the poor quality of microsoft windows costs the world economy $170 billion per year in lost productivity due to crashes. this is four times bill gates’ net worth, so we are not talking pocket change, even for him, if he were forced to cover the cost of his deeds. the flaw in this argument is that almost no one’s life is really ruled by any os or software. we choose to use these things. ‘lost productivity’ is a meaningless phrase in many situations. if a 24 hour cake factory’s machines go down and they can’t put battenburgs together for six hours they’ve lost production since they can’t get those six hours back. that most desktop machines crash occassionally and we all lose a little work is rarely such a major problem. i’ve pulled my fair share of all nighters rewriting, rejigging, refinding or rebuilding in the aftermath of computer madness and i generally feel that having the chance to redo adds greater long term benefits to the world than the lost work subtracts.

also on the point of people losing work time in futile attempts to print out power point slides: upgrade to acetate and ohp markers. i have no sympathy. [found via cafe au lait]