...does play all the latest games and software which I need (the alternatives suck, try comparing Photoshop with GIMP),
That's funny because it shows that you are obviously not a graphic designer. And if you are, you're a really bad one. One wat was just told wat buttons to click to get teh perty pictures.
I think we're both trying to say the same thing actually. I'm not really saying that proprietary software has never done anything, I'm just taking objection to the idea that it has done anything amazilngly new or innovative recently. Not that that's a bad thing per se, as you say, old things like spreadsheets are pretty good at what they do, and they haven't been significantly updated recently.
When someone says 'xyz is expensive...' it is implying 'xyz is more expensive than similar items...'.
Of course there is no absolute definition of 'expensive'. Everyone knows that. That's why when anyone says that something is expensive they imply the above expansion.
Just because one thing is cheaper than another doesn't make that other thing "expensive."
Yes it does. You're getting confused here. What you're thinking about is 'value' not 'expensiveness*'. If you have a $0.30 apple and a $0.50 orange, the orange is more expensive than the apple. It's no use trying to argue whether the apple is better or worse than the orange, the orange will always be more 'expensive'. Even if it has a firewiere port.
Now, what you can start debating is 'value'.
How this is relevant to the conversation is that not everyone wants a better graphics card. They want to do word processing. They don't care whether OSX is better or not. They don't want iLife apps. They don't want a firewire port. Or integrated speakers. So, the macintosh is more expensive. You're paying for all this crap you don't want.
People often make the comparison of macintoshes being like Ferraris. Well, to extend the analogy, would someone come up to you in the street and say "Ferraris aren't expensive. They're only $100,000. And think of what you're getting for that. Really cheap."? No, because it is accepted that Ferraris are expensive.
*-Sorry for turning an adjective into a noun so inelegantly.
I knew someone would bring up iTMS, and I don't really condsider it software. I'd put it more in the category of webstores. Like amazon. You wouldn't call amazon innovative software, would you? The software is secondary to the fact that it's a shop.
Aqua is based on openstep which is over 10 years old. The prettyness may be new, but that's about all.
And napster, there were several peer to peer music systems around before it, so I wouldn't call it innovative, it was nothing new, it just happened to be the one that caught on. I always thought it sucked. Not interesting or innovative to me.
But nitpicking aside...
In the last rouchly 2 years not a single commercial piece of software has made me bat an eyelid or turn my head. They just aren't doing anything new or interesting. Compare it to the opensource world, where almost every day I find out about a project I didn't know about before that's doing something very clever, very cool or both. Free software constantly amazes me.
If you're thinking of this, you really have to ask yourself why you want widespread linux adoption at all. If you're just going to create an equally crappy system to replace windows with, what's the point? We already have a crappy system on 90%+ of desktops.
And it needs to get a real system to distribute packages and make it a standard.
Compared to windows which has er.. no package management at all. Just a haphazard bunch of proprietary binaries putting their files wherever they want, overwriting whatever libraries they feel like, and having no versioning system. That isn't package management.
In windows can you do 'apt-get install application'? Using your logic I could say that therefore windows isn't ready for the desktop because it doesn't behave like the rest of my systems. Windows looks massively inferior from where I'm standing.
I think before you boot your slackware system again you have to repeat the mantra: "this is not windows, this is not windows...".
I'm not going to bother pointning out the crap in most of your post, but this just annoyed me:
Yes, the Linux community has done some spectacular stuff - but it just doesn't hold a candle to what the retail world has done in the same time.
Bullshit. I can't think of a single intriguing interesting or useful piece of mainstream software that has come out in the commercial sector in the past 4 years. All the things I can think of are either based on open source, written ages ago with the only things done recently being piddly little 'improvements' and of course price hikes, or does its' job incredibly badly.
The retail world has been doing nothing for the last god knows however long. The only interesting things I see being done now are in the open source world.
I definately agree. I always find linux and BSD drivers fantastic compared to their windows counterparts. They either work and work very well, or they don't work at all, which is the way I like it.
Example: I once had an ethernet card (before ethernet cards were $5) which was very strange. Under windows it would sort of be detected by the windows NE2000 driver but then never do anything. I looked at the chipset it used and based on that I tried about 5 different drivers I downloaded. Varying degrees of success. Windows did its' fun little game each time of: "Have I removed the driver? Oh, am I going to try and re-autodetect it again? Shall I for some reason think there are 3 of them?". Eventually no success. Tried on several machines. Tried it on a Linux machine. Booted up, modprobe ne, done. Bring eth0 up and it was running fine.
I can think of many examples where this has happened to me.
I don't know why some people have this obsession with Linux becoming the norm on all computers, but if it means that to do it Linux has to become shit, I'd prefer to have Linux being good but used by a minority.
I mean, what would be the point? We already have a shit operating system that is mainstream.
Really this is just the developed world reaping bad karma for the last 4 centuries or so. The third world has continually been exploited into slavery, occupation and massive debt by the west for so long. And "Oh no, you can't give debt relief, because it's the free market, and they can work the debt off themselves by offering a product or service for a lower price: you can't intefere with the free market...".
But as soon as this happens, it's "Oh no, you can't take our jobs away. We have to do something about this...". Isn't that intefering with the free market?
You have to learn that it's inevitable. This is going to happen if you treat developing nations like this for so long. The west has had the rest of the world by the balls for so long (all the time telling them it's for their own good), and now as soon as it looks like they might have a chance to grab some control over their own futures, you have to go and change the rules.
So, what's your view on debt relief? You can't have it both ways, you see.
What's to stop a third party making mindstorms-like devices for lego?
Small embedded processor running embedded OS. Maybe even compatible with old mindstorms programs. Small interpreter running on the OS for simple (kiddy) programs but otherwise full system call / thread / malloc power for the nerds.
What's more, it's an opportunity to fix some of the problems people complain about. Too expensive? Don't sell with high profit margins. They can't be that expensive to produce. Not enough io channels? Put more in. Not updated often enough? Update them yourself. Open the specifications while you're at it.
What are the patent issues with this? Because after all, all it would be is a small computer which can fit into lego constructions. How can they stop you selling that?
It can't be that difficult. Couple of electronic engineers, computer scientist, and you're done.
Acutally I think it would be better to get a 20 quid webcam (or 40 quid if you want slightly higher resolution) and use something like this to capture frames. Or any old framegrabber.
Let me put it this way. A while back I was doing a job where I had to use Photoshop pretty much from 9 to 5. There was a reason I chose to use the gimp at home. Most people who kiss Photoshop's arse haven't had to wrestle with it all day every day.
Exactly. Running on a PII 400Mhz (dual) with TNT2 here. Have been able to play all the quake series just fine. (Not that I really do anymore. Haven better things to do than throw away time playing a silly game.)
While I'm here I might suggest something. Doom Legacy. This is great fun. You'll need to dig out your old Doom / Doom2 wads, but it is really a blast playing through the levels on a lan in cooperative mode. Give it a try.
...but in the past Boise has had nothing but a good reputation.
Really? IIRC it was Boise who got up to that 'look, see how much faster IE is...' piece of evidence on MS's behalf, where the machines were actually rigged. However I might be wrong. If so, please correct me.
And you're gonna come and save us all by standing up and shouting "You're all a bunch of nerds!".
But seriously, he's not saying anything new. And saying this isn't going to fix anything: that's just how things are. That's how free software developers work.
He picked something that's very easy to say but in the end means absolutely nothing.
We're talking about the overall 'user experience' here. So, yes.
Who uses.ogg anyways?
I do.
Hmmm.. you haven't heard of Winamp
Fine for mp3s. But then you have to play realmedia files. And by then you've already got 3 media players battling over things (winamp/windowsmedia/real).
And NO, you don't have to recompile the kernel or go to command line.
Recompile the kernel? Video codec? You really don't know what you're talking about.
What has the working third party app got to do with the functioning of Windows OS.
Everything. The fact the Windows doesn't come with decent ripping software out of the box reinforces my point. You have to go hunting for some shareware crap. Easy Linux distro: already installed. Magic.
We're talking about the 'user experience' here, not about windows/linux technical issues.
I am sure you can find a *much* better collection of CD rippers (that work well) for Windows than Linux.
I really doubt that.
Come on now... that's like a freebie and no one is forcing you to use it. I use Nero and it works perfectly (I have used WinXP CD burning too and it works pretty well).
This is joe user we're talking about. He buys a cdrw drive at walmart. Gets it home. Follows the instructions. How does he know what this 'nero' thing is? For all intents and purposes he IS stuck with the crappy software.
Sometimes I think people who use the phrase '...not ready for the...' should be hung up by the balls.
More specifically I think a lot of people are living in a reality distortion field where everything 'just works' on a windows system. Especially when they look at linux. For some reason a switch is flipped in their brain which says: 'let's compare this to windows, which is perfect in every way.'
Now from what I can remember from windows (it's been a while):
- The user can add a new PCI card and install a driver for it
Majority of cases on a user friendly distro, you don't even have to install the driver.
Windows. Pray that the hardware detection wizard detects the card. Possibly go through several reboots where windows thinks you have two cards installed, then none, etc.
Install the normally very low quality driver. Shitty systray icon and crashy control program. Not standards compliant, so if your supplied software doesn't support format x, you can't do it.
Search for a better driver. The reference driver. Realise that it was made for the chipset before and hangs your system when used with your card.
Go through another round of: 'No, windows, I don't have three sound cards installed...'
And so on.
- The user can insert a hotplug device (USB or Firewire or even Bluetooh) and get a fixed, known location in the file system for it, the same one every time
Depends what you're talking about. Unless it's a USB mass storage device, windows wouldn't even give it a place in the filesystem. And in an easy distro you'd never have to use it.
- The user can click on any audio file and it will "just play"
Come on, can you do that in windows?
Easy to use distro: yeah, if the format is supported (no patent problems), it'll just play. No extra software.
Windows: ANY audio file? Can I send a windows user an ogg and it'll just play? No. Not out of the box. flac? shn? Nope.
Solution: install crappy shareware/adware/spyware/bloatware music player app, which will try and hijack all your file associations, put shortcuts to it everywhere, sit in you system tray etc. God help you if you need more than one media player. And you will. You'll have the two shitty apps battling over file associations and default players. Popping up 'Buy me now!' windows. Crashing. Generally having a great time.
- The user can click on any video file and it will "just play"
Almost same as above.
"This movie I got from the internet says it's in 'xvid' format. Windows media player can't handle that."
Solution: almost same as above.
- The user can drop a CD into the CDROM drive and play it or rip it
Doable on an easy distro.
Windows: I understand default ripping options are very limited. Get this crappy shareware/adware/spyware/bloatware ripper. Tries to take over your system. Repeat.
But, oh no! One of the media players I installed earlier thinks it's also an entire media solution, and thinks it can do everything, including play/rip cds. Pity it does a shit job of it. Another app battling for your attention.
- The user can drop a DVD into the DVD drive and it plays, including the horrible and ungodly menu
Don't know personally, Imagine it's same as above.
- The user can drop a CDR into the CDROM drive and burn a random selection of files to it, with long file names on by default
Easily done in easy distro. No configuration.
Windows: cdrw drive comes with crappy burning software. But it seems it's the only one that works with your drive, so you're stuck with it, even though it's not very full featured.
And guess what. It also thinks it's an entire media solution and tries to take over all your actions and file extensions.
- The user can hook up a TV Tuner card and be able to play video from a cable box / antenna or a VCR.
Slashdot Mirror
...does play all the latest games and software which I need (the alternatives suck, try comparing Photoshop with GIMP),
That's funny because it shows that you are obviously not a graphic designer. And if you are, you're a really bad one. One wat was just told wat buttons to click to get teh perty pictures.
I think we're both trying to say the same thing actually. I'm not really saying that proprietary software has never done anything, I'm just taking objection to the idea that it has done anything amazilngly new or innovative recently. Not that that's a bad thing per se, as you say, old things like spreadsheets are pretty good at what they do, and they haven't been significantly updated recently.
No, it doesn't.
Yes, it does.
When someone says 'xyz is expensive...' it is implying 'xyz is more expensive than similar items...'.
Of course there is no absolute definition of 'expensive'. Everyone knows that. That's why when anyone says that something is expensive they imply the above expansion.
Candy bar B is more expensive.
Just because one thing is cheaper than another doesn't make that other thing "expensive."
Yes it does. You're getting confused here. What you're thinking about is 'value' not 'expensiveness*'. If you have a $0.30 apple and a $0.50 orange, the orange is more expensive than the apple. It's no use trying to argue whether the apple is better or worse than the orange, the orange will always be more 'expensive'. Even if it has a firewiere port.
Now, what you can start debating is 'value'.
How this is relevant to the conversation is that not everyone wants a better graphics card. They want to do word processing. They don't care whether OSX is better or not. They don't want iLife apps. They don't want a firewire port. Or integrated speakers. So, the macintosh is more expensive. You're paying for all this crap you don't want.
People often make the comparison of macintoshes being like Ferraris. Well, to extend the analogy, would someone come up to you in the street and say "Ferraris aren't expensive. They're only $100,000. And think of what you're getting for that. Really cheap."? No, because it is accepted that Ferraris are expensive.
*-Sorry for turning an adjective into a noun so inelegantly.
I knew someone would bring up iTMS, and I don't really condsider it software. I'd put it more in the category of webstores. Like amazon. You wouldn't call amazon innovative software, would you? The software is secondary to the fact that it's a shop.
Aqua is based on openstep which is over 10 years old. The prettyness may be new, but that's about all.
And napster, there were several peer to peer music systems around before it, so I wouldn't call it innovative, it was nothing new, it just happened to be the one that caught on. I always thought it sucked. Not interesting or innovative to me.
But nitpicking aside...
In the last rouchly 2 years not a single commercial piece of software has made me bat an eyelid or turn my head. They just aren't doing anything new or interesting. Compare it to the opensource world, where almost every day I find out about a project I didn't know about before that's doing something very clever, very cool or both. Free software constantly amazes me.
An exe-like format for morons.
If you're thinking of this, you really have to ask yourself why you want widespread linux adoption at all. If you're just going to create an equally crappy system to replace windows with, what's the point? We already have a crappy system on 90%+ of desktops.
And it needs to get a real system to distribute packages and make it a standard.
Compared to windows which has er.. no package management at all. Just a haphazard bunch of proprietary binaries putting their files wherever they want, overwriting whatever libraries they feel like, and having no versioning system. That isn't package management.
In windows can you do 'apt-get install application'? Using your logic I could say that therefore windows isn't ready for the desktop because it doesn't behave like the rest of my systems. Windows looks massively inferior from where I'm standing.
I think before you boot your slackware system again you have to repeat the mantra: "this is not windows, this is not windows...".
$199 microtel (plus $100 monitor)
I'm not going to bother pointning out the crap in most of your post, but this just annoyed me:
Yes, the Linux community has done some spectacular stuff - but it just doesn't hold a candle to what the retail world has done in the same time.
Bullshit. I can't think of a single intriguing interesting or useful piece of mainstream software that has come out in the commercial sector in the past 4 years. All the things I can think of are either based on open source, written ages ago with the only things done recently being piddly little 'improvements' and of course price hikes, or does its' job incredibly badly.
The retail world has been doing nothing for the last god knows however long. The only interesting things I see being done now are in the open source world.
It's called OpenMosix.
I definately agree. I always find linux and BSD drivers fantastic compared to their windows counterparts. They either work and work very well, or they don't work at all, which is the way I like it.
Example: I once had an ethernet card (before ethernet cards were $5) which was very strange. Under windows it would sort of be detected by the windows NE2000 driver but then never do anything. I looked at the chipset it used and based on that I tried about 5 different drivers I downloaded. Varying degrees of success. Windows did its' fun little game each time of: "Have I removed the driver? Oh, am I going to try and re-autodetect it again? Shall I for some reason think there are 3 of them?". Eventually no success. Tried on several machines. Tried it on a Linux machine. Booted up, modprobe ne, done. Bring eth0 up and it was running fine.
I can think of many examples where this has happened to me.
I don't know why some people have this obsession with Linux becoming the norm on all computers, but if it means that to do it Linux has to become shit, I'd prefer to have Linux being good but used by a minority.
I mean, what would be the point? We already have a shit operating system that is mainstream.
Dear Mr. President. There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot!
-- Grampa Simpson writes another letter, ``The Front''
No no no. Autechre's LP5.
My favourite album ever. (probably)
I would suggest Autechre's LP5 and Peel sessions volume 2.
Easy intros. Plus very good albums/eps.
Taking peoples livelyhood away
Oh fucking no.
Really this is just the developed world reaping bad karma for the last 4 centuries or so. The third world has continually been exploited into slavery, occupation and massive debt by the west for so long. And "Oh no, you can't give debt relief, because it's the free market, and they can work the debt off themselves by offering a product or service for a lower price: you can't intefere with the free market...".
But as soon as this happens, it's "Oh no, you can't take our jobs away. We have to do something about this...". Isn't that intefering with the free market?
You have to learn that it's inevitable. This is going to happen if you treat developing nations like this for so long. The west has had the rest of the world by the balls for so long (all the time telling them it's for their own good), and now as soon as it looks like they might have a chance to grab some control over their own futures, you have to go and change the rules.
So, what's your view on debt relief? You can't have it both ways, you see.
What's to stop a third party making mindstorms-like devices for lego?
Small embedded processor running embedded OS. Maybe even compatible with old mindstorms programs. Small interpreter running on the OS for simple (kiddy) programs but otherwise full system call / thread / malloc power for the nerds.
What's more, it's an opportunity to fix some of the problems people complain about. Too expensive? Don't sell with high profit margins. They can't be that expensive to produce. Not enough io channels? Put more in. Not updated often enough? Update them yourself. Open the specifications while you're at it.
What are the patent issues with this? Because after all, all it would be is a small computer which can fit into lego constructions. How can they stop you selling that?
It can't be that difficult. Couple of electronic engineers, computer scientist, and you're done.
Acutally I think it would be better to get a 20 quid webcam (or 40 quid if you want slightly higher resolution) and use something like this to capture frames. Or any old framegrabber.
Then use mencoder to put them together.
...Seems that future digicams won't need a compact flash anymore!
Bye bye battery life...
Let me put it this way. A while back I was doing a job where I had to use Photoshop pretty much from 9 to 5. There was a reason I chose to use the gimp at home. Most people who kiss Photoshop's arse haven't had to wrestle with it all day every day.
Exactly. Running on a PII 400Mhz (dual) with TNT2 here. Have been able to play all the quake series just fine. (Not that I really do anymore. Haven better things to do than throw away time playing a silly game.)
While I'm here I might suggest something. Doom Legacy. This is great fun. You'll need to dig out your old Doom / Doom2 wads, but it is really a blast playing through the levels on a lan in cooperative mode. Give it a try.
Ok well bad spelling aside, I withdraw my factually incorrect comment.
...but in the past Boise has had nothing but a good reputation.
Really? IIRC it was Boise who got up to that 'look, see how much faster IE is...' piece of evidence on MS's behalf, where the machines were actually rigged. However I might be wrong. If so, please correct me.
And you're gonna come and save us all by standing up and shouting "You're all a bunch of nerds!".
But seriously, he's not saying anything new. And saying this isn't going to fix anything: that's just how things are. That's how free software developers work.
He picked something that's very easy to say but in the end means absolutely nothing.
All of those are included in Mandrake 9.2.
That's never happened with me.. NEVER!
.ogg anyways?
Bloody always happened to me. ALWAYS!
Blame Windows for it?
We're talking about the overall 'user experience' here. So, yes.
Who uses
I do.
Hmmm.. you haven't heard of Winamp
Fine for mp3s. But then you have to play realmedia files. And by then you've already got 3 media players battling over things (winamp/windowsmedia/real).
And NO, you don't have to recompile the kernel or go to command line.
Recompile the kernel? Video codec? You really don't know what you're talking about.
What has the working third party app got to do with the functioning of Windows OS.
Everything. The fact the Windows doesn't come with decent ripping software out of the box reinforces my point. You have to go hunting for some shareware crap. Easy Linux distro: already installed. Magic.
We're talking about the 'user experience' here, not about windows/linux technical issues.
I am sure you can find a *much* better collection of CD rippers (that work well) for Windows than Linux.
I really doubt that.
Come on now... that's like a freebie and no one is forcing you to use it. I use Nero and it works perfectly (I have used WinXP CD burning too and it works pretty well).
This is joe user we're talking about. He buys a cdrw drive at walmart. Gets it home. Follows the instructions. How does he know what this 'nero' thing is? For all intents and purposes he IS stuck with the crappy software.
Sometimes I think people who use the phrase '...not ready for the...' should be hung up by the balls.
More specifically I think a lot of people are living in a reality distortion field where everything 'just works' on a windows system. Especially when they look at linux. For some reason a switch is flipped in their brain which says: 'let's compare this to windows, which is perfect in every way.'
Now from what I can remember from windows (it's been a while):
- The user can add a new PCI card and install a driver for it
Majority of cases on a user friendly distro, you don't even have to install the driver.
Windows. Pray that the hardware detection wizard detects the card. Possibly go through several reboots where windows thinks you have two cards installed, then none, etc.
Install the normally very low quality driver. Shitty systray icon and crashy control program. Not standards compliant, so if your supplied software doesn't support format x, you can't do it.
Search for a better driver. The reference driver. Realise that it was made for the chipset before and hangs your system when used with your card.
Go through another round of: 'No, windows, I don't have three sound cards installed...'
And so on.
- The user can insert a hotplug device (USB or Firewire or even Bluetooh) and get a fixed, known location in the file system for it, the same one every time
Depends what you're talking about. Unless it's a USB mass storage device, windows wouldn't even give it a place in the filesystem. And in an easy distro you'd never have to use it.
- The user can click on any audio file and it will "just play"
Come on, can you do that in windows?
Easy to use distro: yeah, if the format is supported (no patent problems), it'll just play. No extra software.
Windows: ANY audio file? Can I send a windows user an ogg and it'll just play? No. Not out of the box. flac? shn? Nope.
Solution: install crappy shareware/adware/spyware/bloatware music player app, which will try and hijack all your file associations, put shortcuts to it everywhere, sit in you system tray etc. God help you if you need more than one media player. And you will. You'll have the two shitty apps battling over file associations and default players. Popping up 'Buy me now!' windows. Crashing. Generally having a great time.
- The user can click on any video file and it will "just play"
Almost same as above.
"This movie I got from the internet says it's in 'xvid' format. Windows media player can't handle that."
Solution: almost same as above.
- The user can drop a CD into the CDROM drive and play it or rip it
Doable on an easy distro.
Windows: I understand default ripping options are very limited. Get this crappy shareware/adware/spyware/bloatware ripper. Tries to take over your system. Repeat.
But, oh no! One of the media players I installed earlier thinks it's also an entire media solution, and thinks it can do everything, including play/rip cds. Pity it does a shit job of it. Another app battling for your attention.
- The user can drop a DVD into the DVD drive and it plays, including the horrible and ungodly menu
Don't know personally, Imagine it's same as above.
- The user can drop a CDR into the CDROM drive and burn a random selection of files to it, with long file names on by default
Easily done in easy distro. No configuration.
Windows: cdrw drive comes with crappy burning software. But it seems it's the only one that works with your drive, so you're stuck with it, even though it's not very full featured.
And guess what. It also thinks it's an entire media solution and tries to take over all your actions and file extensions.
- The user can hook up a TV Tuner card and be able to play video from a cable box / antenna or a VCR.
Easy linux di