Email Me Daynotes Gang

Can't We All Just Get Along? In a world of OS Wars and partisan bickering, does no one remember what these marvelous machines are for?

Visit Slashdot sometime, and do a fast count of the story categories relating to different Operating Systems. Linux, *BSD, BeOS, even OS/2. And the category "Microsoft", but it has little resemblance to the other categories. The other categories are filled with stories about new releases, interviews with leaders in each community, stories of advocacy. The more general categories about the web and computing in general are also liberally scattered with stories of Linux advocacy and of "oppression" by various groups and companies refusing to allow Linux onto their networks. The Microsoft category, on the other hand, is filled almost entirely with anti-Microsoft ranting. "Micrsoft did this", "Microsoft is lying about that", "Bill Gates = Satan" (you think I'm kidding, don't you? <G> OK, that headline has never appeared - at least, not in actual text) Forget journalistic integrity and impartial reporting; they already have.

And it's not just the pro-Linux crowd, either. Pro-Microsoft magazines and web sites are just as bad, or nearly so (I think Slashdot's rather juvenile readership, who contribute heavily to the tone through comments and from whom the original editors have primarily been drawn, make Slashdot worse than it might otherwise be... but that's just my opinion.) Indeed, most such publications don't even try to maintain neutrality anymore.

I think we have forgotten what computers, networks, and the Internet are for. Computers are calculating machines, at their core they simply make an assistant or a replacement for a human. A better writing tablet, a better mathematical calculator, a better mailing and communications system. The purpose of a network is to share the abilities of this better set of systems in one device, and the Internet is a means of allowing the flow of files, of documents, of words, more importantly, of ideas to flow throughout the world. What does it matter that this column is typed on a laptop running Linux, stored on a server running AIX, served from a server running another form of Linux, and viewed on machines running Linux, Windows, BSD, BeOS, Macintosh, or Solaris? Does it change the ideas? Are my words mysteriously transformed to some other meaning because I picked up the computer running Mandrake rather than the one running Windows 2000?

It doesn't matter what we use computers for. Writing books, playing games, maintaining web sites like this one. The point is, they are USED. They are TOOLS. It doesn't even matter how fast, or how expensive, the computer and the software operate; what matters is only the result. The ideas, flowing from my machine, to yours, from my fingers, to your eyes, from my mind to yours.

Even Slashdot.