George W. Bush seems to have some sort of Crazedar. That is, he sends out some sort of subliminal signal to those on the left that drives them insane and lose all sense of perspective. This hasn't just affected politicians and activists, it's affected journalists too.

So incensed are some left-winger journalists and activists that they have gone off and formed a new media network to combat the "growing right wing media influence". It's called Central Air Media. There's a certain militancy to the whole thing. A zealotry that didn't exist before Bush. A zealotry that extends far beyond a few people trying to start an overtly liberal media network. It's made its presence felt on network news, in newspapers (particularly the New York Times), and elsewhere.

The net result is that the American media, which was long suspected of having a left-wing bias, has moved enough to the left that only a few far left apologists remain convinced that there is no left-wing bent to the mainstream American media (there are a few that have gone off the deep end so far that they are convinced there's a right-wing bias to the media now).

One obvious beneficiary of this trend has been Fox News which has, since Bush's election, become the top cable news network. Of course, that's all relative as cable news still gets a tiny amount of viewers relative to other mediums. There is an ongoing debate about whether Fox News is right-wing.  I tend to say that that depends on how far to the left you are. I've never been able to find someone on the political left to articulate exactly why they think Fox News is right-wing. The usual response is, "Everyone knows Fox is a right wing tool!" Why? How?

Yesterday on C-Span, Al Franken tried to argue that Bill O'Reilly is right-wing.  To a right-winger, Bill O'Reilly is pretty damn liberal. In reality, O'Reilly is Catholic. He's got a sprinkling from all sides. But when someone like Franken tries to lump O'Reilly in with Limbaugh he just demonstrates the intolerance some on the left have for dissenting opinions. You either march lock-step with their agenda or you're a right-wing nut.

The intolerance for dissenting opinion has resulted in a movement to establish an official "liberal" media network. As if ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time and the Washington Post aren't enough.  This new network, "Central Air" is bringing on Al Franken to co-host a liberal radio talk-show. Oops, I'm sorry, "Progressive".

As Eric Alterman, who writes for MSNBC and occasionally for Newsweek said, "Liberal journalists are journalists first, conservative journalists are conservatives first." (Yea, you're truly putting journalistic integrity above personal rantings over at MSNBC...).

The contempt that Franken, Alterman, and their ilk have for dissent is one reason why the left has lost so much of its influence in recent years. Their contempt doesn't stop for conservatives, it extends into their views of the average American. "The problem with the average American isn't that they're ignorant but rather they're indoctrinated by the right" said one liberal commentator last night.  In their eyes, the vast right wing media complex they imagine has to be fought against.

In reality, they would prefer a system in which only enlightened people such as themselves delivered the news. Liberals, after all, are enlightened enough to be fair whereas those fascist conservatives are only interested in "indoctrinating" those gullible ditto-head masses. Don't take my word for that, that's essentially what Franken and Alterman said last night. Alterman claims on his site to have been on his "best" behavior too. BTW, Altermen also has an anti-Bush book coming out too. The Crazedar is done its work on him.

Alterman's views are particularly useful for understanding the left-wing mindset which can be summed up as follows:

• Liberals are more enlightened and civilized and thus able to be "fair" in their reporting
• Most Americans have liberal views and it is only through a tiny right-wing minority that is well organized that the will of the people is thwarted year in and year out
• Conservatives are ideologues and incapable of being fair
• The mainstream media may be populated by liberals but they try to be fair. The vast right wing media is just pushing its message

Of course, Alterman wouldn't even concede that NPR has any left-wing bias at all. Is he really that far gone? But he sure is quick to talk about the big right-wing bias. Which begs the question, what vast right-wing media network?

Let's do a quick table with the left side being the "spin" and the right side the reality.

The Spin	Reality Check
"Talk Radio"	Yea, AM Radio! Tax Payer funded NPR is on in every significant market in the United States on FM. Of course, since Alterman wouldn't even concede NPR's bias he would shrug that off.
The Weekly Standard	The skin site, WinCustomize.com gets more traffic than this site. It has about 30,000 subscribers. Whoo.
The Wallstreet Journal	The whole paper? No. Just the single editorial page.
Fox News	No specifics ever given other than "O'Reilly" who is not right-wing. But let's say it is right-wing. It's a cable news channel. One. Out of how many? It's no more right-wing than CNN is left wing.
New York Post	Yep, it's right wing. Ever see the New York Post at an airport? Not I (other than in New York). New York Times, however, is the world's most popular newspaper and has in the past couple of years become flagrantly left-wing (remember the 40+ articles against that Augusta country club?)

That's it pretty much. Wow. It's vast.

Yet conservatives have to deal regularly with statements such as these:

"He went along with having an openly gay congressman address the convention last night, yet bush opposes hate crimes legislation, gay marriage, and gay adoption." -ABC's Dean Reynolds on World News Tonight right after the Republican National Convention.  You see, not being for those things is akin to being a homophobe really..

"The GOP platform is again very strongly pro-life and rejects abortion rights, and the platform specifically comes out against gay unions and against legal protections baesd on sexual preferences. So is this really an open, compassionate, tolerant party?" -ABC's Charles Gibson to Lynne Cheney on ABC's Good Morning America.   Once again, if you are not for left-wing policies, it's because you're full of hate.

"Since 9/11 the word "terrorist" has come to mean someone who is radical, Islamic, and foreign. But many believe we have as much to fear from a homegrown group of anti-abortion crusaders." -ABC's Jami Floyd on 20/20 just 2 months after 9/11. Oh yea, I am sure "many" of you reading this have just as much fear of anti-abortion crusaders as Al Queda.

But it's not really the flagrant left-wing bias stuff out there. One can nit-pick that sort of thing all day if you look hard enough.  There are entire websites dedicated to it.  What Americans are increasingly becoming frustrated with, in my opinion, is being treated like ignorant cattle by the "mainstream" media.

The most obvious symptom of that contempt is the use of labels. Don't believe there's a bias in the media? Watch the shows, any shows and look for the labeling.  "Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh..." versus "Satirist Al Franken". Why not "Liberal commenator Al Franken"?

Or the "Hard Right-wing congressman Newt Gingrich" versus "Senator Ted Kennedy".  Ever heard the term "Hard left" used at all to describe any congressman or senator?  Ever hear liberal or left wing labels put in front of NOW? Or ACLU?  On the other hand, the NRA regularly gets labeled as conservative or right-wing or worse. And while the Christian-Coalition is nearly always labeled as a right-wing or conservative group, the NAACP is almost never identified as left-wing or liberal.

Labeling is just one example where you can easily see the biases. But the biases are often very tough to spot unless you're really into this stuff. For example, there are two big Washington think-tanks on political philosophies: The Heritage Foundation (conservative) and The Brookings Institute (liberal). Besides the fact that the Heritage Foundation is nearly always labeled, the selective use of guests from these foundations can be very telling. If you follow the news closely, odds are you have heard of the Brookings Institute much more the Heritage Foundation. That would be because ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and particularly NPR have guests from the Brookings Institute much more often than from the Heritage Foundation. Not only does it get much more air time but rarely is its political affiliation identified.

NPR had an almost surreal interview about 3 weeks ago regarding Gays in the military.  NPR had two guests to debate the issue about what the military policy concerning gays in the military should be.  The two guests? Two former high ranking officers from the military -- both gay and both in favor of openly allowing gays in the military. Way to go NPR. You're right Alterman, no bias there.

And of course we won't even get into the soft-influence from Hollywood which has a very far left of center perspective on the world. Franken, true to form, tried to argue that Hollywood isn't that left by pointing out Arnold Swartz nagger is right-wing. Well yea, barely. So okay, score one for the Republicans against the thousands of Clooney's, Gere's, Streisand's, etc.

Unfortunately for the media, capitalism works its magic. The mainstream media is losing its grip. Contrary to their view that the typical American is some knuckle-dragging imbecile, the average American is no fool. They can detect spin and political correctness. And they're getting fed up with it and turning to other mediums.

It will be interesting to see how Central Air Media does. I believe it will fail miserably. From a business perspective, I don't think they've done their demographics homework.  But the real "root cause" of its failure, in my opinion, is that most of the media is already to the left of mainstream America and people have had their fill. That's why sources that are more in tune with American sensibilities or to the right are doing so well. We've had enough and we're not going to take it anymore.  One wonders though, when Central Air Media bombs, will there be any introspection by the Frankens and Moores and Altermans of the world that maybe they are just a bit out of touch?

My wife and I went out to see "Big Fish". Big Fish is a movie in which a son must try to put together the real life story of his father. The dying father spent his life telling his son tall tales of his life. Rather than telling a story as "just the facts", the father flavored his story leaving his adult-aged son bewildered. What is true and what is fantasy?

The movie goes through the father's life as he told it. A truly remarkable, even seemingly impossible string of adventures that let the view trying to figure out which parts are true and which parts are flavored by the story-teller.

It's an enjoyable heart felt movie that I recommend to couples looking for a good movie to see together.

Our games team is working on a new game called The Political Machine. It won't be out until May and the website hasn't even been announced. But I'll share it with you guys here.

It's actually a strategy game that can be played either single player or multiplayer on the net. We've been doing a great deal of demographic research to find out what issues matter to voters in which states and splice it between Democrats and Republicans. If you click on the game link on its page you can get more details.

There aren't very many political based games out there and the ones I have seen are immensely complicated. What we're trying to do is create one that could almost play like a board game. Something fairly straight forward to play but has very in depth strategies to master.

The website is still under construction but users here should be pleased to hear that it will share the same database as JoeUser.com. That means your account here at JoeUser.com will work there. In addition, the forums are shared as well so blogs and forum posts in the Politics category will automatically show up there since they're using the same database.

One of the things I've been surprised about on forums, and I wrote a post about this recently, is just how poor at debating many younger debaters are. They seem interested in debating but it's as if they have no idea how to debate. Debating isn't just arguing. It is an exchange of ideas in which both sides try to make the case for their position. Lawyers in court, in theory, debate. They dont' just yell back and forth "Did so!" "Did not!" for hours until the judge flogs them.

Highschools used to have debate classes. I don't know if they still do. I'm only 32 so I was young enough still to grow up with computers and BBSes and such. But today's young adults have had the Internet for most of their lives. You would think their skills would be sharper. They think that debates are pointless. Or that they're just arguments in which loud mouthed people trade epitephs back and forth. They're not. Debates offer a way for us to exchange ideas, thoughts, and opinions. They aren't there to "win" or "lose". They are there to make us think about things. I dont' want to pick purely on younger people, I see people of all ages trying to demonstrate their intellectual ineptitude to the world. But younger people tend to be the ones who take the most simplistic positions on issues and then insist that those who disagree with them are idiots or (my favorite) "ignorant".

Being good at debating isn't really that hard. There are basically 3 rules:

(1) Target subject matter that you have an interest in and have sufficient back ground knowledge. I don't know anything about, for instance, broadway musicals. So I wouldn't interject myself in a debate about the merits of one musical or another. Other subjects have a lot of material readily available. The most obvious one being history. People who haven't bothered to invest time reading history annoy those who have in debates because no one likes to have to sit down and do the leg work for some ignorant loud mouth. Go onto a World War II Usenet forum and you'll see a lot of aggravation as some neophyte comes in peddling either some Internet myth or some popular culture misconception. One common example are those people who think dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was an atrocity. These are people who have clearly not spent any time reading about the Pacific war. Trivia: Why was Hiroshima chosen to drop the atomic bomb? Because the air force had flattened nearly every other major city in Japan and there were only a few cities left. There are ample interviews of Hiroshima survivors and survivors of the various Toykya incidiary attacks to realize that the horror is pretty similar either way with the difference merely being the # of planes required to inflict it.

The point being: Pick subject matters you have invested some time to learn about. I have a long list of topics I'm in the process of researchig. I have an article on Halliburton. I know the basic facts for my article but I need to do more research on it. Yes, it takes work, but if you want to have a useful discussion and not just piss people off, you need to know the topic you're choosing to write an opinion piece on.

(2) Backup your assertions with evidence if the assertion isn't one that is commonly understood by others who are reasonably famliar with the subject. Also, be specific. Avoid vague generalities in your assertion. I.e. don't say "America is a bully." say "I think America is a bully because of the seeming arrogance displayed by this administration with its high handed treatment of the UN during the Iraq crisis. There doesn't seem to have been a compelling reason to attack Iraq when it did." I would disagree with that statement but it at least has enough meat to have a discussion about. By contrast, impression does the "America is a bully" give off? To me, it sounds pathetic and simpering. The words of someone jealous of American power and success.

(3) Offer alternatives. Nit-pickers quickly earn the contempt of other debaters. Who wants to deal with people who just sit around bitching about what other people have done. Offer an alternative action. Tell them what should have been done instead.

These 3 rules will help create better debates with people and accomplish what debating is really about -- thinking about things in new and interesting ways.

Have fun!

They didn't have blogs back when I was 18. Back when I was 18 (14 years ago), I had a BBS but that wasn't the same. But I kept a journal. Unfortunately.

A journal is the same as a diary. Except guys don't keep diaries so we call them journals. It's about marketing. This past week I went back and read my journal which took place between the age of 17 to 20. I remembered how melodramatic life seemed back then. But until I re-read my journal I had no idea just how bad it was.

When you're 17-20 you're probably starting to experience a ton of new things in rapid sucession. And all these things can seem overwhelming. But in reality, it's just the tip of the iceberg. My journal entries are like some of the blogs I've seen here by kids of that age. An argument with a girlfriend (or boyfriend), a bad day at school or work, an argument with the parents, whatever, it all seemed to be so important, so huge, so monumental. It wasn't. It just seems so at the time because we have nothing to compare those experiences with.

If I had a time machine and could use it to go back and give myself advice it would go something like this:

Have fun. Don't take things too seriously but at the same time try not to do anything that will screw up your life in the long term. Use this yardstick to measure important decisions: How do you think this decision will affect things 10 years from now? If the answer is badly then don't do it. If it won't have any affect on it then go right ahead.

17-21 were amongst the most exciting days of my life. But they weren't the happiest. My happiest days were to come. But it's easy to lose sight that ones knowledge, wisdom, understanding of the world, are still fledgling. Because at the time, I and my contemporaries thought we knew everything. WE had deep conversations and thus were philosophical intellectuals. But in hindsight, what we considered philosophical and intellectual then was really just superficial claptrap. I suspect that in days ahead I'll look back at being 32 and come to a similar conclusion about my mid-20s to early 30s.

Life just keeps going on and we keep growing (in more ways than one).

While PC users seem obsessed in having a dock on their PC and use programs like ObjectDock to try to get something similar to what is on MacOS X, not all Mac users are enthralled by the Mac dock.

Here's an article that gives 9 reasons the Mac dock sucks

Linux will never make it mainstream on the desktop unless Microsoft does something incredibly stupid.

I fought in the trenches of the OS Wars back in the 1990s. During the height of the Microsoft-IBM battle for the desktop with Windows 3.1 vs. OS/2, myself and Dave Barnes from IBM went on the road together demoing OS/2 and OS/2 + Object Desktop to HP, Gateway, Dell, Compaq, and the rest in an effort to get OS/2 pre-loaded.

At the time, OS/2 was remarkably better. There was no debate about that. Windows 3.1 was a 16bit shell on DOS that could barely multitask, crashed constantly and had a primitive shell.  By contrast, OS/2 2.1 was a full 32 bit OS with preemptive multitasking, multithreading, an object oriented shell that could even run DOS, Windows as well as OS/2 programs.  OS/2 was a far better choice.

And OS/2 still lost. Linux advocates are stuck on the edges nit-picking some piddly issue here and there about Windows. It is very unlikely that ever again an OS will have such a clear and easy to see set of advantages like the kinds OS/2 had over Windows. And if OS/2, backed by IBM, couldn't defeat Microsoft, who in 1994/1995 was much less powerful than they are today, I just don't see what chance Linux has even if they do get their act together.

Which brings up the next issue, Linux advocates. Unlike Mac users who have a good reason to brag about MacOS X (particularly 10.3), Linux, as a desktop OS, is inferior. Its best argument for it is that it's "free".  But when you can get a Dell PC with Windows XP on it for $399 (including monitor), such arguments seem kind of weak.  Linux, as a desktop, feels taped together. It has so many rough edges. And it delivers no significant benefit over Windows for those rough edges.

That was ultimately what doomed OS/2 - by 1997 when Windows NT 4.0 was available and mature OS/2 wasn't delivering anything significant over Windows NT in exchange for the host of minor annoynces OS/2 had.  That new piece of hardware that either didn't work under OS/2 or required some weird tweaking. That program you wanted to try out that just didn't quite work under emulation in OS/2 for some reason. That web page that didn't display quite how it was supposed to because it was using ActiveX or some new version of Shockwave or whatever got old too.

OSes can get away with such announces if they provide something blatantly concrete in return. I just don't see what Linux delivers in exchange for the pains it requires of its users. Linux advocates on the net tend to fall into the old "OS/2 hard luck syndrome" (as we used to call it). Where for whatever reason, every possible problem one could have with Windows seemed to happen to Linux (or OS/2) advocates such as system crashing, lost data, fires, you name it. Such arguments are never compelling to normal users who found Windows ME (ack) "good enough" and Windows XP to be a panacea of stability. The same is true of arguments that boil down to "I don't need that feature." which regularly comes up when discussing software that isn't available or features missing in a "equivlanet" piece of software.

For these reasons, I think Linux will always be a hobbiest OS on the desktop and a good server OS for those either on a budget or who need to a very custom solution.

Recently I wrote two articles that tried to explain Tolkien's mythology on Lord of the Rings in fairly plain terms. You can read them here and here.

Jaime writes:

Brad- thanks for your helpful, plain language articles. Just rewatched the first movie with a bunch of friends, and even those of us who read the Silmarillon, etc. couldn't remember them well enough to answer some background questions that your articles answered nicely. We still have some questions I thought you might know the answers to:
 

1) What's the deal with the 19 other rings? Who made them- it says in the movie  "they were all deceived' and we know Sauron could control them through the one ring, so did he make them and hand them out in disguise?
 

2) We know that the corrupted kings who bore  the 9 rings for men became ringwraiths. Were they numinor kings? And why was Isildur spared? And what happened to the elf and dwarf rings- were their bearers able to keep using the rings?
 

3) Nobody could remember- what's the deal with Aragorn being exiled? How long has it been since Gondor had a king, and why is Aragorn recognized as the heir but still in exile?
 

4) Is Elrond the elf King, or just a leader elf?
 

1) There 20 rings total (including the one Sauron made).  But Sauron only made 1 ring.  The other 19 were created by the elves. Of those 19 that Jaime refers to, all but 3 of them were "touched" by Sauron.  You see, at one time, Sauron was able to take the guise of a noble and wise person. Remember in The Fellowship of the Ring when Saruman at first came across as Gandalf's friend? Sauron was able to do this to the elves but much more so. The elves had no idea that Sauron was a bad guy at this point and Sauron taught them the craft of creating these rings. So the elves created these rings. The greatest of the elven Ring Makers was the lord of Eregion named Celembrimbor.  He created the 3 most powerful of the rings which had special powers. Elrond, Gladriel, and Gandalf wore those rings (you can see the rings on their fingers in the movie even though they aren't really mentioned much).

Eregion was a land that was just west of Moria and was destroyed in the last war with Sauron and the elves aren't there any more. That's why the entrance to Moria that the fellowship traveled through was there in the first place - an easy way for the elves to visit the dwarves who, at that time, got along okay.

What I find amazing about this plot is how applicable it is today. Think of middle earth magic like software. Sauron, taking the guise of a wise, trustworthy teacher, showed the elves how to create these rings (software). But in doing so, he knew where all the back doors were, all the ways he could hack into the rings.

Then in secret he went and forged one ring that would be able to harness all the power of all those rings as well as those who wore them. Once he did that, the elves got rid of all but the 3 rings which they simply took off.  But to make a ring of such power to control so many powerful rings as well as such powerful minds, Sauron had to invest much of his native essence into that ring. Magic, in middle earth, is spiritual energy. It doesn't just come from no where. And it's not re-generating (i.e. it's not like mana). Every time you use some you have to invest some of your life force so to speak into it. Eventually all magical things fade. The 3 rings, it should be pointed out, were actually created to postpone the fading of all magical things and did a good job at it.

Anyway, Sauron recovered all but the 3 elven rings and then distributed them.  7 to dwarves and 9 to men.  The 9 men who took them became kings in their time but eventually became mastered by Sauron and a slave to his ring and faded into being wraiths -- the Ring wraiths aka the Nazgul.

2) The ringwraiths were "dark" Numenorians.  Before the fall of Numenor, Numenor had established colonies of conquest in Middle Earth. In their time, some of these leaders became petty kings who came in contact with Sauron and were granted one of the rings.  Isildur wasn't "spared", he and his family never trusted Sauron and thus were never ensnared.

A little note on how powerful Numenor was - Sauron pissed off the Numenorians at their high point by contesting them for control of Middle Earth. Sauron, at the height of his power, with a massive army went to meet the Numenorian army. But the Numenorian army was so powerful that Sauron's army fled without a fight and Sauron was taken prisoner and taken back to the island of Numenor. Of course, Sauron has other forms of power than brute force and as was written elsewhere eventually corrupted the Numenorians from within.  But it does go to show how powerful Numenor was. Sauron had his ring with him at the time and his army and was still so outclassed by the Numenorians that his army cowered in the presence of the Numenorians. Kind of makes Gondor look pathetic eh?

Now, with regards to the dwarf rings - they were eventually all lost. The rings were cursed since they were ultimately controlled by the 1 ring. Dwarves couldn't be controlled by Sauron but he could encourage their darker natures to grow and the result was that each of the 7 dwarf kings became fantastically rich as the rings they worse ultimately led them to great riches which became the foundation of the 7 golden hordes of treasure. Unfortunately, dragons eventually came in and took those hordes and consumed most of the rings. The Hobbit actually deals with 1 of those hordes whose dragon, Smaug, probably consumed one of the 7 rings. The dwarven rings I believe are all lost by the end of the stories.

3) That is a bit sketchy I agree. So here's my take on it. Aragorn was born in the north and early in his life he fell in love with Arwen. But Elrond made clear to him, "My daughter will marry no other than the king of Arnor and Gondor and the opportunity for reunion will be a long while coming by the terms of men." And so Aragorn went out into exile into the world to became the world's greatest warrior biding his time for the opportunity to one day reclaim the kingship. He did so quietly and under many names for he knew that Sauron would return and that eventually the 1 ring would be found and only then would he be truly tested.

Gondor had been without a king for a long while, hundreds of years. My knowledge on that a part is sketchy. The last king of Gondor I believe died in a plague.

4) That's a bit sketchy too. Not all elves are the same. Elrond, like Gladriel, is of the Noldor. That is a type of elf race. He is also partly a Sindarian elf. Heck, there's some Maiar blood in him too but we'll try not to get too complicated. 

By the time of Lord of the Rings, there just aren't enough Noldor elves left to be using the term King anymore. He's the lord of Rivendell. The last high king of the Noldor was named Gil-Galad who died fighting Sauron.  The opening scene of Lord of the Rings should have showed two people being killed by Sauron and not just Isildur's father. The other person who Sauron killed in single combat was Gil-Galad, high king of the Noldor.

But that was the last alliance of men and elves and after that the Noldor slowly migrated back to the far west and their numbers dwindled to the point where the "realm" of Elrond is basically a large bed and breakfast type place called Rivendell.

Elrond, by the way, was born in Middle Earth and was going on 7,000 years old by the end of the story.

HP has no plans to support Windows Media Audio (WMA) in its forthcoming own-branded iPod product, contrary to earlier reports.

HP product marketing manager Muffi Ghadali told Wired: 'We're not going to be supporting WMA for now."

He said the company had chosen to work with the most popular digital music distribution service, and wanted to focus on a single format in order not to confuse customers.

Microsoft and others have declared that choosing to adopt the open standards-based AAC format championed by Apple deprives consumers of "freedom of choice". By this, the company means consumers are not using its proprietary Windows Media Audio, which it claims is an industry standard.

However, Apple currently dominates the market, with 70 per cent of digital music sales and 30 per cent market share of iPod music players by units (55 per cent by revenues). Apple-sold music uses the open industry standard, AAC.

 Neowin.net

 

Linux will never make it mainstream on the desktop unless Microsoft does something incredibly stupid.

I fought in the trenches of the OS Wars back in the 1990s. During the height of the Microsoft-IBM battle for the desktop with Windows 3.1 vs. OS/2, myself and Dave Barnes from IBM went on the road together demoing OS/2 and OS/2 + Object Desktop to HP, Gateway, Dell, Compaq, and the rest in an effort to get OS/2 pre-loaded.

At the time, OS/2 was remarkably better. There was no debate about that. Windows 3.1 was a 16bit shell on DOS that could barely multitask, crashed constantly and had a primitive shell. By contrast, OS/2 2.1 was a full 32 bit OS with preemptive multitasking, multithreading, an object oriented shell that could even run DOS, Windows as well as OS/2 programs. OS/2 was a far better choice.

And OS/2 still lost. Linux advocates are stuck on the edges nit-picking some piddly issue here and there about Windows. It is very unlikely that ever again an OS will have such a clear and easy to see set of advantages like the kinds OS/2 had over Windows. And if OS/2, backed by IBM, couldn't defeat Microsoft, who in 1994/1995 was much less powerful than they are today, I just don't see what chance Linux has even if they do get their act together.

Which brings up the next issue, Linux advocates. Unlike Mac users who have a good reason to brag about MacOS X (particularly 10.3), Linux, as a desktop OS, is inferior. Its best argument for it is that it's "free". But when you can get a Dell PC with Windows XP on it for $399 (including monitor), such arguments seem kind of weak. Linux, as a desktop, feels taped together. It has so many rough edges. And it delivers no significant benefit over Windows for those rough edges.

That was ultimately what doomed OS/2 - by 1997 when Windows NT 4.0 was available and mature OS/2 wasn't delivering anything significant over Windows NT in exchange for the host of minor annoynces OS/2 had. That new piece of hardware that either didn't work under OS/2 or required some weird tweaking. That program you wanted to try out that just didn't quite work under emulation in OS/2 for some reason. That web page that didn't display quite how it was supposed to because it was using ActiveX or some new version of Shockwave or whatever got old too.

OSes can get away with such announces if they provide something blatantly concrete in return. I just don't see what Linux delivers in exchange for the pains it requires of its users. Linux advocates on the net tend to fall into the old "OS/2 hard luck syndrome" (as we used to call it). Where for whatever reason, every possible problem one could have with Windows seemed to happen to Linux (or OS/2) advocates such as system crashing, lost data, fires, you name it. Such arguments are never compelling to normal users who found Windows ME (ack) "good enough" and Windows XP to be a panacea of stability. The same is true of arguments that boil down to "I don't need that feature." which regularly comes up when discussing software that isn't available or features missing in a "equivlanet" piece of software.

For these reasons, I think Linux will always be a hobbiest OS on the desktop and a good server OS for those either on a budget or who need to a very custom solution.