There is no such thing in the broader scale and unless you believe in racial superiority of the [insert some ethnic group here
Ah, the old "You are a racist!"-argument. I'm not a racist. True, Africans are black, but that's besides the point. I do not for a second believe that their problems are caused by the color of their skin or some genetic heritage. It is not racist to say "Africa's problems are mostly caused by the people living there and their rulers, and it's up to them to fix their own problems". If I said something like "Africa is a shithole because blacks can't build a working society" THEN you could call me a racist. But I'm not claiming that. What race the people in Africa happen to be is besides the point, this discussion is not about their race.
So if a bunch of Nigerians, Chinese, Pakistanis and Mayans blah blah blah....
Sure it would cause disruption. But if we look at slavery for example. Africans were transported by the million to Americas. And they were taken mostly from western Africa. And today western Africa is similar shithole as eastern Africa is. Has the west done bad things in Africa? Sure! I'm not denying that. But other countries that had been in similar situation have been able to move on.
USSR lost large part of their population in WW2 (humungous number), and large part of the country was wiped out. Yet they recovered in few decades and they ended being one of the most powerful countries in the world. Japan was firebombed to the ground, large part of the population was killed and central tenents of their religion, culture and politics were removed by the allied forces, and still, without any notable natural resources they were able to rebuild their country and today they are doing very well indeed. Jews were slaughtered in the millions during WW2 (and they had been persecuted thorought history), but they seem to be doing pretty well these days. But when Africa suffered bad things in the past, it apaprently requires a millenia for them to rebuild their societies?
Yes, I maintain that people of Africa and their rulers have to carry the responsibility for the situation the continent is in. Maybe they did suffer in the past. Stop wallowing in it, and move on! Other countries were treated similar way, and they are doing better and better all the time! I'm sorry, but I can't accept any responsibility for the actions of Sudan. I can't accept any responsibility for the actions of that nitwit-Mugabe.
Blaming Africans for the state of their continent after what has been done to that continent for so long is not just ignorant, its callous and disgusting.
Bullshit. I'm sick and tired of this "It's not their fault! It's the fault of the west!". Yes, I'm pretty sure that west is somehow to blame when government of Sudan decides to kill their own people. It's entirely the fault of the west when Mugabe decides to flush Zimbabwe down the drain. It's entirely the fault of the west when Ethiopians starved because the socialistic junta that ruled the country decided to forcibly move the population around. How about if we for a change simply assumed that it's their fault? Instead of blaming the west, why not blame the people making decisions down there? Instead of blaming west, why not blame Mugabe for Zimbabwes problems? Instead of devicing methods of killing their own people, they would try to educate and feed them instead? A novel and radical idea, don't you think?
The tools to change things in Africa, are in African hands. That is a fact. We can't make them change. We should not make them change. The change must come from themselves. We could pump billions in to Africa, but it would not change a thing, if they squander the opportunity for more killing and civil-war.
But I guess I'm being "arrogant" when I say something like that, huh?
Finland is prosperous because the government doesn't actively try to starve the people, and there are no significant wars killing the able and destroying crops. Both of the above are large problems in Africa
Exactly! So what exactly is this bullshit of "it's hard to protect from the environment" or some other crap like that? It seems to me that their poverty is mostly their own doing. Maybe they would be doing better if they weren't so busy killing each other and if their "leaders" weren't busy looting their nations for their own benefit?
Hell, Zimbabwe was doing pretty well, until some moron assumed power, and they country has been going downhill ever since. And their current problems (transformed from being a food-exporter in to a country with food-shortages) is entirely their own doing.
My point is that Africa CAN get better. But they are doing their best to stay poor. Of course they do not choose to stay poor, but they just make bad decision after bad decision. And they pour their resources at completely wrong places (instead of figuring out ways to feed and educate their people, they are busy figuring out ways to kill their own people or invade neighbourghing countries).
you can preload Konqueror if you like. But usually preloading just does something that may or may not be used.
would love to be able to use KDE everywhere, but its simply too bloated for some of my machines
What "bloat" are you referring to here? "Bloat" is something that is heavier and slower than it needs to be. And looking at the functionality of KDE, I don't see much "bloat" there. And what kind of machines are you using? KDE is somewhat slow on my 300Mhz laptop with 320MB of RAM, but that's due to uber-slow HD, which makes Windows crawl on it as well.
on which I am forced to use Windows or endure very sluggish performance.
Well, you CAN use something else besides KDE. How about XFCE for example? And what Windows are you talking about? XP? W2K? W2K is ancient when compared to recent KDE, and XP is pretty old as well. If you compared XP to Win98, I guarantee, that you would notice Win98 to be a lot faster.
And if you want, you could always cut back on KDE's features and eye-candy to make it faster.
I include "other people trying to kill you" as part of the environment from which one needs protection.
Maybe they shouldn't then try to kill each other? Why should we help them, if they are hell-bent on tearing everything down? When they demonstrate that they are capable of building a stable society that doesn't destroy everything it touches, meybe then we should move in with money and resources? But trying to support Africa the way it is now, is equivalent to pissing in the wind.
Well if that's the case, what does that say about Windows using half the ram while still being able to preload those programs?
Like I said elsewhere, Windows does less. KDE has a lot more features and functionality than Windows does. And eos Windows REALLY take "half the RAM"? Does Windows really consume just 70MB of RAM? In my case, with KDE running, the mem-consumption is about 150MB. Most of that is KDE and related apps, but not all. Windows should then consume about 60-70MB of RAM, by your acount.
The reason that "disadvantaged children" are "disadvantaged" is not because they don't have computers, but because it's hard to get food, hard to get clean water (for drinking and for cleaning - a huge factor for being healthy is hygeine), and hard to be protected from the environment.
I call bullshit. Take Finland for example (the place where I happen to live in). the climate is not exactly the nicest in the world. Without adequate protection, the environment will kill you pretty quickly (you would survive in the summer, but in winter....). Yet we were able to build a prosperous and wealthy nation. What exactly is preventing the people in Africa (for example) of doing the same? Climate is harsh in both places (our climate is cold, theirs is hot). Yes, it's hard to get food in Africa, but Finland isn't really the breadbasket of the world either. Africa DOES have humungous amount of natural resources, something Finland lacks.
I seriously see nothing that prevents Africa and other poor places from improving their situation. Well, constant civil-wars, corrupt leaders and the like withstanding. But those are IMO their problem, and not ours.
Kbear is a third-party app that is not part of KDE. And it seems to be dead as well. Why do you blame KDE for shortcomings in some third-party app? Wouldn't it be same if I blamed OS X because some obscure app I found on the net is not working properly?
"Q&A-troubled desktop environment"? But luckily you are rushing to help them with that, right? Q&A is something even you could do. Just run developement-version of the desktop, and report any shortcoming you find. Or do you prefer to sit on your ass and whine when others give you software for free?
So, you are using a modern KDE on modern computer, and compare it to 5 year old Windows on modern computer? Hey, I bet that Windows95 is A LOT faster than KDE is on same hardware, KDE sucks! DOS was even faster!
Fact is that software tends to get slower over time. You don't really notice it since hardware gets faster. But if you took old piece of software and installed it on modern piece of hardware, it would be very fast indeed. There are several reasons for that slowness. For starters, new software usually looks better, and that eye-candy takes CPU-cycles and RAM. And new software does more than old software does, and that too takes CPU-cycles and RAM.
Maybe W2K is faster than KDE 3.4 is. But KDE also does A LOT more than Windows does, so it's not really fair to compare the both.
Why don't you compare Windows XP and KDE 1.1 on same hardware, and see which is faster?
Maybe Messenger gets preloaded in Windows? My KDE starts up in about 5-7 seconds, whereas XP on my company-machine takes about 15-20 seconds to load (by "load", I mean "started up, and ready to he used". Simply displaying the desktop but loading bunch of stuff in the background is not "started up"), so Windows is apparently loading bunch of stuff when it starts up, whereas KDE does not.
On how much RAM should it work then? 256MB is the absolute minimium these days, with 512MB being the standard on computers. On my machine, KDE with bunch of apps (Konqueror, Kontact, Konsole at least) takes about 140-170MB of RAM. With 256MB it should work just fine, with 512MB being great.
Why are people so concerned with KDE's memory-consumption? So what if Windows eats slightly less RAM than KDE does? KDE also does a lot more than Windows does. Even if KDE eats a bit more RAM, it will run comfortably on any decent machine. If you wanted to use KDE with 128MB of RAM, then mem-consumption might become an issue. But since nobody uses 128MB of RAM these days, the point is moot.
Oh yes, the "Scaled Composites kicks ass, NASA sucks!"-argument.... SC has the benefit of being able to take advantage of stuff NASA, ESA and Soviets invented for them. Shuttle and the like were built from the ground up. Gradual evolution from something else was not possible, because there was nothing to evolve from. Some of the required technology did not exist, so it had to be invented. Computers were at their infancy when they designed the shuttle etc. etc.
Now all that hard work is done, and we have so powerful computers that the computer I'm typing this message on, is propably faster than all the computers combined NASA had when they designed the Shuttle. Now we have Scaled Composites who marches in, takes advantage of all the stuff NASA pioneered at great expense, and they barely manage to get one spacecraft (with just the pilot, and nothing else) in to space for short amount of time. And they shout off "look how cheaply we can do this!". Well, no shit Sherlock, since NASA and others did all the hard work for you! NASA had none of that whiz-bang technology at their disposal that you take for granted! The foundation on which SC can build their space-operation on already exists. It did not exists back when NASA designed the shuttle, NASA had to build it from the ground up. And that takes money. SC didn't do it, they just take advantage of it.
Yes, what SC did was great. But I'm getting sick and tired of listening to the "NASA sucks, Scaled rules!" choir of fanboys. NASA has done A LOT of work for space travel, and now we have others taking advantage of their pioneering work. Usually it is very expensive to be the first one at doing something. Those that follow have easier job in front of them.
And of course it's very easy NOW to point out the flaws in the Shuttle. And of course it's easy NOW to deisgn something better than the shuttle. And the reason for that is that we can learn from the shuttle! NASA didn't have that luxury when they designed the shuttle, it was the first of it's kind.
NASA does lots of stuff. SC managed to barely do a sub-orbital spaceflight. Maybe NASA spends more money, but they also do A LOT more than SC does!
Now why do special effects people make explosions make noise in a vacuum in sci-fi movies, shows, etc.
Because it would be stupid without any sound. Go ahead and watch the space-battle-scenes in Star Wars/Trek with sound off if it bothers you so much. You would notice after 5 seconds that it would take about 80% of the coolness away from the battle-scenes.
Battle of Endor with no sound? Starfleet vs. Borg Cube in First Contact with no sound? Battle-scenes in Babylon 5 with no sound? Maybe it's unrealistic, but I prefer them WITH sound, thankyouverymuch!
What exactly is wrong with France's military record? Dien Bien Phu? The plan was bad (OTOH, who would have thought that Vietnamese dragged artillery uphill through the jungle), but the troops fought very well indeed. WW2? They lost to world's biggest military superpower (which was itself defeated by combined efforts of USA, USSR and Britain years later). Oh the humiliation! And if we look at WW1, I don't think you can blame their courage or willingness to fight there.
If we look even further in to the past, we see the French marching all over Europe. And they did save Europe from Muslim invasion.
I have a RT2x00 chipset-using WLAN-card, and Ubuntu does not magically "Just Work" with it. In fact, they have lengthy instructions on how to make it work. OpenSUSE 10.0 RC1 does work with it automatically, however.
For many people (though not all), Ubuntu *just works* out of the box. That's something else that few distros can claim.
That reminds me of the story of getting my WLAN-card to work with Ubuntu. I have a test-laptop I like to use to try out different distros. I installed Ubuntu on in, and proceeded then to install the WLAN-card on it. It has GPL'ed drivers, so it shouldn't be that difficult. How do you install that NIC on an Ubuntu-machine? Like this. I did get it to work, but the experience was far from appealing.
A bit later I installed OpenSUSE 10.0 RC1 on that same laptop. I then proceeded to install that same NIC on that machine. How did I install it? I plugged it in, and it Just Worked, 100% automagically, took me about 5 seconds.
Using that experience as a guide, it seems to me that Ubuntu's ease of use has been somewhat exaggarated.
Lot's of stuff is better left to the audience's imagination but with a higher budget, film-makers often get sucked in to the ability to show everything.
That's not due to high budgets. There is NOTHING that says that if you want high budget, you have to show and explain everything.
I'm not saying that all hi-budget movies kick ass, whereas all low-budget movies suck. Far from it. I'm saying that there's NOTHING that would automatically make hi-budget movies suck and make low-budget movies kick ass. When you have low budget you might not be able to shoot different takes of a scene, making the end-result sub-optimal. With high budget you could re-shoot is as many times as needed. And hi-caliber actors often cost money. And having good SFX does NOT make the movie worse. Yet you seem to think that more money and resources are poured in to a movie, the worse the movie is going to be.
I feel it is completely wrong to make even "likely" claims that cannot be fulfilled with 100% certainty.
Well, if they can be fulfilled with 100% certainity, then they wouldn't use the word "likely". But since they are not 100% sure, they use that particular word.
Oh yes, the good ol' "bow before me you maggots, for I am the USER!"-argument. Well, if the user spouts nothing but pure bullshit, he is bound to be treated badly. Just because you are a user doesn't mean that
a) you are entitled to something b) the developers (or anyone else for that matter) are required to listen to your inane whining and bullshit
Seriously: you are talking about something that you have ZERO first-hand knowledge about. You whine about the use of word "likely" ("aha! They promised with their hand on the Bible that Koffice WILL run on Windows within a year! We'll see about that!"). Seriously: just shut the fuck up. You might be a user. But that doesn't mean that you or your opinions are somehow sacred. In fact, you are nothing but a clueless user who talks about things he knows nothing about. What exactly makes you expert on this issue (as opposed to the people who write the software?)? The fact that you are a user?
Koffice-developers give you kick-ass software for free. What exactly makes you think that YOU are entitled to something? What exactly makes you thing that you should be treated with kid-gloves? I mean, you are not their client, you didn't pay them one dime. In fact, you haven't given them anything in return for the software you are using.
Network bandwidth will continue to increase in speed and decrease in cost.
And bandwidth-demands of games are going to increase even faster. Fact is that local graphics will always have more bandwidth and lower latencies than networked graphics will have.
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Ah, the old "You are a racist!"-argument. I'm not a racist. True, Africans are black, but that's besides the point. I do not for a second believe that their problems are caused by the color of their skin or some genetic heritage. It is not racist to say "Africa's problems are mostly caused by the people living there and their rulers, and it's up to them to fix their own problems". If I said something like "Africa is a shithole because blacks can't build a working society" THEN you could call me a racist. But I'm not claiming that. What race the people in Africa happen to be is besides the point, this discussion is not about their race.
Sure it would cause disruption. But if we look at slavery for example. Africans were transported by the million to Americas. And they were taken mostly from western Africa. And today western Africa is similar shithole as eastern Africa is. Has the west done bad things in Africa? Sure! I'm not denying that. But other countries that had been in similar situation have been able to move on.
USSR lost large part of their population in WW2 (humungous number), and large part of the country was wiped out. Yet they recovered in few decades and they ended being one of the most powerful countries in the world. Japan was firebombed to the ground, large part of the population was killed and central tenents of their religion, culture and politics were removed by the allied forces, and still, without any notable natural resources they were able to rebuild their country and today they are doing very well indeed. Jews were slaughtered in the millions during WW2 (and they had been persecuted thorought history), but they seem to be doing pretty well these days. But when Africa suffered bad things in the past, it apaprently requires a millenia for them to rebuild their societies?
Yes, I maintain that people of Africa and their rulers have to carry the responsibility for the situation the continent is in. Maybe they did suffer in the past. Stop wallowing in it, and move on! Other countries were treated similar way, and they are doing better and better all the time! I'm sorry, but I can't accept any responsibility for the actions of Sudan. I can't accept any responsibility for the actions of that nitwit-Mugabe.
Bullshit. I'm sick and tired of this "It's not their fault! It's the fault of the west!". Yes, I'm pretty sure that west is somehow to blame when government of Sudan decides to kill their own people. It's entirely the fault of the west when Mugabe decides to flush Zimbabwe down the drain. It's entirely the fault of the west when Ethiopians starved because the socialistic junta that ruled the country decided to forcibly move the population around. How about if we for a change simply assumed that it's their fault? Instead of blaming the west, why not blame the people making decisions down there? Instead of blaming west, why not blame Mugabe for Zimbabwes problems? Instead of devicing methods of killing their own people, they would try to educate and feed them instead? A novel and radical idea, don't you think?
The tools to change things in Africa, are in African hands. That is a fact. We can't make them change. We should not make them change. The change must come from themselves. We could pump billions in to Africa, but it would not change a thing, if they squander the opportunity for more killing and civil-war.
But I guess I'm being "arrogant" when I say something like that, huh?
Exactly! So what exactly is this bullshit of "it's hard to protect from the environment" or some other crap like that? It seems to me that their poverty is mostly their own doing. Maybe they would be doing better if they weren't so busy killing each other and if their "leaders" weren't busy looting their nations for their own benefit?
Hell, Zimbabwe was doing pretty well, until some moron assumed power, and they country has been going downhill ever since. And their current problems (transformed from being a food-exporter in to a country with food-shortages) is entirely their own doing.
My point is that Africa CAN get better. But they are doing their best to stay poor. Of course they do not choose to stay poor, but they just make bad decision after bad decision. And they pour their resources at completely wrong places (instead of figuring out ways to feed and educate their people, they are busy figuring out ways to kill their own people or invade neighbourghing countries).
you can preload Konqueror if you like. But usually preloading just does something that may or may not be used.
What "bloat" are you referring to here? "Bloat" is something that is heavier and slower than it needs to be. And looking at the functionality of KDE, I don't see much "bloat" there. And what kind of machines are you using? KDE is somewhat slow on my 300Mhz laptop with 320MB of RAM, but that's due to uber-slow HD, which makes Windows crawl on it as well.
Well, you CAN use something else besides KDE. How about XFCE for example? And what Windows are you talking about? XP? W2K? W2K is ancient when compared to recent KDE, and XP is pretty old as well. If you compared XP to Win98, I guarantee, that you would notice Win98 to be a lot faster.
And if you want, you could always cut back on KDE's features and eye-candy to make it faster.
Maybe they shouldn't then try to kill each other? Why should we help them, if they are hell-bent on tearing everything down? When they demonstrate that they are capable of building a stable society that doesn't destroy everything it touches, meybe then we should move in with money and resources? But trying to support Africa the way it is now, is equivalent to pissing in the wind.
Like I said elsewhere, Windows does less. KDE has a lot more features and functionality than Windows does. And eos Windows REALLY take "half the RAM"? Does Windows really consume just 70MB of RAM? In my case, with KDE running, the mem-consumption is about 150MB. Most of that is KDE and related apps, but not all. Windows should then consume about 60-70MB of RAM, by your acount.
I call bullshit. Take Finland for example (the place where I happen to live in). the climate is not exactly the nicest in the world. Without adequate protection, the environment will kill you pretty quickly (you would survive in the summer, but in winter....). Yet we were able to build a prosperous and wealthy nation. What exactly is preventing the people in Africa (for example) of doing the same? Climate is harsh in both places (our climate is cold, theirs is hot). Yes, it's hard to get food in Africa, but Finland isn't really the breadbasket of the world either. Africa DOES have humungous amount of natural resources, something Finland lacks.
I seriously see nothing that prevents Africa and other poor places from improving their situation. Well, constant civil-wars, corrupt leaders and the like withstanding. But those are IMO their problem, and not ours.
How exactly? They both have a taskbar? Windows? "Start-menu"? Icons? Why is KDE a "copy of Windows", whereas some other desktop is not?
Kbear is a third-party app that is not part of KDE. And it seems to be dead as well. Why do you blame KDE for shortcomings in some third-party app? Wouldn't it be same if I blamed OS X because some obscure app I found on the net is not working properly?
"Q&A-troubled desktop environment"? But luckily you are rushing to help them with that, right? Q&A is something even you could do. Just run developement-version of the desktop, and report any shortcoming you find. Or do you prefer to sit on your ass and whine when others give you software for free?
So, you are using a modern KDE on modern computer, and compare it to 5 year old Windows on modern computer? Hey, I bet that Windows95 is A LOT faster than KDE is on same hardware, KDE sucks! DOS was even faster!
Fact is that software tends to get slower over time. You don't really notice it since hardware gets faster. But if you took old piece of software and installed it on modern piece of hardware, it would be very fast indeed. There are several reasons for that slowness. For starters, new software usually looks better, and that eye-candy takes CPU-cycles and RAM. And new software does more than old software does, and that too takes CPU-cycles and RAM.
Maybe W2K is faster than KDE 3.4 is. But KDE also does A LOT more than Windows does, so it's not really fair to compare the both.
Why don't you compare Windows XP and KDE 1.1 on same hardware, and see which is faster?
Maybe Messenger gets preloaded in Windows? My KDE starts up in about 5-7 seconds, whereas XP on my company-machine takes about 15-20 seconds to load (by "load", I mean "started up, and ready to he used". Simply displaying the desktop but loading bunch of stuff in the background is not "started up"), so Windows is apparently loading bunch of stuff when it starts up, whereas KDE does not.
On how much RAM should it work then? 256MB is the absolute minimium these days, with 512MB being the standard on computers. On my machine, KDE with bunch of apps (Konqueror, Kontact, Konsole at least) takes about 140-170MB of RAM. With 256MB it should work just fine, with 512MB being great.
Why are people so concerned with KDE's memory-consumption? So what if Windows eats slightly less RAM than KDE does? KDE also does a lot more than Windows does. Even if KDE eats a bit more RAM, it will run comfortably on any decent machine. If you wanted to use KDE with 128MB of RAM, then mem-consumption might become an issue. But since nobody uses 128MB of RAM these days, the point is moot.
Oh yes, the "Scaled Composites kicks ass, NASA sucks!"-argument.... SC has the benefit of being able to take advantage of stuff NASA, ESA and Soviets invented for them. Shuttle and the like were built from the ground up. Gradual evolution from something else was not possible, because there was nothing to evolve from. Some of the required technology did not exist, so it had to be invented. Computers were at their infancy when they designed the shuttle etc. etc.
Now all that hard work is done, and we have so powerful computers that the computer I'm typing this message on, is propably faster than all the computers combined NASA had when they designed the Shuttle. Now we have Scaled Composites who marches in, takes advantage of all the stuff NASA pioneered at great expense, and they barely manage to get one spacecraft (with just the pilot, and nothing else) in to space for short amount of time. And they shout off "look how cheaply we can do this!". Well, no shit Sherlock, since NASA and others did all the hard work for you! NASA had none of that whiz-bang technology at their disposal that you take for granted! The foundation on which SC can build their space-operation on already exists. It did not exists back when NASA designed the shuttle, NASA had to build it from the ground up. And that takes money. SC didn't do it, they just take advantage of it.
Yes, what SC did was great. But I'm getting sick and tired of listening to the "NASA sucks, Scaled rules!" choir of fanboys. NASA has done A LOT of work for space travel, and now we have others taking advantage of their pioneering work. Usually it is very expensive to be the first one at doing something. Those that follow have easier job in front of them.
And of course it's very easy NOW to point out the flaws in the Shuttle. And of course it's easy NOW to deisgn something better than the shuttle. And the reason for that is that we can learn from the shuttle! NASA didn't have that luxury when they designed the shuttle, it was the first of it's kind.
NASA does lots of stuff. SC managed to barely do a sub-orbital spaceflight. Maybe NASA spends more money, but they also do A LOT more than SC does!
I find your ideas intriguing, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter....
Well, Postgresql.org contains detailed instructions on how to install their database on OpenServer. So they are actively supporting SCO. Can we trust them?
Well, SCO also ships PostgreSQL with their product, can we trust the PostgreSQL-folks?
Because it would be stupid without any sound. Go ahead and watch the space-battle-scenes in Star Wars/Trek with sound off if it bothers you so much. You would notice after 5 seconds that it would take about 80% of the coolness away from the battle-scenes.
Battle of Endor with no sound? Starfleet vs. Borg Cube in First Contact with no sound? Battle-scenes in Babylon 5 with no sound? Maybe it's unrealistic, but I prefer them WITH sound, thankyouverymuch!
What exactly is wrong with France's military record? Dien Bien Phu? The plan was bad (OTOH, who would have thought that Vietnamese dragged artillery uphill through the jungle), but the troops fought very well indeed. WW2? They lost to world's biggest military superpower (which was itself defeated by combined efforts of USA, USSR and Britain years later). Oh the humiliation! And if we look at WW1, I don't think you can blame their courage or willingness to fight there.
If we look even further in to the past, we see the French marching all over Europe. And they did save Europe from Muslim invasion.
I have a RT2x00 chipset-using WLAN-card, and Ubuntu does not magically "Just Work" with it. In fact, they have lengthy instructions on how to make it work. OpenSUSE 10.0 RC1 does work with it automatically, however.
That reminds me of the story of getting my WLAN-card to work with Ubuntu. I have a test-laptop I like to use to try out different distros. I installed Ubuntu on in, and proceeded then to install the WLAN-card on it. It has GPL'ed drivers, so it shouldn't be that difficult. How do you install that NIC on an Ubuntu-machine? Like this. I did get it to work, but the experience was far from appealing.
A bit later I installed OpenSUSE 10.0 RC1 on that same laptop. I then proceeded to install that same NIC on that machine. How did I install it? I plugged it in, and it Just Worked, 100% automagically, took me about 5 seconds.
Using that experience as a guide, it seems to me that Ubuntu's ease of use has been somewhat exaggarated.
That's not due to high budgets. There is NOTHING that says that if you want high budget, you have to show and explain everything.
I'm not saying that all hi-budget movies kick ass, whereas all low-budget movies suck. Far from it. I'm saying that there's NOTHING that would automatically make hi-budget movies suck and make low-budget movies kick ass. When you have low budget you might not be able to shoot different takes of a scene, making the end-result sub-optimal. With high budget you could re-shoot is as many times as needed. And hi-caliber actors often cost money. And having good SFX does NOT make the movie worse. Yet you seem to think that more money and resources are poured in to a movie, the worse the movie is going to be.
Well, if they can be fulfilled with 100% certainity, then they wouldn't use the word "likely". But since they are not 100% sure, they use that particular word.
Oh yes, the good ol' "bow before me you maggots, for I am the USER!"-argument. Well, if the user spouts nothing but pure bullshit, he is bound to be treated badly. Just because you are a user doesn't mean that
a) you are entitled to something
b) the developers (or anyone else for that matter) are required to listen to your inane whining and bullshit
Seriously: you are talking about something that you have ZERO first-hand knowledge about. You whine about the use of word "likely" ("aha! They promised with their hand on the Bible that Koffice WILL run on Windows within a year! We'll see about that!"). Seriously: just shut the fuck up. You might be a user. But that doesn't mean that you or your opinions are somehow sacred. In fact, you are nothing but a clueless user who talks about things he knows nothing about. What exactly makes you expert on this issue (as opposed to the people who write the software?)? The fact that you are a user?
Koffice-developers give you kick-ass software for free. What exactly makes you think that YOU are entitled to something? What exactly makes you thing that you should be treated with kid-gloves? I mean, you are not their client, you didn't pay them one dime. In fact, you haven't given them anything in return for the software you are using.
And bandwidth-demands of games are going to increase even faster. Fact is that local graphics will always have more bandwidth and lower latencies than networked graphics will have.