When I was at uni, I knew a guy who used to say his biggest hero in the Bible was Phineas, of Numbers 25 fame. Admittedly, God saying that you are “as zealous as I am for my honor” is nothing short of extraordinary… but to class him as your ultimate hero? A little eye-glazed mad-zealot for my taste. Then again, maybe I’m just soft and conservative.
As I’ve said before, I’m getting a new mac. So for the past few months, in my research, I’ve been scouring web blogs and discussion boards, trying to make an informed decision about what I’m spending quite a reasonable amount of money on.
Boy, do Apple zealots like to flame. And troll. And partake in all manner of web rudeness.
It must be said that there are plenty of Windows users who do exactly the same thing, namely follow this sort of line-of-thought: “You use a different operating system to me. Therefore you are clearly a narrow-minded, stupid, foolish waste of space, and I am vastly superior in every way, and have every right to write the most ridiculously obscene insults about your mother”.
Well, it actually comes out more like “Mac OS rulz!!!111!one!! Micro$oft are evil, and your are a …”
It’s extraordinary. People are incredible. Although considering human nature, and the cloak of anonymity the internet provides, such base instincts aren’t too surprising, I guess.
But yesterday, I found the cream of the crop. This site was at the more measured, sane end of office suite comparisons, comparing the (free, open-source) OpenOffice.org suite to (the evil, bloated, terrible, costly) Microsoft Office. It made a number of good points, and set about showing that for most users, the free version actually works rather well for a common set of tasks. Right up until the end:
“Look, do yourself a favor and set aside the natural skepticism that comes with trying something new. You’ll thank me later. After all, 49 million downloads can’t be wrong.”
Oh, millions of people can be wrong, alright.
