunition did not explode. Why was this?

Such a case occurred once in Ukraine. Our tank was hit. We jumped out
of it but the Germans were dropping mortar rounds around us. We lay
under the tank as it burned. We laid there a long time with nowhere to
go. The Germans were covering the empty field around the tank with
machine gun and mortar fires. We lay there. The uniform on my back was
beginning heating up from the burning tank. We thought we were
finished! We would hear a big bang and it would all be over! A
brother's grave! We heard many loud thumps coming from the turret.
This was the armor-piercing rounds being blown out of their cases.
Next the fire would reach the high explosive rounds and all hell would
break loose! But nothing happened. Why not? Because our high explosive
rounds detonated and the American rounds did not? In the end it was
because the American ammunition had more refined explosives. Ours was
some kind of component that increased the force of the explosion one
and one-half times, at the same time increasing the risk of detonation
of the ammunition."

IMHO, linux does not have to be top-class in every department in the
same configuration (impossible), but it has to do a couple of basic
things well, and avoid branding.

Regards, Gernot