I'm Somewhere between a Morlock and an Elloy...

On Ned Stevenson's In the Beginning There Was a Command Line: I really liked Ned Stevenson's comparison of operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS to car models. It creates a good visual picture of the kind of operating system a person would want to ally himself with. Even moreso I really liked the comparison to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine where the Elloys are the beautiful people who don't care to know how things work but use the system. I think that pretty much comprises most of the planet. I am the kind of person who tries to know how things work, and I'm proud to admit that I used to know MS DOS really well. Iknow I'm not the only one out there who did - see Steve's post. At that time, you needed to know DOS, there was no way around it. In fact, I think all the operating systems since Windows 3.1 or 95 really insult the intelligence of the user by putting things behind barriers so the user can't get to them. Me, I want to know what's behind them. As far as I'm concerned, newer versions of any operating system are just evidence of pithy improvements and vigorous attempts to convince consumers that things are different or "new and improved," when they're not.