Well, this is a definitely typical american approach. "Let's seperate from the rest of the world, because there is no rest of the world, other than what needs conquering or destroying". Time and time again, I read that the people from the US have absolutely no clue that there are other countries in the world than the gold old US, those bastards Canada, and those illegals Mexico. Oh, and the commies in Cuba and the rest of the world. But I won't continue on the above subject, and just answer your questions:
- How often do you email people in other countries? Daily. My best friend emigrated, and another friend lives in Au. My in-laws live on a seperate continent, and my wife's best friend in China. Segregation would SUCK!!!
- How often do you use foreign sites? Considering you probably mean non-us-sites, daily. Just in case (god forbid) you mean sites foreign to me, daily. This includes sites in English, Japanese, dutch, german, french, swedish, norwegian, tagalog, russian, etc. If it has content I can decipher and find relevant, I read it.
- What would you lose by not being able to access US sites? Not considerably much, just slashdot, gucomics, google, userfriendly, various news sites, digg, etc. Oh....those are my most used sites....well, considerable apparently.
- What other processes? Well, how about those mmorpg's? If segregation was done, Blizzard would be destroyed. No more WOW, except for US, which would mean about a approximate drop of 4 million users. Many MANY games would be unable to be sold, because they rely on US servers for checking of licenses. Those games that do get sold are extremely expensive, because the sellers have to place servers in EVERY country.
- foreing news? Duh, I don't trust single access to news. Too easy to get biased views. Better to see the news from several unrelated sites, to get the whole picture, as far as that's possible.
- would journalists be hindered? Absolutely. They wouldn't be able to send their reports to their bosses, because there would be no internet connection to the US. Also, they would find themselves easier censored by the countries they are in, or report to.
So, to get back to how much would you lose......I think, if you read the things above, you'd get quite a good picture about how much you'd lose. Basically, you'd lose the internet, and everyone would be back to the 80's. No news, no webshops, no online games, high cost of games (higher than now), massive amounts of untracable piracy, rampant virusses (slowly spreading, but unable to remove due to lack of virusupdates), buggy operating systems (no updates).
"$12-$14 range. I live in New Orleans..."
Well, I live in Holland, and I've seen CD's going for anywhere between 20 and 30 euro (1 euro = 1.25 dollar, do maths), and almost always it's that yet-another-rap-yeller-or-rnb-whiner-song. Or a britney-wannabe (who'd want to do that? she can't even sing without moaning...).
Haven't bought a CD in over a year now. No use, everything in the music shop sucks.
5-7 inch colour screen (with option for turning backlight off and lowres nocolour), 640x480/800x600, 6-8 inch big as in, just a tiny bit bigger than the screen), enough cpu to play nice divx's (400-500mhz xscale or something), 128-256m memory, cf slot, sd slot, 54mbit wlan, grafitti handwriting recognition:) And 72 hours on the battery:)
As for the operating system....well... PocketPC2003/.NET should be ok (yeahyeah, I know, it's MS, but at least it looks better than Palm, though it's handwriting recognition su*ks)
Linux will be less expensive:
OpenOffice works *almost* as well as MS Office does, but I doubt that's a reason for Windows users to get it. And one MAJOR hurdle against it is...the 100 megs download ("man...that takes me a week, no way i'm gonna download that, i'll just go to the store and buy MS Office, much easier." or: "man...that takes me a week...no way i'm gonna download that, but though i'm willing to try it, i can't buy it in the shops, so i have to get MS Office"). But that's just an office program...there are more programs to/for linux.
But license per license, yes, linux is cheaper, I think, especially in the server departement:
Windows requires licenses for each client connecting (for filesharing, terminal capabilities, etc), whereas linux that's free.
Support on the other hand is also less good, so that's a trade-off (unless you use redhat/suse).
Linux needs to forced upgrades:
Bull. Complete Bull. Every program needs upgrades, especially Linux. How else are the problems fixed?
Linux management is easier:
Again...Bull. Linux administration is *not* easier. It's harder. You have to look up files, figure out how the syntax is, and fix the problems. This will take more time to learn than the click-and-run stuff on windows. But it is better configurable, and in the hands of a skilled administrator better running (and faster configured).
And your argument about Linux Terminals being cheap. Guess what. Windows 2000 server (and later editions) have Windows Terminal Services. Argument nullified.
Linux has lower TCO:
I agree. One unix admin can do more machines at the same time than one Windows admin can. Simple timing: Clicking is slower than typing something in.
And please......get rid of the LTSP argument. Windows has had Terminal Services since windows 2000 server default installed.
Skills are transferrable:
Have you *seen* the amount of different unices? It's learning a whole new operating system each time you sit behind a new one. Sure, many config files are located at the same spot, but definately not all, and they also handle various commands differently.
Bottom line:
I agree, no desktop linux for normal users for a while. But not for above reasons. The reasons (in my view) are:
- Incompatability between programs (copy-paste between progams? yeah...right)
- Slow grapical (Refresh under X is gastly, ever used KDE? Compare that to windows.)
- Slow bootup (Turn computer on, go to toilet, clay a bit, flush, go back to computer, see xdm start up)
- Terrible installation of most programs: Decompress file,./configure, damn...library wrong...find library, install library, damn...needs other library, ad infinitum, make, damnit....compile errors, wtf is this program?, fix errors, make install. damn...segfault...what? no uninstall? aarggh!!! (try having a non-geek user do that)
Ok, RPM works....but see library/segfault bs.
- Bad multimedia capabilities: Some programs have working audio, others don't. Some have working video codecs, others don't. Installing a codec often fails, if it's even there for linux, no *real* dvd software (mplayer et al have dvd ability, but that's illegal: hacked codec). And lindvd exists, but that's a not-really-released-verison.
- Overall INSTABILITY of PROGRAMS. While I agree that Linux (the operating system) is stable, the programs running on it are a NIGHTMARE. Many, many segfaults, unaccountable crashes, mysterious hangups, weird glitches, etc.
But you do get 500000 shells, 5912719471391 editors, and 50 different windowmanagers!!! (woohoo?)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, this is a definitely typical american approach. "Let's seperate from the rest of the world, because there is no rest of the world, other than what needs conquering or destroying". Time and time again, I read that the people from the US have absolutely no clue that there are other countries in the world than the gold old US, those bastards Canada, and those illegals Mexico. Oh, and the commies in Cuba and the rest of the world.
But I won't continue on the above subject, and just answer your questions:
- How often do you email people in other countries? Daily. My best friend emigrated, and another friend lives in Au. My in-laws live on a seperate continent, and my wife's best friend in China. Segregation would SUCK!!!
- How often do you use foreign sites? Considering you probably mean non-us-sites, daily. Just in case (god forbid) you mean sites foreign to me, daily. This includes sites in English, Japanese, dutch, german, french, swedish, norwegian, tagalog, russian, etc. If it has content I can decipher and find relevant, I read it.
- What would you lose by not being able to access US sites? Not considerably much, just slashdot, gucomics, google, userfriendly, various news sites, digg, etc. Oh....those are my most used sites....well, considerable apparently.
- What other processes? Well, how about those mmorpg's? If segregation was done, Blizzard would be destroyed. No more WOW, except for US, which would mean about a approximate drop of 4 million users. Many MANY games would be unable to be sold, because they rely on US servers for checking of licenses. Those games that do get sold are extremely expensive, because the sellers have to place servers in EVERY country.
- foreing news? Duh, I don't trust single access to news. Too easy to get biased views. Better to see the news from several unrelated sites, to get the whole picture, as far as that's possible.
- would journalists be hindered? Absolutely. They wouldn't be able to send their reports to their bosses, because there would be no internet connection to the US. Also, they would find themselves easier censored by the countries they are in, or report to.
So, to get back to how much would you lose......I think, if you read the things above, you'd get quite a good picture about how much you'd lose. Basically, you'd lose the internet, and everyone would be back to the 80's. No news, no webshops, no online games, high cost of games (higher than now), massive amounts of untracable piracy, rampant virusses (slowly spreading, but unable to remove due to lack of virusupdates), buggy operating systems (no updates).
Would you like it?
"$12-$14 range. I live in New Orleans..." Well, I live in Holland, and I've seen CD's going for anywhere between 20 and 30 euro (1 euro = 1.25 dollar, do maths), and almost always it's that yet-another-rap-yeller-or-rnb-whiner-song. Or a britney-wannabe (who'd want to do that? she can't even sing without moaning...). Haven't bought a CD in over a year now. No use, everything in the music shop sucks.
5-7 inch colour screen (with option for turning backlight off and lowres nocolour), 640x480/800x600, 6-8 inch big as in, just a tiny bit bigger than the screen), enough cpu to play nice divx's (400-500mhz xscale or something), 128-256m memory, cf slot, sd slot, 54mbit wlan, grafitti handwriting recognition :) :)
And 72 hours on the battery
As for the operating system....well... PocketPC2003/.NET should be ok (yeahyeah, I know, it's MS, but at least it looks better than Palm, though it's handwriting recognition su*ks)
Reply to your comments:
./configure, damn...library wrong...find library, install library, damn...needs other library, ad infinitum, make, damnit....compile errors, wtf is this program?, fix errors, make install. damn...segfault...what? no uninstall? aarggh!!! (try having a non-geek user do that)
Ok, RPM works....but see library/segfault bs.
Linux will be less expensive:
OpenOffice works *almost* as well as MS Office does, but I doubt that's a reason for Windows users to get it. And one MAJOR hurdle against it is...the 100 megs download ("man...that takes me a week, no way i'm gonna download that, i'll just go to the store and buy MS Office, much easier." or: "man...that takes me a week...no way i'm gonna download that, but though i'm willing to try it, i can't buy it in the shops, so i have to get MS Office"). But that's just an office program...there are more programs to/for linux.
But license per license, yes, linux is cheaper, I think, especially in the server departement:
Windows requires licenses for each client connecting (for filesharing, terminal capabilities, etc), whereas linux that's free.
Support on the other hand is also less good, so that's a trade-off (unless you use redhat/suse).
Linux needs to forced upgrades:
Bull. Complete Bull. Every program needs upgrades, especially Linux. How else are the problems fixed?
Linux management is easier:
Again...Bull. Linux administration is *not* easier. It's harder. You have to look up files, figure out how the syntax is, and fix the problems. This will take more time to learn than the click-and-run stuff on windows. But it is better configurable, and in the hands of a skilled administrator better running (and faster configured).
And your argument about Linux Terminals being cheap. Guess what. Windows 2000 server (and later editions) have Windows Terminal Services. Argument nullified.
Linux has lower TCO:
I agree. One unix admin can do more machines at the same time than one Windows admin can. Simple timing: Clicking is slower than typing something in.
And please......get rid of the LTSP argument. Windows has had Terminal Services since windows 2000 server default installed.
Skills are transferrable:
Have you *seen* the amount of different unices? It's learning a whole new operating system each time you sit behind a new one. Sure, many config files are located at the same spot, but definately not all, and they also handle various commands differently.
Bottom line:
I agree, no desktop linux for normal users for a while. But not for above reasons. The reasons (in my view) are:
- Incompatability between programs (copy-paste between progams? yeah...right)
- Slow grapical (Refresh under X is gastly, ever used KDE? Compare that to windows.)
- Slow bootup (Turn computer on, go to toilet, clay a bit, flush, go back to computer, see xdm start up)
- Terrible installation of most programs: Decompress file,
- Bad multimedia capabilities: Some programs have working audio, others don't. Some have working video codecs, others don't. Installing a codec often fails, if it's even there for linux, no *real* dvd software (mplayer et al have dvd ability, but that's illegal: hacked codec). And lindvd exists, but that's a not-really-released-verison.
- Overall INSTABILITY of PROGRAMS. While I agree that Linux (the operating system) is stable, the programs running on it are a NIGHTMARE. Many, many segfaults, unaccountable crashes, mysterious hangups, weird glitches, etc.
But you do get 500000 shells, 5912719471391 editors, and 50 different windowmanagers!!! (woohoo?)
Saryon