John Clark wrote:

> 
> I'm pretty disappointed in Mac OS X at the kernel/driver level. I've 
> expressed this
> to the point of being dismissed out of hand by most.

it is a work in progress, to be sure. I wish I was more of a 
kernel guru so I could see why it bogs down (I have 384 Mb RAM so 
I hope it's not swapping much: my aged 9500 running NetBSD rarely 
if ever runs thru it's measly 64 Mb).

> However, in the case of GNOME, KDE and any one of {Linux,FreeBSD,NetBSD}
> (ie those OS's that I've tried), none would be 'easy to use' by most 
> users of
> computers. I think this is directly related to their being done either 
> by the
> largess of some corporation, or folks that have income by other means. 
> Perhaps
> there is some small subset of folk who do make a living by supporting 
> these things,
> but they are so small in number and unable to deal with the large set of 
> problems
> that exists, even in hardware which has some claim to a 'standard'.

I dunno: I don't think they're any harder to get than Windows as 
desktop/metaphoric UIs go.

> I don't expect this to change one iota in any 'settlement' between 
> Microsoft and
> the US Justice Dept. The only 'settlement' I see coming out of this is that
> a few large software suppliers might be able to stick their widgets into 
> MS OS
> systems, a few hardware manufacturers will provide slightly different 
> system
> OS installations, but that's about it.

You may be right: the states seem to be asking for less of 
Windows, ie fewer bundled gizmos, so perhaps that leaves room for 
innovation outside the Pale of the Redmond campus (Mac OS has 
always had room for improvement and many have taken up the 
challenge).


> I think the path of the BeOS is an object lesson on what will await any 
> investment
> in 'alternatives to MS' for the PC world, or 'Mac OS' for the Apple world.

I liked Be: I bought and used Release 2 and 3 when they came out, 
but the lack of apps and at that time, the inability to add open 
software to it made it pretty limited. They had some religious 
issues about X windows, of all things. Be was easier to work with 
on Apple hardware and their lack of support for post-604 
processors (I always assumed that was the price of Intel's help on 
the x86 port: it's not like other OSes haven't figured out how to 
run on the G3/4) made it of limited use for me. Linux and *BSD 
were much less limited as far as Intel hardware support.

> At the moment, for the young technically inclined I recommend a study and
> career path which involves becoming a corporate lawyer specializing in
> patent/trade-secret/anti-trust law as more profitable than actually 
> producing
> something useful.

Sad, isn't it?



-- 
Paul Beard
8040 27th Ave NE
Seattle WA 98115
206 529 8400

Chicago, n.:
	Where the dead still vote ... early and often!