On Wednesday 01 August 2007 12:57, Raj Mathur wrote: > Sorry, car analogies don't work in the IT field. Let's just talk > about compatibility in the context of computers.
IMO they do. And indeed the parallels fit neatly. All vehicles have engines that burn fuel, produce power, drive the wheels, use brakes the same way, use steering the same way, have seats, lights etc. Infact all the components are equiv. of each other and do the same job. BUT u cant switch components from one to the other.And a technician evem with good knowledge in one type of vehicle will have initial difficulties with another type. In the case of users too the analogy holds true. A zen user is going to have some initial difficulty driving a Santro. And to complete the analogy the locked down boot example holds true. One might also add: Unlike a modern car, a comp does many navigation tasks automagically like finding files, figuring out their formats, finding urls, etc and this intelligence is where the OS's show their strength (linux can read and write most things on windoze) or lack thereof (windows cant do most such things). Further when linux drives u can see thru all the scenery, trucks and mad drivers included. Doze rolls up the windows, blakens the windscreen and tries to sedate u with jazz. The scenery with trucks and mad drivers are still there, but u are blissfully ignorant, resulting in the all to familiar crashes. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
