From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Dec 2 11:33: 6 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 091F637B417 for ; Sun, 2 Dec 2001 11:32:58 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 88556 invoked by uid 100); 2 Dec 2001 19:32:51 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15370.33251.168127.204747@guru.mired.org> Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 13:32:51 -0600 To: "Anthony Atkielski" , Cc: , "Ted Mittelstaedt" , Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) In-Reply-To: <00e601c17b5e$a3af1ff0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <15367.37543.15609.362257@guru.mired.org> <040701c179af$4bda25f0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15367.43943.686638.723011@guru.mired.org> <003301c179ea$8925d270$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15368.2156.193643.17139@guru.mired.org> <005601c179f3$a4030640$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15368.5624.255357.964607@guru.mired.org> <008901c17a30$7d084f40$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15369.3159.548082.862287@guru.mired.org> <000f01c17ab1$1ac8c590$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15370.25831.254244.363910@guru.mired.org> <00dd01c17b5d$b10b0930$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <000301c17a40$8fc78dc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <010d01c17a44$98b491e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C08A204.3CA7014C@mindspring.com> <002e01c17a5f$f2b34040$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <000c01c17a7c$4de06710$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15369.53.739857.967952@guru.mired.org> <000a01c17ab0$266fabd0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15369.20345.689585.495352@guru.mired.org> <002501c17ab3$07f0f0d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15370.26355.292711.525268@guru.mired.org> <00e601c17b5e$a3af1ff0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Anthony Atkielski types: > Mike writes: > > I've priced name brand hardware both with > > and without MS software, and the identical > > hardware was more expensive without the > > MS software - and involved me doing more > > work to use it. > So why didn't you just buy it with the MS software, and then remove the MS > software? You say that the hardware was identical, after all. Because I don't see the point in paying for software I'm not going to use. This strange state of affairs is the result of MS's illegal and unethical licensing practice. > > Windows may have been a completely different > > environment from MS-DOS, but it would run MS-DOS > > software. That's made it "good enough" to be > > worth using for MS-DOS users, whereas options > > that didn't do that weren't. That's the proprietary > > trap again. > Didn't OS/2 run MS-DOS programs? True. MS outmaneuvered IBM a second time on that one. But we were discussing why Apple didn't go anywhere, and the Mac didn't run MS-DOS programs. > > If they didn't own what IBM was going to turn into > > the defacto standard desktop OS for business, they'd > > still be a small company turning out mediocre (aka > > "good enough") language processors. > I seriously doubt that. They would have followed the money in any case. That's > what made them successful. And the fact that they are no longer doing that to > the same extent will be part of their downfall, too. Ok, they might have been a large company turning out mediocre software, instead of being a mammoth company turning out mediocre software. Anthony Atkielski types: > Mike writes: > > Windows 3 was clearly good enough for most > > people, but they still stood in line at midnight > > to get Windows 95 - which was better. > The reason you saw long lines is that there were many people for whom Windows 3 > was _not_ good enough. Then why were they using it? Anyone who wasn't using Windows 3 wasn't standing in line, either. For those people standing in line, it was clearly good enough - otherwise they would have dropped it before 95 came out. Those were the people who wanted better - which is why they were standing in line. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message