[Sussex] snigger, snigger!

[Geoffrey Teale]

Mark Harrison wrote:
> Heh - at least Bill actually _uses_ his software.

What you mean he still has an Altair on which to run Altair BASIC?

... oh I see, you mean he uses software written by people who work for 
his company or used to work for companies his company acquired.   ;-)

On this subject, I received a book for Christmas, it was written by 
Michael Bywater and is entitled "Lost Worlds - What have we lost, and 
where did it go?", I thoroughly recommend it.   It is a highly 
entertaining read, a taxonimy of loss.   I wish to quote a single entry 
(including footnotes, it's the final footnote that's the killer):

Microsoft.
==========

Microsoft is, sadly, far from lost*.  But is is, in a precisely 
defineable way, a loser, and what it loses is other people's lives.

Let us derive a conservative estimate of 200 million computers installed 
worldwide**.  Let us take, also, the estimate of approximately five 
hours per computer lost each week to people's computer problems - 
crashes, viruses, incomprehension, upgrading and so forth***.  This 
comes to over 114,000 person-years lost each and every year because of 
poor software design, and, given that Microsoft is by far the most 
successful supplier of operating systems and application software in the 
world, they must, surely, feel dreadfully saddened by this terrible loss 
of human time, maybe even, in their benevolent humility, blaming 
themselves for time equivalent to one thousand, two hundred human 
lifetimes wasted every year.  Not including the time wasted by Microsoft 
executives, worrying about it.  This is a lot of irreplaceable time. 
Perhaps we shoud sue someone; but we just do not have the time****.

Footnotes
---------

* - One day it will be two vast and trunkless legs of stone, and we will 
wonder what its secret was, and how it got away with it for so long. 
Until then it must simply be endured.

** - DG Figures, 1999.

*** - Shneiderman, "Leonardo's Laptop", 25.

**** - Or rather perhaps you should.  I don't use the stuff.  This book 
was researched and written without the use of any Microsoft software at 
all.  Such a pleasure; you can't imagine.

-- 
Geoff Teale
Free Software Foundation <tealeg at member.fsf.org>