Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 07:35:56 +0100 From: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, "Brad Knowles" <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: A breath of fresh air.. Message-ID: <a05101017b837621e58c4@[10.0.1.16]> In-Reply-To: <013901c17fac$b23dc6a0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <0112071641320B.01380@stinky.akitanet.co.uk><000b01c17f42$c23ab140$0a0 0000a@atkielski.com><3C110351.4748B559@duth.gr><005001c17f6c$e60c0ef0$ 0a00000a@atkielski.com><15377.17350.796336.801464@guru.mired.org><0069 01c17f70$19a2f820$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15377.18218.830731.410656@gu ru.mired.org><008101c17f9a$1a4a4290$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15377.3661 7.358466.76379@guru.mired.org><00ab01c17f9d$0bde8510$0a00000a@atkielsk i.com> <15377.37214.213789.306335@guru.mired.org> <00c901c17f9f$e80a95e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <a05101009b83750a740f1@[10.0.1.16]> <013901c17fac$b23dc6a0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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At 6:53 AM +0100 on 2001/12/08, Anthony Atkielski wrote: > The Mac respresents only a fraction of the desktop market. There must be a > reason for that, and I do not think that it is a dark conspiracy. Regardless of what you may think, I have spoken to people who have first-hand knowledge of precisely such a "dark conspiracy". Indeed, if there weren't such a conspiracy, then there never would have been a need for the US government to file an anti-trust suit against the company. > Then why do most people continue to use Windows on the desktop? People are irrational, I've said that before. > Hmm ... how could the choice of _software_ on a machine make the _hardware_ > unreliable? Some software explicitly disables standard built-in cooling mechanisms that are found in certain types of hardware, with the result that the system runs faster but is less reliable. However, this is totally unrelated to the fact that a lot of PC hardware is inherently unreliable. That's because most PC hardware is made with the absolute cheapest cut-rate components that they can possibly find, because price is the one and only distinguishing factor amongst most PC vendors. Yes, if you take care to specify higher-quality components that are known to work together well, you can build a very reliable machine. But this says nothing about what kind of garbage most companies are pushing. > In any case, I've never seen any evidence that any of these is the case. > The conventional Mac OS crashes at least as often as consumer versions of > Windows, and much more often than NT-based versions of Windows (or UNIX). Not at all true. The vast majority of Mac desktop users see significantly fewer crashes than Windows desktop users, and there probably isn't a single NT server in the world that has been up and running more than two hundred days straight. Contrariwise, I know of a particular Unix machine that I personally installed that had an uptime in excess of 1000 days before it was finally turned off and decommissioned. Now, Macs don't have that kind of uptime, but that's because most people turn their Mac off at night when they leave. > As I've pointed out previously, UNIX and Windows are about even in the > server market right now, in terms of installed hosts (from what I was able > to glean from the statistics I read). There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Obviously, the surveys you've seen have not accounted for all the possible variables that are involved. > I don't know. But AOL != entire server market, so why is that important? In my many years of experience, I would say that AOL is very representative of the server market. How many decades of experience do you have that you'd like to stack up against mine (and that of others on this list who appear to likewise disagree with you regarding the inherent superiority of Windows)? >> You can't just use the Netcraft host survey results >> (or any other host survey results I know of), because >> the number of web servers out there is not a representative >> sample of the total number of servers out there. Moreover, >> none of the host surveys I know of can distinguish >> between NT Desktop and NT Server editions, and by your >> own definition these two camps are mutually exclusive. > > Okay ... but this is still not a reason to _disbelieve_ the provided > numbers, as there is no contradictory evidence. The very fact that you are willing to allow for this statement proves that this kind of information was not made available to you prior to your looking at that survey. In my experience, only if people are trying to hide something to they avoid telling you about the potential weaknesses or biases in the underlying information they have available to you, which means that the Netcraft people probably have something to hide. Either that, or you were unwilling or unable to read their disclaimer, in which case you were looking at the data without having it set in proper context, and you were inappropriately applying your own obvious bias to the situation, which would disqualify your conclusions based on the data. -- Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be> H4sICIFgXzsCA2RtYS1zaWcAPVHLbsMwDDvXX0H0kkvbfxiwVw8FCmzAzqqj1F4dy7CdBfn7 Kc6wmyGRFEnvvxiWQoCvqI7RSWTcfGXQNqCUAnfIU+AT8OZ/GCNjRVlH0bKpguJkxiITZqes MxwpSucyDJzXxQEUe/ihgXqJXUXwD9ajB6NHonLmNrUSK9nacHQnH097szO74xFXqtlbT3il wMsBz5cnfCR5cEmci0Rj9u/jqBbPeES1I4PeFBXPUIT1XDSOuutFXylzrQvGyboWstCoQZyP dxX4dLx0eauFe1x9puhoi0Ao1omEJo+BZ6XLVNaVpWiKekxN0VK2VMpmAy+Bk7ZV4SO+p1L/ uErNRS/qH2iFU+iNOtbcmVt9N16lfF7tLv9FXNj8AiyNcOi1AQAA To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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