Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 15 Jun 1997 23:34:38 +0800 (WST)
From:      Adrian Chadd <adrian@obiwan.psinet.net.au>
To:        "Victor A. Sudakov" <vas@vas.tomsk.su>
Cc:        isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: PPP problems.
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970615232011.8568A-100000@obiwan.psinet.net.au>
In-Reply-To: <199706141334.VAA04717@vas.tomsk.su>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Victor A. Sudakov wrote:

> > If they get shitty about it.. stick the RFC in their face and say "read
> > and adhere". If they choose not to.. Well theres the problem. It works
> > with the majority of their users (ie Windows) so why should they change
> > anything? 
> > 
> > Sad, isn't it.
> 
> Yes, this is exactly what I am afraid of. The reason of my having started this
> thread is that I am trying to understand if ISPs can prevent this from
> happening.

:)
Well, basically in my eyes it boils down to this:

* We (ISP's) are out to provide a service to people, and make money.
* In order to make money we have to cater for the majority of the market,
  unless of course the minority want to pay us huge amounts of money :)
* The majority of users use a Microsoft-based OS, so the ISP which caters
  for the Microsoft-based OS, no matter how whacky Microsoft twist TCP/IP,
  PPP, or whatever into.. will be making the most money.

Guess what the business-smart person would do, without thinking
"standards" ?

It comes down to the fact that we have to keep compatibility to Windows
clients. Having to maintain compatibility to them AND the REAL standard
can and will become a pain in the arse.

Get UNIX into the homes is what I say. Dress it up, make it easy to use,
make it pretty, make it do what people want. Once its out there, and its
gained some popularity, people WILL start writing more applications for
it.

If I actually got off my arse and completed my "desktop customisation",
my mum could walk up to my FreeBSD/X machine, login with her
username/password, be dumped to an X session (which would be running
Openlook). There would be icons on the desktop and folders too (yes,
people like them :) and one would be "StarWrite 3.0".. she'd double
click that, and up would pop swrite3. That in itself is a very nice piece
of software (albeit a TAD slow, but hey.. Word 7 is still worse)
and when I started it up for her, she sat right down and typed her resume
out from scratch. She didn't even ASK me for help :)

Problem is.. none of us have any TIME. If someone was going to PAY me to
pretty up an X environment, write nice configuration scripts, write that
file-manager/icon stuff, I'd do it for sure. But, since the "free unix" is
generally powered by people who are doing it in their spare time.. well
I'm surprised its gotten as far as it has today.

</RANT>

Now Jordan, if this isn't far away from FreeBSD-related talk, I don't know
what is :)

Seriously though, whats happening with the user-friendly install of
FreeBSD?

Adrian

-- 
Adrian Chadd			| "Unix doesn't stop you from doing
<adrian@psinet.net.au>		|   stupid things because that would 
				|    stop you from doing clever things"





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.95q.970615232011.8568A-100000>