Re: NT & Unix

["Jeffrey C. Ollie" <jeff@ollie.clive.ia.us>]

  Louis Proyect wrote:
  > 
  > The popularity of NT has to be understood in terms of the general need of
  > corporate America to adapt single-vendor, single-operating system solutions
  > to edp.
  
  I would change "need" in this sentence to "belief in the need".
  
  > There is no question that a
  > Windows based operating system will be easier to administrate than Unix.
  
  Such a sweeping statement like this is patently false.  The relative
  ease in administering the different platforms will vary depening on the
  particular organization's needs, the system configuration, and the
  skills of the administrators.
  
  > This morning I was beating my head against the wall trying to do a "kill
  > -9" on a task and all of its parent tasks properly. I am quite sure that NT
  > would have had a much less arcane approach.
  
  It does not sound as if you have administered an NT system if you can
  make statements like this.
  
  > If Microsoft was the single vendor, then all sorts of connectivity issues
  > would be resolved.
  
  If Microsoft was the only player out there (instead of merely the
  largest) there would be even less need for Microsoft to fix problems -
  after all, who would people go to if they wanted to vote with their
  pocketbook.
  
  > My question is this: can Microsoft ever "privatize" the Internet as long as
  > it is built on the TCP-IP architecture. As long as everybody is on the same
  > level playing field--and this is the nature of TCP-IP--how can Microsoft
  > block the transmission of "dangerous" thoughts? The problem of censorship
  > is a very real one in cyberspace and I am not quite sure that Microsoft's
  > shipping of Explorer as part of Windows 95 exacerbates this problem.
  
  The question under consideration is not one of what content you access -
  it's a question of being able to choose who you buy the software to
  access the content from.
  
  Jeff