Slashdot Mirror

The now somewhat long-in-the-tooth In the Beginning... Was the Command Line [ Alternative source, already unzipped ] tells us that a bug was reported against BeOS with the title

BeOS missing megalomaniacal figurehead to harness and focus developer rage

(about three-quarters of the way down, or search for "megalomaniacal").

I don't know if the same bug has been reported against Linux (and if it has then it should be classified EWONTFIX) but clearly Linus himself is not the solution to this. The promoters of systemd want this role to be filled, while everyone else wants it to stay as EWONTFIX.

His image of the various vehicles representing OSes is indelibly burned into my brain, as is his vision of Apple as a sort of free-thinking "commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children" that turns out to be a facade, run by a bunch of control freaks who want to dictate your every move. (And before some Apple defenders get ready to attack me, note that Stephenson insults just about everybody in the essay. But the digs at Apple are just the most entertaining and revealing, particularly given that this was written before iPads, iPods, and even OS X.)

The Hole Hawg is a drill made by the Milwaukee Tool Company. If you look in a typical hardware store you may find smaller Milwaukee drills but not the Hole Hawg, which is too powerful and too expensive for homeowners. The Hole Hawg does not have the pistol-like design of a cheap homeowner's drill. It is a cube of solid metal with a handle sticking out of one face and a chuck mounted in another. The cube contains a disconcertingly potent electric motor. You can hold the handle and operate the trigger with your index finger, but unless you are exceptionally strong you cannot control the weight of the Hole Hawg with one hand; it is a two-hander all the way. In order to fight off the counter-torque of the Hole Hawg you use a separate handle (provided), which you screw into one side of the iron cube or the other depending on whether you are using your left or right hand to operate the trigger. This handle is not a sleek, ergonomically designed item as it would be in a homeowner's drill. It is simply a foot-long chunk of regular galvanized pipe, threaded on one end, with a black rubber handle on the other. If you lose it, you just go to the local plumbing supply store and buy another chunk of pipe.
...

The Hole Hawg is dangerous because it does exactly what you tell it to. It is not bound by the physical limitations that are inherent in a cheap drill, and neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might be built into a homeowner's product by a liability-conscious manufacturer. The danger lies not in the machine itself but in the user's failure to envision the full consequences of the instructions he gives to it.

A smaller tool is dangerous too, but for a completely different reason: it tries to do what you tell it to, and fails in some way that is unpredictable and almost always undesirable. But the Hole Hawg is like the genie of the ancient fairy tales, who carries out his master's instructions literally and precisely and with unlimited power, often with disastrous, unforeseen consequences.
...

It is not hard to imagine what the world would look like to someone who had been raised by contractors and who had never used any drill other than a Hole Hawg. Such a person, presented with the best and most expensive hardware-store drill, would not even recognize it as such. He might instead misidentify it as a child's toy, or some kind of motorized screwdriver. If a salesperson or a deluded homeowner referred to it as a drill, he would laugh and tell them that they were mistaken--they simply had their terminology wrong. His interlocutor would go away irritated, and probably feeling rather defensive about his basement full of cheap, dangerous, flashy, colorful tools.

Unix is the Hole Hawg of operating systems, and Unix hackers, like Doug Barnes and the guy in the Dilbert cartoon and many of the other people who populate Silicon Valley, are like contractor's sons who grew up using only Hole Hawgs. They might use Apple/Microsoft OSes to write letters, play video games, or balance their checkbooks, but they cannot really bring themselves to take these operating systems seriously.

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's description of Shanghai banks on the eve of World War 2:

Here you've got the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of course, City Bank, Chase Manhattan, the Bank of America, and BBME and the Agricultural Bank of China and any number of crappy little provincial banks, and several of those banks have contracts with what's left of the Chinese Government to print currency. It must be a cutthroat business because they slash costs by printing it on old newspapers, and if you know how to read Chinese, you can see last year's news stories and polo scores peeking through the colored numbers and pictures that transform these pieces of paper into legal tender.

As every chicken-peddler and rickshaw operator in Shanghai knows, the money-printing contracts stipulate that all of the bills these banks print have to be backed by such-and-such an amount of silver; i.e., anyone should be able to walk into one of those banks at the end of Kiukiang Road and slap down a pile of bills and (provided that those bills were printed by that same bank) receive actual metallic silver in exchange.

Now if China weren't right in the middle of getting systematically drawn and quartered by the Empire of Nippon, it would probably send official bean counters around to keep tabs on how much silver was actually present in these banks' vaults, and it would all be quiet and orderly. But as it stands, the only thing keeping these banks honest is the other banks.

Here's how they do it ...

Continue reading ...

Read Neal Stephenson's In the beginning was the Command Line, or, better yet, give it as a set book to the students. It's available for download from his website for free, or you can buy it as a paperback from all good booksellers (and some bad ones)

Read Neal Stephenson's In the beginning was the Command Line, or, better yet, give it as a set book to the students. It's available for download from his website for free, or you can buy it as a paperback from all good booksellers (and some bad ones)

I have inherited a number of books and each one of them can be used to decode the message!

Unfortunately someone already beat you to it.
Way to sneak in the reference, though!

Selling a proprietary virtualization empire is, in the long run, about as likely to succeed as writing a text editor

You mean like Microsoft Office, which at its core has a glorified text editor that is one of the cores of Microsoft's profitability? Or how about an OS (for anyone whos read "In the Beginning was the Command Line")?

If VMware can keep up innovation, and can fix some of its licensing issues, I dont see why they could not have a long future in selling a "virtualization empire".

I take your question to mean that you want to program but aren't allowed to add anything to your work machine, including binary files that don't require an installer to run. That's typically how I've seen that sort of rule interpreted.

You mentioned an interest in HTML/CSS and presumably javascript.

You might enjoy JSFiddle

If you would like to try other languages or other approaches, there are online IDEs for that too:

ShiftEdit - Online IDE | ShiftEdit
ECCO -Web-based IDE
Cloud IDE
WIODE
CodeRun
Cloud9 IDE
http://www.codeanywhere.net

And some more lists and reviews:
http://speckyboy.com/2010/07/25/the-most-powerful-and-feature-rich-web-based-code-editors-ides/

Another option would be to look at some of the free shell account vendors online, but you seemed mostly interested in GUI IDEs so that might not be your thing.

If you want a fun, short read about why you might want to reconsider the command line, check out In the Beginning Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson

I remember reading somewhere several years ago about a German navy sub that collided with the coast of Norway, but I'm having trouble finding a link to that one...

I believe it was in Stephenson's Cryptonomicon

Aside from Linux Mint, which I prefer over Ubuntu for a better out of the box experience (I just installed Lisa yesterday evening), I'd suggest these: VLC / SMplayer
LibreOffice
7zip (and *remove* Winzip/WinRAR/whatever).
Firefox / Google Chrome
Notepad++ (associate with everything)
Thunderbird
Foxit Reader (I know it's closed source, perhaps Sumatra instead? I use both)
Picasa
Pidgin
If the receiver is a student, tools for things like Latex (Miktex + Texmaker, perhaps?)
A print copy of the manual.
Whatever you like from Portable Apps. :)

The perfect UI for 90% of all use cases has existed for decades. I think In The Beginning Was The Command Line

My boss would probably like you to have his baby. He thinks that everyone should only work inside of VIM and on the command-line. I think he's an idiot. I've watched him try to merge code bases w/ diff on the CLI. Then I fire up WinMerge or Beyond Compare, or any other GUI merge tool and show him how its done. He seriously asks people their favorite CLI editor in job interviews and if you don't say VI, he probably won't hire you. It's ridiculous. As if a programmer's skill is measured by their love of VI.

Anyway, I can't imagine what you are doing on the command-line at home most of the time. Doesn't sound like you do anything fun. Sure I use the CLI on my server at home, and a lot on my HTPC as well, but the GUI beats out the CLI on just about any FUN activity.

The perfect UI for 90% of all use cases has existed for decades. I think In The Beginning Was The Command Line should be required reading for all of those "Intro to Computer Literacy" classes they tend to require of college freshmen (or did about 6 years ago when I was still taking classes). I can see GUIs for Photoshop or Final Cut or whatever, but the vast majority of my computer usage is spent in bash/zsh and vim. And I'm not even describing my coding/sysadmin work, this is home use. As far as GUIs go, I liked Enlightenment, and I'm pretty happy with Snow Leopard. Lion is shite, Windows has always been shite, and Unity pisses me off. GNOME 3 is probably the least shite of the new ones, but that's not saying much.

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

There's a reason to know how stuff works.

Once upon a time, in the days of yore, we had something fairly similar to what it sounds like they are proposing: The Command Line. A recent slashdot.org post even demonstrated the concept for younger folks who cannot remember back that far back. While there is new rhetoric about commands being issuable in putative 'natural language', this is something that has been heard before, with diminishing plausibility. So, why does Mozilla insist on going backwards? I like the URL bar. If they do away with it, I'll just have to find an add-on to bring it back. So, I think that this is silly.

Seems to me this issue has been explored as thoroughly as it needs to be - by none less than Neal Stephenson in In the Beginning Was The Command Line". The man can write, and having done do on a subject close to the heart of many geeks is doubly cool.

"Hi, I'm calling about repeated attempts to steal my Ford Focus for spare parts."

"Buy a BMW".

"Get a tank for free".

What would happen decades from now if, say, Richard Powers or Neal Stephenson attempted to auction their desktops or laptops?

Considering that Stephenson has written more than a couple of his longer books using a fountain pen, I don't think his desktop or laptop would go for much. Thanks for not even bothering to look that up, though, and just throwing out his name to try and get geek cred.

For what it's worth, according to his book In The Beginning... Was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson said he used a BeBox for a while.

He's also used emacs. Personally, I like the idea that anyone can download it for free and be on an equal footing with someone who's used it to write such great novels. Isn't that inspiring?

Is this something similar to In the Beginning was the Command Line theory of god creating the universe

The demiurge sits at his teletype, pounding out one command line after another, specifying the values of fundamental constants of physics:

universe -G 6.672e-11 -e 1.602e-19 -h 6.626e-34 -protonmass 1.673e-27....

and when he's finished typing out the command line, his right pinky hesitates above the ENTER key for an aeon or two, wondering what's going to happen; then down it comes--and the WHACK you hear is another Big Bang.

Maybe the universe command is a fractal generator and the earth is a insignificant whorl in the universal mandelbrot's set.

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

It's the law of unintended consequences. The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity. Whenever there has been a tradeoff between control and simplicity, Microsoft has chosen simplicity. Unfortunately some things are inherently complex, and as you try to wrap them behind simplistic abstractions there comes a point where you simply can achieve what you want. Suddenly you, and your current task is one of the things that the designers abstracted away. The quote about "we didn't realise people would try and download it from the downloads page" is a classic example.

Which of course was exactly the point that Neal Stephenson made in the essay In the beginning was the command line.

didn't neal stephenson imply this a decade ago?

You might want to have a word with the Sultan of Kinakuta about that idea.

THE HOLE HAWG OF OPERATING SYSTEMS

Unix has always lurked provocatively in the background of the operating system wars, like the Russian Army. Most people know it only by reputation, and its reputation, as the Dilbert cartoon suggests, is mixed. But everyone seems to agree that if it could only get its act together and stop surrendering vast tracts of rich agricultural land and hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war to the onrushing invaders, it could stomp them (and all other opposition) flat.

It is difficult to explain how Unix has earned this respect without going into mind-smashing technical detail. Perhaps the gist of it can be explained by telling a story about drills.

The Hole Hawg is a drill made by the Milwaukee Tool Company. If you look in a typical hardware store you may find smaller Milwaukee drills but not the Hole Hawg, which is too powerful and too expensive for homeowners. The Hole Hawg does not have the pistol-like design of a cheap homeowner's drill. It is a cube of solid metal with a handle sticking out of one face and a chuck mounted in another. The cube contains a disconcertingly potent electric motor. You can hold the handle and operate the trigger with your index finger, but unless you are exceptionally strong you cannot control the weight of the Hole Hawg with one hand; it is a two-hander all the way. In order to fight off the counter-torque of the Hole Hawg you use a separate handle (provided), which you screw into one side of the iron cube or the other depending on whether you are using your left or right hand to operate the trigger. This handle is not a sleek, ergonomically designed item as it would be in a homeowner's drill. It is simply a foot-long chunk of regular galvanized pipe, threaded on one end, with a black rubber handle on the other. If you lose it, you just go to the local plumbing supply store and buy another chunk of pipe.

During the Eighties I did some construction work. One day, another worker leaned a ladder against the outside of the building that we were putting up, climbed up to the second-story level, and used the Hole Hawg to drill a hole through the exterior wall. At some point, the drill bit caught in the wall. The Hole Hawg, following its one and only imperative, kept going. It spun the worker's body around like a rag doll, causing him to knock his own ladder down. Fortunately he kept his grip on the Hole Hawg, which remained lodged in the wall, and he simply dangled from it and shouted for help until someone came along and reinstated the ladder.

I myself used a Hole Hawg to drill many holes through studs, which it did as a blender chops cabbage. I also used it to cut a few six-inch-diameter holes through an old lath-and-plaster ceiling. I chucked in a new hole saw, went up to the second story, reached down between the newly installed floor joists, and began to cut through the first-floor ceiling below. Where my homeowner's drill had labored and whined to spin the huge bit around, and had stalled at the slightest obstruction, the Hole Hawg rotated with the stupid consistency of a spinning planet. When the hole saw seized up, the Hole Hawg spun itself and me around, and crushed one of my hands between the steel pipe handle and a joist, producing a few lacerations, each surrounded by a wide corona of deeply bruised flesh. It also bent the hole saw itself, though not so badly that I couldn't use it. After a few such run-ins, when I got ready to use the Hole Hawg my heart actually began to pound with atavistic terror.

But I never blamed the Hole Hawg; I blamed myself. The Hole Hawg is dangerous because it does exactly what you tell it to. It is not bound by the physical limitations that are inherent in a cheap drill, and neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might be built into a homeowner's product by a liability-conscious manufact

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

Indeed, this is related to text-based computing in a very direct way. Shell scripting (like all programming) is the practice of describing to the computer exactly what you want it to do—word for word, so to speak. Graphic UIs, for all their advantages, don't let the user give such specific instructions, forcing them to perform the individual steps themselves: click that file, move it here, click that file, move it there, executing the algorithm yourself instead of describing to the computer. Like the summary says, "illiterate computing" pretty much nails it on the head.

Not that I'm bashing GUIs or saying that anyone who uses one is non-metaphorically "illiterate". Good GUIs are obviously indispensable in modern software, and with good reason. But they can never fully replace the expressive abilities of the command line. To swing back on-topic, a fully graphical UI for people who really are fully illiterate is a noble idea, but considering the limitations of a normal GUI, it would suffer serious drawbacks, to say the least.

The literacy metaphor in comparing text-based and graphical interfaces is explored very nicely in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson.

I've got to say, the users you have worked with sound a bit more competent than average. The usual response to this will be "why does my battery run out all the time? And what the hell are these two bars?" Understand that the average user's IQ drops 30 points and they develop a kind of situational ADD whenever they are confronted with the problem of working with a computer. I've met geniuses (this isn't sarcasm) who couldn't figure out on their own how to log out of Windows the first time because it never occurred to them that you would click a button marked "start" to shut something down. The idea of an average user figuring out how to use "top" is laughable. Do a quick survey of your aunts and uncles (throw out anyone who has ever written a computer program as a bias in the sample): how many of them know how to use "Task Manager" on Windows or "Activity Monitor" on the Mac? I'd guess less than 10%.

90% of software falls into three categories:

1. Software written by people who enjoy tinkering with stuff and have no constraints on what they release: it tends to be powerful as hell and about as hard to fly as an F-22.
2. Software written by people who enjoy tinkering with stuff but are constrained by market inertia and the lack of vision among their marketing people: it tends to be irregular and only moderately reliable, rather easier to use, but also rather limited in its robustness, with more the appearance of capability than its actuality.
3. Software written by people who enjoy tinkering with stuff but are constrained by consideration of what works well with the lowest common denominator user: it tends to be rather reliable and very easy to use, but is far too constricting for those who enjoy tinkering with stuff and doesn't have the appearance of capability that attracts the business buyer.

Think of these as three points on a triangle rather than as a flat line with two extremes and one median (you should recognize the influence of Stephenson's "In the beginning [. . .]"; if you don't, it's worth reading right away - my categories are obviously parallel to Stephenson's tank, station wagon, and sleek euro sedan, or the traditional Linux, Windows, and Macintosh - or on the other hand, Gentoo, Xandros, and Ubuntu) . The sweet spot is the space between 1 and 3 - if you can build something that looks simple and is easy to use if you are just going to work with the basic features, but responds to an expert hand by making more and more powerful options available (without burying those capabilities too deeply), you've got the perfect device.

In operating systems, I think we're beginning to see the three major players all start to move this way - Linux distributions are trying to incorporate more surface simplicity and deal with the hell of dependencies and device drivers that make them so difficult for the average user to set up and maintain, while hiding the configurability of the user interface just deeply enough that it won't distract the average joe; Apple by adopting BSD and incorporating a terminal, and gradually adding such obvious features as multiple desktop spaces; and Microsoft with its half-baked attempts to simplify configuration and clean up and simplify their user interfaces (which aren't working very well, in my opinion: Windows Search is a prime example), and their on-again, off-again overtures to the command-line set (not just Monad/PowerShell, but also WinFS).

With a smart phone / communication device, the balance tilts slightly more toward 3 than 1. You have less space for the user interface, and so need to keep the number of controls to a minimum so you don't overwhelm the user. You also have to remember that the average users will have a hard time distinguishing the way state is handled in an application: if they're not very good with computers, they will expect all user applications to suspend when not visible but still retain all their data in the state it held

I think this representation will help - http://www.cryptonomicon.com/images/p15.gif

BTW, forget the years of college math - I learned late in life that just about anything you'd need is in Cryptonomicon - http://www.cryptonomicon.com/text.html

Watch out for June 2 on this evenly-numbered year - that'll be Dick Tracy day!

I think this representation will help - http://www.cryptonomicon.com/images/p15.gif

BTW, forget the years of college math - I learned late in life that just about anything you'd need is in Cryptonomicon - http://www.cryptonomicon.com/text.html

Watch out for June 2 on this evenly-numbered year - that'll be Dick Tracy day!

Perhaps the idea was to steer users towards using the buttons on the toolbar, but there aren't enough buttons to cover all the options located under the menus. If the UI designers wanted to steer users gently towards using the buttons, my suggestion would have been: Whenever the user picks something under a menu that corresponds to something accessible from the toolbar, display a dialog box which says for example, "In the future, you can print faster by clicking the printer button on the toolbar", along with a picture (and a "Do not show this message again" checkbox -- important!).

How to fix:

1. Read In The Beginning Was The Command Line http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

2. Realize that you once again traded in the crappy station wagon that broke down the day you drove it off the lot for another crappy station wagon, although newer, that broke down as soon as you drove it off the lot - same make, same dealer.

3. Come to the realization that as long as you think it's your job to excuse why your station wagon broke down - after all, everyone seems to drives one and everyone seems to give those excuses and suggestions - then you are doomed to keep buying broken down station wagons and you become part of the encouragement to dealer and maker to just keep up what they do - and some day, you'll be part of the mass of station wagon buyers that influenced someone else to follow this behavior.

4. Once this realization is established, the problem is solved, and it elegantly leaves you two options.

Option A - Rationalize away what you've just realized, and now your problem is solved: this pretty much includes not having any further questions on the subject and whenever you hear someone else complain about the idiocy of driving a broken down station wagon at new car prices, roll your eyes with the knowing, "he's just a Microsoft basher!" explanation.

Option B - Vow to never repeat this mistake. This pretty much includes going across the intersection to another corner, and picking up one of the free tanks - yes, I mean as in big, mean Army tank! - and drive it or the other corner and pay about the same as you did or will over your use-time for a sleeker, fun car that breaks down about as often as the Army tank - ie, virtually never. If you have something that can only be done using a broken down station wagon, you'll find your tank has a thing called WINE that will let you drive parts of the little station wagon around inside your tank or you'll find your sleek car lets you play broken down station wagon inside a couple of videogames called Parallels or VMWare.

Once you have followed this path, you will have magically answered this question, too:

But to this day I've never heard an answer to one question: Since even Linux advocates admit that it's harder to use, what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?

If you solved your problem by going with Option B, you've realized that the question isn't going to be ever answered. Because you just asked, "Why don't I get a simple answer to one question: Ever since I saw that a tank might be harder to drive, why would I want a free tank that never breaks down when I can keep paying for the privilege of driving a crappy station wagon guaranteed to be broken down by design?"

If you solved your problem by going with Option A, you've realized that broken down station wagon drivers throwing good money after bad are much more clever than free tank drivers or sleek car drivers. (Don't forget to gloat, even if done ever so humbly.)

Hope it's not to late for the author in question - best luck, compadre.

PS - I have never recommended the online version of "In The Beginning..." - ever. I always insist people buy the book. It seems to help those preconditioned to buy what they can get for free to actually get

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the
others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they
broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but
attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg
contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had
to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort,
sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market
share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the
aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little
later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more
beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek
Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up
in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station
wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the
Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet
cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts,
tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are
not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and
jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in
such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more
fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are
lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away
for free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and
buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going
to buy t

Maybe this whole "upgrade the OS" thing isn't such a good business plan after all?

And here I was thinking that Linux is a tank (full text).

Original link to Neal Stephenson's website which no longer has the full text inline.

-l

This reminds me of Stephenson's In The Beginning There Was The Command Line, which is a little dated now but still pretty funny. He describes the various OSes as different car dealerships, and Windows as an unreliable station wagon that for some reason 90% of the potential customers buy.

"With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free."

And:

"The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?""

Does this mean that if I steal one copy of Windows, and make 1,000,000 copies of it, that I am only liable for the one copy? After all, since Microsoft only produced one copy. I am only depriving them of the use of one copy. The lawyers are going to have a field day with this decision.

See also cryptonomicon.

Ah, a car analogy. Reminds me of a very funny section in an essay called In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. The entire essay is available (as a zipped text file) at http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html, and is a recommended read, at least the section called MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES. It is really funny. A short except:

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

Microsoft has to milk as much out of the market as it can before the price of the OS hits $0.

This is like having a Mercedes and have it serviced by Kia.

Naw, I like Neal Stephenson's analogy, because then it would be like having an M1 tank, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other, that's been modified in such a way that it never, ever breaks down, is light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and uses no more fuel than a subcompact car, and taking it to a station wagon car company to have it serviced.

I am not the first one quoting that proverb in this context. Frederick Brooks opened a chapter in ''The Mythical Man-Month''[1] with the very same quote, a chapter about sharp tools. Neal Stephenson writes about tools in ''In the Beginning was the Command Line''[2]. Tools are important for mankind. They always have been important and they always will be important.

To put it simple -- The Microsoft world is not my set of tools.

It is not hatred. It is ignorance. I do not care about Microsoft because I do not use their products in my everday work.

Furthermore... I am a computer enthusiast, a geek. I like beautiful computer solutions. What is beautiful to me then? Have you thought about the style of this answer? Would you get the same kind answer from your everyday Microsoft user; with literary references? Maybe, maybe not, though I doubt it. The UNIX crowd are fond of words. Once again, it is not an original thought. Thomas Scoville wrote about it in ''The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature''[3].

Yes; you could say Microsoft is a beautiful company from e.g. an economist point of view. I have a great respect for what they have achivied but it is not where my heart lies.

One last thing. History. We like underdogs. Microsoft used to be an underdog when IBM ruled the world. IBM did a lot of good things back then but the grassroots disliked the monopoly. In politics monopoly spells dictatorship. We do not like dictators, we like underdogs. Who is good or who is bad does not matter. We will give our Christmas presents to the underdogs, not to the dictators. I do not say Bill Gates is a dictator, I do not say he is good or bad, but he is not the same underdog he used to be.

/jörgen
--

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Mont h
2. http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
3. http://www.thomasscoville.com/PCarticle.html

Microsoft is in the "software" business, and they're getting pissed because of the spread of opensource. Neal Stephenson has an interesting essay on the subject of command line interface, linux, and what Gates and Jobs have spent their efforts doing in the computing world. Microsoft knows that it can no longer compete with a "collective" greater than their own, except in the capital arena. If we would like for computers to become less popular and for hardware prices to go up (because capitalism has certainly been driving many hardware advances) then we could just bankrupt Microsoft by creating an infinite number of distros =). Someone commented earlier on the smart pill that Ballmer has to take in the morning to just get by, and I think he's right, Microsoft may not lose their OS users and people who default to their software, but they can't just throw money at linux and make it go away. Sad to say, Microsoft is good for the little guy, even if their software is buggy and expensive. Who wants cheaper faster more reliable hardware?! raise your hand! Then we can all go frolic and fret and flee to LinuxLand. I hear a themepark!

OK, our jobs may be boring, alright... But I've read one book that lands much more on the probable-side of tech, that would make a very interesting movie: Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

I'd love to see it on the big screen!

Now, on the fantasy side, I'd like to see Neuromancer as well.

Normal people can't do that. I can't program worth shit, and I don't even know how to mess with the Kernal. They mean an OS that changes with you, without you having to do it with coding. If Linux could do that, it would be MUCH better.

This is true. I use emacs and ipython as my Python IDE. They work fairly well, but don't look nearly as slick as Eclipse. There is IDLE and PyPE, but they are a lot less ambitious (or, from another perspective, overfeatured and bloated) than Eclipse. But, I wouldn't generally use them as I've rarely found that sort of development tool useful. And I've made a go of using them for a long time too because everybody else has raved so much about them. I've come to the conclusion that they prefer an illusion to reality.

But, I personally find Eclipse to be cumbersome and to do a great deal to obscure what's really going on. I find it highly amusing that a tool like that is all the fashion in Java. It reinforces my opinion of it as the new COBOL. A hand holding tool for programmers who don't really want to know how their computer actually does anything and want a tinkertoy programming environment that attempts to dumb down complicated things so they appear superficially simple.

Did you get this idea from Cryptonomicon?

As Neal Stephenson said about Apple in In the Beginning was the Command Line :

The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly.

Awesome post. In the spirit of an updated Neal Stephenson's classic (and outdated) OS treatise In the Beginning was the Command Line.

In the Beginning was the Command Line. To be completely honest, I must admit that I'm a fan of OSX, but I think that's because I find that it's doing things for me, instead of me doing things for it.

BTW, I coded that link to open in an new window, but apparently Slashdot doesn't allow it; I don't know why, but I'm curious.

It's actually called "In the Beginning was the Command Line" and you can find it here [zip file].

Microsoft have managed to subvert most of the usual processes of ensuring fairness, because their "product" was something so new, and without any analogies elsewhere, that there just were no rules that could be used as a starting point.

To make pattern parts for a car, you buy the "official" part and go over it thoroughly with measuring instruments. Your parts have to match certain critical dimensions {such as the positions and threads of fixing holes, and possibly electrical current / voltage and hydraulic flow / pressure ratings} but may also do some things differently to the original parts. Point is, nothing seeks to stop you making them.

Now, suppose one car manufacturer decided that they would print a handbook containing certain important facts and figures about their cars, sell this at an extortionate price to manufacturers of pattern parts, and allow pattern parts only to be made according to the figures in the book and not by measuring original parts, and only by manufacturers who bought the book at full price from the car manufacturer. Obviously, this would restrict manufacturers to parts that they could manufacture using the specifications given in the book; if the book neglected to mention the maximum current likely to be drawn by the horn then this would preclude the manufacture of pattern horn relays. Additionally, incorrect data in the book might well lead to the manufacture of parts which could not actually be fitted to a vehicle.

Fortunately, this sort of thing would not be allowed in real life: once a car has been sold to a consumer, Exhaustion of Rights kicks in, and then the only thing standing between you and fitting all the aftermarket pattern parts you want is the annual roadworthiness test.

Unfortunately, when computers appeared on the scene, everyone was so blinded by science that they panicked, and common sense went out of the window. There isn't really an analogy in the non-computerised world for an operating system. For copyright purposes, computer software was classed as a work of literature. Now, this may not have been the right thing to do. Works of literature are not particularly modifiable and don't usually create other things; there isn't an obvious aftermarket. Computer programs can be modified to change their behaviour, and many computer programs create data files. This is evidence of two potential aftermarkets: one in modifying software that people have already purchased to alter or enhance its functionality, and another in supplying software to analyse and manipulate the data files created by other software.

Microsoft {and, it must be said, others; though nowadays Microsoft have eliminated or absorbed most of their competitors} have made unreasonable restrictions upon the legitimate use of their software. These include seeking to deny users the right to adapt software to their requirements, thus imposing their idea of a way of working on users {an act of violence}; and blocking the development of software which would work in various with data files created by Microsoft software, by deliberately withholding necessary details {also an act of violence}.

The owner of a car has the right to fit a new stereo, extra lights or upgraded braking systems supplied by parties other than the original manufacturer. The owner of a piece of software should have the right to change aspects of the way it works, or use other software supplied by a third party to interact with data files generated by the original software. Microsoft are guilty of interfering with those rights.

Some people prefer A, some people prefer B. trying to convince people using rational arguments to change something they like or have grown deeply accustomed too usually results in them digging their heels in and sticking to their preferred thing.

On another level what is going on here is the CLI versus GUI debate on another level, a very interesting essay on which can be found here http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

I recommend giving it a read.

Remember, different is not necessarily bad, its just not the 'good' you are used to. Learn to tell the difference.