On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Shachar Shemesh wrote:That's the most common cause. I would even say further - their entire concept of "what is a computer" was formed around what MS supplies. MS supplies "the standard". Anything else can, at best, equal it.
Gadi Gilon is an addicted Microsofti
Can you tell me what makes him (or anyone else) an addicted Microsofti ? Is it fear of the unknown ?
As a result, when they try to evaluate an alternative product, whatever qualities it has as a bonus don't count ("your system doesn't need a reboot once a week? So what? Rebooting once a week is standard"), but whatever it doesn't have that MS has becomes a disadventage ("What do you mean there is no wizard for shutting down the machine? How can that be?").
The moment you put on these glasses, everything not MS cannot be good. These people can see that one MS platform is better than another, but usually this view of the world prevents them from accepting degradation of quality over successive versions. They think MS means progress (you can see them in reply posts for FOSS friendly articles saying such things as "You are just jealous of Bill Gates because he is rich. Where would the world of computers be today without Microsoft?"), and therefor find it hard to believe that a newer version CANNOT be better than an older one.
The funny thing is, some of these people are actually FOSS supporters, and even active advocators. You can call them "addicted MSies in rehab". They realize that this is something different, with a lot of potential. You will find that they lack the volcabulary to express, or even evaluate, the places where, for example, Linux is better than Windows. You can hear them say sentances such as "The latest Windows XP is indeed much better than previous versions. So it Office XP. I do have some trouble running the two together. Strange, don't you think? You'd think that greater integration would produce a better product."
While this is a problem whenever evaluating a competing product, FOSS requires commercial entities to do some latteral thinking. The change in terminology is something that is very scary to some people. For example, the fact that you can get support that is, on average, much better than commercial support is not something that would appeal to most IT managers of proprietary products. They see the lack of guarentee as a show stopper. Commercial support is a great gap filler here (both from big companies, such as IBM, Oracle and CA, and from tiny ones, such as myself), but it makes the support more expensive, giving rise to allegations that "FOSS software is more expensive due to support costs".
Is it that Microsoft gave them some knowledge that makes them powerful ?Specifically, in the case of Clalit, they are a "casestudy customer" of Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/CaseStudy.asp?CaseStudyID=13951). Such customers tend to get a lot of specific development and tailored, free, support by the developers themselves. As such, it is not so suprising that Gadi Gilon likes his MS solutions so much.
It is sad that, with such close help from MS, they were still knocked offline by a virus. This is not due to neglect. I have heard Gadi talk about their systems. At the time, it was to boast how they were not affected by Slammer (http://www.tigershows.co.il/html/event_desc.asp?Event_ID=142)
GaborShachar
-- Shachar Shemesh Open Source integration consultant Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/
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