Slashdot Mirror
The Paradox of Choice
sproketboy writes "Psychology professor Barry Schwartz has written a book which is a must read by those wanting to get Linux on the Desktop.
Dr. Schwartz examines the problem of too much choice in our society. Maybe Microsoft has it right after all?
Here's a video interview with Dr. Schwartz,
a review of the book from the New Yorker and
more info from PBS." Of course, the choice issue applies to far more than desktop computers, but is still instructive in that area. Thanks to Stefan Hudson for a SciAm story that has more information.
I for one would like a many choices thankyou.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
There's more than one way to do it!
Its why Perl is so damn confusing.
I am saying it is invalid science! Based on subjective opinions. Oh- if I don't talk to another idiot in my apartment for more than 1 day, I become "Introvert". Score +1 in this column. Why? Because you decide this column gets +1 and not -10 so you can make up a system and sell it to become "scientist" like the real scientists who work in respected fields. It is called bull shit. Psychology and sociology make up scoring systems. It is all they do.
And psychologists don't tell me this and that about "understanding complex system" such as brain activity. That is field for neurology and brain surgeon. Do not compare yourselves to those people; they are much higher than you will ever be preaching Brigg-Myer and similar crap.
I suggest you read Slashdot
but you're not forced to store all that food and whatnot on your property.
I had to strain to get RedHat to fit onto a system that XP had no problem fitting onto. It didn't help that RedHat thinks it's a good idea to copy the entire CD to the HD before installing. And there's no obvious option (if there is even one) to install directly from the CD. I also have never had to swap a CD to install Windows.
And then when it was all said and done, even with a minimal installation, it was mostly junk on the harddrive. That RedHat box is now sitting up in my closet doing nothing. I already have Windows. So "it's free" doesn't mean anything. I just has an extra system so I thought I'd give it a shot again. Not impressed.
"That sounds like fascism, to me."
Sound like an intelligent thing to do to me. Nobody is saying other choices shouldn't be available. Just that all those choices shouldn't be in one single package. How hard is it to offer cut down versions of Mandrake? KDE edition contains all the KDE stuff. Gnome edition contains all the gnome stuff. Not hard.
It's very much fascism when the only choice is to download up to a gig and a half of crap and be be forced to burn it to CD and then have it all be crammed onto your system even though 90+% of it you don't need. And good luck getting rid of it. Windows has an easy to find and use remove programs. Not Linux.
It's not fascism to give people the choice of not having a choice. A clean install of Windows is very much that: clean. No junk. There's no such thing as a clean install of Linux. The options are bloated or more bloated.
When you buy a car you get very few choices. When you buy a car you don't get a dozen steering wheels to go with it. By your analogy, imagine Linux as going to a car dealership, buying a car and getting a truck load of every option imaginable that you're expected to store in your garage.
No thanks.
Ben
Work Safe Porn