RE: On Compatibility

[Christopher Nelson]

>    Then that is an extremely unusual situation.
> 
> It is extremely usual for places that have a bazillion users 
> and few admins.
> 
>    but the fact that single-user PC's are the rule and not the
>    exception.
> 
> Depends on _where_.  I can give you several places where it 
> isn't the rule.

That doesn't stand up to purchasing realities.  The PC market is orders
of magnitude larger than the dumb-terminal market.  Otherwise Sun
wouldn't be in so much trouble.  They've been trying to convince
everyone that the whole NC idea is the future for decades.

I see that you are saying there are places where the the majority is in
the minority.  For example, consider that in some cities in the Southern
US non-caucasion people are the majority.  However, in the entire
country they are still a minority.  

Your point is very valid that there are places where dumb-terminals are
dense.  Just like if I were to enter a colocation facility, I would
think the world was made up of servers.  But from a global perspective,
PC's outnumber dumb terminals vastly.  
 
>    The point is that if people didn't buy it, they wouldn't make it.
> 
> I don't buy that, look at the free software movement.

I'm not talking about why people make free software.  I'm talking about
why companies that are looking at their bottom line make software.  A
company like MS makes software for one reason: because it sells.  So my
point is that a for-profit company who makes a lot of money selling a
lot of copies of an app to the public does so because the public buys
it.  

> 
>    FireFox is exceptional in that way, but it still proves the point:
>    you run FireFox on a PC.
> 
> I do? Last time I ran it was on a 25 CPU Sun box hosting 1000 users.
> And the time I ran it on a GNU/Linux machine hosting aprox 
> 300 users (with aprox 70 users on it at a time).

Then you have a globally differentiated system.  The _average_ user does
not run a 25 CPU box at home.  The average small office does not even do
so.  Many large companies MAY do so, but you're still looking at only a
potential of a few million users compared to a few BILLION users.
 
> This is why your questions are flawed, the pool of users is 
> infinitly (close to it atleast) large, and for each example 
> you give, I can give counter example.

Sure, but you end up getting stuck in a locally optimal valley.  I will
admit that there are cases where what you say is entirely correct, but
the GLOBALLY AVERAGE user does not experience that environment.  

For proof you need look only to where the money is: What sells more,
PC's or NC's?

-={C}=-