Computers have revolutionized the world. Never before have people from so many countries been able to talk to people from other countries without interference from their governments. The world is shrinking as we all are more able to see that just because someone lives in this country or that, they are human, are interested in the same things we are interested in, though some of them are just unable to acquire what they want as easily as others.
It is amazing that I have one piece of equipment that I can use to play music, to find music, to make art, to find art, the report news, to read news, to write what I want and to easily publish it for everyone's benefit.
This computer is amazing, the programs that I can get and what they can do sometimes boggle me. But what I cannot understand is why I cannot get a good operating system, compatible with all the fine programs available, that I do not have to reinstall every six months. Bill Gates, if you are going to control the software market, please, please, please, make your damn software work without having to be continually updated to fix bugs, without eating bits of itself so that it becomes corrupted over use, and does not require so much code to run. It can be done. I bet you that if you would agree to open source your OS, within a year, there will be several free market programmers who have stabilized it to the point where I do not have to end up losing 6 months worth of saved emails because I have to reformat and reinstall your crappy software.
Even the cheapest computer is a fine piece of equipment. I know, I have 4 different models of e-machines*. I have been computing since 1980, and have seen the OS develop from stable DOS to the buggiest OS ever crated, Win MX. I have two MX machines, and I seem to spend more time trying to get programs to work under the OS than they do with either my '95 or my '98 boxes. If it was possible to run every piece of software I have on it, I would switch to LINUX in heartbeat.
*I think of e-machines as the disposable razors of the computer industry. They are cheap, work problem free for awhile, begins developing snags, you throw it in the trash and go get another one, with the newest chip and bigger hard drive.
Posted by Tiger at June 5, 2003 08:26 PM | TrackBack