OS DNA
The coming introduction of Vista is why I fled from Microsoft and bought an Apple iMac.
As much as 90% of human DNA is thought to be redundant or obsolete junk having no apparent function, yet the total system works marvelously well. Windows code is obviously a pile of spaghetti and bracketing, but it works less well with every new edition. Why can't Microsoft do like Mother Nature?
For one thing, if Microsoft had nature's time scale it could patch its code until it works marvelously well, too. But time scales in the computer industry are a bit shorter than that! Time pressure forces half-baked product onto the market, creating Service Pack Hell.
Longer term, the larger problem is that Microsoft does not have Mother Nature's lack of competition. There is only one DNA system, and every organism on the planet shares it, from the lowliest microbe on up. There is no opportunity for a rival system to develop, because those large molecules would be quickly eaten by DNA creatures already existing. Microsoft's environment is different, because there is the constant possibility of rival code systems, like Linux and the Mac OS. So far, Microsoft dominates its environment enough to keep competitors at bay, but that domination might erode, might be eroding already.
Byron
As much as 90% of human DNA is thought to be redundant or obsolete junk having no apparent function, yet the total system works marvelously well. Windows code is obviously a pile of spaghetti and bracketing, but it works less well with every new edition. Why can't Microsoft do like Mother Nature?
For one thing, if Microsoft had nature's time scale it could patch its code until it works marvelously well, too. But time scales in the computer industry are a bit shorter than that! Time pressure forces half-baked product onto the market, creating Service Pack Hell.
Longer term, the larger problem is that Microsoft does not have Mother Nature's lack of competition. There is only one DNA system, and every organism on the planet shares it, from the lowliest microbe on up. There is no opportunity for a rival system to develop, because those large molecules would be quickly eaten by DNA creatures already existing. Microsoft's environment is different, because there is the constant possibility of rival code systems, like Linux and the Mac OS. So far, Microsoft dominates its environment enough to keep competitors at bay, but that domination might erode, might be eroding already.
Byron
posted by Byron | Sunday, August 19, 2007
1 Comments:
I was ready for a change from XP when Vista came out but found it to be an underwhelming resource hog. I didn't want to sacrifice considerable hardware to go with Apple, and I appreciate the advantages of open source. That left one choice: Linux. As with Vista, there are too many decisions to make, such as distribution (Debian? Fedora? Gentoo? Mandriva? Slackware? Ubuntu? OpenSuSE?) and window manager (Gnome? KDE?), which the Linux community must address to attract mainstream users. I went with OpenSuSE with Gnome and XGL/Compiz; installation was a breeze and the user experience is very impressive. Performance is excellent, all of my peripherals work perfectly (other than video capture on my ATI AIW9700-PRO), viruses are no longer a distraction, OpenOffice handles my Office 2000 word processing and spreadsheet files, GIMP does everything I used Photoshop to do, the few OS and app problems encountered have been resolved VERY quickly (a GnuCash developer responded on a Sunday within six hours of my bug report regarding Quicken data import), and it's all FREE. It seems Vista has been good for both Linux and MacOS...
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