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 at atlas.otago.ac.nz>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 10:38 AM
Subject: RE: [rant] owner of squeak


> Stephen Pair <spair at 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.
>
>
>