By your logic, if Apple has 5% integrated market share in the home market, given the boxed numbers shipped from those 6 distrobution manufacturers, Linux has at least a 20% home marketshare. That dovetails nicely with the estimated current market share of 75% for Windows..

oh wait, you didn’t realize that Microsoft ONLY has 75% AT MOST in the home market? Care to guess how many are Win9x systems AND NOT WinNT systems?

Shush Rico. All you do is prove you don’t know what you are talking about.

Hi Roughneck.
re: “Some people don’t see moving up the corporate ladder as advancement and would rather remain individual contributors. If you’re really, really good at something, why muck up your life doing something that you’re only medicore at?”

Sometimes folks climb to keep their jobs. As Mark Zbikowski’s instant departure from Microsoft demonstrates, Time Doing Quality Work On The Job means nothing to some companies.
(http://www.trimmail.com/news/elsewhere/data/1151350089.25/)

re: “What happens when you have as many people as MS does working on a project the size of WinOS is same thing as the old cliche’ of too many cooks spoil the broth.”

Absolutely. And every “super cool” new feature brings with it new possibilities for more Windows security trouble.

“Another this a compentent programmer would know is that there are part of the code that are critical - care you esitimate how many lines are code are critical for security and how many are just for pointless eyecandy - think clippy type stuff.”

You can introduce a double free attack vector in any area of code. There’s plenty of room for improvement in 45+ million lines of code and when it comes to security vectors, it’s all critical.

“You also give away the lie that you are a serious programmer if you can only use games as the reason for windows.”

I’m no apologist for Windows, but if 90+% of the market is using a particular platform, that’s where I’m going to write code for my little pgm. Trying to sell to 90% of the market is a whole lot more likely to produce $’s in my hand that selling to 10% of the market.

“Even if you have been programming for 12 years then that does not mean you are any good - still being a programmer after 12 years is quite indicative that you are probably at or above your cabability limit”

Dave Cutler has been writing code for how long now (30+ years) and ya’ know, I don’t see anyone calling into question his capability limit. Some people don’t see moving up the corporate ladder as advancement and would rather remain individual contributors. If you’re really, really good at something, why muck up your life doing something that you’re only medicore at? Be the best at what you do.

What happens when you have as many people as MS does working on a project the size of WinOS is same thing as the old cliche’ of too many cooks spoil the broth. www.usenix.org/events/usenix-win2000/invitedtalks/lucovsky.ppt ,start w/ slide 9. If you don’t think this same sort of thing can’t happen in any other OS, you’re living in fantasyland.

re: “Today we have primarily MS SQL and Access…”
I use SQLite for desktop stuff, MySQL for servers. (I still crank up good ole FoxPro for one-on-one data processing.)

re: “Is a Microsoft-dominated security space healthy?”
Nope. This, too, shall pass.

The point is, it doesn’t matter how many lines of code (and one of my programs had over 5 million lines by the time I had finished), it IS possible to write programs that don’t break down.

I moved over to Linux about 8 years ago and the only Windows I run is on my notebook to do a couple of small things I can’t do in Linux. My entire office runs on Linux and my staff love it. They are all productive and _never_ have to worry about viruses or spy ware.

Linux is evolving and developing so fast it is running rings around M$. Since I started on Mandrake Linux v8, I have upgraded twice and now work in v10. When is Bill going to release his next upgrade?

The problem for Window$ is that it is based on the wrong architecture. Bill knows this, but he still insists that the next upgrade must be backward compatible. Wrong thinking IMHO. But what do I know? I am only a humble programmer who completes dozens of projects a year.

Another this a compentent programmer would know is that there are part of the code that are critical - care you esitimate how many lines are code are critical for security and how many are just for pointless eyecandy - think clippy type stuff.

You also give away the lie that you are a serious programmer if you can only use games as the reason for windows.

Even if you have been programming for 12 years then that does not mean you are any good - still being a programmer after 12 years is quite indicative that you are probably at or above your cabability limit

As far as I am concerned, the rest of my argument is correct.

50 billion line program - do us a favour, you know it is not that large. Is you argument so week you need to begin it with a lie?

Taken into account the complexity of an O/S and the fact that it is installed on virtually all home computers out there (yes, there are about 5% MAC users and perhaps 1% Linux users for HOME use), it is by far the preferable choice of targets for virus makers. COMBINE that with the AVERAGE person’s ability to do normal updates and such, yes there will be more vulnerabilities since they do not apply patches.

Let’s be honest, Linus SUCKS for home use. Let’s play a game on Linux… you go ahead and select which of the 9 games to play that are playable on linux. Same thing with MAC.

I think the Mac is a much better o/s experience for home use, problem is that it is so friggen expensive compared to Windows… thus fewer people will want to get it. Couple that with the limited number of popular applications will further decrease the users. Yes, there are alternative but note I said popular… ie.. the ones advertised.

Rico