“Windows is the McDonald’s of operating systems. You know it’s not good for you, but you can’t help but buy it at least once in a while. And it’s the same everywhere you go, which is the real key to Microsoft’s success.” eCommerceTimes says. Elsewhere “Less than two years ago, Lynanne Fowle, a Holly Springs charter high school director and mother of five, made the switch. She said that security and costs were the two main reasons she jumped ship from Microsoft” the LinuxInsider says.
Beware the Desktop Quagmire; Home Users Leap to Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Interesting quote from the first article:
“But in the end, once the smoke has cleared and the battlefield casualties have been counted, Microsoft still will control the vast majority of the desktop marketplace. With the outcome so obvious, is this a war really worth fighting at all?”
How can you says its not a war worth fighting? Is Freedom of choice not an option? Is competition on worth anything? Isn’t it though competition that innovation flows more freely? Without GPL/OSS why has MS decided to take a more aggressive stance on security? Because they keep getting compared to their competitors, one of which is Linux.
I guess the writer of the article must enjoy downloading patches about critical security issues. I guess the author also enjoys paying $500 for an office suite (250 for an OS)? People can buy (modestly priced) or download for free comparable office suites. It is Microsoft’s monopoly status and guarded file formats that prevent users from using other programs. Now if you like to be dictated on what software you can run then so be it. I will not stand for it.
I vote for open standards and interoperability.
makes me wish I’d become a journalist so I could just get my opinions in print or online, whether I know what I’m talking about or not. Wasn’t there a time when journalists just brought you the news, and didn’t offer unqualified opinions on things? Now they just seem to electronically run their mouths because they can eg. Enderle…
But in the end, once the smoke has cleared and the battlefield casualties have been counted, Microsoft still will control the vast majority of the desktop marketplace. With the outcome so obvious, is this a war really worth fighting at all?
You are just kidding, right?
So far we are witnessing governments around the world (China, Japan, Korea, and Brazil to name a few in the last couple of months) determined to pry Microsofts grip off their desktops. Even portions of the US government are using BSD or Linux rather than Windows. It is becoming very clear that Windows will be shut out of all governing bodies soon. They may have a trickle down effect to private citizens and corporations. This is the revolution from the top down.
We are also witnessing schools being supplied with recycled PCs running Linux due to threat from Microsoft over licensing issues. For schools where cost isn’t an issue, they seem to choose the Mac. The great minds of the future generation are being trained on non-Windows platforms. This is the revolution from the bottom up.
Home users are concerned about cost. Microsoft is determined that home users don’t get Windows for free. They have put in protection to force users to shell out major money for the software. The next version will be worse. Home users will tire of spending more money on a mediocre computer system than a used care. Word is spreading about the free alternative. Home users will have their free systems back. This is the revolution from the consumer middle.
Companies are concerned about cost. It is insane to want to spend large sums of money on little return. That is why the dot-com era is over. Major companies are supporting Linux the more enthusiastically than they used to support Windows (IBM, Novell, and Oracle). With so much industry support, thrifty companies will choose Linux. This is the revolution from the corporate middle.
There is no war, my friend, there is only a gentle revolution in progress. There is no sector of population that is not advancing towards Linux. The inertia is far too great now to stop it. Even the massive progaganda machines from Microsoft and SCO are having precious little impact upon the world wide acceptance of Linux. Even the outrageous claims of the media will not deter the inevitable.
LOL…how can you be so sure? This is the future you are talking about. No one knows what’s gonna happen!!!!
“But in the end, once the smoke has cleared and the battlefield casualties have been counted, Microsoft still will control the vast majority of the desktop marketplace. With the outcome so obvious, is this a war really worth fighting at all?”
As much as I’m pleased with Microsoft and as much as I dislike Linux, I must say this war is *essential* and *critical*. I believe in competition, and even if I stand on Microsoft’s side, I have a very high respect for Linux, Apple and BSDs to stand with such great opposition. Cause I know the headquarter of my camp will continue to threat me like a king as long as the ennemy is menacing.
Long live healthy competition and freedom of choice !
It was the most reasonable pro-Windows comment that I have ever seen in this site!
Cheers,
DeadFish Man
I’m not a huge fan of Windows, save for the apps it runs (the only reason I use it).
As far as Linux as an alternative, I’m not sure if the disease in this case isn’t actually worse than the cure. Sure, it’s free, but so what? IMHO, it sucks on the desktop.
The great thing is that others are fighting this war so I don’t have to. I can sit back and laugh mercilessly at these people as they try to figure out how to make the latest and greatest Windows app run under Wine.
One day, it’ll probably be up to par, and then I can jump ship , while never having to do any of the work
That “the LinuxInsider says.” link makes Mozilla[Firebird] hang
Linux is okay if you dont want loads of games etc, also if you want to wait for people to create drivers for it then fine go for linux. Question why does linux suck on the usb side of things? Whilst windows doesn’t. I feel from most of the linux people i have spoken to they have a superior than thou attitude. Just cos people wish to use windows does not make them fools. If you wish to use an os that only 20million people use on the desktop then fine go for linux, otherwise why not join the majority and continue to use an os that is stable and does not crash like windows, and don’t tell me it crashes all the time cos mine doesn’t, and iof you use linux how would you know what happens with windows eh?
I am an avid user of Linux on the Desktop. I installed Knoppix ,http://www.knopper.net/knoppix, onto my laptop, and love it. There really isn’t anything I can’t do on my laptop, that I can’t do in Windows. Save for OOo, where there seems to be some problems, the machine is perfect. I am not even upset with OOo, because MS is the one holding them back. I understand the reasonings behind MSs motives not to release their info so that OOo and Office can co-exist, but wasn’t it MS that screamed interoperability when they were competing with Wordperfect?
They say “Home users leap to Linux” and only give one example. Makes it sound like millions in the masses did said event when in reality no such thing occurred.
i been using Linux on my desktop for a little over 3 years now and love it!!!
I don’t know about the rest of the world but I haven’t ate at McDonalds in over ten years
Damn tree hugger!
J/k 😛
Hype anything up and make it seem cool to do and people flock to it like lemmings. Remember Pet rocks? Then when the linux zealots get their wish and Linux is no longer the underdog they will find something else to champion and whine about the Evil Linux empire.
I think the title of the article is a little misleading. It makes it seem as if home users in droves are leaving Windows for Linux. Then it mentions Lynanne Fowle and how a mother of 5 switched to Linux when really her husband an IT director probably switched them. If you ask a lot of average Windows users, Linux isn’t even a consideration.
The people that seem to be deploying Linux on the desktop is the tech saavy and adventurous user which is NOT your average user. In both instances where Linux was deployed in the home their was an IT professional doing the installation.
okay, I eat McDonalds, and I run linux, what does that mean? As for this whole “converting to the linux desktop thing” will everyone please drop it. Users have choices, if they like linux fine, if they don’t, they have other options. Lets not turn this into a religous war (as usual).
Not bloody likely, mate. Since no one company controls Linux and never will, there will be no one company to point to and label the Evil Emperor.
You go and enjoy your Windows, and I’ll be happy with my Linux desktop.
>In both instances where Linux was deployed in the home their
>was an IT professional doing the installation.
I guess that is what some “Windows users” think of an IT professional, somebody that can shuff in a cd/dvd-rom and
press install…
Really you need to dig more into the Linux world and be suprised that most Linux installs are easier than Windows installs.
Then when the linux zealots get their wish and Linux is no longer the underdog they will find something else to champion and whine about the Evil Linux empire.
There can be no such thin as the “Evil Linux empire”, because it if Free Software. Nobody owns it.
Thats only for right now. What happens if linux gets more hardware support and vendors start making official drivers? You will then see instaling drivers from floppies become common.
Governments around the world are switching to GNU/Linux. Microsoft is going to soon get hundreds of thousands of complaints from users who are trying to open OpenOffice XML documents and find that Word can’t read them. People who claim that GNU/Linux isn’t “ready” for the desktop don’t know what they’re talking about. What exactly would make GNU/Linux ready? No one can answer that question, exept those who say that GNU/Linux is already ready for the desktop. We’re only a few years away from seeing boxed software for GNU/Linux on shelves. Pretty soon you will see all the major companies porting to GNU/Linux as the Windows and Mac market share is eroded by everyone switching to GNU/Linux.
It’s happening people… the era of Microsoft rule over the computer is coming to a close. Telling yourself it isn’t is just lying to yourself.
only in a case where the user wants vendor drivers.
besides that, with he Linux package management system, the distribution can have a script that will probe the system, go to the vendor site, download the driver, install it and then tell the user that the new drivers will be used on the next boot.
The LinuxInsider link crashes for my version of Firebird too.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7
Strangely enough though, wget-ing the page with “wget -p -k” and viewing it locally works just fine.
besides that, with he Linux package management system, the distribution can have a script that will probe the system, go to the vendor site, download the driver, install it and then tell the user that the new drivers will be used on the next boot.
Not to nitpick, but rebooting isn’t necessary. The driver can be loaded dynamically into the kernel and the net service restarted as part of the script. Ah, the beauty of Linux…
The first flaw in Mr. Regan’s logic is that Windows has one very major difference from Mcdonalds – 5 years from now Mcdonalds will still serve nearly the same menu as today so no one need change but just keep ordering the same old thing. When Longhorn becomes a Windows release it will change the OS massively all at once. Even with a emulation mode to run XP programs many will not run or do well on the “new Windows”.
The second flaw in Mr. Reagn’s Logic is that when OS are usually changed is when a new computer is purchased and and that falls into a similar behavior to car buying as opposed to hamburger buying. I moved to Linux when I bought a new computer rather than trying to switch my old system (the old system started with Windows 98 and it died with Windows 98). True right now it is somewhat hard to find Linux systems preloaded on a computer at purchase, but think that will soon change. When people go out an buy a new car, the new vehicle is often quite different from the one they now are using. If Linux is viewed as a move upward or as a better system – People will switch at computer purchase time and not even think about it. That is how the switch from CP/M to MS-Dos went that is how the Switch from MS-Dos to Windows 3.1 went, That was how the switch from Window 3.11 to Windows 9x went and it is how the Switch from Windows XP to some Linux will go. Mr. Bill built his software systems to force that behavior in people and now it may just come back to bite Mr. Bill in the butt.
By the authors logic, Ferrari should just give up and stop making cars, because Toyota always has and probably always will sell more cars than Ferrari does…
There’s a place for “small” players like Ferrari in the automotive world, though. And there’s a place for small computing players in the computing world, too.
But it doesn’t stop there.
At present, Linux has an ecological niche in the computing world, or rather, several niches. However: evolutionarily speaking, Linux is a fairly formidable competitor, because it is very agile due to its openness and free availability to all developers. This lets it evolve and fill new niches everywhere in the computing ecosystem; we’ve already seen Linux evolve to the point where everything from PDA’s and set-top boxes to big-iron Altix servers can use it. Linux is being used for point-of-sale devices, to record TV shows, to check out library books, to run Internet servers, to provide the onflight entertainment in Airbus’s latest jets, to run Actiontec modems, to create big-screen animation blockbusters (like Sinbad), and to help solve the secrets of the early universe in the hands of researchers like Stephen Hawking’s group in the UK.
At present, Microsoft is much like the king of the carnivorous dinosaurs once was. MS is ruler of all it surveys, like T. Rex stomping through his hunting grounds in his prime. Linux, meantime, is the little furry mammal hiding in a burrow, almost beneath the Tyrannosaur’s notice.
But the little furry mammal is more adaptable than the T. Rex, it reproduces faster, can live in colder climates, and can get by on less food. Eventually it evolves into homo sapiens, the most adaptable of all living species. We all know how this particular story ends, a hundred million years later. Homo Sapiens has been so overwhelmingly succesful that the species is well on the way to killing off most other forms of animal life on our planet.
The computing universe evolves far, far faster than the biological one. Linux has come from nothing to where it is today in a dozen years, rather than a few million. Linux is evolving even faster today than it was evolving ten years ago, because there are more developers working on projects than ever before, and more existing code to jump-start their new projects with. Because the code is free, developers gain the advantages of all the work others did before them. This method has worked in scientific research for centuries, and it is now working for Linux and other Free/Open Source software. As Newton said, “if I see farther than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants”.
Linux continues to grow and evolve like Jack’s bean-stalk.
Meanwhile, the next iteration of Windows (Longhorn) is apparently delayed till 2006.
How long do you think the Microsoft dinosaur will continue to rule? Five years? Ten? Twenty?
I don’t know the answer, but the evolutionary precedents are pretty clear. Sooner or later, the more adaptable species will succeed in claiming the major territory and pushing the less adaptable species into the odd nook and cranny. And sooner or later Linux will become the obvious choice for the majority of people, whether programmers or users, whether idealists or pragmatists, simply because it will do everything they want, and do it for less money, than the alternatives.
If you found a society that handed out free Toyota Camry’s to everyone, there would still be folks who would go pay a hundred grand for a Ferrari. And so there will still be folks who will fork out the dough for Microsoft products, or Apple products, even when Linux does everything they those operating systems do, for free. But they will be in the minority, like the folks buying the Ferrari’s…
> Linux is okay if you dont want loads of games etc,
It depends on the type of games; Linux has a lot of games. If you want the latest big titles, you don’t want to use only linux; you may or may not want to dual-boot. That quibble aside, I do mainly agree.
> also if you want to wait for people to create drivers for
> it then fine go for linux. Question why does linux suck on
> the usb side of things?
It does? With things like hotplug, it seems pretty decent to me. What sucks specifically? My scanner works with it; it’s the only USB peripheral I have.
> Whilst windows doesn’t.
Windows 95 definately did. I’ve not used anything more recent than 98 on my own systems; what does it do that is so much better than linux? Linux supports hot-plugging, and automatically detects a lot of stuff from what I’ve seen (try knoppix sometime; no install.) The windows drivers are likely more numerous; beyond that, what’s the big advantage? I’m genuinely curious.
> I feel from most of the linux people i have spoken to they
> have a superior than thou attitude.
I’ve found most don’t. There are some that do. Newbies and people who get on the wrong side of those who fanatically ‘defend’ their favorite OS run into these people the most, regardless of which operating system is involved, in my experience.
> Just cos people wish
> to use windows does not make them fools.
Yes. Obviously. They may have foolish reasons (and no, I’m -not- implying that all do; there are many legitimate reasons to use Windows); even that does not make them fools.
> If you wish to use an os that only 20million people use on
> the desktop then fine go for linux,
Um… I’m sorry, but number of users is pretty irrelevant. Bragging “My OS is more popular than yours” is trite and annoying, whether your OS is windows or linux, and whether you compare it to linux or BSD…
I can see the point of “If you wish to use an OS that doesn’t support ExtraNewGreatFeature/SuperBasicFeatureY/whatever.” But please, stop appeals to number of users? It has absolutely no relevance once a project has a reasonable number of users (large enough that it’s used on a variety of hardware, gets a reasonable number of bug reports, etc); I would say that Linux does.
> otherwise why not join the majority
Appeal to widespread usage / the majority is just… a bad arguement? A logical fallacy? No offense, but if the best you can say about an OS is that it’s widely used, that seems questionable to me; I don’t particularily like windows, and I can think of a great number of better reasons to use it.
> and continue to use an
> os that is stable and does not crash like windows, and
> don’t tell me it crashes all the time cos mine doesn’t,
Linux does crash. So does Windows. Modern versions of Windows are much more stable than previous ones; it does not crash for everybody, but it does crash. If it doesn’t for you, great; that does not mean it never does.
For me, some versions of Windows crashed extremely frequently. It’s what drove me to find an alternative, 4+ years ago.
> and iof you use linux how would you know what happens with
> windows eh?
Dual booting? Being the local ‘techie’ and having to troubleshoot the problems of friends/relatives? Reading?
I see OSNews as a place to discuss every operating system. Others may see it differently, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I just wish that on an OS hobbyist site, that there were less appeals to “more people use this” and less chest-beating “Everything except my OS sucks” rants.
Windows trolls in the linux articles are something that frequently annoy me (I’m not saying you are one, nor that other trolling combination do not occur.)
LinuxInsider link doesn’t crash at all here with Mozilla Firebird.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031115 Firebird/0.7
am I the only one who’s getting sick of techies comparing software evolution to natural selection?
1. relatively modern humans have only existed for a couple hundered thousand years, where T Rex lasted millions.
2. the better adapted for an environment simply replaces a lesser adapted species. generalists are exceptions to the rule. that mouse isn’t any less adapted than the T Rex, it’s just luck that its adaptions were better suited for the time. or are you suggesting that dinosaurs were “beat”.
3. as a gene pool gets larger, evolution halts. it doesn’t get better, it has no need.
4. humans are babies in the scheme of things. if for some reason you believe they are the highest level of life, or the aim of evolution, then you are a creationist and should not even attempt to understand evolution. you’ll go to gehenna for stuff like that.
I’ve actually seen Linus musing much worse things about evolution, and it’s kind of sad that people try to mold natural selection into what they think it is, or what it should be.
The article at LinuxInsider is from The News and Observer in Raleigh, NC. It ran there yesterday. Raleigh is also the headquarters of Red Hat. So what would you expect to see in the pictures that accompanied the article? Take a look at:
http://newsobserver.com/business/technology/story/3034777p-2777326c…
Those boxes in the upper right picture aren’t red. There must be a story behind that…
Question why does linux suck on the usb side of things?
I have a USB mouse, a USB printer, a USB scanner and a USB digital camera. They all work flawlessly on linux.
and iof you use linux how would you know what happens with windows eh?
Actually, lots of us use both OSes, daily. I do, Windows at work and Linux at home. Also, I’ve used Windows since the 3.1 days.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure you don’t currently use Linux. So, how would you know what happens with Linux, eh?
Website makes Mozilla freeze here due to its underminated constant and several other mistakes.
“Website makes Mozilla freeze here due to its underminated constant and several other mistakes.”
What version are you using? It works fine with 1.5
I am using firebird.
<p>That link causes my vanilla Firebird on Windows 2000 (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7) to hang, but <em>not</em> my
roll-your-own Linux build on Redhat 8 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7).</p>
<p>It seems to be a problem with the Windows builds only.</p>
Oops, didn’t read the OSNews small print re. mark-up.
“Windows is the McDonald’s of operating systems.”
I do hope so because McDonald’s isn’t having the best time of it at the moment, they’re losing quite a bit of cash apparantly.
One thing that might hurt MS on the desktop is activation. I’d feel a bit guilty if i were to resort to using xp corp or activation tricks so I can do multiple installs. With Win 98 SE or ME or 2k i can make as many installs as needed. It’s not enough that they have the damned registration key, u now have to activate xp and 2003. Between hunting down my keys and activating, xp turns out to be a real pain in the ass.
It’s not just the geek user and power user who has 5 pc’s in the home anymore. These days, families and college students, etc all may have several pc’s in the home, home office, laptop for school, and so on. At $100 (xp home oem) to $300 (xp pro boxed) windows upgrades and additions can be very expensive. Upgrading a whole family to longhorn could turn out to be several hundred dollars.
Compare the microtel boxes at wal mart. For $10 in cheapbytes isos and $160 for microtel pc w/ no OS, you can have a decent little rig. The same (or similar) box with xp home is way more. It’s funny how xp home is supposedly ~ $40 preinstalled, yet the xp boxes are always much more expensive. I’m personally going with the no OS or lindows/lycoris microtels, cause I can assemble decent little lab for next to nothing. With the money I save on xp, I can buy plenty of freebsd and linux boxed sets, cisco routers, docs, solaris 9 media kit, etc. And my money is going to open source, and bsd, rather than supporting a monopoly that is “third rate” in the words of Steve Jobs. MS has been foisting sub standard stuff on us for years, and we’ve gladly paid good money for it. It’s about time the tables are turned.
I dont use windows because I don’t have the time to learn it. After spending 12 years trying to learn windows I just gave up.
Gentoo took me just about 2 years to learn.
It seems that in windows there is no consistent way to fix problems, and absolutely no way to know what the problem is.
In Gentoo I at least get sensible error messages, and the fix are mostly consistent.
Have you ever noticed that whilst most Linux distros perfectly detect hardware and set it up correctly, when it comes to things like firmware updates (e.g. for your CD drive, DVD drive, USB card reader/writer, scanner etc. etc.), virtually *all* the tools supplied by hardware manufacturers to apply the firmware updates for Windows (or DOS) only ?
Yes, I guess you could find a bootable Windows floppy from “somewhere”, boot into that and then run the update tool (they’re usually DOS-based, but not always), but what if you’ve never had Windows at all on your machine [e.g. a white box] ? Do you have to resort to illegal downloads of Windows boot floppies or try something like FreeDOS which may or may not work ?
It’s the total lack of support of Linux from many hardware manufacturers that’s one of the biggest issues nowadays when switching from Windows to Linux – it’s why I still have to keep a Win 98 partition on my hard disk (though the primary reason is actually to play games, of which there’s a dearth of on Linux).
Yeah 1 million Linux desktops just was sold to China and 200 milliom more to follow and Linux somehow cant beat Microsoft? Maybe not in America but world wide Microsoft is dead.
Here in Brazil there are many Mc Donald’s stores but they are facing difficulties with competition… For the price of a Big mac Trio (Big mac + coke + french fries) you can buy a complete brazilian lunch (latins like eat well).
Linux in Brazil is becoming more popular nowadays and even our president likes free (in “libre” and “zero price” senses) software.
The american way of life is not more a unamimity in world…
Could someone at osnews make an new review and an nice overview of institutions and organisations, ammount of individuals that are using linux. Because i am sure there are many. In my own country for example(the netherlands) there is an supermarket nationwide that is going to use debian as operating system for their bussiness. And i thought i was the “geek” with something special running, dude, even supermarkets run linux.
Yep, Can’t use the link without FireBird (0.7 WinNT) locking up solid.
I’ve found out that if you go to linuxinsider and then to the story link it works fine.
Odd, I would suspect poor coding of the site. Going to the front page then the story works, deeplinking hangs.
Could it have been that way on purpose? Nah……
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
someone247356
For Linux to be adopted by people, a couple of things need to be satisfied. One is applications. But these applications won’t be there all at once. Over time as more and more people use Linux the needed applications will follow.
Another part of Linux adoption is preloaded PCs. Right now, you can get a pretty cheap PC from Emachines or Dell. But how much of the price is cost of the Microsoft Windows license fees? If a young start up, starts selling PCs cheaper than Dell by putting Linux on the PCs instead of Windows, how will this affect Dell? Dell has to recover the cost of Microsoft’s fees somehow so the price they charge may not be able to go much lower. Unless Dell starts selling PC with Linux. Microsoft could also subsidize Dell by paying Dell to place Windows on their PCs. Microsoft did the same thing for WebTV. It cost Philips about $100USD to make a WebTV unit so Microsoft gave Philips $50USD for each unit made so the price of WebTV unit would be below $100USD retail.
It will be a while before Microsoft is knock off its throne. Not everyone will leave Microsoft which is to be expected. But Linux will gain some share of the pie.
Windows is the McDonald’s of operating systems. You know it’s not good for you, but you can’t help but buy it at least once in a while
Windows has lot of FAT like McDonalds food.
“Windows has lot of FAT like McDonalds food.”
In terms of FAT, linux distro./KDE/Gnome now have way too much more FAT than win2k/xp+office while at the same time
don’t taste good.
In terms of FAT, linux distro./KDE/Gnome now have way too much more FAT than win2k/xp+office while at the same time don’t taste good.
So we can now install Windows without the GUI?
I have several Linux computers with no KDE/GNOME/Office Suites. They’re more than useable: they’re perfect for what I have them doing.
I agree, if Linux were to become the dominent desktop and server OS this same group of people would be bashing it in favor for something new.
If you don’t think so, look at what happened to OS/2, everyone hated IBM and was afraid they were going to take over the world. OS/2 was and still is superior to any Windows platform but is virtually dead.
Macs will never be mainstream because people hate Macs because Mac people hate everything else. Even though it is BSD with a nice GUI it will not gain traction.
>1. relatively modern humans have only existed for a couple >hundered thousand years, where T Rex lasted millions.
——————
True. What’s your point?
>2. the better adapted for an environment simply replaces a >lesser adapted species.
——————
There’s more to it than that. When an environment changes, the more adaptable species is likely to find ways to survive and succeed, while the formerly “best adapted species”, if unable to adjust to the new conditions, dies.
Humans have proved more adaptable than any other species, thanks to our ability to make fire and use tools. If the next ice age starts, we’ll have figured out how to make warmer clothes and larger fires before we all die from the cold.
The computing environment changes rapidly. So adapatability (the ability to adjust to changing circumstances) is more of a strength than “being better adapted” at a given point in time. Because of the wide spread, many-pronged development of Linux, it is very adaptable.
>that mouse isn’t any less adapted than the T Rex, it’s >just luck that its adaptions were better suited for the >time. or are you suggesting that dinosaurs were “beat”.
——————-
Neither. Both animals were adapted to their environment, then the environment changed. The mammals survived the change better than the dinosaurs, i.e., they were more adaptable. I’m not an evolutionary biologist, so I can’t speak with authority on this, but it seems that, for instance, the fact that mammal offspring grow within the mothers body makes them more likely to survive a sudden cooling of the environment than a clutch of dinosaur eggs buried in the cold ground.
>3. as a gene pool gets larger, evolution halts. it doesn’t >get better, it has no need.
———————
This presupposes that evolution has some kind of common-sense or thinking process. Evolution is a blind, deaf, dumb, random process. Genetic mutations occur at a certain rate in nature, determined by things like background radiation level and errors in DNA replication. The size of the population has nothing to do with it. I think you may be confusing evolution with some kind of God driven process, which has a why and a wherefore behind it.
>4. humans are babies in the scheme of things. if for some >reason you believe they are the highest level of life, or >the aim of evolution, then you are a creationist and >should not even attempt to understand evolution. you’ll go >to gehenna for stuff like that.
—————————
Nope, don’t believe that, never said that, and most definitely am not a creationist.
What I said was that humans are the most *successful* species. Evolutionary success is measured ultimately by the number of offspring you leave behind; humans have done this more efficiently than any other species, with the result that six BILLION of us now overload our poor planet.
If you’re not good at mathematical visualization, here are some other numbers to drive home the point:
One, I read recently that 97% of all vertebrate biomass on the planet belongs to humans or domesticated animals. (In other words, all the tigers, lions, whales, fish, bats, and every other living vertebrate put together account for 3% of biomass; humans, cows, pigs, dogs, cats, etc account for the remaining 97%).
Two, we typically take a species off the endangered list when their numbers reach about 2,000; the known numbers of most human-sized or larger animal species – tigers, elephants, zebras, you name it – are now in this region or below it. Since there are 6 billion humans, that means there are *three MILLION* humans on the earth for every tiger, or lion, or whale. In other words, a large city full of humans for a single one of most every other large mammal.
At this point in the earth’s history, the only species that are as successful (reproductively) as humans are insects. Notice that insects are small enough not to be fighting for the same evolutionary niche as humans.
>…and it’s kind of sad that people try to mold natural >selection into what they think it is, or what it should >be.
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Such as believing the process of natural selection has intelligence and “knows” to stop when a population becomes big enough? 🙂
-Nemo
The fact is the average geek wants to do something creative that most people can’t do and yet still have it be cool, robust, and secure.
The average home user want’s things to just work and they don’t care why or how, just that it works.
The average geek is not the average home user.
This is the same reason that Linux isn’t as popular as it could be in the enterprise. The average IT support person is doing that job because it is a pretty good paying profession, but they do not go home after work and spend hours trying to solve complex IT problems. Until the IT geek can make it easy for the average IT support person to support, it will be slow going.
Interesting. Now you can contribute to the project
Here’s a thread about this issue
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=272318
Please add additional info if you can, like your version.
“The mammals survived the change better than the dinosaurs, i.e., they were more adaptable.”
this presumes that dinosaurs completely died off, there is a very large debate whether that happened. if they survived as our feathered friends, then it ain’t over till it’s over.
this arguement also assumes that the environment changed gradually, where we currently believe that dinosaur populations were in decline, but ultimately pushed over the edge by a massive catastrophy. this was a matter of luck that mammals rose, rather than a better adapted species replacing the old. if it was caused by a major catastrophy, then simply being small was their greatest adaptation.
when it comes to the major extinctions, all bets are off. it comes down to luck, and we’re far from immune from that.
“the fact that mammal offspring grow within the mothers body makes them more likely to survive a sudden cooling of the environment than a clutch of dinosaur eggs buried in the cold ground. ”
that’s probably not a fair depiction of all dinosaur life.
the other fact(an actual fact as opposed to your “fact”) is that mammals are at a great disadvantage exactly because of this trait. a starving, pregnant mammal is going to take hunger pretty badly, putting herself and her unborn offspring at extreme risk. whereas an egg layer will live to lay another.
“This presupposes that evolution has some kind of common-sense or thinking process. Evolution is a blind, deaf, dumb, random process. Genetic mutations occur at a certain rate in nature, determined by things like background radiation level and errors in DNA replication. The size of the population has nothing to do with it. I think you may be confusing evolution with some kind of God driven process, which has a why and a wherefore behind it.”
again, you’re not understanding the actual processes behind changes in species via natural selection.
genetic mutations do occur quite frequently, but in a large population the chances of them being quickly bred out are extremely high. the biggest, quickest changes happen in a small population, because those mutations are quickly spread and strengthened through inbreeding.
imagine how fast a change to a single gene could pass through a population of 100… I’m not very good with statistics, but I’m sure it would happen relatively quickly. now imagine how long that change would take if we’re dealing with a population of 5-6 billion. if it would happen at all. mutations are flukes in a population this large.
evolution is effectively stopped. no need for god in this, except to strengthen your case for human superiority.
“One, I read recently that 97% of all vertebrate biomass on the planet belongs to humans or domesticated animals.”
to drive my point home that dinosaurs and other extremely proven and successful species aren’t ruling the world today here’s an interesting statistic:
the cretaceous extinction took out an estimated 85% of all species. not quite the cambrian extinction, but impressive, nevertheless. luck killed most and luck kept a few alive.
anyway, this is getting long. you’re wrong, large populations do grind the processes behind evolution to a halt.
so far, humans are like those first suppermassive stars in the beginning(right after god said let there be light, lol). we’re big, beautiful and destructive but we probably don’t have what it takes for the long road others species have taken. sure, we may currently have the largest population, but how many crocodilians have there been before us and most likely after us…
can you imagine, humans as we currently are lasting 50 million years? agent smith summed us up quite nicely, if you ask me. the idealized human you have in your mind has only really been here for maybe 10-20 thousand years.
bah, I’m tired…
“to drive my point home that dinosaurs and other extremely proven and successful species aren’t ruling the world today here’s an interesting statistic:”
was an edit gone wrong, disregard. missing words and punctuation and I totally forgot the point I was trying to drive home and how I intended to do it… heh
prayer for me, Brother Nemo.
This is so fascinationg. A discussion about evolution on a web site for Operating Systems. This discussion is far better than the Gnome/KDE and Windows/Linux wars.
A few things to consider about evolution. Some species have accelerated reproduction cycles. They reproduce rapidly and often. Another characteristic of their births is that babies are more mature in the life cycle. They are able to help themselves at an earlier age, even if it is just running/flying away.
Humans have a low reproduction rate. Human babies are less mature at birth and take a couple of years to get to a point of helping themselves.
Genetic varations will take longer to move through a species with a low reproduction rate compared to an accelerated rate. Genes are neither prophetic nor reactionary. Species that are able to reproduce in the current environment pass along the genes. As time goes by the new environment becomes the current environment. Genes basically try to create a system that possible will survive.