How is that any different than what I said? The only thing that makes it difficult for people to use a new desktop when they have only ever used something else is because it is unfamiliar, not because it is necessarily objectively more difficult to learn.
Hell, you get people bitching at their phones sometimes after an OS update just because "things are different". They adapt in that case because they *have* to.... but given a choice, most people are going to want to stick with whatever it is that they know.
Let me guess. You drive a Tesla and make sure everyone you make an acquaintance of knows this.
No... I think Teslas are overpriced for what you get.
32G of ram costs only about $350.... and is quite far from the most expensive component in a computer. A modern MB and CPU can each cost much more than that.
Please explain what magical technological strides have been made to attack this problem differently in such novel ways that justify an 8,192 fold increase in RAM requirements to accomplish the exact same task that was being accomplished 20 years ago.
The computers *ARE* doing more today, however. *FAR* more. the fact that they apparently are doing it so well that you can't or won't even acknowledge it is irrelevant.
Never happen? Uh.... what is it that you suppose that people who believe they are using Linux are using then? Saying it will never happen just because it might not ever be popularly accepted is like telling some multi-millionaire that nobody else has ever heard of that they will never amount to anything just because they aren't famous.
Well no.... in my case it's 32G for the desktop + whatever applications you wanted to run. The notion of a desktop that you don't even actually run any applications on is kind of pointless.
I've was playing with KDE5 on an 8GB machine recently. I really felt the difference in peformance between that and what I normally use. I haven't ever tried it with just 16G though, so maybe that might be fine as well. I said 32G because I've used it at that size and find that it works well.
Oh, so because something required only 4 to 8 megs 20 years ago that should be acceptable now? 30 years ago things only required 640K.... 40 years ago, things didn't even require 64K.
The fact that memory requirements have only increased by not even an entire order of magnitude after nearly a quarter of a century is actually the very *OPPOSITE* of bloat.
And no, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for a desktop environment to need 32G to function well in today's world. It's 2017. Is it for everyone? No... but neither is an electric vehicle, for example... which typically comes with a sticker shock when you see that it's often double the price (and in some cases, even more) of an otherwise comparable ICE vehicle.
The issue is when you have multiple office users and computers, and printers, and applications which only run on Windows.
Actually, the problem is really that these users are only ever trained on Windows-only software... if instead they were trained on software that could run on Linux, then that would not be an issue.
And in fact, especially for something like office work, there is *VERY* little you would often need to do with a windows desktop that you could not accomplish with Linux as well. The only difference is in how the user is initially trained. Linux alternatives usually only seems harder to learn to some people because they are only familiar with Windows, not because the Linux software is necessarily objectively more difficult or time consuming to learn in the first place.
Considering such software is often freely available, there is no actual reason why a person could not be initially trained to use such software unless a substantial percentage of their work involves sharing documents with people who were trained only on Windows, thereby causing a catch-22.
It's my own observation that when most people are asked about what features they *really* depend upon in Office that are simply not present in the most comparable alternatives for Linux, the #1 answer seems to be simple full compatibility with MS Office itself. While the free tools for Linux can open and edit MS Office documents, often subtle formatting differences get introduced that can rather radically change how the document ends up looking, and this is, understandably, undesirable in many cases.
Mind you, this isn't even an issue when you and all of the people you may need to share such documents with are both using the alternative software in the first place. Considering the software is free, there's no real reason why this could not be done.
To be fair, bloat is really only an issue when it has a discernible negative impact on productivity. KDE works just fine if you have enough RAM... typically 32G or more, but I will agree that it's definitely not for smaller systems.
I don't think in real words either, but I have no difficulty in imagining a computer programming environment, for instance, that generates code that I imagine in my brain, even if I do not yet know what the specifics of it are. The concept of a code fragment begins as a mental envisioning of a general structure, which corresponds to some kind of pattern, and then as I concentrate on individual details of the pattern, they are then fleshed out in the resulting code, enabling the generation of the equivalent of many thousands of lines of code in moments.
Well yes... so you could be dealing with the exact same sort of phenomenon... just as you've seen that typing on a keyboard isn't sufficient to prevent something from being sent inadvertently.
I seem to recall somebody making a home computer video game about Skylab falling back to earth back when that event was a thing... allowing those that wanted to play the game to experience a facsimile of the real event as many times as they want (and always landing someplace different).
They can (and sometimes will) do that already... it doesn't work worth shit, because it's so rare that they actually will catch someone doing it.
The percentage of enforcement is so tiny that nobody else ever bats an eye.
How often do you see people smoking in areas near buildings where there are clearly labelled no-smoking signs. I see it all the time where I live. I have known countless people that smoke, but only know of one person I've met in my entire life that ever actually got a fine for doing this. They do it because the enforcement is so random and infrequent that nobody takes it seriously until it happens to them... (and if it does, they feel unjustly persecuted, because so many others are getting away with it).
A-la-carte programming (for channels beyond the most basic cable service that has no really good channels at all) is often available... but it rarely seems worth it, financially. You can pay more for just a half dozen a-la cart channels than you do for a basic cable package that comes with dozens of channels that you never watch.
Because it's still cheaper than subscribing to the 4 or 5 different streaming services you'd have to otherwise subscribe to in order to get 100% of the programs that you like. You can get about 80% with just one streaming service, and maybe 90% with 2, and it takes another 2 or 3 to get the remainder of the shows that you really want to watch.
If you can undo something by simply sending any appropriate mental commands to your fingers to press the appropriate keys, there's no real reason that you could not use mental commands to directly command whatever you were otherwise controlling by keyboard.
No... but why would you think a computer that could read your mind would do so? The very same so-called "filters" that you use to stop yourself from saying or doing every little thing you happen to think about could, at least in theory, also be used by a computer that can so evaluate a person's mental state to limit the data that a computer would accept from you as input.
Not to mention it would be a boon for people with disabilities who cannot communicate any other way.
That so-called filter is entirely in the brain itself though. In exactly the same way you can decide to not go through with physically typing what you might have briefly thought about, with a purely mental UI, one could decide to not mentally "transmit" whatever they might have at first wanted to do with no more effort than it takes to not speak every little thing you happen to think out loud.
The only way you could actually enforce the laws prohibiting it (and there are actual laws against it in every city I've ever lived in), is if you had cameras *EVERYWHERE*... and advanced image recognition software to instantly recognize when a person was breaking the law, and be able to make them accountable.
Ah... so of course all of the experts who are completely dumbfounded as to the actual cause of this even are overlooking this perfectly obvious explanation. Cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, you get people bitching at their phones sometimes after an OS update just because "things are different". They adapt in that case because they *have* to.... but given a choice, most people are going to want to stick with whatever it is that they know.
No... I think Teslas are overpriced for what you get.
32G of ram costs only about $350.... and is quite far from the most expensive component in a computer. A modern MB and CPU can each cost much more than that.
The computers *ARE* doing more today, however. *FAR* more. the fact that they apparently are doing it so well that you can't or won't even acknowledge it is irrelevant.
Never happen? Uh.... what is it that you suppose that people who believe they are using Linux are using then? Saying it will never happen just because it might not ever be popularly accepted is like telling some multi-millionaire that nobody else has ever heard of that they will never amount to anything just because they aren't famous.
Well no.... in my case it's 32G for the desktop + whatever applications you wanted to run. The notion of a desktop that you don't even actually run any applications on is kind of pointless.
I've was playing with KDE5 on an 8GB machine recently. I really felt the difference in peformance between that and what I normally use. I haven't ever tried it with just 16G though, so maybe that might be fine as well. I said 32G because I've used it at that size and find that it works well.
Oh, so because something required only 4 to 8 megs 20 years ago that should be acceptable now? 30 years ago things only required 640K.... 40 years ago, things didn't even require 64K.
The fact that memory requirements have only increased by not even an entire order of magnitude after nearly a quarter of a century is actually the very *OPPOSITE* of bloat.
And no, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for a desktop environment to need 32G to function well in today's world. It's 2017. Is it for everyone? No... but neither is an electric vehicle, for example... which typically comes with a sticker shock when you see that it's often double the price (and in some cases, even more) of an otherwise comparable ICE vehicle.
Actually, the problem is really that these users are only ever trained on Windows-only software... if instead they were trained on software that could run on Linux, then that would not be an issue.
And in fact, especially for something like office work, there is *VERY* little you would often need to do with a windows desktop that you could not accomplish with Linux as well. The only difference is in how the user is initially trained. Linux alternatives usually only seems harder to learn to some people because they are only familiar with Windows, not because the Linux software is necessarily objectively more difficult or time consuming to learn in the first place.
Considering such software is often freely available, there is no actual reason why a person could not be initially trained to use such software unless a substantial percentage of their work involves sharing documents with people who were trained only on Windows, thereby causing a catch-22.
It's my own observation that when most people are asked about what features they *really* depend upon in Office that are simply not present in the most comparable alternatives for Linux, the #1 answer seems to be simple full compatibility with MS Office itself. While the free tools for Linux can open and edit MS Office documents, often subtle formatting differences get introduced that can rather radically change how the document ends up looking, and this is, understandably, undesirable in many cases.
Mind you, this isn't even an issue when you and all of the people you may need to share such documents with are both using the alternative software in the first place. Considering the software is free, there's no real reason why this could not be done.
To be fair, bloat is really only an issue when it has a discernible negative impact on productivity. KDE works just fine if you have enough RAM... typically 32G or more, but I will agree that it's definitely not for smaller systems.
Yeah... that'd be just fine for catching people speeding.
(eyeroll)
I don't think in real words either, but I have no difficulty in imagining a computer programming environment, for instance, that generates code that I imagine in my brain, even if I do not yet know what the specifics of it are. The concept of a code fragment begins as a mental envisioning of a general structure, which corresponds to some kind of pattern, and then as I concentrate on individual details of the pattern, they are then fleshed out in the resulting code, enabling the generation of the equivalent of many thousands of lines of code in moments.
Well yes... so you could be dealing with the exact same sort of phenomenon... just as you've seen that typing on a keyboard isn't sufficient to prevent something from being sent inadvertently.
I seem to recall somebody making a home computer video game about Skylab falling back to earth back when that event was a thing... allowing those that wanted to play the game to experience a facsimile of the real event as many times as they want (and always landing someplace different).
How often do you see people smoking in areas near buildings where there are clearly labelled no-smoking signs. I see it all the time where I live. I have known countless people that smoke, but only know of one person I've met in my entire life that ever actually got a fine for doing this. They do it because the enforcement is so random and infrequent that nobody takes it seriously until it happens to them... (and if it does, they feel unjustly persecuted, because so many others are getting away with it).
A-la-carte programming (for channels beyond the most basic cable service that has no really good channels at all) is often available... but it rarely seems worth it, financially. You can pay more for just a half dozen a-la cart channels than you do for a basic cable package that comes with dozens of channels that you never watch.
Because it's still cheaper than subscribing to the 4 or 5 different streaming services you'd have to otherwise subscribe to in order to get 100% of the programs that you like. You can get about 80% with just one streaming service, and maybe 90% with 2, and it takes another 2 or 3 to get the remainder of the shows that you really want to watch.
What I meant was that there's no real reason you could not use mental commands to directly *undo* whatever you would otherwise control by keyboard.
If you can undo something by simply sending any appropriate mental commands to your fingers to press the appropriate keys, there's no real reason that you could not use mental commands to directly command whatever you were otherwise controlling by keyboard.
No... but why would you think a computer that could read your mind would do so? The very same so-called "filters" that you use to stop yourself from saying or doing every little thing you happen to think about could, at least in theory, also be used by a computer that can so evaluate a person's mental state to limit the data that a computer would accept from you as input.
Not to mention it would be a boon for people with disabilities who cannot communicate any other way.
That so-called filter is entirely in the brain itself though. In exactly the same way you can decide to not go through with physically typing what you might have briefly thought about, with a purely mental UI, one could decide to not mentally "transmit" whatever they might have at first wanted to do with no more effort than it takes to not speak every little thing you happen to think out loud.
And why do you suppose this would be forever technologically impossible?
If you didn't want it, then why would it obey it? Or are you supposing that what you want isn't part of your mindset?
Simple answer: because they can get away with it.
The only way you could actually enforce the laws prohibiting it (and there are actual laws against it in every city I've ever lived in), is if you had cameras *EVERYWHERE*... and advanced image recognition software to instantly recognize when a person was breaking the law, and be able to make them accountable.
Ah... so of course all of the experts who are completely dumbfounded as to the actual cause of this even are overlooking this perfectly obvious explanation. Cool.
How did you get so smart?
No... I responded to this... which isn't even an AC post, so I'm not sure how you thought I was responding to myself.