Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 16:13:06 +1100 From: jonathan michaels <jon@caamora.com.au> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: This just in: Microsoft/Sears Merger Message-ID: <19981228161306.C11293@caamora.com.au> In-Reply-To: <4.1.19981223001616.009eb140@genesis.ispace.com>; from Drew Baxter on Wed, Dec 23, 1998 at 12:32:19AM -0500 References: <Message <asmodai@wxs.nl> <XFMail.981222204458.asmodai@wxs.nl> <199812230107.TAA09822@n4hhe.ampr.org> <4.1.19981223001616.009eb140@genesis.ispace.com>
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On Wed, Dec 23, 1998 at 12:32:19AM -0500, Drew Baxter wrote: > At 07:07 PM 12/22/98 -0600, David Kelly wrote: > >> If you can get 85+% of the software on the market to work on FreeBSD, and > >> support my Voodoo2 card, I'll switch.. > > > >Excuses, excuses, excuses. 85% percent of software doesn't support your > >Voodoo2 card, so the requirement that 85% of software support FreeBSD > >and the Voodoo2 card is extremely unlikely. If it were to come to pass, > >Jordan Hubbard would have done what Bill Gates couldn't do. > > Did I say it does? actually you did .. go back to some of teh real english grammar books, thier you will find a description off what the 'and' does. also you were describing you computers display subsystems, to amke what you say latter a tue representation, it would have need to be a different structural entity .. sorry i'm getting picky. at this early stage, plese excuse my spelling, i have dsylexia and several neurological deficits that make it nearly impossible to type and spell correctly, most (unix based, and all teh rest) spell checkers cannot cope with my spelling disorders and make teh spelling worse that what it is. so i don't bother, i prefer to have all teh right letters in teh word and woryy about the order latter. if this sounds like i'm saying i;m a disabled person, you are right, only i'm a real disabled person with hands, eyes brain and legs that don't work as they are told to do .. not like an average wheelchair 'disbled person' whose only probelm is that they cannot get up and walk, but have 100 percent use of eyes hands and brain and no impediments to typing well and can spell properly. > I said if I could GET 85% of the software on the market > AND my voodoo2 card.. They are separate entities in my sentence.. I'm also i have one question, why do yo want 85 percent of all software in teh marketplace to run on your computer which include your choice of a specific video (image and text) processing subsystem ? how many word processors, how many spreadsheets, how many whatevers can you use ? shortly i will be investing in a sun microsystems WABI licence so that i can use teh word processors of choice and my faverite spreadsheet, these being ms windows excell v2.11 and ms word for windows v2.0a and wordperfect v5.1. i have very specific needs to use those three packages, as well as the fact that i grew up with them and i find tehm most comfortable to use. wonce i get this organised i will in all probability never upgrade teh underlying operating system, and i can guarentee you that i will never go away from those three packages. well, that is not true, if somebody ever ports framework v2 to xwindows or makes it possible to use teh dos version of framework v2 in a dos emulator, then and only them i will trash teh rest and go back to framework. just in case you are interested framework is an excelent 'office package', it was one of teh forst actually. i provides a veru good text authering system, a spreadsheet and database engine as well as teh other goodies. ok, i've mentioned 4 software packages, this is about 2 to 3 more than most people use, in a practial sence, in thier daily computer chores. ohhh, your are going to cry tears of blood over teh amrican mantra, 'freedom of choice', answer this, whic is better one or two very good bit of saftware that work faultlessly or several thousand that are medicre at best and dangerious at worst ? choices is pertinent to, with and at levels of functional equivalence, not just yet another spreadsheet hat works almost as good as ms excel on a good day if you hold you tonge at teh right angle .. maybe. choise is relevent when confronted with equally functional objects. currently the software (home small business) marketplace dosen't work like that, in short we dond have teh hegemony of a us govt divison or a soe/sop (just in case yo are not a big company tech support person) standard operating environment/stand operating procedures from a fortune 500 company. choice when used in the manner you propose is a cripling disease that hampers far more that it ever helps people to 'develop'. > referring to the regular PC market.. I don't see me (nor many people in my > economic class) to be able to have an SGI or an UltraSparc or anything like > that for a home machine. > > This is a software creation place, but this is also a place of > demonstration.. If anything I'm trying to sell myself in demonstration. > It's increasingly difficult to try to sell on a platform that the 'average > consumer' (keep in mind this is referencing the average consumer in Maine, > USA), actually cares about. Windows, people here can understand. FreeBSD, > UNIX, Linux (although media lately on that word could spark something), > AIX, SGI, SPARC, SUN, all those words, are not really known or have little > relevance on the 'average consumer' in Maine. As a network developer in an > Educational Institution (Public, at that), I get the wonderous joy of being > a consultant too. "FreeBSD", will not sell as a buzz word to these people, yup, only, i worked at teh real coalface, seeing computer replace people, and watching teh heartache and misery that was rought by even teh mention of teh word computer in relation to ones duty roster. this is how people really feel about 'computers', this is why companies like microsoft are spemding millions, not to advertise 'microsoft' product but to detoxify teh word computer. > but "Windows" will. People that refuse to touch computers in that town > know what Windows is.. no they do not .. they are comfortable with a much bandied about buzzword that has no real definition. it is an aglomeration of meanings that pass a vague picture of some sort of mundane functionality atributed with, and concurrent tot eh use of an object called a 'computer system'. i have several frinds who tell me tehy are extremely computer literate, they all use ms windows, one even 'feels comfortable' at teh ms dos cli. yet when thier dos shell interface cracks up and tehy have to use more than a mouse and a handfull of 'keyboard shortcuts' to fix it .. they are totally lost. computer literacy is measured by the lack of literacy of ones peers, not by how much one thinks that hey know about a very partucular, very narrow segment of one type of software tollkit. but that is another side of teh cion you flipped lets hope it dosnt land exposing that side ... yup. > If you're looking for me to say that I'd wipe all 17.7 gig of storage I > have on this machine and install FreeBSD, you won't see that. Yes, I have > a FreeBSD machine running X here, as well as my larger machine at work. > Yes, I like using both of them. Yes, I am in a Microsoft world due to > work. But there are several thousand other people that go to work each > morning to a Windows-based PC, so if anything, I'm a sell-out or a > follower.. But that's the difference, if I was a leader, I'd have a choice. we are all leaders, we all have choice, concomitant with those choices are responsibilities .. this is what peope dont want .. teh responsibilities. > > >Not to mention less than 85% of all software runs on Microsoft hosts. less than 15 percent of ALL software runs on ibm/intel personal computer based hardware. > >Apple, Unix, and mainframes have at least 20% of the software market. unix and mainframes are about 60 perecnt of teh WHOLE software market place with embeded (realtime unix like) systems being about 15 to 20 percent with home and small business machines bringing up teh rear. one small moot point to note as teh embeded systems market place grows it wil take far more from teh home business end of teh spectrum that it will from teh unix/mainframe end, this segment may actually grow as it diversifys to supply bulk information to a host of read and display terminals that people will still call "home computers" teh mainframe will be doing al teh data crunching and sending out tot eh termial in teh home. > > Again, PC market. K-8 school in Eastern/Central Maine USA in a town with > 1800 people doesn't care about Mainframe or Unix, in many cases not even > Apple.. if they didnt care about unix or mainframes they wouldm have the govt services that they do have, nor would they have traffic lights, and their telephine exchange would be still using hill top signal fires. 98 percent of people at home do not need a computer of any kind, they want one, want and need are two completely differnet ways of looking at things, items positions and phhilosophical structures. > > If someone ever manages to get WINE to be neck and neck with whatever > Windows version comes out (as far as application compatiblity only), then > I'll switch. In the meantime, the words are "Office", "Foolproof", and > "Encarta"... 2 of the 3 ARE Microsoft products, the 3rd only runs on > Windows or Macintosh.. > > --- > Drew "Droobie" Baxter > OneNetwork Exchange > Network Development, Orland Consolidated School > http://www.droo.orland.me.us > 207-942-0275 / 207-471-2719 > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message -- =============================================================================== Jonathan Michaels PO Box 144, Rosebery, NSW 1445 Australia ===========================================================<jon@caamora.com.au> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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