Stephen Pair spair@advantive.com, replied to my note about my government wasting a lot of money (for a country of about 4 million people) on Microsoft software for schools, saying
That really is an unfortunate waste of money. I fail to see why anyone would spend any money on an operating system these days. Perhaps your government officials were seeking a few perks from the executives in Redmond? Just a guess. I forgot who said "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but it seems apposite. This Government has a lot of fairly inexperienced members of parliament. I see no reason to believe that anyone in charge would know a sound technical decision if it bit them in the leg. On the other hand, it would not surprise me if Microsoft's salesmen knew their job very well, and could make a sale to someone who had never ever heard of Linux, MacOS, StarOffice, or indeed open source.
And I think that's the real point. Smalltalk can do anything that Java can do, and do it better, but more people have _heard_ of Java than of Smalltalk. You don't need corruption to explain why a company would "choose" Java rather than Smalltalk without doing any comparitive evaluation; you only need to suppose that they did not know they were making a choice.
Same with Windows: you only have to suppose that the people responsible for the choice were sufficiently incompetent not to have realised that "computers in schools" does not mean the same as "Wintel boxes in schools" and the choice was done without any actual choice being made.
The sad thing is that I'd have to vote for these clowns again because there isn't any better alternative.
Neither good salesmen, nor stupidity or malice I'm afraid: M$ is a MONOPOLY. Hang in though guys. they are not yet omnipotent
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard A. O'Keefe" ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 10:38 AM Subject: RE: [rant] owner of squeak
Stephen Pair spair@advantive.com, replied to my note about my government wasting a lot of money (for a country of about 4 million
people)
on Microsoft software for schools, saying
That really is an unfortunate waste of money. I fail to see why anyone would spend any money on an operating system these days. Perhaps your government officials were seeking a few perks from the executives in Redmond? Just a guess.
I forgot who said "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but it seems apposite. This Government has a lot of fairly inexperienced members of parliament. I see no reason to believe that anyone in charge would know a sound technical decision if it bit them in the leg. On the other hand, it would not surprise me if Microsoft's salesmen knew their job very well, and could make a sale to someone who had never ever heard of Linux, MacOS, StarOffice, or indeed open source.
And I think that's the real point. Smalltalk can do anything that Java
can
do, and do it better, but more people have _heard_ of Java than of
Smalltalk.
You don't need corruption to explain why a company would "choose" Java rather than Smalltalk without doing any comparitive evaluation; you only need to suppose that they did not know they were making a choice.
Same with Windows: you only have to suppose that the people responsible for the choice were sufficiently incompetent not to have realised that "computers in schools" does not mean the same as "Wintel boxes in schools" and the choice was done without any actual choice being made.
The sad thing is that I'd have to vote for these clowns again because
there
isn't any better alternative.
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org