[LINK] The cost of monoculture

[grove at zeta.org.au]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Rick Welykochy wrote:

> The same applies here as it does to a mono-culture in the biosphere: one
> virulent pests can wipe out the whole lot. Although in this case it would
> be one virulent pest wiping out another 8-)
>
> cheers
> rickw

I feel so vindicated as I recall a time when I used to repeatedly 
say words to the effect of "Destroy Microsoft" on this list back in the 90's and 
was politely asked to tone it down.

I guess it took the rest of you 10 years to catch up to me ;)

I believe these days however, that people are basically either addicted 
to their products and cannot be swayed, or are "true believers" in Billware
and/or just do not understand anything about Operating Systems and good hygiene.

I had to just give up an argument yesterday with one of the supervisors 
who has eaten the brown acid and swallowed the CAUDIT koolaid who swore 
black and blue that Microsoft and Vista was going to be the saviour 
of the Enterprise and that eventually we are all going to have to agree
that it is Best Practice to use their products over and above anyone elses.

And that OSX was no better than Vista because of the prescense of 
a single "virus" for that platform, even though I tried to explain 
that it cannot be a "virus" if you have to execute it manually to take 
effect.

These days, I ignore the debate as much as I can, knowing it is unwinnable 
in the face of huge marketing ploys, subsidies via plans like CAUDIT, 
"lock in" schemes and so on.

Now these days, I just want to say, "go ahead and use Microsoft,
10 million blowflies can't be wrong, either..."

In the meantime, I am being productive with my computers, doing real 
work that has implications in the real world and expanding my horizons
rather than reliving the "ground hog day" of a kinda/sorta new OS.

Microsoft is poison to the IT Industry.  It is self serving and 
productivity destroying.   It is a Pyramid scheme of the worst kind.
When Civilisation finally collapses, it will be in no small part 
to the use of Microsoft products, as they will be as ubiquitous as the 
lead pipe in Roman villas.

I foresee a time when most IT graduates will know nothing of other OS philosophies
and their roles will be eventually dumbed down to the same level of 
mobile phone sales persons.    Australia is fast becoming a "shop front" 
economy and MS is helping keep us there, by stifling innovation and 
providing products that are "just good enough" and locking the users
into a treadmill of mediocrity, when we could all really do so much more.

I keep thinking about the quote that says the current PC is about the 
tech equivalent of the Model T Ford and that it's full potential will not 
be revealed for some time to come.   While ever the philosophy is 
that we buy a computer to run an OS, rather than appreciating that the OS 
is meant to run your computer, that time will never come.


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
 	"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security,
 	deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759