RE: GLUG: SuSE 7.0...

["Jason Doller" <rjd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 30 Nov 2000, at 20:39, Ashley Kleynhans wrote:

> about it, most of us in the IT industry would not have jobs if it were not for Microsoft and their
> marketing tactics.  Thank God we don't have to put up with communism and actually have a

I can't agree with this.  Mucrosoft's marketing tactics didn't cause the 
PC explosion, it caused the Mucrosoft explosion.  (Actually, just 
noticed the mis-spelt word now.  Leaving it for personal immature 
reasons).

The PC was an idea who's time had come.  Bear in mind that the 
beginning of the PC revolution took place on DOS, and there were many 
products similar to DOS (CP/M springs to mind).  All that Microsoft did 
was make sure they were firmly entrenched in the market.

And as for Windows - can we say MacOS?  Can we say X windows?  If 
memory serves me correctly, both of these products predate Windows.  
Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and dBase predate MS Office (and the only 
reason Office took over from these products was because of 
questionable tech. issues - MS didn't make full Windows specs 
available to non-MS companies.  Same as today.)

Another point is that many people in the PC industry (at least when I 
started) were mainframe and Novell people.  I remember all the 
excitement when people thought MS was going to release a NOS.  That 
was how OS2 started.  (Lanman had failed miserably, and MS needed 
to move into a field dominated by Novell).  The joke is, NT started out as 
a new version of Windows 3.1, but evolved into something else (this is 
honest-to-goodness truth.  I remember a lady at the computer faire 
showing me an alpha version of NT (with it's graphics library - libg?) and 
telling me that it was the new version of Windows, the New Technology.

So I don't really see how Microsoft gave us our jobs.

To paraphrase someone, their ideas were all new and original.

Unfortunately, the new stuff wasn't good, and the good stuff wasn't 
original (Oscar Wilde?).

> choice so if we don't like a certain product, we can choose not to use that product, but I think
> that it is immature to flame/insult/whatever products and technology which helped the IT industry
> grow to the point where it is today.

OK, I'm going to ASSUME you ar referring to my crack about supporting 
Win machines.  Actually, that was probably less of a joke / flame / 
insult / whatever than you might think.

Supporting Win machines is sterssfull, mostly because you're trying to 
fix a problem when you don't know what the problem is, and there's no 
way to find out (WHY do certain progs GPF?  And why only 
sometimes?).  I have seen people stress out and burn out trying to run 
tech support departments.  Your users expect you to give them a stable 
working experience, but the tools they are using (Windows) are not up 
to the task.  This makes the users angry, and they take it out on the IT 
staff, particularly the managers.

Besides, as the smiley under the comment suggested, this was all 
tongue in cheek.  A joke.  Not to be taken seriously.  As a matter of 
fact, if you search GLUG archives you'll see that I'm on record defending 
MS in certain areas (where they deserve defending), such as their GUI 
(which IS superior to what we have on Linux - although KDE2 is pretty 
much there).

> >(BTW, if you all group together you can probably ge a bulk / group 
> >discount with a shrink.  I know a couple if you need help there (I used to 
> >support Win machines.  Requires YEARS of therapy.)

Cheers,

Jason Doller
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SuSE - German engineering where you need it most on your PC.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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