[vox] [fwd] Consumer & admin (was: Possibly interesting data point on jobs postings)

[Bill Kendrick]

A post on sf-lug's mailing list that I thought folks here might enjoy. :)

-bill!

----- Forwarded message from Greg Nelson -----

Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 10:36:20 -0700
From: "Greg Nelson"
Subject: Re: [sf-lug] Consumer & admin (was: Possibly interesting data point
	on jobs postings)

We all tend to value our possessions at what they cost us, an irrational
error but one that comes naturally.  Corporations that make unwise purchases
will keep assets on their balance sheets at inflated values for years, to
avoid admitting their loss. Very few of us are enthusiastic about reforming
English spelling, since the years we spent learning it would then be
revealed to be wasted.  Those who have struggled for years to learn to use
Windows want to believe that what they have learned is worth the effort they
spent on it, and their minds resist any suggestion that there might be a
simpler way.  So all of the time that the world's PC users spent futzing
with their Windows machines, editing windows.bat, struggling to use the help
systems, wrestling with gratuitous complexity, which in truth is dead
economic waste, is also an investment in  a secure future for Microsoft.
Based on a comment that Bill Gates has made, I suspect that Microsoft
realizes this, and therefore delays their introduction of simpler, more
easily-managed versions of Windows with some deliberation.  But I also think
that if they wait too long, they will lose the game, since Linux and the web
have introduced competition into what was a secure monopoly, and the costs
of complexity are real, and capitalism is pretty effective at exposing true
costs.  The stakes are higher than one company's survival: if the gratuitous
complexity in Windows becomes deeply embedded in the culture, I suppose it
could last as long as the atrocity of English spelling.

Greg Nelson

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----- End forwarded message -----