http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005 by the authors Sun, 15 Feb 2004 22:56:08 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/15/135138.php#comment-44848 i'm probably less knowledgeable about this than some other folks on BC, but i think the main problem would be getting the two vastly different operating systems to talk to each other. connecting a network of Windows machines can be tough enough. throw in a different OS and you've got a major headache. but i think his comment, "True diversity would require thousands of different operating systems, which would make integrating computer systems and networks virtually impossible" is right on target. The railroad metaphor is nice, but we would need too many OS's to make it worth the trouble. all that development would sap away resources that could be used toward developing new functionality for existing systems, or as is most likely the case, fixing the crap that goes wrong with the current ones. In the short-term, it's not cost-effective for the software manufacturers. The long-term is a different story. 44848@blogcritics.org Sun, 15 Feb 2004 22:56:08 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/15/135138.php#comment-44843 the other, sort of unrelated, aspect of this monoculture is the fact that millions of dollars in lost productivity due to the unending maintenance problems. computer seized up? oh, did you reboot it? while microsoft creates mountains of basically mediocre software, businesses flush away many, many hours on problems. 44843@blogcritics.org Sun, 15 Feb 2004 22:12:40 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/15/135138.php#comment-44773 I think we'd see a lot fewer email viruses flying about if more people used email programs other than Microsoft Outlook, even if they continue to use Windows. I use too many programs that don't run on Macintoshes or Linux, so I don't really have a viable alternative to using Windows. But I use Agent as my mailer. Trouble is, the people smart enough to be able to download and install any one of the plethora of free mail programs out there are the same people that are smart enough not to click on suspicious attachments in the first place. 44773@blogcritics.org Sun, 15 Feb 2004 14:37:16 EST