Re: Convincing someone to switch to Linux
On Sun, Mar 16, 2003 at 03:05:57AM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
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> On Sun, Mar 16, 2003 at 10:29:42AM +1200, cr wrote:
> > Agreed, but unfortunately there's all this spurious 'compatible' crap.
> > Nobody was ever scared off buying a GM car because it wasn't
> > 'Ford-compatible'.
>
> Really? So that's why you see so many government issue vehicles that
> aren't a Ford Crown Victoria or a Chevrolet Impala, or if it's been on
> the road for a while, a Fordrolet Crown Impala. There's not a whole
> lot that can't be exchanged between those two on most model years.
Well, the analogy works better wrt British Fords and GMs. Over here,
one can proverbially assemble any set of Ford running gear into any
Ford bodyshell. So you can take the guts out of your 1300 Escort and
fit a Capri V6 and the overdrive gearbox out of a Transit van, and it
all just bolts together. You can play similar games within the
British/Vauxhall and German/Opel GM lines. But you can't put GM bits
in a Ford, or vide versa.
But as far as most drivers are concerned, Fords and GMs are
compatible. The steering wheel, pedals etc are all in the same
relative positions and work the same way. If you were to make a car
with even slightly different controls - like a different gearshift
pattern - nobody would buy it.
Pigeon
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