How does this impact the field of computers?
We see that an Intel Pentium II processor is better than an AMD K6-III processor at doing video compression, so we generalize that Pentium II is better than K6-III and that Intel is better than AMD, period. We established that. We can't go back and re-analyze the fact simply because AMD put out a new CPU. That takes time, and we don't have it. We know that Intel is better and it will take a lot of people saying the contrary for us to give up this belief. So until we give it up we do the following. Whenever someone comes up with the preposterous idea that brands don't really matter, that we forgot that we shouldn't care about AMD or Intel but about which product does better what we want to do (and that is video compression), we tell them they're stupid. And wait for a fanboy of the other team to show up (in this case AMD), a fanboy who's as close-minded as we are, to start a flame war and call him retarded for even considering those things CPUs.
Let's take another example, the classical flame war of the major operating systems:
- John is an amateur painter. He uses a computer to mainly process and create digital pictures, which he uploads to his deviantart account. He uses a Mac and is quite satisfied with it. It has a nice and friendly user interface and does everything he needs. He always used a Mac and is very proficient with it. Money's not an issue for him.
- Jim is a fanatic gamer. He also bought a Mac, an iMac, because it was a hip thing to do. He soon discovered though that not all the games he wanted were available for OSX and the hardware wasn't up to the task of playing the latest games smoothly when emulating the Windows environment.
- Jack uses an old PC. It's quite weak from the hardware point of view, but it's enough for Jack. He only needs it to check his mail, browse a bit and chat with his friends via IM. Jack is a bit strapped for cash, so he downloaded a pirated copy of Windows Vista (let's say this was before Windows 7). But now his PC is quite slow. He needs to wait about 5 minutes just for his PC to boot and start the web browser.
- Joe is a student, known for being flat broke most of the time. He managed to get some used components from various sources and assembled a PC with less than 200$ spent. He installed Ubuntu on it, which runs smoothly. He's been needing a PC for his homework assignments.
- John did OK. He filled his needs.
- Jim did wrong getting a iMac. Just because the "I'm a Mac vs. I'm a PC" commercials made PCs look as fit only for Excel charts and Macs good at everything else... (and somehow transformed PC from "Personal Computer" to "Computer running Windows") doesn't mean they are.
- Jack, besides doing something illegal, also did something wrong. He could have used a Linux distro.
- Joe did OK.
Regardless of how they did, they're all trolling the fanboy forums, poking at the other camps for being uptight, nerds or retards. And they're all missing the point. They're religulous, with their own God Question.
We should go on and pursue our needs and desires, but we tend to forget them, and are too lazy to go back and reanalyze the situation. We forget that we need something to browse safely and go into flame wars about things like which browser is better, failing to understand that what's best for us isn't best for everyone. Some need security, some need speed, some need convenience, ease of use. Sure, like operating systems, all browser makers say they deliver the best of each, but we know (or should) that it's not true. You can't be the best at everything.
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