WARNING: RANTING COMPUTER NUT...

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Jun 15 07:21:49 2004

On Tue, 2004-06-15 at 11:25, David V. Corbin wrote:
> >>>> Sounds like somebody grabbed the old machines when a school downgraded
> their computer facilities to PCs...
>
> As shown by the above quote, there is a strong anti "PeeCee" bias by many
> here. While I completely agree that there are significant *problems* with
> both the hardware and (Windoze) software, I do believe that the more extreme
> views are off base.

I witnessed a school clearance over here last year (I actually got there
first and took all the good stuff :-) who were disposing of all their
old Acorn 8 bit hardware.

They were moving everything over to Acorn RiscPC hardware because they
found it was more viable than taking the 'accepted' route of going for
expensive obsolete-in-a-second PCs.

For where they *had* to maintain x86 compatibility, x86 coprocessor
boards for the machines are readily available.

The machines could all run Linux happily alongside RiscOS.

It was just nice to see somewhere putting together an environment that
was reliable, cheap, and did everything that was expected of it.

I don't think the Government here lay down the law as to what
hardware/software schools use (yet), but once a school takes the typical
PC/Microsfot route I suppose it's very hard to go back as the knowledge
of alternatives gets lost amongst the policy-makers (remember that
traditionally in the UK most educational establishments used Acorn and
later Apple Mac platforms, with universities using Unix)

> IF the computer industry had remained with a large number of completely
> different hardware/software environments which required trained operators
> for even the most basic operations, then computing would not have become a
> household commodity.

I don't know how many households had a home computer in the 80's and
early 90's in the UK, but my meory is that it was a lot, at least
amongst those families who had children.

> Standardization of both hardware and software HAD TO HAPPEN, if computers
> were to become the commodity they are today.

I'd say the standardization came later, just at a huge cost, both at
hardware and software level.

At the hardware level there was the PC with it's oddball design, which
had crippled progress ever since.

At the software level there was, well, you-know-who. That argument's
been done to death so I'm not even going to go there.

I'm all for standards when they're well-defined and publicly available,
but not when a company with too much marketing clout deviates from
accepted standards and creates fragmentation, or uses their weight to
create a rival 'standard' of their own choosing, or when the standard is
poorly designed or over-complicated so that it stands no chance of
keeping up with technology advances.

> IBM/Intel had the technology, manpower, and finances to create a platform
> that was (reasonably) affordable, and significantly exceeded the
> capabilities of the current generation of "personal" computers.

I'd disagree on both counts there I think, but that's just my opinion.
And the flipside of blaming good marketing is that you can always blame
a lazy public who aren't prepared to understand what they're buying and
shop around for the best deal (not in terms of cost, but in terms of
what suits their needs)

> Bill Gates had the opportunity to develop an operating system [MS-DOS] when
> Digital Research decided not to agressively persue a new version of CP/M.
> Once this was the dominant command line O/S, it was only logical that the
> same company had the best chance to develop a GUI based interface once that
> technology started to appear

Why? GUIs and command-line interfaces are very different animals.

> Even with these issues, lets face the facts Windows/PC is going to be around
> [and dominant] in most business and personal environments for a significant
> period of time, unless something RADICAL happens on the technology level
> [Bio-Neural-Networks come to mind]. So lets stop the bashing, and just LEARN
> TO DEAL WITH IT!

My personal gripe is the "computing is good, everyone should have a
computer" attitude. I'm forever seeing eldery people struggling to
afford computer technology only to find that it doesn't really *give*
them anything. Same goes with Third World projects - all very noble, but
how about making sure people can maintain basic services for themselves
before dumping wireless technology on their heads?

Sure, we've come a long way, and computing does have benefits. But I'm a
little concerned that it's being treated as the saviour of society and
the way forward. Nobody seems to be sitting back and worrying about the
biger picture...

> I have an uncle who collects/restores old cars [1909 Sears, Stanley Steamer,
> etc.] each of these cars had some fascinating and innovative features for
> their day. Although he does complain about many features of the current
> state of the automotive industry, he never suggests that we should go back
> to the old way of doing things.

Maybe every industry has some sort of sweet period though, I don't know.

For me I'd much prefer a thirty or fourty year old car because I can
understand the technology, can fix it with simple tools, and it does
what I expect of a car - it's reliable and gets me from one place to
another in comfort and in a reasonable amount of time. I don't care if I
have to stop for five minutes if I want a drink because there's no
cupholder - life should not be fast enough that I can't afford to stop
for that drink anyway. I don't care if I have to wind a window down by
hand, or look at a map because I don't have satnav, or (shock horror)
scrape ice of a front window on a cold morning because it isn't heated.

Personally I'd rather have something that gets me from A to B and
doesn't cost a fortune to buy or run because it's not packed full of
'extra' gizmos and technology.

Of course, I'm in a minority, preferring simple tools that do a
well-defined job, rather than something complex that does anything. It's
a nice analogy too, because I feel the same way about computing. And
sometimes I do wonder if, deep down, most people would feel like that if
they didn't have the marketing departments telling them otherwise...

> <END OF RANT>

same here :-)

cheers

Jules
Received on Tue Jun 15 2004 - 07:21:49 BST