tlug: Re: Linux taking over the globe?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "tjh" == tjhaslam  <tjhaslam@example.com> writes:

    tjh> At 16:13 98/09/22 +0900, Chris Seikya wrote:
    >> Do we really want to lower the bar?  Do we want to have a linux
    >> box on every desktop?  Do we want to replace Windows as the OS
    >> that is chosen by damned near every company on the globe?
    >> 
    >> I submit that we do NOT.

    tjh> Okay.  But I think that the dumb Tluggers, for whom I will
    tjh> appoint myself the `Spokesperson of the Moment` or SpM [tm],
    tjh> are actually asking for something different.  Someone,
    tjh> Stephen Turnbull I think, talked about the pleasure of
    tjh> getting his fingers greasy by actually working on the engine
    tjh> (shades of the Starr report?).

Yuck.

No, I wrote of a religious experience.  I was Babeling, I guess....

But I chose that metaphor seriously.  It's not everybody's Way.  It
happens to be mine, and Chris's (I should think), and a lot of people
I respect a lot.  It doesn't have to be yours, though.

    tjh> Second, there`s a lot of people out there who are using
    tjh> computers to get things done.  They can keep paying the MS
    tjh> monopoly tax--and further support and perpetuate the entire
    tjh> culture of stupidity that you and Turnbull rightfully
    tjh> despise.

Alexei Panshin once defined (or quoted a definition; why don't SF
writers footnote their bon mots?) civilization as the extent to which
you can do things automatically without thinking about them, leaving
your mind free to work on important things.  The beavers in the front
office should not have to worry about getting their email shut down
because the propellor heads in the machine room are getting flamed and 
mail bombed by us RFC weenies.  The state where they can beaver
without worrying is civilization.

Where MS falls down is not that it allows people to use computers
without thinking about it.  I would like to see more people thinking,
but there's a Heinlein quote about that somewhere....  It's that they
allow people to make themselves look like discourteous slobs if they
don't think about it.

And then there are the poor people with 3000 words of text and 12
diagrams that would take 12kb the lot in Postscript, and even pkzip'd
it won't fit on a 1.44MB floppy.


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