on 1/14/09 7:10 AM, Bill Connell at [email protected] wrote: > I've had Mac, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris machines at home, and use > WinXP, Linux and Macs at work. The best thing about the Mac for me is > that you never *have* to mess with conf files, but you have the full > unix guts at your disposal if you want 'em. I've done a ton of > tinkering with hardware and software, and have done this long enough > that now i expect the tools to just work and let me get on with the > job. > > It's interesting to think of computers and bikes in the sense of > openness. I prefer the Mac by far, but i recognize that there are > aspects of it that are strictly inaccessible, as compared to Linux. On > the other hand, it's irksome to work on bikes and find that i need to > track down some obscure part because of a different size or threading > standard. The Mac situation is probably most like the Raleighs of the > 30s-70s, where they used a different system than most others, but > since they controlled the whole ecosystem the product worked very well > as built. It's only when you try to customize and tinker that the > limitations become troublesome though it certainly doesn't prevent > tinkering.
Just to totally pitch over the lip of OT-ed-ness, if you have a chance to read it, Neal Stephenson wrote a short book called "In the Beginning Was the Command Line..." which has an interesting overview of the history of OS's (at least up through the pub date of ~1999). It's a good short read. At the time, he made the quite valid point that the MacOS was actually the least open (and favored unix for a number of reasons). This was of course before the Unix core changes. Ok, I really need to get back to work, now... - J -- Jim Edgar [email protected] Cyclofiend Bicycle Photo Galleries - http://www.cyclofiend.com Current Classics - Cross Bikes Singlespeed - Working Bikes Get your photos posted: http://www.cyclofiend.com/guidelines "Then I sat up, wiped the water out of my eyes, and looked at my bike, and just like that I knew it was dead" -- Robert McCammon, "Boy's Life" --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
