[clug-talk] OT: MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES

Tue Apr 18 07:53:49 PDT 2006

>
> Now back to configing this Mr. Fusion power plant for my Hyperdrive M1
> with XGL and wobbly windows....

lol I had to  laugh when i read that one. i luv xgl <3

On 4/18/06, Dan Graham <grahamdk at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Juan Alberto Cirez wrote:
> > Mitchell Brown wrote:
> >
> >
> >>     Thanks to hype0 for sending this to me. It made my day :)
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>     MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES
> >>
> >> Around the time that Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, and Allen were dreaming up
> >> these unlikely schemes, I was a teenager living in Ames, Iowa. One of
> >> my friends' dads had an old MGB sports car rusting away in his garage.
> >> Sometimes he would actually manage to get it running and then he would
> >> take us for a spin around the block, with a memorable look of wild
> >> youthful exhiliration on his face; to his worried passengers, he was a
> >> madman, stalling and backfiring around Ames, Iowa and eating the dust
> >> of rusty Gremlins and Pintos, but in his own mind he was Dustin
> >> Hoffman tooling across the Bay Bridge with the wind in his hair.
> >>
> >> In retrospect, this was telling me two things about people's
> >> relationship to technology. One was that romance and image go a long
> >> way towards shaping their opinions. If you doubt it (and if you have a
> >> lot of spare time on your hands) just ask anyone who owns a Macintosh
> >> and who, on those grounds, imagines him- or herself to be a member of
> >> an oppressed minority group.
> >>
> >> The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very
> >> important. Sure, the MGB was a lousy car in almost every way that
> >> counted: balky, unreliable, underpowered. /But it was fun to drive/.
> >> It was responsive. Every pebble on the road was felt in the bones,
> >> every nuance in the pavement transmitted instantly to the driver's
> >> hands. He could listen to the engine and tell what was wrong with it.
> >> The steering responded immediately to commands from his hands. To us
> >> passengers it was a pointless exercise in going nowhere--about as
> >> interesting as peering over someone's shoulder while he punches
> >> numbers into a spreadsheet. But to the driver it was an /experience/.
> >> For a short time he was extending his body and his senses into a
> >> larger realm, and doing things that he couldn't do unassisted.
> >>
> >> The analogy between cars and operating systems is not half bad, and so
> >> let me run with it for a moment, as a way of giving an executive
> >> summary of our situation today.
> >>
> >> Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are
> >> situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the
> >> others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles
> >> (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke
> >> you could easily fix them.
> >>
> >> There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one
> >> day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively
> >> styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they
> >> worked was something of a mystery.
> >>
> >> The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the
> >> original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg
> >> contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it
> >> to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear
> >> goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple
> >> owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the
> >> windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared
> >> with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.
> >>
> >> Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a
> >> colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal
> >> of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and
> >> it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a
> >> hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT)
> >> which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little
> >> more reliable.
> >>
> >> Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has
> >> changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled
> >> sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have
> >> had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long
> >> that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making
> >> bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.
> >>
> >> On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along
> >> more recently.
> >>
> >> One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the
> >> BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans,
> >> better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as
> >> reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the
> others.
> >>
> >> With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and
> >> which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees,
> >> and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The
> >> people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned,
> >> cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S.
> >> Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated
> >> technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army
> >> tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break
> >> down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets,
> >> and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being
> >> cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of
> >> them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the
> >> ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away
> >> for free.
> >>
> >> Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety
> >> percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station
> >> wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other
> >> dealerships.
> >>
> >> Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan,
> >> pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy
> >> the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the
> >> opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior
> >> vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.
> >>
> >> The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut
> >> who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to
> >> accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.
> >>
> >> The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is
> >> staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with
> >> bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible
> >> situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
> >>
> >> Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks!
> >> It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety
> >> miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
> >>
> >> Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is
> >> true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
> >>
> >> Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
> >>
> >> Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes
> >> wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here,
> >> and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours,
> >> listening to elevator music."
> >>
> >> Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send
> >> volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
> >>
> >> Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
> >>
> >> Bullhorn: "But..."
> >>
> >> Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
> >>
> >>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > Here are my "dos centavos":
> > I have been using Linux since 1993/1994. I have always used slackware
> > (and only briefly used debian/Stormix while building their Firewall/VPN
> > server). Although Linux has gotten easier to install and maintain, it
> > does still requires  a  basic understanding of  computers to make full
> > use of it. Until Linux is 100% idiot-proof and supports as many devices
> > as Windows does (right out of the box), it will be relegated to the
> > "Gourmet" user...
> > To paraphrase Friedrich W. Nietzsche: Every advance in human society is
> > only made possible when and if the powerful elite deems it necessary, or
> > convenient...(EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the
> > work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be...). Not until
> > the business world (not just a few; but a concerned, unified effort) see
> > the economic benefits(to themselves; not the consumer) of promoting
> > Linux as a viable alternative  (and Linux continues to mature into a
> > true user-friendly OS) will it reach the critical mass it needs to
> > "compete" against the StationWagon dealership...Not matter how cool it
> > is to drive a tank on the freeway (or how nice it's to blow s**t up with
> it)
> >
> >
>
> Nietzsche is old school and over rated ;-) . ... Now back to configing
> this Mr. Fusion power plant for my Hyperdrive M1 with XGL and wobbly
> windows....
>
>
> --
> Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done.
>
>
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