Consumerism and the OS wars

Ok lets stop for a second speaking of the great things my OS does and yours does not. These OS wars are a symptom. They are a symptom of a society that has increasingly pushed into thinking that things need loyalty to them, and that my things are better than yours, because slick marketeers told us such.

They are virulent, because you have let a slick marketeer convince you that the bauble you are using is better than the baubble I am using. In effect, this is a symbol of how we learn how to depend on how others think of us, because of the crap we choose to use.

For the record I find fanboys on BOTH SIDES annoying. Mostly I have used MANY operating systems, and all of them have their good things and their bad things... but this is a symptom... just like the cola wars and the pancake wars. They are a way to keep you distracted of what truly matters.

And they are what ails us... consumerism. In effect we are willing to ignore HOW our chosen toy is made, as long as we can get our chosen toy... or the conditions laborers toil under, as long as we can get our chosen toy.

Well guess what? If we as a society and economy are to overcome much of what ails us... one thing we will have to realize, collectively mind you, is that these are just THINGS... and that corps do not deserve your loyalty vis a vis products. Find what works for you... that does not mean what works for you is what works for somebody else.

Hell, I stepped off the track with the cola wars. We simply don't drink soda anymore. Water works just fine. And computers, we use what works for us. The Windows machine is the toy in the house... after all what it does is mostly games. The netbook plays a role as a Personal Information manager and research machine. Yep, that is what I take to coffee shops, et al (Yes the cool factor on the Mac makes me a target in certain places due to the economy)... and the Macbook is my machine for work at home.

As I said, we use what works for us...

And for me right now the Macbook has one advantage over the other two... I don't have to defrag a drive or anything stupid like that... but none of them is superior to the other... I got off this but, but, but my machine is better than yours shit... and quite honestly we need to do that with all the stuff we buy. Try to buy American, realize that many companies are not since our consumerist society requires neo liberal policies and we might as well plan on a revolution to change some of this. Alas the revolution is not just about the economic system, but how YOU relate to that economic system. And no, Mac or PC are not loyal to you, hence they do not deserve one iota of loyalty from you.

They are TOOLS, nothing more, and nothing less. And the same goes for so many other products you consume every day.

Oh and the marketing people COUNT on these wars (insert product here) and laugh all the way to the bank.

Ah back to readying classical economics with me...

Wow, I like totally missed out on that. Must have been blissing out on my Mac.

that said, you know what I mean.

Waffle House kicks ass all over Huddle House. Don't make me come over there.

:hi:

Celiac like disease.

:hi:

So I can sneer at you.

:-)

I can't eat pancakes anymore, either, since my surgery.

But the hash browns....I miss the South sometimes.

and did not grow up in the south.

:-)

Ah salt, pepper and cayenne pepper... with onions and garlic... and at times red peppers...

and jalapenos. And tons of other stuff. Onions. Damn, I miss 'em.

If you ever get to the Deep South, hit a Waffle House and get some hash browns. Load 'em up.

I've had an equal mix of both Macs and PCs over the years - I've never used one completely exclusively. I didn't get a Mac this time around because of the ridiculous price tag - a new fully loaded 17" Macbook costs nearly $3000!!! My desktop cost $1400 (w/o monitor) and my laptop was barely under $1000. Both OSs have their strengths and weaknesses and I mean it's just personal preference that's all.

think of the Cola wars.

It is loyalty to STUFF... that in the end gets you nothing... but the marketeers count on that to ahem SELL more of their stuff. Essentially those going... but my MAC\WIN does this and your MAC\WIN is trash miss just how much of the work for marketeers they are doing.

That said I am willing to make one exception for crappy OS... Vista... oy, the nightmares. Why I got a Macbook to begin with. I literally had it with the vista gaming machine. (And Win 7 works fine on the netbook)

I really like Windows 7 so far - I haven't had any trouble with it - except at work I moved the hard drive to another port on the motherboard and it totally freaked out.

and yes it took SP 2 for XP to become THAT stable.

But that is way too much inside baseball...

Windows 7 is what I always wanted Windows to be.

work the same...their GUIs look dam near identical now. I've had OSX crash or not work just as much as XPpro.

hell even gaming is catching up now.

Agreed, we have an XP Pro box (the toy), the Win Seven Starter box... stable as hell... and the Macbook I am posting from... They all run Word, excel et al. Next question?

Why I find the OS wars to be down right STOOOPID!

They both work great and give rock solid performances under stress.

I wear GAP because it is 'ore hip... no, J Crew is hipper... give me a fucking break!

If it fits and you like how it looks on you... I don't care what brand it is.

And I wear fair trade shirts... THERE

:hi:

I have no loyalty to any OS...whatever my client use, be it Mac, PC or Unix..I 'talk' all 3..
I believe everyone should speak another language.

it could be the Cola wars.

We are a bilingual household by the way... trilingual if I count the IPOD OS, which is actually a different branch of Unix...

:hi:

... And I heard from a reliable 16 year old source I met in WoW, that Apple caused the Oil Spillage in the Gulf!

That is the question. It seems some of the local fan boys for both OS systems will.

I use both Windows and OS x daily because of my job. I just prefer one OS over the other, but to fight over a product... why bother? Neither Microsoft nor Apple pay me to do such a thing.

our local fan boys.

I use both every day too...

And to be honest to browse the web and do other web based work, I prefer the mac.

For readying PDFs and notations... I found a SWEET program for the Win Machine... I also found a sweet one for the mac, but I prefer the windows one. It's the interface mostly and they are not adobe.

MS Win might count as two (early DOS types vs later).

My favorites would only be familiar to a few of you. It's like arguing about which programming language, or development environement. I live with and support products on roughly 20 hardware and software environment, have may another dozen HW/SW environments in my archive (in working order).

Just keep SWF off the iPhone!

The cola wars, now you're talking. Growing up (50's and 60's), I usually could tell which bottling plant produced common brands like Coke or Pepsi. Back in the day when they used real sugar all the time, not just in Europe or for Passover. On international flights, can often tell where they stocked the beverage carts.

Strange to see the South tied to hashbrowns. Grewing up in NC, we never had has browns, only saw them when traveling north of here. Grits and rice ruled around here; were still grewing rice in NC at that time.

Not sure if we need to go off into another discussion wrt the South. You and I know how those seem to turn out. (Though we avoid the typical arguments and try to remember our manners.)

for the geeks.

I mean Windows 3.1 is hardly the same kernel or program as NT... which does have a little in common with Win 7, but quite a bit with Vista...

Oy...

And lets not go into the branches of Unix, of which at least two Apple OS's are branches off.

And then Linux...

But to most people who fight the OS wars... Microsoft is a single OS... going all the way back to ASCII and DOS 1.0 I guess... while Mac has been originally springing fro Zeus's head. And Linux is just a step child... not children, child of any number of older OS core systems.

And you are right, back in the day you could tell where things were bottled... and to this day Mexican Coke (made with sugar) happens to have that characteristic too.

So who shall I raise my flag for?

:hi:

Heard hurts, the inner geek... Dos 3.1 go into the innards and speed it up by... increasing the number of pages to be opened at one time... been a while huh?

the brand of underwear I buy, the kind of car I drive, and the newness of my cell phone.

My loyalty to the corporate trademark is my loyalty to ME!!

we have to stop doing this shit...

And stop tying our identity to... insert brand of... here.

How did they manage to get so many people to surrender to them?


Pepsi and Coke coexisted for a long time before people started drawing borderlines around themselves and defining themselves as "a Coke family".

Some people preferred Ford and some were loyal to Dodge. The issue only arose when it was time to buy a car. They didn't get the emblems tatooed into their skin!



I see announcements on facebook like, "Mary Smith became a fan of Heinz ketchup," and I think, "What? Who the hell has the time or desire to celebrate their ketchup?"

I am curious how it came to be this way, but I already suspect that the growing dependence on television in daily life has something to do with it.

but it is the creation of false needs starting with a cousin of Freud, his name is Edward Barnays, but he is the father of this.

His whole premise was to create false needs... so people would buy the stuff, whether they needed it or not.

I think though that even Barnay's would be shocked as to how successful they have been.

The greatest thing I ever did with my macbook was plug in a microsoft mouse so that I could right-click and put my files in good order. On the other hand, I needed to have a friend who knows a lot about computers fix my Dell after the anti-virus expired and popups galore happened. Now that I have two functional platforms, I tend to like the mac for doing word processing and internet. The PC is good for gaming and all word processing passes through it in the end to ensure that the docs that I produce are free of compatibility error, because PC is the standard more or less. I'm glad I have both and I might very well replace my current macbook with another one and give it to my mom, who needs a laptop and who doesn't know the care-taking stuff needed for a PC.

just got Word for Mac, since hubby is going back to college. If he decides to take this one to college... well there you have it.

Before printing it will go through Word on the gaming rig... anyway.

And they are better each on their own.

I considered giving my mom a Mac... 80 something, she does the defrag pretty well though, and Norton's set up her box to be more secure than Ft. Knox, that is my brother... lOOOOONG story.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8251545 -Apple eats babies and shuts down their own property. 12 votes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8248157 -Apple rapes 12 year old Chinese girls and nobody else does. 15 votes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8239238 -Steve Jobs: Flash is no longer necessary and I will kill your daughter. 4 votes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8238090 -The End of Microsoft? 0 votes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8248068 -Hewlett Packard kills it's Slate (iPad Killer) computer. 0 votes.

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8247081&mesg_id=8247081 -Ubuntu 2nd day trial. 3 votes.

Now, count how many "Apple sucks" posts against those defending/correcting misinformation, much closer to equal than "Windows sucks" posts which are practically non-existent. Yeah... both sides do it... Bullshit!

Nadine: The CNN of the OS wars.

TRS-DOS
:rofl: at how I just dated myself

I am much younger than you.

THERE!