From: nick at virus-l.demon.co.uk (Nick FitzGerald)
Subject: Anti-MS drivel

Bart.Lansing@...ls.com wrote:

> Tobias, I have to tell you that >>Customer is king. When a customer "makes
> a mistake" then it's not his
> own but the vendor's mistake.<< is getting old.
> 
> 1.  If the customer decided to  make a sharp left turn at 120 kph on an icy
> mountain road and slid his car off the side of the cliff...or...
> 
> 2.  If the customer decided to ignore the product warnings and popped that
> can of beans in the microwave then stood there with his face against the
> window to watch...or...
> 
> 3.  If the customer decided to go scuba diving at 100 meters, ignored the
> guages that told him he was out of air, then decided to rocket to the
> surface as fast as he could so he could get a breath...
> 
> THE CUSTOMER MADE A MISTAKE

True, but in all those cases it is reasonable to expect that a 
(reasonable) customer _should_ know better.

The problem -- at least with "consumer computers" -- is that typical 
consumers do not (and, it seems, for quite some time to come yet, will 
not) "know better".  However, we keep selling them computers as if the 
mismatch between the devices' capability and the user's ability to use 
them safely are in harmony.

This assumption clearly does not even hold for much of the corporate 
world (or at least _has not_), where supposedly "expert" folk are 
responsible for running the computer systems much of our financial 
systems, and thus our commerce, now depends on.  Despite this, the 
computer industry was allowed to expand and expand and expand to the 
point where any attempt to regulate it would have had massive negative 
social, economic and political repercussions, meaning we ended up in 
the situation of self-sustaining (commercial) madness that produced 
Windows XP Home...


Regards,

Nick FitzGerald

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