Augury and reading chicken bones for profit... (wasPun-ditry...)

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004, John Esak wrote:
>On Fri, Jul 23, 2004, John Esak wrote:
>> ....
>> >When and if Linux systems ever write strong enough underpinnings and
>> >foundations for their software that such as screen readers could work...
>> >maybe then I'll start looking more closely at it. On the whole,
>> I still view
>> >Linux as a toy for developers and a hell of an OS for small
>> control system
>> >chips.
>>
>> John:
>>
>> You have some unusual requirements vis-a-vis user interface (e.g.  your
>> ``looking'' at something doesn't involve much use of your eyes).
>>
>> I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are good tools to meet your
>> requirements under Mac OS X as the default installation has features that
>> generate audio output of whatever is under the mouse cursor, have auto-
>> zooming under the cursor, and other accessibility features.
>>
>> As for Linux being a ``toy'', I've been installing Linux in mission-
>> critical applications since September 1997, and have been using it
>> exclusively for ISP systems since 1998.  I don't consider systems that
>> support 10s of thousands of e-mail accounts, web services, etc.  on a
>> single server, to be toys.
>>
>> Bill
>
>Bill,
>I'm afraid that you particularly make my point more strongly than any
>example out there. Sure, you have done all the things you say with Linux
>since 1997... that is obvious... and all done well, I might add. However,
>Bill, you are without doubt one of the most savvy developers in the
>country... you know more about "all this stuff" and I use that term even
>more loosley and precisely than it sounds....  than just about anyone I
>know. You can keep the Linux stuff updated, fixed, pathed, on a daily and
>more likely minute by minute basis than 99% of the people  out there...

I don't spend that much time keeping Linux stuff updated, fixed, etc.,
probably because We have always stayed well away from Red Hat and other
distributions that weren't aimed at commercial applications.  I spend most
of my time developing solutions for our customers and learning to use new
applications and features (the last month's project has been mainly Zope
and Plone).

The amount of effort to do this on Linux is far less than it would be to
implement the same open source solutions for SCO OpenServer -- far less.

>alone other developers out there.  Of course I was minimizing the scope of
>Linux by calling it a toy... but the whole concept of what I meant was  that
>Linux is _still_ a "system" for developers. There is no business user I know
>who could successfully run a Linux system over the past 5 years...

We've had business users using Linux exclusively for about seven years now,
without having to have any full-time IT staff or having to spend time
babysitting their systems.  One of these has been running their Caldera
OpenLinux 1.3 system since 1998, and all their work stations are diskless
Linux boxes, also running OpenLinux 1.3.  I've been trying to get them to
do a server upgrade before the hardware falls out from under them, but
they're cheap and it's working.  They rarely call me because they don't
want to pay any more than they absolutely have to.

For the last couple of years we've been installing Macs running OS X where
people need sophisticated, commercial desktop applications like Adobe's
Photoshop and desktop publishing, or are addicted to Microsoft Office.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Systems, Inc.
UUCP:               camco!bill  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676
URL: http://www.celestial.com/

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in
session. -- Mark Twain