“Deliver us from Microsoft” – The Guardian headline
Stephen Fry introduces the open source platform that will see off Windows.
In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.
The two great pillars of Open Source are the GNU project and Linux. I shan’t burden you with too much detail, I’ll just make the outrageous claim that your computer will be running some descendant of those two within the next five years and that your life will be better and happier as a result.
I am writing this article on a kind of mini John the Baptist, a system that prepares the way of the software saviour whose coming will deliver the 90% of world computer users who suffer under Windows from the expensive, clumsy, costly, ugly, pricey toils of Microsoft.
The Asus EEE PC perched on my knee combines GNU software with a Linux kernel powered by an Intel Celeron Mobile Processor to produce a very extraordinary little laptop. It weighs less than a kilogram, starts up from cold in about 12 seconds and shuts down in five. It has no internal hard disk and no CD drive. It offers 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a seven-inch display; wireless, dial-out modem and ethernet adaptors are available for networking and internet connections, three USB ports, mini-jack sockets for headphones and microphone, a VGA out, an SD card slot and a built-in webcam. All for about £200 – less than the price of a show, dinner and taxi for two in London’s West End.
When you press the EEE’s power button, the lightning speed and quietness of boot-up tell you that you are in the hands of a solid state flash drive: no vulnerable moving parts and buzzing platters here. Within seconds a tabbed screen will appear on your display: the tabs are labelled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favourites. A click on each reveals a page containing bright, clear icons that relate to 40 separate applications and half a dozen or so selected web links. The applications include Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird (the Mozilla mail client) and OpenOffice.org, an Open Source suite of applications that allows you to create and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. One of the pre-installed web links is to Google Docs, which lets you do the same MS Office compatible work online. This combination of “server side” applications and Open Source software is, rightly, scaring the heck out of Microsoft which is in danger of relying, in a few years’ time, on its excellent Xbox games console for income and kudos, its domination of personal computing a rapidly diminishing memory. Well, I’m allowed to dream.
The EEE is far from perfect: system software claims two-thirds of its meagre 4GB of storage, the keyboard is sub-par, the trackpad worse; it seems a shame to boast a built-in webcam and a full field of IM clients, yet be incapable of videochat; the OS, a customised version of Linux, part Debian, part Asus’s own creation, makes downloading outside the bundled software updater uncertain. But these defects are minor compared with the machine’s astounding value and functionality – and to the future trends in computing it heralds.
This is a computer designed as an introductory machine for children or adults, as well as a simple cheap do-it-all machine along the “One Laptop Per Child” model but which is also absolutely ideal as a truly cheap, portable, resilient device to slam into a backpack or briefcase. Everything you could want is there in free, Open Source form. It does not pretend to cater for the power user but, while file management is basic for the average person, tuxheads (Linux experts) can go straight to terminal mode and do their stuff. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, this is a wonderful little friend who does all we need straight out of the box. And it is only the beginning…
© Stephen Fry 2008
@PC Bitsearch
Quotation from the Oxford English Dictionary:
“Balkanize v., to divide (a region) into a number of smaller and often mutually hostile units, as was done in the Balkan Peninsula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” OED’s earliest quote is from 1920. Whence Balkanization is first quoted in English in 1922, where it is stated to have been coined by German socialists. Whereas the word originally referred to a geographic phenomenon, its use in other ways is nothing new. Whether the word has come back into fashion following the Balkan wars of the late twentieth century I’m not sure.
Stephen does use quite a lot of made up words, of course, in his blessays, blisquisitions as well as extrablogospherically. And jolly nice they are too as a rule. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of intrablogoneologization I say.
At the risk of turning Mr.Fry’s blog into the new Slashdot.
Daithi – be careful not to confuse open standards (such as ASCII, HTML or TCP/IP) with open source software. Open standards have actually been far more important in the development of computing, and have long been backed by consortiums of companies. In the future, it will be far easier to recover, say, an MP3 file or DVD, than something created using an unknown and failed format using open source software.
Dark Phoenix – to be fair, comparing Windows in the 80s with Unix circa 1970 is a bit off, given that desktop computers simply did not have the spare power to run a ‘proper’ operating system until well into the 90s. Even in the early 90s Unix workstations were typically 5 times the cost of a PC. You can only really compare it to its peers – GEMM, AmigaOS, Mac OS, Archimedes OS and IBM OS/2. Where it is still loses.
What I don’t understand is why they have failed over the last decade to take the opportunity to move onto a properly designed system. The cost of maintaining Windows must be huge, and the cost of trying to ‘fix’ it, even higher.
Backwards compatibility isn’t an excuse when you can run Windows software in an OS X environment using software like Parallels or Fusion, a solution that would be a lot easier when you control every piece of the puzzle.
[For what it's worth, MS have experimented with an entirely new research OS, called Singularity, which is worth reading up on, and proof to those that MS do invent things]
I think Tretle has it right about ‘even if the user has no idea it’s Linux’. I’d almost go so far as to say ‘only if the user has no idea it’s Linux’.
Stephen,
Isn’t it exciting? For years Microsoft ruled the roost. They didn’t do it with quality, they didn’t do it with marketing, what Microsoft did was cut deals that prevented competition from selling to the OEMS. Except Apple, and Apple spent a decade wandering in the wilderness until Steve Jobs came back.
So now we have Apple delivering exciting tech, ASUS, OLPC, and a whole bunch of other companies producing really neat tech, all of which is based on Open Source software.
And Microsoft can’t compete. They never learned how. They learned how to cut off Netscape’s air supply (read the US antitrust case documentation). But they never learned to produce a compelling product – something that was so good everyone went “wow – I’ve got to have that.”
Even the XBox – possibly their best product to date, is really second rate compared to the Nintendo Wii, or even the antique Playstation 2.
So yes, our saviors have arrived, and they are the BSD, GPL, MPL, and other open source licenses. The next few years in tech promise to be exciting – we will see even more neat toys coming down the pike, and none of them will have Microsoft product inside them. Unless someone at Microsoft gets smart – and with Steve Ballmer running the show I don’t see that happening.
Hi Stephen
Good to see you articulate so well, but it would be great if you could make a better distinction between ‘Free Software’ and ‘Open Source’.
Free Software is free as in enterprise or freedom. Open Source is often used as a competitive weapon with highly restrictive licensing.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
The two links above provide a much better analysis that deserves better publicity.
OpenSourceFry
1) I was right about the lack of localisation for Hebrew. My brain was fuzzy on the details but the essential was correct. If lack of support happened to MAC in 2002 it could happen on Windows in 2009.
A couple of links for you
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/06/17/microsofts_mac_hebrew_snub_prompts/
http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2008/01/mac-office-2008-still-no-arabichebrew.html
2) If Office was an open sourced product then anyone could hire someone to localise it and feed it back into the community, or not as they saw fit. That is the “freedom” of open source, not it doesn’t cost anything but it is yours to do with as you will.
Then if you have a market where your supplier doesn’t deem it worrthwhile then you are not scuppered by that.
You should own your computer, not a company convicted of abuse of monopoly position that tells you that you aren’t allowed to change the hardware in your machine without risking a deactivation and a long phone call to get sorted.
Ah yes, thank you for nother wonderful read Stephen. I found myself nodding as I read it knowing that many people feel that way. Including my other half so I emailed it to him a link to it saying a word about it. He read it and came back with ‘yes I agree exactly’. Knew it. We keep saying we are going to try out Linux, one of these days.
This is an hilarious thread!
I think I’ve read threads similar to this for every one of the last 15 years, between Microsoft defenders (I wouldn’t say any are advocates, unless employed by them) and Open Source foot soldiers. Everyone (practically) in the industry knows that Open Source has many benefits over the M$ offerings, but that hasn’t changed anything; the forecasts of M$’s demise have not proved true. Why is that?
In my opinion it’s because M$ has succeeded as a business; it has developed, bought, marketed, wheeled and dealed to a position of great strength and as a consequence its products have become predominant. It’s not because they’re products are so much better than all the others, as we know, although they do have plenty of decent products, regardless of where they’ve come from. Open Source products haven’t been championed by an organisation as effective as M$.
So will Open Source products be omnipresent-ish (you know what I mean) in five years time. In my opinion, only if one of two things happen. First possibility is that M$ adopt Open Source, and start applying their expertise to that business model. Second possibility is that M$ drop the ball in a bad way (as IBM did) and lose their predominance in the marketplace. Perhaps they already have; Vista has not been their finest hour, and with Bill Gates less hands on perhaps the magic of M$ is waning. In the past they’ve made errors (the Web) but spotted them and recovered. Can they continue to do so?
OpenSourceFry
No, I was right though I misremembered a particular. MS Office since 2002 has not been localised for Hebrew or Arabic.
Here’s the story I remembered as reported
THEN http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/06/17/microsofts_mac_hebrew_snub_prompts/
and
NOW http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2008/01/mac-office-2008-still-no-arabichebrew.html
This cut to the heart of the argument. Let’s discount the reported offer of financial support to localise for the MAC. Say it never materialised.
Nothing can be done. No volunteers can help, because the source is closed.
What about OpenOffice? http://he.openoffice.org/ Page for a Hebrew localised OpenOffice
NeoOffice can also use its localisation
Hell, there is even a Scots Gaelic OOO localisation.
You lose this one
I won’t bother to read most of the previous comments (largely because it’s an argument I’ve heard a thousand times before and it never gets any more tolerable).
My philosophy about computers is “Use what works for you at a price you’re comfortable with.” So if your little machine does what you want, that’s wonderful. But I also can’t fault most people in search of a midline or low-end laptop who buy a Dell (with Windows) at a price between $500 and $1000 USD.
The thing about Windows XP is it’s really not that bad. It works. It’s stable. Not the prettiest user interface in the world, but folks who want a premium user experience tend to go for the expensive premium computer (Apple). There are lots of programs available for Windows so people can do whatever they want on it. It’s an OS that allows growth in how you use it. That’s the kind of thing most people need–it might not be the best way to do the job, but for many it’s the cheapest.
I don’t expect Windows to be overtaken by Linux any time soon. Open source is swell but as a rule GNU software is not made with the average user in mind. It’s not a fantastic company platform either (paying employees to create something to give away for free). Berkeley open source, sure, I can see there being more products derived from BSD-style open source. Companies can profit from that, and companies care a lot more about user interface issues than computer-savvy volunteers usually do.
I’d just quickly like to point-out a failing in the English language that appears to cause some confusion. Unusually, we have one word, “free”, where the French have two, “libre” and “gratuit”. Open source is consequently sometimes referred-to as “software libre”. This is very, very different from “free software” as in “free beer” as in “biere gratuit”.
“Look, are Microsoft and Windows really that dreadful?”
Um, probably. History may eventually provide the answer. I’ll stick my neck out and predict the Microsoftware will be seen as caught up in a cycle of bloatware and has been since Word fitted on a single 360K. As did WordStar, VisiCalc. Even dBase ll wasn’t that big. But Word today on XP or Vista would need over 300 floppy disks to store. Then there Excel, Access, Outlook, Office in general. Were probably looking at 2000 floppy disks. And all the REALLY important stuff fits on the first. And that was the operating system. I can’t imagine what the standard Vista needs are, Gigwise.
It isn’t rocket science to to suspect a classic – maybe the ultimate – case of diminishing returns.
One could probably do 99% of what you need to 99% of the time on something around 2-5% of an normal Windows storage needs. And if you could dump their “must have” file formats, perhaps even better.
Something like the EEE could actually deal MS a mortal blow. Even if ASUS went broke tomorrow, they have set a precedent. A definate turning point. MS didn’t take a long hard look at the EEE. They looked a a picture, read the specs and it was all over in about 10 seconds. “Get on the phone to Asus. Now!”
I feel compelled to point out that Skype is not open source. Not even a little bit. Closest Skype-like open source app would be one of http://gizmoproject.com or http://openwengo.com
I’ve got a little technology blog and a slightly embarassing Stephen Fry-related tale to tell here: http://www.blogstoday.co.uk/gizmos.blog
BTW: The dialup modem is NOT available. Apparently they wanted the capability but for some reason they couldn’t deliver. Possibly because they were undecided on how to market accessories. This is sad, because in many places mobility is important, WiFi is not available. Also the Linux world simply cannot support all the peripherals and their drivers that the windows world can, thus unfortunately causing lots of EeePC users putting XP on their systems. Sigh!
— Owen
gratus ut in vinum; non libertas ut in orationis libertam?
or something like that.
I am probably the last to point out that the little Asus Eee isn’t meant as a full ranged desktop computer thing, and to cut the costs even more they settled for a Linux based operating system. It will do what it promises, but nobody is denying (like Apple does) you from installing another operating system on that little notebook sized thingy. It’s not meant to be a fully fledged desktop/laptop system.
I would suggest either Ubuntu Live-CD, or for for those who want even more space for their own content, Damn Small Linux, which takes only 50 megabytes and does everything you need from such a small handheld little thing, and more.
I tried Linux. It broke my laptop so that it wouldn’t fully boot, but hung just after the bios bit. Fortunately, as it was Linux, I was able to make it work with the power of the root command; I got into the OS and was able to fix it better. It then hung before the bios bit. I was able to fix it further so that it hung just after the screen came online; Linux is amazing in how it lets you modify the OS even when the OS isn’t actually working. Then I fixed it so well the screen wouldn’t even come online fully, it just blinked between some lines and dead screen and refused to respond to keyboard commands. I now have a lovely laptop-sized paperweight which is Linux enabled.
I know, I could put in a boot disk…. but I’m scared to try. It gets worse every time I fix it; if it gets any further broken it’ll be on fire…
I have to do the bi-annual relatives round soon and as an Internet addict, I am not at all keen to take my MacBook on the very long bus and train journeys due south. When comparing how I would feel if some %£@&**(@% stole my Mac, with all the important data on it, and the cost to replace, with how I might feel if same wotsit filched an Asus EEPc , there is no question in my mind, apart from which store has current stock, preferably not in girly pink.
The only thing it misses? A sim card. But, I suppose I would then have to hold the 7in Asus up near my mouth, in a rather peculiar manner.
Oh dear. I discover that one of my favourite actors, who I saw in Footlights as a naive fresher at Cambridge so many years ago, a man I have watched with admiration and amazement for years, an individual I look up to as a success, well known and wealthy,….
is an open source bigot just like me. And he has a blog. With articles about open source.
Oh joy!
N.
Those people who feel their jobs are threatened by Open Source software should take time to read ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ by Eric Raymond, which gives an excellent outline of why proprietary software is harmful and why it is not necessary to be directly paid for the product in order to turn a profit.
Also, I am a Software Engineer. I use Linux (Ubuntu) at home on a low-end laptop. At work I am forced to use Windows XP on a blisteringly fast development machine. Daily I am frustrated by the inability of Windows to function, even with this glut of resources. I never have problems with Ubuntu at home though.
[...] lo hace con la Asus EEEPC en un post que es una nota para el periódico The Guardian y da un buen punto evangelizador sobre el software open y las posibilidades de esta tendencia de [...]
My feelings are with you, we share similar luck
Can you direct me to your documentary on manic depression, via the web? I wish to view it again, but my brain cells departed at an early age, so i can not remember where i first saw it.
Love to your bones.
xxx
‘Dark Phoenix’ said: “Yeah, by setting computing back 20 years or so. Things Microsoft is tacking onto Windows now were staple components of the original UNIX, created in 1970.”
This is a wonderfully empty statement, with no justification provided. I’d love for you to give examples of this.
IMHO computing in every flavour has marched on so far from the 70s, that any comparison is silly. But please, do justify your statement, as I really do appreciate the education.
‘NeilHoskins’
I think we could easily use ‘free’ (don’t pay for it) and ‘liberated’ (not tied by license). There’s plenty of other synonyms to liberated that we could use if we wanted to -= but I don’t see any drive for creating such a distinction in the open source community. If there was one, the distinction would already have been made …
The less-savvy computer user thinks open source = free (as in beer) and no amount of waffle by the open source community is going to fix that in a hurry. Mostly because open source software usually *is* free! It’s the *support* for that software that costs …
Speaking of which. The less-than savvy among the proponents of Linux tell us that it is a cheaper because it is free. They either don’t know, or ignore the fact, that the cost of retraining staff (most of whom, IMHO, are shockingly illeterate in computer terms) to use a new OS and new software is prohibitive for most companies, as is the cost of a Linux system admin v’s a Windows system admin (a 2:1 ratio last I looked)
I just got an EEE and it’s great (black, 4gb model). I’ve only got it for those low-intensity things like email and feed reading on the go, but it’s ideal for that. I’m not worried about it clunking around in my bag or if something was to go wrong with it. It’s just convenient. I had been waiting on Apple’s “ultra-portable” but unfortunately, due to the footprint, the Air isn’t one.
Of course, the EEE for me because I will have a beast of a machine at home (replacing my current 15″ laptop) as a main desktop and I’m supplied with a lovely desktop at work.
In case you’ve not come across it, there’s a cut down version of Ubuntu especially for the EEE (http://code.google.com/p/eee-ubuntu-support/). I haven’t tried it yet (hope to soon), but I think it’ll be better for users who do want to do a bit more with their machine.
The latest installment of Stephen Fry Appreciation Monday, if you miss the Guardian column, you are in for a little treat
http://www.couchslobs.com/2008/02/11/285/
Michael…
I think you hit the nail on the head with this….
I’m amused by BluePatch’s comments. Presumably if he sat around in the primordial soup watching amino acids and the like complexify, he would have called all that evolution bloated. And several billion years later, that these primate things are still just consuming energy and producing new genes, just less efficiently than before.
Software-wise we’re standing on similar shores, with a long way to go. If you want to go splashing around in the shallow end of the cyber-gene-pool then off you go, but I don’t imagine you’d get much of what everyone takes for granted today with a stack of floppy discs on a computer using a chip less powerful than the one in your average microwave oven. Talk about a failure of the imagination!
I see friends kidding themselves that they’ve skimmed some bloat off their software installations and then they download a few hundred GB of music, video and photographs. Some of it isn’t even pornographic. Consider that all the files for Windows and Office take up the same amount of disc space as a few episodes of a laugh-tracked sitcom. Relative to the 1TB of hard disk space on my new desktop computer, it’s almost negligible. In a few years, you’ll probably have more than that on your keychain. And there will still be people rattling on that Windows takes up 0.0001% more diskspace than absolutely necessary and why won’t those kids get off their front lawn.
Have any of you checked out how much of your brains, your genetic code, or your vastly overweight masses are under-utilised, or padded out with supporting tissue, junk DNA and fat? Your average PC is positively svelte in comparison m’dears…
I am also typing this entry on my lovely little eeepc. They are so hard to get hold of at the moment, but so worth the effort. It does everything that I need when I’m on the road (I’m an IT trainer) and doesn’t make my dislocated shoulder dislocate even further as my bulky laptop does.
This little machine has limitations, have no doubt about it; but it does what it’s supposed to, and as it is unhampered by Windows, its performance is great.
I’m in
Curious how people are putting Linux down saying it’s various distributions will never displace Windows. Has anyone thought of how hard it is currently for Windows (Vista) to displace Windows (XP)? It just goes to show how hard it is to unseat a huge installed base of a familiar highly usable OS. Also in order to shift large numbers of people away from such an installed base the new product has to be MUCH better as in CDs compared to LPs or 95 as compared to 3.11 or XP as compared to ME (devil spawn).
Dale
Ubuntu 7.10
Mike said “I’m amused by BluePatch’s comments. Presumably if he sat around in the primordial soup watching amino acids and the like complexify, he would have called all that evolution bloated. And several billion years later, that these primate things are still just consuming energy and producing new genes, just less efficiently than before.”
I don’t buy the analogy. Whilst it is true that evolution is a slow unconscious process built on successful bits of code (and lots of redundant pieces too), software creation is a conscious effort. More like intelligent design. Well it should be.
Come to think of it maybe you’re right. There’s lots of genuine junk code in MS – that’s the stuff that is never really used at all.
BP
Free beer is, of course, possible if you have a Nokia N95.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khFkQAJO1pM
(iBling fanboys watch and weep)
You really dont want to get me started on my Nokia N95. What a pile of
GPS i’m sure stands for Greater Problems Still. It advertised well but when it comes to full functioning forget it. My web keeps starting up on its own and we all know how expensive it is surfing the web on these “things”.
Yours
Me.
[...] closer examination of his personal blog post, it appears Mr Fry has obtained an EEEPC, the dinky little device from Asus. Unlike other [...]
BluePatch wrote “There’s lots of genuine junk code in MS – that’s the stuff that is never really used at all.” – clear examples would make a better case.
Mike: I just assumed that if, for example, most of the real important stuff ion Word takes up less that half a meg, then 100-200 meg is diminishing returns. I think it a reasonable assumption. Of course you are free to prove me wrong. Just what is that important (ie everyone must have it) that uses all those megs?
BP
If you’re just making ridiculously naive statements about how software functions map to bits on disk, there’s nothing I have to “prove”.
“half a meg” is the size of a low quality version of a single song track or a medium-resolution photograph. Highly specialized software I wrote 20yrs ago which output on a text-based screen was roughly that size. A word-processor is orders of magnitude more complex, and so “half a meg” is roughly comparable to the size of the code for spell-checking (not counting the code for displaying squiggles on the screen or lists of suggestions).
[...] סטיבן פריי מתמוגג מהכיוון ×©×ž×¡×ž× ×ª ×ž×›×•× ×ª הקוד הפתוח של ×סוס. http://stephenfry.com/blog/?p=39 [...]
Mike: Alright already. I think bloatware exists. You don’t. Let’s leave it there before we both bore everyone else to death.
Cheers and safe travelling.
BP
BP: That’s another naive mischaracterisation. You seem to define bloatware as anything bigger than what ran on a computer 15-20 years ago, with a ratio of “1/2 meg” useful to “100-200 meg” being not so. In your started numerical terms, that’s “99.5% of software is bloat.” As Wolfgang Pauli put it, “It’s not even wrong”.
drop me a email if you want to rank for google.co.uk pages, which your not at the mo, its a easy fix.
Hmm..Fry & Laurie doing an ‘aussie’ sketch and saying ‘ass’ and not ‘arse’ is perhaps mischaractersiation.
I do not pretend to know very much on this topic so, of course, I run the risk now of being seen as the proverbial in the woodpile and being heckled..however..doesn’t the term bloatware have two (or more) meanings? So that some people describe it as BluePatch has and others describe it as the enhancements that can be added onto a base application that a number of users find problematic and claim the application has become less serviceable and fast compared to the original? (Apologies for lengthy awkward sentence)
Creeping featuritis is one novel idiom I have seen related to this topic.
I have to say that I see bloatware as something I put on when my weight burgeons..but that’s another topic.
These things, these Asus EEEPc’s, they’re an early April Fool aren’t they? I mean, you can’t buy one, you can’t even talk to a store that advertises stocking them because the ruddy ‘phone line has been disconnected, if you email them, you receive no reply, if you look at the Web Store-Front, many of those old computer shopper’s favourites, show an unhappy message suggesting that they are fed-up with the game.
They are as elusive as a delicate French truffle, although at the moment, I am beginning to favour the mushroom.
I wonder how long it will be before another company copies Asus with something very similar, then those of us unlucky enough to miss out this time, will be able to have a choice – which may not be a bad thing. My hands are now firmly in my pockets!
Any chance of a little more bloggery soonish? A few words to say you are still alive and not regretting losing your bet that you could arm wrestle a mannatee?
[...] Artikelen over de voordelen van open-source software zijn er heel veel, maar slechts weinig zijn geschreven door een bekende acteur als Stephen Fry. [...]
Been a while since the last blog post. How’s the arm and the documentary? Hope they’re both knitting together nicely.
Smashing article.
I’m lucky enough to have an eee having scoured my local area, including our ToysRUs. A toy? The eee? Never. It’s great. Handy. And fast. It’s really good. However, one of the first things I did was pop XP on it.
Now I take SF’s point about Microsoft. Ultimately, I hope that Open Source wins the day, and I realise I’ve hardly done my part towards this. But, XP does me well, and at least it is configurable. On top of that I want to play a number of games. Linux doesn’t have the gaming platform – yet, much as I’d like that to be the case.
I almost visualise a horizontal barometer. On the left is Linux; it’s created by enthusiasts for the good of all, the genuine good. Not many games, but tons of free stuff that works pretty well. In the centre is Microsoft. It’s huge and created Windows. It’s reasonably good willed, but has done some quite nasty things like embedding media player and IE to push out the smaller boys. Now, on the right is Apple. Has a host of devotees, but has the ultimate in lock-in: only trust yourselves. I just bought an iPod Touch, and Apple wants me to shell out £13 for a service pack with a couple of tweaks. For Linux, this would be free from day one; even MS wouldn’t dare.
There are different levels of evils in the computer world; sometimes limbo wins the day.
One of us could compose a brief piece to catalyse further discussion here. I’m good on the social ethnographic side of things and many others are great on the tech side of things. We could pick a topic and then muse about it here and show Stephen that we can be troopers alongside him and are willing to let him rest and carry the torch ourselves for a short time. As a relative newcomer I would leave a topic choice to others more familiar. How about it? Even a debate style statement can be useful. For some reason I recalled an interesting debate that was run her on Oz vis: Australia is the arts end of the world. Can’t we arrive at something similar?
I don’t think I could provide a good jumping-off point for any discussion right now. Unless people here are up for discussing the difference in declension between Finnish and Karelian nouns…
I did have to laugh. I have just driven back from a shopping centre speaking to myself in what we would call here “westie” english which is more a pronunciation issue. However, in terms of language and computing must we have most applications that come out underlining all words you don’t write in american english spelling? I am sure to be corrected on this but I find virtually every system I use online defaulting to US speak. (No offence to US readers intended).
Susan – you need to make sure that your application knows that you want British or Australian English etc. Microsoft Office has supported these for 15+ years (if you look in the right place on the hard drive you’ll in fact see that the Australian English file is bigger than the US/UK file). but if you have your computer set up with US English settings, it will honour those. Likewise Firefox has downloadable dictionaries for its inline spellchecker. It’s worth checking your browser to see what its preferred language settings might be.