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User-friendliness and fascism | Democracy in America | Economist.com

It starts with a silly premise - comparing operating systems and politics - then descends into some more interesting stuff. I thought it was interesting and figured a few people here might enjoy the short read.

I found it via OSNews, which has a little write up of their own, albeit less thought provoking.

Operating Systems as Politics

The author's logic broke down when he started to involve the US health care debate and finance reform. End users of government provided regulation have a say in it. Just go ahead try and crack open your Mac to put your own hardware in. End users ultimately have little input in the way Mac allows user freedom.

Quite unlike how voters are allowing themselves to be fooled into thinking a public option or finance regulation is somehow bad for them.

I can do this too.

Macs are like Scandinavia. Tiny user base, expensive, subtly restricted freedom in several areas, users that simply don't care about any of this because everything works so damn smoothly. They tend to be subtly racist and while they allow foreign applications into them, their users will hate them, and said foreign applications will never truly integrate into the system causing problems and continuing the vicious cycle.

Windows is like the US - you can install it where ever you'd like (though it's not always a good idea, as you risk decade-long insurgencies, and countless amounts of cash needed to restore everything to working order to avoid constant blue screens of death), everyone on the internet loves to hate them, and everyone seems to forget their existence has likely done more to push the world forward than any other operating system. It's rife with buggy applications, but there's just so damn many of them, there's the occasional gem that doesn't exist on other platforms. The management is corrupt, and resorts to brutish tactics.

Linux is like Somalia. You're free to do anything you want, but you're likely to get your limbs chopped off with a machete by roving guerrillas if you're not careful. You're also likely to get bombed by Windows for harboring terrorists. Nothing works, and as much as you'd like to blame Windows' aggressive tactics, the truth is closer to home. Things are supposedly a bit better nowadays, but it'll be another couple of decades until it turns into a semi-usable operating system. Piracy is encouraged.

Vicsun wrote:Macs are like Scandinavia. Tiny user base, expensive, subtly restricted freedom in several areas, users that simply don't care about any of this because everything works so damn smoothly. They tend to be subtly racist and while they allow foreign applications into them, their users will hate them, and said foreign applications will never truly integrate into the system causing problems and continuing the vicious cycle.

Windows is like the US - you can install it where ever you'd like (though it's not always a good idea, as you risk decade-long insurgencies, and countless amounts of cash needed to restore everything to working order to avoid constant blue screens of death), everyone on the internet loves to hate them, and everyone seems to forget their existence has likely done more to push the world forward than any other operating system. It's rife with buggy applications, but there's just so damn many of them, there's the occasional gem that doesn't exist on other platforms. The management is corrupt, and resorts to brutish tactics.

Linux is like Somalia. You're free to do anything you want, but you're likely to get your limbs chopped off with a machete by roving guerrillas if you're not careful. You're also likely to get bombed by Windows for harboring terrorists. Nothing works, and as much as you'd like to blame Windows' aggressive tactics, the truth is closer to home. Things are supposedly a bit better nowadays, but it'll be another couple of decades until it turns into a semi-usable operating system. Piracy is encouraged.

Far better put than the econmist's writer had. Maybe you should offer to do some work for them so that this other fellow can go back to failing at journalism.

jklinders wrote:Far better put than the econmist's writer had. Maybe you should offer to do some work for them so that this other fellow can go back to failing at journalism.

Their blog is never of the same quality as their printed edition, and this entry is particularly bad, even by blog standards. It's unfortunate, because I tend to like The Economist.