Subject: Re: [lojban] [WWW] browser usage statistics (was: Big update!)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 21:15:37 EST

In a message dated 12/6/2001 6:14:43 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> More web servers run Apache than any other
> product (I think it's actually over 50% market share), because webmasters
> want something they can control and understand, and that doesn't totally
> break their budget, and that takes plugins from multiple sources, and
> doesn't have viruses breaking into it every two months like IIS does.
> 

Servers, who knows? I was talking about browser -- us's not they's.

<Microsoft products are very good at what they're good at: word processing
and spreadsheets and things like that. I'm not going to give them credit
for e-mail because there have been far too many virus exposures caused by
inept design of the security model in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook
Express.>

That is, MS does a good job at what most people use computers for, even 
though there are problems with the e-mail thing (which problems get fixes 
fast enough to not be a reason for dumping all the good stuff)

<The learning curve is pretty steep to get to the next level, but for the
high-end fanatic, there's a *lot* of worthwhile stuff up there that you can
do in the UNIX context, that is a nightmare in the morass of Microsoft
Windows. And with offerings like Star Office, and the various "Linux for
dummies" distributions, Microsoft had better watch their tail. Not to say
that Star Office has every feature in Word, Excel, Access, etc. or that
someone trained on Microsoft products will have a 100% seamless experience,
but Star Office (and competing programs in Gnome and KDE) are out there and
are improving all the time.>

I won't deal with this except to note the vast understatement at the 
beginning (the manuals mentioned earlier come in here, of course). Since it 
takes forever to get the operating system operating systematically, what runs 
on that system had better be pretty spectacular, but in truth it is about 
three cycles behind MS (that is, about as bad as Word is now compared to what 
Word Perfect was a couple of years ago). Why bother? (Admittedly, I like 
the extra control I can get -- when Linux is actually working approximately 
right -- for stealing music off of 33's, but that is already a fringe 
activity, I suspect). 

In any case, the point is about serving the public, reaching out to more 
people, not really about excellence, if any is to be had in any program.