Richard Bailey
Technology Novice
Gene let me start by apologizing for this post. My statements on the other forum were from the Linux perspective. I do not own a Mac, however I would dearly love to. On the occasions that I have used one it was a little slice of heaven. Since I have five desktops and two laptops Mac is not cost effective for me. Someday..
Since we were ask to come over here I will try to keep this discussion as short as possible. A little background.
I have been using personal computers since I received my first Commodore vic -20. I moved over to the PC when dos 3.3 and ten meg hard drives were all the rage and you still had to insert the memory chips directly into the mother board. Since then I have used dos 3.3, dos 5.0, windows 2.0, windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, millennium, 2000 pro, xp, and vista. I build my own machines, most for specific purposes. Oh, I almost forgot I was a BBS sysop on several boards including my own in the Late 80's and early 90's and was one of the first sysops to take advantage of the emerging (at that time) Usenet. I currently Have a website devoted to amateur radio, a packet BBS system that operates over the air on VHF, and produce my own podcast. Now that bit was just so we are clear that I might know what I am talking about. Not an expert just someone with some experience under his belt.
Ok on the the question at hand. On the other forum DBTrek ask me to demonstrate some proof to the statement that I made concerning Microsoft sliding down the slope to oblivion. This is a Short list of places that do not use Microsoft
The French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries chooses Mandriva Linux Corporate Server 4.0 for its servers.
77% of the worlds top 500 Supercomputers use Linux only 0.40% percent use Windows
US National Weather Service
National Center for Environmental Prediction
San Diego School District 8th Largest in the Nation rolls out laptops with Linux
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)
DreamsWorks Animation ( Yes, Shrek 3 )
Pep Boys
Boscov's
The City of Munich, Germany
Peugeot
That is just the tip of the iceberg.
Microsoft is aware that they are losing market shares everyday and are still trying to use intimidation to keep what they have left. That is why they have recently filed frivolous patent infringement law suites against companies and projects that they feel are cutting into their bottom line.
They have also tried to make deals with some of their competitors in an attempt to put them selves in a position to minimize their loses.
Ubuntu and Red Hat Rejects Microsoft Patent Deal
Mandriva Linux - Not Our Job to Pay Protection Money
Even the deal they made with Novell is beginning to crumble with the release of the GPL 3.0
Acer of India and DELL computers have begun shipping machines with Linux as an alternative to Windows due to overwhelming demand by their customers and potential customers.
All appliance operators are somewhat insulated so you can't blame some of them if they believe the claims of the Redmond propaganda machine. In these days almost every piece of technology we come in contact with has to have an operating system from cell phones to MP3 players. How many of these do you think are running on MS operating systems? Your TIVO and or Linksys router run on a Linux based operating system as well as most cell phones. In fact a WRT54G router can be taken from a low end router to an advanced router just by doing a firmware upgrade to one of the Linux OS based firmware.
Lastly on th Microsoft issue I would like to say. Microsoft is the only company on the planet that releases beta versions of their software as the initial release. dos 4.0, dos 6.0, Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows XP and our favorite Windows VISTA all were released needing major bug fixes. Not to mention the security holes in the later versions of Internet Explorer. The code required to run the current windows version is not what takes so much room on your hard drive it is all the old code that they never removed just locked off and built on top of and the unneeded video and code known as ”Easter eggs”. I am sure it will get better just this last week MS patented some new piece of technology that will allow them to turn their operating system into on large piece of spyware. Soon they will know all that you do. Thinking an operating system is the best because it is what was on the machine when you bought it is like buying a house because because you like the color of the shingles on the roof.
Now the MAC, Apple has over the years drawn from the open source community and built an outstanding operating system (OS 10 I Think). They offer a superior product at a superior price. You get what you pay for. The Local school district here uses exclusively MAC. I have a friend that works for the district and I get to put my hands on them on occasion. For a wordsmith or graphics artist I think they are the best tool around. For the rest of us we are limited to these PC's. Luckily we are not locked into using the operating system we are told to use by the monopoly minded folks in Washington state. We have a choice.
One more time, Thanks Gene for giving me a place to post this
Richard Bailey
Not afraid to use my real name
Since we were ask to come over here I will try to keep this discussion as short as possible. A little background.
I have been using personal computers since I received my first Commodore vic -20. I moved over to the PC when dos 3.3 and ten meg hard drives were all the rage and you still had to insert the memory chips directly into the mother board. Since then I have used dos 3.3, dos 5.0, windows 2.0, windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, millennium, 2000 pro, xp, and vista. I build my own machines, most for specific purposes. Oh, I almost forgot I was a BBS sysop on several boards including my own in the Late 80's and early 90's and was one of the first sysops to take advantage of the emerging (at that time) Usenet. I currently Have a website devoted to amateur radio, a packet BBS system that operates over the air on VHF, and produce my own podcast. Now that bit was just so we are clear that I might know what I am talking about. Not an expert just someone with some experience under his belt.
Ok on the the question at hand. On the other forum DBTrek ask me to demonstrate some proof to the statement that I made concerning Microsoft sliding down the slope to oblivion. This is a Short list of places that do not use Microsoft
The French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries chooses Mandriva Linux Corporate Server 4.0 for its servers.
77% of the worlds top 500 Supercomputers use Linux only 0.40% percent use Windows
US National Weather Service
National Center for Environmental Prediction
San Diego School District 8th Largest in the Nation rolls out laptops with Linux
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)
DreamsWorks Animation ( Yes, Shrek 3 )
Pep Boys
Boscov's
The City of Munich, Germany
Peugeot
That is just the tip of the iceberg.
Microsoft is aware that they are losing market shares everyday and are still trying to use intimidation to keep what they have left. That is why they have recently filed frivolous patent infringement law suites against companies and projects that they feel are cutting into their bottom line.
They have also tried to make deals with some of their competitors in an attempt to put them selves in a position to minimize their loses.
Ubuntu and Red Hat Rejects Microsoft Patent Deal
Mandriva Linux - Not Our Job to Pay Protection Money
Even the deal they made with Novell is beginning to crumble with the release of the GPL 3.0
Acer of India and DELL computers have begun shipping machines with Linux as an alternative to Windows due to overwhelming demand by their customers and potential customers.
All appliance operators are somewhat insulated so you can't blame some of them if they believe the claims of the Redmond propaganda machine. In these days almost every piece of technology we come in contact with has to have an operating system from cell phones to MP3 players. How many of these do you think are running on MS operating systems? Your TIVO and or Linksys router run on a Linux based operating system as well as most cell phones. In fact a WRT54G router can be taken from a low end router to an advanced router just by doing a firmware upgrade to one of the Linux OS based firmware.
Lastly on th Microsoft issue I would like to say. Microsoft is the only company on the planet that releases beta versions of their software as the initial release. dos 4.0, dos 6.0, Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows XP and our favorite Windows VISTA all were released needing major bug fixes. Not to mention the security holes in the later versions of Internet Explorer. The code required to run the current windows version is not what takes so much room on your hard drive it is all the old code that they never removed just locked off and built on top of and the unneeded video and code known as ”Easter eggs”. I am sure it will get better just this last week MS patented some new piece of technology that will allow them to turn their operating system into on large piece of spyware. Soon they will know all that you do. Thinking an operating system is the best because it is what was on the machine when you bought it is like buying a house because because you like the color of the shingles on the roof.
Now the MAC, Apple has over the years drawn from the open source community and built an outstanding operating system (OS 10 I Think). They offer a superior product at a superior price. You get what you pay for. The Local school district here uses exclusively MAC. I have a friend that works for the district and I get to put my hands on them on occasion. For a wordsmith or graphics artist I think they are the best tool around. For the rest of us we are limited to these PC's. Luckily we are not locked into using the operating system we are told to use by the monopoly minded folks in Washington state. We have a choice.
One more time, Thanks Gene for giving me a place to post this
Richard Bailey
Not afraid to use my real name
