Yes, it's true that us geeks and most other people who know much about computers have a relatively low opinion of Microsoft. Yes, we likely have the mass of evidence on our side, like the fact that MS products generally suck, and the fact that the only thing they've innovated in MS Bob (I've actually looked into that. MS-DOS was bought, Windows was stolen/copied, and before each of the MS Office programs there were already word processors, spreadsheeters, and presentation programs. Before IE was Netscape, etc...).
But here's the problem: a lot of the world DOESN'T know or agree with all of this. You might ask why. Well here's why: we take the fact that Microsoft is so evil as such an obvious thing that we rant and rave about it, make all sorts of assumptions that may be largely true but are nonetheless assumptions. And whenever anybody other then our little group sees these rants, it discredits us rather then discrediting MS.
I have been involved in this whole net and computer community thing for quite some time, and I have yet to seen a rational, sane explanation of why MS sucks. Honest to god. Period.
I'll give you a case in point: I have a friend, who will go unnamed, who is relatively smart and such, and knows a thing or two about computers. This friend of mine has the natural AOL-hating gene that most everybody has, and is really no idiot. And they see absolutely no reason to abandon Microsoft and Windows, etc.
Why? Well the answer is simple: from my friends perspective, MS does what she needs. It's the only thing she's ever used, so she takes the crashes as part of daily life on computers. She has seen and heard rants about MS sucking and Linux being a better alternative to Windows, and doesn't buy them because they ARE so ranty.
So what do we need to do? We need to allow the rest of the world to realize that MS isn't that great, and we need to do it in a sane, un-ranty way. How? I don't know. But I need to go anyway, and thanks for reading this long post.
If you look around right now, you'll notice that of the Linux distributions out there, most are either Red Hattish (as in, gone commercial, trying to become easier to use, etc.), really small and relatively insignificant (nothing against Linux Mandrake but....), or, well... Slackware! I'm just wondering what you see for the future. Slackware is the only distro that is relatively "major", yet hasn't given in to the commercial rush and zillion dollar IPOs (although feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Do you know if the user base of Slackware is going up or down? And what do you see for the future of Slackware and Linux in general?
It seems to me that if anything, the internet is MORE searchable then it used to be. I remember some statistic about how a couple of years ago the few search engines that were around only got some small percentage of the web covered anyway. These days it seems the search engines do a better job, and there are a zillion more search engines and also tools that let you search multiple search engines at once. That and the fact that there is just plain a lot more stuff on the net. Back a few years ago, if you searched for Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, you might find a page or two on some college webpage somewhere, if you were lucky. These days there are enough pages out there that you're bound to find at least one of them that's halfway decent. Anyway, to summarize, keyword searching still seems to work for me. I think that the only way it will get considerably better is when true artificial intelligence is possible. That way, when you ask the computer to find something, it is actually smart and goes out and finds it like a real person. However, it seems to me that true artificial intelligence is a way off....
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Well I'll tell you why they're still trying:
Yes, it's true that us geeks and most other people who know much about computers have a relatively low opinion of Microsoft. Yes, we likely have the mass of evidence on our side, like the fact that MS products generally suck, and the fact that the only thing they've innovated in MS Bob (I've actually looked into that. MS-DOS was bought, Windows was stolen/copied, and before each of the MS Office programs there were already word processors, spreadsheeters, and presentation programs. Before IE was Netscape, etc...).
But here's the problem: a lot of the world DOESN'T know or agree with all of this. You might ask why. Well here's why: we take the fact that Microsoft is so evil as such an obvious thing that we rant and rave about it, make all sorts of assumptions that may be largely true but are nonetheless assumptions. And whenever anybody other then our little group sees these rants, it discredits us rather then discrediting MS.
I have been involved in this whole net and computer community thing for quite some time, and I have yet to seen a rational, sane explanation of why MS sucks. Honest to god. Period.
I'll give you a case in point: I have a friend, who will go unnamed, who is relatively smart and such, and knows a thing or two about computers. This friend of mine has the natural AOL-hating gene that most everybody has, and is really no idiot. And they see absolutely no reason to abandon Microsoft and Windows, etc.
Why? Well the answer is simple: from my friends perspective, MS does what she needs. It's the only thing she's ever used, so she takes the crashes as part of daily life on computers. She has seen and heard rants about MS sucking and Linux being a better alternative to Windows, and doesn't buy them because they ARE so ranty.
So what do we need to do? We need to allow the rest of the world to realize that MS isn't that great, and we need to do it in a sane, un-ranty way. How? I don't know. But I need to go anyway, and thanks for reading this long post.
If you look around right now, you'll notice that of the Linux distributions out there, most are either Red Hattish (as in, gone commercial, trying to become easier to use, etc.), really small and relatively insignificant (nothing against Linux Mandrake but....), or, well... Slackware! I'm just wondering what you see for the future. Slackware is the only distro that is relatively "major", yet hasn't given in to the commercial rush and zillion dollar IPOs (although feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Do you know if the user base of Slackware is going up or down? And what do you see for the future of Slackware and Linux in general?
It seems to me that if anything, the internet is MORE searchable then it used to be. I remember some statistic about how a couple of years ago the few search engines that were around only got some small percentage of the web covered anyway. These days it seems the search engines do a better job, and there are a zillion more search engines and also tools that let you search multiple search engines at once. That and the fact that there is just plain a lot more stuff on the net. Back a few years ago, if you searched for Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, you might find a page or two on some college webpage somewhere, if you were lucky. These days there are enough pages out there that you're bound to find at least one of them that's halfway decent. Anyway, to summarize, keyword searching still seems to work for me. I think that the only way it will get considerably better is when true artificial intelligence is possible. That way, when you ask the computer to find something, it is actually smart and goes out and finds it like a real person. However, it seems to me that true artificial intelligence is a way off....