(Score:-1, Troll)
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 09:58:16 -0500
> From: Andrew Baudouin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [brlug-general] Best Slashdot Post Ever
> To: [email protected]
> Message-ID:
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On the subject of Microsoft's new CLI, Monad:
>
> Why should you be worried? Were Microsoft to develop
> the best CLI ever
> conceived, it wouldn't take bash, tcsh or zsh or
> whatever is your
> shell of choice (pick your flavour, I'm not going to
> start a war here)
> away from you (and me and everyone else).
>
> So best luck to them, and may life be less painful
> for our fellow
> Windows sysadmins!
>
>
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152169&cid=12768136
>
> Why should you be worried?
>
> Because there are a surprisingly large contingent of
> people who define
> themselves by the operating system they use, and
> whose self-esteem is
> directly linked to the perceived superiority of this
> operating system
> over Microsoft Windows. During the late nineties,
> when Windows was
> truly a buggy, crashy, piece of shit, these people
> positively basked
> in the glee that came from the vindication of their
> chosen OS - back
> then, Linux truly was light-years ahead of Windows
> in terms of speed
> and stability, and geeks rejoiced in the streets.
>
> Flash-forward to Windows 2000/ XP, and Microsoft
> apparently
> accomplished a miracle, producing a version of
> Windows that would
> literally run and run, and was still fairly nippy.
> Meanwhile, the
> writers of Linux Desktop Environments were
> discovering that it's very
> easy to be fast and light when you don't do much, or
> aren't
> particularly user-friendly, and that increased
> functionality almost
> always comes at the price of bloat.
>
> So these people saw two pillars of the superiority
> of Linux (speed and
> stability) snatched away from them. The truly
> curious thing is what
> happened next: instead of being spurred into action
> by this new
> competition and addressing these concerns on the
> Linux side, these
> people instead simply went into a state of denial,
> and refused to let
> go of these cherished (and rapidly shrinking) areas
> where Linux once
> scored over Windows. Read through any anti-MS
> slashdot article on any
> given day and count the number of horribly outdated
> criticisms of
> Microsoft you see (BSOD's; bloat; Clippy(!)) - as a
> passionate
> believer in F/OSS, it really grieves me to see
> people behaving like
> this, rather than aiming to improve Linux to the
> state where it once
> again has many advantages over Windows.
>
> Flash-forward to now, as one of the other areas in
> which Linux scores
> over Windows (a UNIX command-line is an awesome and
> enjoyable tool to
> use; the Windows command line, by contrast, is a
> rubber hammer with
> nails in the handle :)) may well be snatched away,
> and we see the same
> thing: people are hoping against hope that Microsoft
> foul it up,
> because if they don't another area of Linux
> superiority disappears,
> along with another shred of their self-esteem. This,
> I think, is why
> people care, and why they do not wish Microsoft well
> in this project,
> however helpful it may be to the common good.
John
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