Posts by [email protected]

The one thing that is ignored or maybe not understood by all this brain and computer power is the simple need for personalization, and I mean "simple". Users need to take possession of the thing by being able to name it themselves. As long as it is "allo" or "Siri" or "Echo" ot any other trademarked name, it belongs to the company that created it. If people are to integrate it into their lives, naming it delineates the type of ownership people want for something to become so intimate a part of their lives. What's the first thing we learn when we meet someone new? If people see that our chatbot/AI is effective/useful, they will ask us for the source.

There seem to be a lot of Linux fans hogging this thread. Many users out here don't really have that option in the sense that they don't even have the concept. Many here have apparently forgotten how much fun previous system upgrades have been. When it comes to bricked systems and driver problems, there have been plenty, Win10, once you get past what is left of the Metro interface, performs as well or better than Win7, and basically doesn't look or act much differently. A little effort can make it look and act even more like Win7. It certainly loads and task switches a bit faster. I am no enemy of Linux, but my business users are largely unprepared for such a shift and/or cannot find a version of their present software or even an adequate replacement program for linux...chicken and egg problems. Certainly, anyone who uses only email, browser and basic suite software can use almost any OS, if they can only get there. For the vast majority, that leaves Win7 or Win8 or Win10. Hopefully, those of us who are knowledgeable can help them with whichever is their choice rather than try to bludgeon them into our choice.

There has been this monstrous environment built up around PC's and that environment outside the servers has been largely co-opted by Microsoft. That monopoly was gifted to MS by the foolishness of IBM. IBM put the PC's together because corporate management had this unreasoning fear of the retail environment represented by the TRS-80 of Tandy/RadioShack. IBM didn't know how to spell retail and did not want to learn. The general idea was to build the PC to destroy RadioShack and then pull the plug on they what they considered an unimportant and temporary offshoot of their business market. That is why they allowed Billy boy and company to so easily take control of the OS (DOS at the time). IBM also encouraged various parts of the PC supply chain, thinking they could pull the plug on the whole thing...oops.

MS did so little creative work that it is hard to credit them with much until Windows and they stole all those ideas from Xerox PARC through Apple. Those of us who had been around for the whole show laughed when MS and Apple got into a pissing match over the basic ideas that both of them had "borrowed". The internet was gifted to us from the Unix world and its predecessors. MS sought to ignore it or own it until one fine day when Billy did an 180 and declared that the internet was his top priority.

Only an almost complete monopoly inherited from a different but also almost complete monopoly could survive that type of stunt. All the rest of this has been like the process of the dinosaurs dying when the asteroid hit. Monocultures are dominant and last until something finds or exposes their weakness(es). This has now happened and the rest will be history written from our current events. The arrogance of Gates and then Balmer and Turner merely accelerated this round of such change. The rich potential of the computer hardware and software market has been held back far too long by the arrogant monopolists. The king is dead (or dying), long live the king...but who or what is the new king.