From: "Erica VD Ginter" <eginter at klgai.com>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Standardized operating system (was Re: equal pay)
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 15:03:28 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

I'm an end user. A bug-ridden standard to me seems better than none; that
can be fixed. Personal felings about Bill Gates and Microsoft are, in the
long run, irrelevant. It also appears to me that some of the examples of
where standardization would be bad are spurious. Iron lungs, for example.
I'm a big fan of medical advances, as you might expect.

Erica

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith F. Lynch [mailto:kfl at keithlynch.net]
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 1:15 AM
To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Standardized operating system (was Re: equal pay)

"Erica VD Ginter" <eginter at klgai.com> wrote:

> I have a hard time understanding why standardization of something as
> important as computer operating systems is bad ...

* The technology is still rapidly developing.  If a standard for
  dealing with polio had been decided on in 1950, we'd have wonderfully
  standardized iron lungs.  But we wouldn't have the Salk vaccine.

* The use of computers is extremely diverse.  In transportation, we
  have space shuttles, nuclear submarines, piper cubs, cars, bicycles,
  freight trains, trucks, army tanks, helicopters, oil supertankers,
  and hot air balloons.  Trying to develop a standard vehicle which
  can replace all of these would be easy compared to trying to develop
  a standard computer operating system which can support all present-
  day computer applications, never mind future ones.

* Standards should not be proprietary.  If we declared the Toyota
  Corolla the standard car, abolishing all others, don't you think
  that would give Toyota an unfair advantage?  What would keep them
  from increasing the price and decreasing the quality, knowing that
  our only alternative was to do without any car?

* There already are operating system standards.  Look up POSIX.
  Needless to say, Microsoft diregards them as flagrantly as their
  web products violate the W3 and HTML standards.

* Even if we did have to choose a particular proprietary operating
  system to be standard, Microsoft's would be a spectacularly bad
  choice, as they're bug-ridden (often resulting in data loss or
  corruption), slow, virus-prone, poorly documented, and bloated.
--
Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
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