Subj : Re: Open Source Leaving Microsoft Sitting on the Fence? To : comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux From : swift Date : Sun Jul 25 2004 07:21 am In article , Jack Strangio wrote: >Next thing we'll be complaining that a '73 Ford gearbox won't fit on >a '97 Ford. Or even that a Mercedes door won't fit properly in a >Chev. > >We don't mind variety in vehicles, so why is variety in software >so frightening to some people? It's possibly due to the MSFT >attitude that 'one size fits all' which has been the paradigm for >nearly 20 years, and which most people now see as the norm. You neglect to notice that the user interface for a car consists of some one dozen gadgets whereas that for computers it's some hundreds to thousand. I recall having a rental car where come night time I couldn't find the light switch because of some oddball design that made the vehicle effectively dangerous. Nowadays a lot of the electronic gadgets on cars, such as DVD players or GPS systems have again become so complicated and non-standard that one has to study hundred-page manuals just to figure out some very simple operations. If you also noticed, over the last decade, commercial cars have become more and more standardized, with almost all cars having the basic switches at the same places. Also note that one of the major flaws of the American automobile industry was not having standardization of parts, which cost it dearly. I have no problems with embellishments, such as color of cars or screen savers on computers being non-standard. But, when different distributions of an OS put basic apps in different places, such as /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /opt/bin, /usr/local/xxx/bin, etc, it's just annoyance. There's been enough times when I've used Linux utilities that I can't figure out whether it's a "core" Linux functionality or one supported only by a particular distribution that it's not clear how much I should depend on the facility. It's like watching DVD movies wherein distributors put in different cuts or endings such that two people who watched "the" movie can't even discusss it because they saw different stories. When one searches for Linux discussion topics on the Web, one often needs to qualify things by "which distribution," which to me is often a plain waste of time. One of the easiest ways to offer secutiry in a system is simply to jumble things up by using non-standard user interfaces. For instance, if my system simply switches the log-in prompt by having "user:" request password and "password:" request user name, it could already cause enough misery for the unfamiliar user. Or a car that switches the gas pedal with the brake pedal could probably frustrate quite a few car thieves... -- Keep it brief: http://www2.paypc.com/mailrules/ .