[newbie] paranoia and a letter

[Pablo Garc�a Dur�n]

Dear guys:   Yes, I misused the word "paranoia" (I gave it the sense it nowadays has in slang Spanish) so probably I got slightly misunderstood. Sorry for that.   But it was a critic anyway.   Again I want to declare my sympathy towards the Linux community. It's a nice idea that matches part of what I think computers should be. But again don't expect the crowd to abandon their Windows-based machines at this time. Most people will pay to be able to click the "add any hardware" icon and start printing, scanning or connecting to the Internet immediately.   I'm not saying you surrender. I'm just saying: read History and learn the Macintosh lesson.   I leave you with an open letter I found, about the real importance of an operating system. -- Pablo Garcia-Duran ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++   A letter to operating system designers Written By: Timothy Nordloh Linux, Microsoft, Apple! It's so confusing! which operating system is best? I'm here to tell you, as briefly as possible, that it doesn't matter. First of all, the majority of users are like me; they see their operating system for no more than three seconds, before launching their favorite application. Second, we know you all want money, even the Linux companies. also, we know you're in bed with the hardware companies. After reading the line on the bottom of the new Mac OS X, display box, I now know that it is the "Most Advanced Operating System in the World". All this statement tells me is that even Apple can't be trusted to be completely honest. I worry that the chief operating system companies out there are getting away from the true meaning of 'operating system.' I think back on the days of DOS. I typed 'edit', and I'm editing documents. I typed 'menu' and I got a menu. Best of all, I got a printed instruction manual that told me these things. What ever happened to instruction manuals? They went from explaining the ins and outs of DOS to describing how to double-click. We need to examine the computer of yesterday. It was simple and reliable. We could print our documents. There were about 20 options on any one product. Anyone could jump in and be 'certified' on a word processor in under thirty minutes. An example of how computers have gotten away from simplicity; back in 1990, if I pressed the button labeled 'print screen', guess what happened? the words on my screen were magically transported to my printer! I miss that. Also, my computer booted up in less than two minutes. When did we lose sight of that simplicity? Stepping back to the present, I have a computer that forgets what kind of monitor I have in Windows, and doesn't shut down properly in Linux. I still have the default background on my computer. I think it's light blue, but I'm not sure. The only time I see my background is during the two seconds it takes me to click on an application icon. I also don't spend a lot of time personalizing my settings. I sit down and start typing on a word processor. Or I install the latest version of Quake. Or I surf the internet. Typically, the only part of the operating system I see is the taskbar. I've seen the pretty Whistler screenshots, and I like the lovely Mac OS interface, but it's all going in the wrong direction. I want to get to where I'm going in one click, or with a simple typed command. No menus, no searches, just give me my games or my web browser. What's up with the .NET concept? First of all, it's silly to think about selling me the chance to use Microsoft Word; I already paid 300 bucks for the 4 year old version, and it has more features than I'll ever use! Do you think you're fooling us, Microsoft? We know you're scheme; you're trying to take over the entire internet! You're going to sell us entire dictionaries, gaming networks, and information sources; I'll be able to download music and movies, I'll get regular software upgrades, all for one low monthly fee. Someday soon, I'll log on to Hotmail, and discover that in order to continue using my e-mail, all I have to do is submit credit card number to .NET. If I buy a cell-phone, it just works. I don't know or care who wrote it's operating system, and the whole instruction set is nicely stored on a silicon chip. With a computer, I have to pay to get my hardware to even work! That's right, it costs me money to activate features! I want my next computer's operating system to be on a rom chip, and I want it to boot up in less than a second, like a cell phone. The other day, I caught my wife using Netscape Communicator to create a document. At first I laughed, but then I realized it was a damn clever idea. It's got word wrap, which is more than I can say for notepad. And she always has her e-mail open anyway. It was a natural step for her. This whole time, it's been taking me two or three clicks to open a word document, and she's doing it by clicking on 'new'. For many of us, the computer is a novel toy, and it's fun to see all the neat things it can do, but let's face it; the computers of the future are going to be like the Sega Dreamcast, and web tv. We'll take palm-tops over laptops. Most people simply don't need or use much of their computers' potential power. Case in point, there are a hundreds of thousands of people using wasted cpu idle time to process Seti records. Let's face it, none of us need a big chest full of tools to change the oil in our cars, and we don't need a 3,000 dollar computer to check e-mail. Besides, most of us pay someone else to change our oil. It's time for all operating system companies to think about streamlining their software. Stop building operating systems that eat 10 percent of my computer's resources. I'm not launching my pc into space, so it doesn't matter too much to me if the operating system in 'outer space' capable. Get a low profile. The average user wants nothing more than a simple interface and a speedy response. Some of us spend a lot of time in online communities; I have a friend who uses his computer almost exclusively to chat on Yahoo. Others create databases of their cd collections, or browse pictures on the web. We like drawing pictures and editing photos. We want to frag the our opponents, and play chess. But we don't care too much whether our desktop background is centered or tiled. We don't even freakin' notice when the mouse changes as we roll it over an icon! My advice is this; go back to the drawing board and make my computer simpler. Make it quicker. Where do I want to go today? Today I want to go play Quake III. I don't care if your name is Bill Gates, I don't care if your name is Steve Jobs. Just get me there in under ten seconds. But if you're name is Linus, I'll give you fifteeen seconds, because I like penguins.