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March 18, 2005
Lure of RSD
The lure of RSD (Rapid Slidedeck Development) is leading astray our best and brightest. Rob's been doing so much slideware and meetings his brain's going soft.
He told me yesterday that Windows is great, Linux is trailing. He bought a Dell laptop with Windows. The only intelligible thing he said was that the Windows application he had lets you remove redeye from photos with one click. According to Rob you have to learn advanced Fourier transforms to do the same with The Gimp. (Slight exaggeration on Rob's part, but in 2003 when that was written you did still have to have enough working brain cells to follow simple directions.)
Don't get me wrong, I use Windows for photos too, basically as a hugely bloated device driver for a proprietary PCI Sony Memory Stick. It's a shame to cripple an entire system just because a $30 flash memory chip.
When confronted with the inevitably obvious question for anyone buying a PC who knows UNIX but wants lots of eye candy -- So if you really just wanted it to work without hassle, why didn't you get a Mac? -- Rob of course answered that Windows was cheaper.
Windows is well monopolized. They manage to squeeze even otherwise sharp thinkers by pushing hardware manufacturers to support only Windows or more expensive solutions, facilitating slideware approaches to reality, and making things just good enough that you get used to how bad they are.
The free market at work? The lure of RSD? Laziness seems more fit to survive than the alternatives.
Posted by Mark at March 18, 2005 08:12 AM