Flash Gordon
11/5/2009 11:30:00 PM
bartc wrote:
>
> "Richard Heathfield" <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote in message
> news:V4ednQFRmpHJRG_XnZ2dnUVZ8j2dnZ2d@bt.com...
>> In <pozIm.1994$Ym4.221@text.news.virginmedia.com>, bartc wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> "Richard Heathfield" <rjh@see.sig.invalid> wrote in message
>>> news:Ic2dnRgejPw5EW_XnZ2dnUVZ7qGdnZ2d@bt.com...
>>>> In
>>>>
>> <f6731d50-9f4d-45c8-b0ea-d7b212b8fc68@f20g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
>>>> spinoza1111 wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Grow up. Most platforms are Microsoft.
>>>>
>>>> Absolute rubbish. [...] MS is a tiny drop in a rather large puddle.
>>>
>>> I keep hearing all this. But since the 80's, most of the computers
>>> I've been able to buy have come with a MS operating system. Most of
>>> the rest have been Macs.
>>
>> How many mainframe systems have you bought, personally, in the last
>> twenty years? How many minicomputer systems? And of course most of
>> the computers that you /have/ bought in the last twenty years aren't
>> MS platforms.
>
> They don't seem to stock mainframes at PC World or Dixons.
So? That isn't where most computers (even most desktops and laptops, I
would guess), are bought.
Oh, and since you've said, since the 80s, there are the HP systems which
were in common use in some industries for which you had a choice of (to
my knowledge) three OSs NONE of which were by MS. These were computers
about the same size as an IBM PC, they had a keyboard, they had a
monitor, and where shipped with at least one programming language (I
used Pascal and BASIC) for software development *on* the machines.
>>> By computers I mean what you normally expect: a box with a screen
>>> and keyboard.
>>
>> If you can arbitrarily restrict the meaning of the word "computer" as
>> much as you like, it's easy enough to come to almost any conclusion
>> about them that you wish.
>
> It's fairly obvious when something is a computer, ie. a desktop or
> laptop PC.
So servers are not computers? That will be interesting to my customer
who buy servers from computer manufacturers, and to the computer
manufacturers themselves who think they are building computers when they
build servers.
> Everything else is more specialised.
Hmm. A computer running simultaneously three versions of Windows (all
server versions, so MS think servers are computers) and I think about 5
versions of Linux as well as the native OS is more specialised than a
computer only running one OS and far fewer applications?
Oh, and it's not long ago we had a customer asking us to port one of our
applications to AIX (a Unix version).
> There might be some
> consumer gadgets that are getting close though.
You mean like the netbook PCs running Linux? Or the PDAs on which you
can run word processors, spreadsheets, terminal emulators, games and
loads more are not computers?
--
Flash Gordon