Re: best o/s survey...someone's missing a few bits...

jt wrote:
>...
> However, I cannot help but look at the practical side of things, as well...
>
> It's been noted that this was a VERY unscientific "survey".  How ELSE can
> You explain the fact SOLARIS led the pack by a fairly wide margin...?!?
> (And how did Windoze get ANY votes...?!? ;-)
>
> The people at the Unix site can stand on their "high" principles, if they
> want, but I haven't seen any explanation of why the iSeries was a late
> entry, in the first place...  (Nor why the OS was referred to as "AS/400"
> either.)
 >...

I for one noted that that this is an unscientific survey.  More
precisely, it is a "self-selected" survey.  Just like the
semi-regular "RPG Enhancement Poll" we released last week.  Surveys
like these do not represent the opinions of a representative sample
of the population.  They just represent the opinions of the people
who choose to answer.

In this case, look at the web site www.unixguide.net.  On the main
page, you see right away a list of six Posix operating systems:
Solaris, Linux, AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, and Tru-64.  It is those six
that are on the survey (plus Windows, which I assume is there only
for comic relief).  It is only those six that unixguide cares about,
and presumably, the purpose of the survey is to determine relative
interest in those particular O/S's *for visitors to unixguide*.
(BTW, for those of us interested in Unix-style O/S's, there is some
great information on that web site!)

And so, why is Solaris in the lead in that poll?  Clearly, the
majority of visitors to unixguide who have an opinion are interested
in Solaris.  Due to the nature of that type of poll, you can't make
any conclusion other than that.

The webmaster at unixguide had nothing to lose by adding another
operating system to the poll.  But clearly, the ballot stuffing gave
him a great excuse to give the OS/400 community a black eye.

Thanks.

Hans