Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 09:53:55 -0500 (EST) From: John Bleichert <syborg@stny.rr.com> To: Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Advocacy help for CS professor Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0203220942530.7872-100000@janeway.vonbek.dhs.org> In-Reply-To: <F118QCIRDE2e0ghLGRI00009136@hotmail.com>
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Oh boy, I fought with this type all the way through engineering school. Yet another CS professor who sees the glitzy surface and the commercial success yet ignores the sloppy underpinnings (He's probably a DCOM expert, right?) and the havoc M$ is wreaking on this planet right now. I've found it worthless to try to reason with these people on technical grounds - if they were interested in technical acumen, they wouldn't be arguing with you anyway. There are only 3 arguments that can help you at this point: * M$ is a convicted monpolist who has broken the law several times and has been convicted of same. They should be treated accordingly. * Ask this "professor" what happens in the wild when one species has gained utter and complete control of a biota and is then summarily wiped out by some sort of disease? The only safe network is a heterogenous network. The fact that one opsys controls the desktop of 95% of the world's, businesses' and governments' desktops gives me the willies and is just plain wrong. * Ask him why exactly he would support a defacto, corprate-installed standard rather than a widely-agreed upon public standard that all opsys's could communicate with. I'm a unix enthusiast, but an open-standards zealot. The problem is, you've dropped this question in a newsgroup to a bunch of people who probably couldn't care if some sequestered academic thinks M$ has better products just because they were able to buy the market ;-) JB On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Charles Burns wrote: > Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 23:41:47 -0700 > From: Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> > To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Advocacy help for CS professor > > I have a CD professor who has a masters in CS and EET from a top 50 > university yet is enveloped in the Microsoft way of life. While this isn't > necessarily a bad thing, he is indirectly advocating Windows over Unix for > all tasks based on knowledge from the Unix of years ago. Alot has changed! > Showing him that Unix (BSD/Linux, etc) make a great server is easy, but Unix > is now a great desktop platform as well. This is what I need help with. I > have written several advocacy messages myself, but they are typically > targeted to people setting up servers. > > I would like to make some specific arguments that will show him that Unix is > worth giving a try, and if he doesn't like it, fine, his choice. He is > willing to read what I have to say about it and listen to me as a peer, and > considering his position as the head of the CS department, this could > benefit FreeBSD and Unix in general (if you are interested in that sort of > thing). > > This person has the following additude: > > - Microsoft has money, therefore can buy the best programmers, therefore has > the best products. > > - 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) > > - 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. I need > specific reasons and hopefully links (not to slashdot, to reputable neutral > news sites and such). OSS has Greenman, DeRaadt, Torvalds, Hubbard, Lehey, > and others which are certainly among the top 100 programmers on earth. How > to prove, though? I have pointed out that academics and contest winners are > different from people that naturally love to code, but he is in a commercial > mindset. I have seen many great logical abstractions of this concept on > various sites, but finding them would be impossible. > > - He is using examples of MS products being superior to other Windows > products, examples in which he is right. Netscape 4.7* vs. IE4--No > comparison. MS Office vs everything else--for it's intended audience, it > really is the best. Media player, etc. He quoted Outlook Express, but 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 examples in > which an OSS Unux product is superior. > ----Note that I am not trying to convince him that Unix makes a better > overall desktop, or that OSS software is necessarily the best, only that > there are many great OSS apps-some of which are better than MS counterparts, > and that he should give it a try. (he is busy and doesn't want to waste time > on something that he is pretty sure will suck) > > - He says Unix is fragmented, therefore cannot have a unified vision and > focus, and that this automatically makes it inferior to Windows which is > under one company with theoretically one vision and focus.(to own everything > :-) > > > I have already made some arguments and given some examples, but I would > greatly appreciate any compact and strong anecdotes, facts, quotes, > examples, theories, logical proofs, rhetorical questions, etc. that apply. > Please don't tell me that Windows really is a better desktop OS--whether it > is or not isn't the point. > > Thanks ahead of time. > > _________________________________________________________________ > Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. > http://www.hotmail.com > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > |-John Bleichert----syborg@stny.rr.com----------------| |-------------------http://vonbek.dhs.org/latest.jpg--| To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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