Re: Big Bill for Gates

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:cbIqf.158$UF3.144@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Our washing machine has a few switches, no electronics to write home about.
> It still does the usual clunk, clank, phssst, whoosh. Works just fine. Why
> would that need an OS? So it can set cookies and relay to some survey outfit
> what we are wearing?

Guess you're not getting one of the newish GE Harmony washers and dryers for
Xmas, eh? (http://www.geappliances.com/harmony/)

I can see there's a lot of products out there that have something of an
operating system that don't really need them, but on the other hand, even
without an OS products such as DVD players, MP3 players, etc. have
significantly more complicated tasks to perform than something like a VCR from
the late '80s, and if nothing else programmers are naturally going to migrate
to higher level languages to implement that functionality, and "higher level"
tends to inherently allow more people to "play" and thus create more of a bell
curve responses in products from "utter crap" to "really great."

What your opinion of wireless routers? I don't think that you'd be able to
walk into a store today and buy one for <$50 (sometimes <$25!) if it weren't
for the existance of a free "real" OS, namely, Linux. On the other hand, I'd
have to say that of all the <$100 wireless routers I've ever owned or used,
more than half would crash and hang or reboot when subjected to network
torture tests. :-(

---Joel


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