[at-l] Way, way OT Drive and computer Trouble!!

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 08:56 AM 12/30/2003 -0800, Datto wrote:
>Why can't they make a car that just goes forward. I don't need to go in 
>reverse. They used to make cars like that you know, they just went forward 
>and didn't have all these fancy knobs and gizmos on them like they do today.
>
>And all this polution control gear in these new fangled cars these days. 
>What a waste! I don't need any of that. Why can't they just make cars that 
>spew out the grime and dust like they used to...so you knew when the 
>engine was turned on and it didn't make that racket when you already had 
>the engine on and turned the key. I used to be able to look in my rear 
>view mirror and see if the engine was turned on.
>
>And these airplanes nowadays. They keep going all the way up to 35,000 
>feet in order to just fly from one place to another. Tarnation. If I had 
>my way, we'd just be loading 350 people from that big expensive 747 into 
>one of the Wright Flyers and travel along at 25 feet above the ground. 
>That's all the higher it takes to fly you know.
>
>Yeah, that's the ticket. Good ol' 25 feet at most. By golly I remember when...
>
>Datto

Ignoring the sarcasm, this is not an apt comparison. For one thing car 
makers *do* make basic model cars without power windows, rain sensing 
wipers, etc. You don't have to buy the model with all the gismos unless you 
want to. As for pollution controls, no OS I have seen ever spewed out 
pollution, at least not directly, although the newer ones use more 
computing power therefore more energy and therefore (theoretically at 
least) they pollute more than a basic OS without all the gismos.

I'm not against improving the OS which to me means making it more stable 
and reliable and yes, faster too. MS spent far too many years integrating 
other (non-OS) software into their OS in competition with other developers 
while neglecting the stability and reliability of their core product. It is 
not unlike the US auto manufacturers who wasted many years railing against 
the cheap foreign imports until it dawned on them that people were buying 
them because they were actually BETTER. MS tried to solve that problem by 
driving all the competition out of business.