[Beowulf] An OT patented rgb editorial rant, skip if you like...

[Peter St. John]

Gentlemen,
The "barbarian" allegory may be more apt than it appears (although it's not
the Penguins). The steppe-nomads who invaded Europe during the latter half
of the first millenium are supposed to have brought sheep with them.
Conquering Europe had the incidental effect of converting arable land from
crops to grazing. Instead of directly growing carbohydrate (wheat), growing
cellulose (grass) and then converting the cellulose to protein (sheep) and
then the protein to calories, is enormously less efficient in calories per
acre. Reducing the ability of the countryside to support the populations in
the cities is said to have been a major cause of the Dark Ages. Nonetheless
we admire Attilla.

Microsoft has swept accross the small computer landscape and conquered the
known world. Incidental to that, "Windows", integrating the GUI with the
OS (as opposed to say VMS, integrating DP with the OS via e.g. thick file
system RMS and shared memory section microcode; or say Unix, integrating the
development environment with the OS, so the archetype unix book is titled
"The Unix Programming Environment" not "The Unix Operating System") cuts the
efficiency (in DP and Development, if not of GUI) on vast stretches of
arable desktop. Putting a GUI OS on a server (e.g. "Exchange Server") is as
counterproductive as grazing sheep on arable land; sheep belong on hillsides
you can't irrigate, and wheat belongs on flat land near rivers.  Bill Gates
is the Attilla The Hun of the Information Age.

Businessmen today admire him the way warriors of old admired Attilla. My
advice to clients is just to point out, that I want to own stock in
McDonald's, I don't want to eat there everyday. Sell Vista to your customers
but don't install it on your servers.

Peter

Peter St.John (consultant, programming more lately in VB than C)





On 1/24/07, Douglas Eadline <deadline at clustermonkey.net> wrote:
>
> Robert,
>
> Excellent screed. One thing:
>
> "barbarian penguins"
>
> I call first dibs on using that name for a rock band.
> (if only I could play an instrument)
>
> --
> Doug
>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
> > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
> > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
> >
> > !DSPAM:45b6462939547511819938!
> >
>
>
> --
> Doug
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.beowulf.org/pipermail/beowulf/attachments/20070124/55dc181b/attachment.html>