Is Microsoft Windows an elitist operating system?

[Boojatta]

I'm not suggesting that a majority of people who use it are elitist. I'm suggesting that it's absurd for anyone to imagine that an Apple operating system or an IBM operating system for personal computers or an implementation of Linux or anything that anybody might develop could compete against the elite people who work at Microsoft.

Americans who buy his products are like starving farmers who think that selling the farm to an infidel is a solution. How much farm land could Americans collectively have purchased with the money they used to buy products from Microsoft?

Surely it would be better to starve to death than to live and work in a city. Surely it would be better to be killed than to sell your land to someone whose religion is different from yours. Surely it would be better for Americans to stop using computers than for them to buy a product designed via elitist alchemy and magic.

[Pierre.Suave]

1. I want to be the first to say it...

No, OSX makes one an Elitist...

:P

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Beat me to it.

:P

[Pierre.Suave]

4. I knew someone would say it

I wanted to be the first.

[billyskank]

3. Who are the elite people who work for Microsoft?

The elite people all seem to work for Google nowadays. Microsoft has been suffering a brain drain for years. Nobody with any self respect wants to work there any more.

Sure they've got loads of money and all, but the design of their flagship products is dictated by marketing requirements rather than engineering considerations. Everything is all about preserving the Monopoly, not serving their customer's requirements.

Plus Bill is reputed still to keep a strong grip on Windows design, and frankly Bill never was that hot an engineer. He fucked up old Windows until it ended with ME, then they had to end-of-life it. Then they started fucking up Windows NT (which they used to make XP), culminating in Vista. Windows 7 is supposed to be merely an evolution of Vista, so that won't fix any problems either, and will doubtless introduce new ones.

The thing people need to understand is, software development is NOT an endeavour that requires huge resources and loads of money to do. It really isn't. Only companies like Microsoft want you to believe the myth.

All you need is an army of geeks.

[pokerfan]

9. Microsoft has never been about innovation

"Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" is their corporate motto.

From the beginning their philosophy has always been about purchasing or stealing someone else's creative product and then adapting it to their own use.

By 'from the beginning' I mean DOS: In 1981 IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide an OS for the PC. So what did Microsoft do? They purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products for $50K, renamed it and sold it to IBM. And it has been that way ever since.

They are literally the Borg of the computer universe.

[billyskank]

10. The CP/M clone was called QDOS by Tim Paterson.

You know what QDOS was short for?

Quick and Dirty Operating System.

[pokerfan]

11. SCP eventually got $1M

but they had to take Bill Gates to court claiming that Microsoft had concealed its relationship with IBM in order to purchase the operating system cheaply. The first of many, many lawsuits for MickeySoft.

"IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up."
– Tim Paterson

[MilesColtrane]

5. Yes, it is absurd to imagine that an operating system could compete with a person.

I'm sure that you could find the answer to your question about farm land with diligent research.

[moriah]

6. Unix Admins are the true elitists.

Then again, we know that we have a better OS.

We have competitions to see just how long a machine can stay up on one boot -- the longest uptime I've seen on a Windows server is 89 days, the longest on a Unix server was 782 days.

Plus, our commands make so much more sense.

rm -- remove
ln -- link
cp -- copy
vi -- virtual intercourse, because it really blows

[moriah]

7. Oh, and we know that rebooting...

... should not be a prime troubleshooting step.

[Pavulon]

8. OS390/Z mainframe people

are the most self righteous bunch. They get on a high horse and start talking about "real computers" and "back in the day" at the drop of a hat.

[moriah]

12. Back in the day, my computer was in a milk crate!

heh.

Actually, that was later on, the first computer I had was an 8088, no odd mods.

It wasn't until Y2k when I worked with a guy who can tell you all about "real computers" who was making computers that could run off of a 12-volt battery -- easier for solar power. We also put modems that were compatible with packet radio in them.

That's the guy who was taking old motherboards that were caked in mud, washing them, putting them in milk crates, and adding peripherals. Most of his actual computers weren't even in milk crates, just bare motherboards, and the cats walked on them.

No cats were harmed in the making or use of our computers.

Edit: The reason I was hired was he did NOT do Windows, he ran Arachne web browser on his DOS-compatible and absolutely refused to learn Windows. But most people wanted theirs with Windows and not DOS or Linux, so he needed someone who could make it work. He's now in lurve with Xandros for people who really need a GUI.

[Pavulon]

15. I write PLC logic

and various logic to make CNC machines work. The Virtual Machine (pick your flavor) has really turned over the way I work. Testing function and recreating failures has really become much easier.

I love computing and a nerd at heart. I think it is damn cool that you can take a laptop and tune a race car engine (and other systems) on the fly.

Computers dont bullshit, or lie. They either work well and do their job, or dont.

[DS1]

16. Maybe your Windows admins just suck

:P


My boxes go many months without any issues, and the only reboot reason is some sort of update from M$

[mainegreen]

17. 782 days? Pffffft. My app server is at four years and counting!

Yeaaaaaaaaah!

[hobbit709]

13. Nope! It's a virus masquerading as an OS

[Lethe]

14. no, but if you are sick of MS Windows try Ubuntu

Ubuntu is:

-free
-stable
-good
-comes with apps that you need (like OpenOffice and Firefox)

http://www.ubuntu.com/


You can actually try Ubuntu on your computer without installing it on your hard drive. It will run from the cd. This will give you a preview of what it's like without actually changing anything on your computer. Currently I'm running two partitions: one XP and one Ubuntu. Since I use some specialized applications, I wanted to give it a test run and see if those would run, and if not, find the suitable linux alternatives. So far I'm pretty hooked. I'll be making the switch 100% and getting rid of XP soon.

Another reason why I'm making the switch is because of MS Visual Studio and the way Microsoft bundles all of their products together. As a programmer it's frustrating to work with Microsoft tools because with every new operating system they come out with, they alter their programming applications (Visual Studio) to be optimized and work almost exclusively for that new OS. Then they totally drop support for their old OS's and accompanying Visual Studios. And with the new Visual Studio comes a new version of .NET, and that means your old MS programming certification is now outdated....guess what that means? Yep you gotta buy a couple hundred dollars of new programming books and a new version of Visual Studio and learn all the stuff they added to the language for their newest OS. It never ends.....

[mainegreen]

18. The problem is that that windows has the overwhelming lions share of software products.

And the software available for windows is, frankly, often better, sometimes multiple times better, than the solutions for other operating systems.

As a developer, while I may target my solutions for *nix environments, I must program on a windows machine because the development tools for other OSes are so vastly inferior.

[ZombieNixon]

19. No, it just sucks.