I think what happened to Jak II is strange though. Some reviewers called Jak II what happened after the first Jak starting hanging with the wrong crowd and doing drugs. While Jak II is undoubtedly a great game, the paradigm shift that happened is kinda' strange.
The answer is rather simple. You choose the one that won't sell out to big corporations. Even though ICANN eventually took some form of action against Verisign, it was little more than a slap on the wrist. A meaningful entity would have stripped Verisign of its registrar power outright and made an example of them.
If some organization must "control" the Internet, it must act in accordance with the greater Internet mobocracy. In essence, it should do nothing unless provoked, at which point it snaps like a rabid dog.
Course, I don't trust any government regime to effect such an organization...
When my college needed to update its Linux lab, we went from Red Hat Linux 7.2 to 9.0. We basically set up a fully updated Red Hat Linux 9.0 install on a single computer and then flashed it over to all of the others. Painless.
Because they make the ISOs available for free on-line, I don't see where the trouble lies or why one would be compelled to pay for the Enterprise or other Red Hat editions other than potentially "moral" reasons.
For years, AT&T has been selling services that are supposed to cut back on telemarketers soliciting consumers. Case in point, they offer caller ID.
Except here's the deal. Ever notice that telemarketers consistently slip under the radar when it comes to caller ID with the infamous "Unavailable" tag? I would believe that in exchange for the caller ID, AT&T would likewise sell telemarketers a tool to circumvent it.
My suspicion was raised when, prior to the no call act, I had received many telemarketer calls. Ironically, these were not identified on the caller ID system, but were calls from the telephone company itself, promoting their new services. The telephone company (U.S. West) circumvented their own technology.
To me, it's a sinister cycle. Telephone company sells consumers technology to dodge telemarketers, company sells telemarketers a way to circumvent said technology. Who profits? The phone company, of course. And so long as the system "sort of" works - that is, as long as not all telemarketers can circumvent the system - no one would be the wiser, right?
Now, you might argue that spam is different from telemarketing and you would be right. After all, spam can be blindly sent anywhere and you don't need an army of people to wreck havoc. Still, I would be suspicious of the phone company having such a patent. There are many other ways they could punish spammers if need be - why patent a circumvention technology? Unless they intend to turn around and... yeah, you know the rest.
Course, I might just be cynical about telecommunication companies. And I might just be overreacting to something very common. But in this day and age I don't think such suspicion is unjustified.
Yeah. Actually, on your feedback yesterday, I went to investigate closer and try to actually get Debian. First of all, jigdo is a pretty neat distribution tool. Aside from a BitTorrent, pooling the resources from many servers like that is a good idea.
Thing I noticed is that it was a lot like Gentoo. Which isn't a good thing - not because I don't like Gentoo - but because Gentoo never worked well on this computer due to some strange unresolved issues with the stupid way a certain computer manufacterer *cough* DELL *cough* implemented their keyboards, USB mice, and other peripherals. I've tried workarounds to this, including flashing the BIOS to the newest version, but the problem persists. I can install Gentoo, but once I get to the graphical login prompt, no keyboard. It could be simple, for all I know, but I haven't the time to mess with it. Since Gentoo is based on Debian, I might imagine Debian has the same issue, though a cursory Google search didn't illuminate anything.
It's also probably worth asking - how unstable is "unstable"? Is it "Don't use this for mission-critical tasks" unstable? What about "testing"? I mean, else, you're essentially running on a Linux as old as Red Hat 7.3.:)
The only reason why Debian is more expert-oriented is that those involved with the project haven't traditionally cared as much about GUI installers and automation.
And surprise surprise, that's what people used to Windows are expecting. Though, you do have a point that once installed, Debian is not all that much different from Red Hat. Fundamentally, it still boils down to Gnome or KDE and a slew of programs that come with them.
A question remains though - and it's a rhetorical damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't type - if Red Hat worked with the Debian project and ported, among other things, the Anaconda installer over, wouldn't the majority of Debian users flinch at the "dumbing down" of their brand of Linux? Would we see the same venomous outcry against Red Hat from the zealots for "tainting" Debian? Maybe.
Comparing Debian/Gentoo to Red Hat is comparing apples to oranges. Would you give your grandmother a copy of Gentoo and expect her to know what to do with it? Red Hat appeals to an entirely different audience, that which values friendly user interfaces and minimal manual hacking to make things work, but still keeps that edge beneath the surface for those who want it.
It is not at all redundant because the distros exist for different reasons and attract different users. The person who is more used to a GUI like Windows will feel more at home in Red Hat than Debian/Gentoo because most everything "works" right out of the box with minimal fuss.
Having used Fedora since the Severn version, I'm very happy with it. If you enjoyed Red Hat 9, this is more of the same, only with the latest versions of everything. Remember that for all intents and purposes, Fedora Core 1 == Red Hat Linux 10. Although you have to do some minor twiddling to get MP3 and NTFS support in the beginning, I feel it is better than Mandrake 9.1 because it seems to work much faster and smoother. The graphical loading screen is just slick and gives it a very professional sheen. I have not encountered any significant problems with it.
The two critiques I have aren't leveled against the product, but against a couple of booboos Red Hat made. First, they were completely unprepared for the deluge when Fedora Core 1 was released. And by unprepared, I mean even less prepared than usual. Literally, the BitTorrent was the only way to score the file since only a handful of servers (mostly universities) had the ISOs. This was a real disaster. The second critique is that the Red Hat Network seems to have some issues with Fedora Core 1. Since there isn't any errata, it's hard to tell if it's actually working or not and there aren't any Channels to subscribe to.
But overall, I think Fedora Core 1 is a fine distro and I would recommend it to those wanting to try that new "Linux thing" they heard about.
I'm not convinced a "killer app" is necessarily the answer. As Microsoft has done time and again, when someone else comes out with a good idea, they are quick to clone it. In that sense, Microsoft takes our ideas and uses them against us.
Indeed, a Xbox is a frugal investment if you compare it to the cost of a reasonably equipped computer. Between the video card and the computer itself, one might expect to pay $500-$1000 to build it themselves. Course, most people going through a builder like Dell would expect to pay far more.
When you compare this to the sub-$200 price point of the Xbox, it's not a bad decision at all. Especially when you also consider that Xbox games (and for that matter all console games) have incentive to "work" from the get go. No installation sequence, worrying about system requirements, crashes, or odd bugs exclusive to your rig.
I don't own an Xbox myself - opting for a PS2 and GameCube instead. I can appreciate the sentiment of the console gamers.
The Internet is really the wild west - the great unexplored frontier. To me, it exists beyond governments and central control. When people with malicious intentions come to the Internet, the good people have no problem taking the unwritten law into their own hands. In a weird sense, the Internet is our one chance at an unbounded pseudo-utopia that is controlled by no entity. No one can tell us what to do or how to behave.
The real threat, as you said, are the government organizations that vie for control of this amorphous mass. They want to dictate what we see, record our actions, and like any government institution tax us to death. I would add corporations as our enemies as well. By pushing for legislation in the government, big business may one day control the Internet. We've already seen the frightening effects of this with Verisign's unbridled and unchecked power.
Both governments and corporations are an undeniable threat to the Internet. Indeed, they will destroy the Internet in their selfish quest for power and ruin it for everyone.
As Internet users, we must be aware of these ongoing assaults on our digital freedom. We cannot allow any organization to gain control of the Internet - no matter of said organization claims to work on behalf of the greater whole.
Well of course support can be added, just as it could in RH9 (and also RH8, which is where I think the MP3 limitation started). Thing is it's just another roadbump for newcomers to swerve around.
Indeed. Fedora has been particularly fiendish in this regard with very few of their mirror sites maintaining a copy. They are very disorganized when it comes to notifying everyone about the new releases.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I'll never understand from where all of the "Red Hate" sentiment derives from. God forbid a company distributing Linux takes to make money.
- Everywhere the Red Hat emblem used to appear, the new Fedora logo does.
- Almost all of the major programs in Red Hat 9 have been updated to their most recent incarnations.
- CUPS is used for all printing needs.
- More recent version of the Linux kernel (still not 2.6, that's for the next version of Fedora).
- Same lack of built-in NTFS read-only capailities and MP3 support in XMMS.
Based on beta 3, that's about all I'd put down as new. I might go insofar as to say it's a tad bit faster, but it could be psychological.:)
When asked for the reasoning, a Square exec replied:
"The fanboys kept demanding a longer Final Fantasy game, so we decided to give it to them. This one clocks in at 2,000 hours and the delay was due to the fact that we needed to beta test it."
I only partially agree. My problem with FrontPage is that it creates some really nasty HTML code as output. This was certainly true of version 2002 and, unless they changed something drastic, is also true of version 2003. Take a look at a web page composed in Dreamweaver and you'll find it's much cleaner to read.
For a time, I had been using FrontPage to manage a very large web site. When I lost the ability to use FrontPage, I was forced to convert it all by hand back to legible handtyped HTML. Let me tell you, it was a messy and arduous task. Though I was successful in doing it, it didn't stop me from going out and getting Dreamweaver MX to manage the site.
The other thing I dislike about FrontPage is the ease by which people can add annoying widgets to their web pages. Scrolling marquees, flashing text, all are things to be avoided by professional web designers. But FrontPage puts them all right out in the open as if they are expected features. Not only are they shunned, but Microsoft's implementation of them only solidifies the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and pseudo-HTML nonsense.
AFAIK, Macromedia's programs are supposed to work really well under Wine. Dreamweaver MX is reported to work just fine, except for the color selector under Properties causes a crash. But, in any case, a program of that complexity and nature shows that if Macromedia is not consciously supporting Linux, then at least they are rolling out some good, compatible code.;)
To put it bluntly, I don't feel Rare has made anything worthwhile since Goldeneye. Perfect Dark was plagued by a choppy framerate that only marginally improved with the N64 memory expansion. Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Donkey Kong 64 were all mediocre easter egg hunts under the disguise of pretty graphics. Starfox Adventures is a dull adventure game with Zelda elements seemingly thrown in at the last moment. Maybe Ghoulies is changed - I don't know.
What Rare really needs to do is find some way of reinspiring and reinvigorating its games, especially in the way of gameplay. They are just tired models of gameplay - Rare should try their hand at something bold and new instead of the neverending item hunt. They have talented artists, designers, and programmers. It's making a compelling game with fun mechanics where I feel Rare continues to fall short. All of the graceful programming and pretty graphics can't save a game with a lackluster basis to begin with. And while there are some people who really enjoy item collection games, Rare slit its own throat by producing one after another after another on the Nintendo 64.
Adobe wouldn't have to insist on product activation and worry about piracy if they sold their product at a reasonable price point in the first place. People tend to pirate things that are out of their price range. Certainly, I know dozens who have Photoshop, but I doubt any one of them actually spent $579 for it.
I see other posts in this thread talking about how the educational discount of $299 is a "steal." Perhaps this is true, relative to other Adobe products. But don't forget that vector drawing still necessitates Illustrator, which also costs a small fortune.
If you want a "steal," you want Paint Shop Pro. We're talking about $100 for the complete package, but a paltry $40 for upgrading users (and I found my copy of PSP7 with upgrade discount for measly $15 at Best Buy). Though the "professionals" will argue what they will (and believe me, they argue on why you should cough up hundreds more), Paint Shop has always worked for me and I can produce Photoshop-level work in it. I'd be willing to gamble that Jasc suffers less from piracy as well.
But rather than being a fanboy of Jasc products, my point is this. Adobe has to be ten times larger than Jasc is. Adobe's products are industry standards. In art circles, Adobe is a household name. So why is it, then, that Adobe charges five times as much for nearly the same program when the much smaller Jasc can get away selling it for a fraction? An economist would say supply and demand. I would say greed.
Often you hear people whine about all of the "starving artists" in the world. Ever walk into an art supply store and be dumbfounded at how much things cost? It's no wonder artists are starving. I see Photoshop in that same light. Yes it's a great program. Yes you can make awesome stuff with it. But thriftiness is also a virtue, and in that respect Photoshop is not worth the price when there are far comparable, cheaper alternatives.
What's "professional" does not immediately equate what's "best." It is merely what the majority is used to using.
Indeed, and I think this is definitely worth pointing out. The license makes it clear that they are only licensing the free runtime of the engine for NON GAMING USES. I suppose their intent is to have it exist for simulations, walkthroughs and whatnot. But, it's really meaningless as far as fan game creation goes, sad to say.
200 megs is nothing when you think about all that has to go into a demo and the points you highlight fail to appreciate this.
As any level builder can attest to, some of the largest components of a level pack are the textures and sounds. The Unreal Tournament engine can handle extremely detailed textures, most 1024x1024 in size, in a fairly uncompressed format. Moreover, all of the sounds are also generally uncompressed wave files. You couple those two things together and you end up with a lot of "bloat." However, performance is improved since the game doesn't have to work at uncompressing a dozen files at runtime. I'd hate to waltz through a world of overcompressed JPEGs, know what I mean?
One thing I did a while back was burn a CD with the installation programs for many of these. It was useful at the time, but since there are new versions now with new features, of course I'd prefer to have the newest edition most of the time. Then, the CD becomes useless.
My point is, Linux can get away with this because the typical release rate for any given distribution is much more frequent than Windows. As since, every new release has the latest and most stable versions of programs bundled right in. Considering that Windows has a delay of about four years, it just isn't feasible.
No one can really deny that Digital Rights Management will prove to be a significant problem and at the rate Microsoft and industry lobbyists are going will inevitably become a reality. When that time comes, you can bet I'll be using Linux or at least be sitting on an older version of Windows. But that time has, for better or worse, yet to be realized.
I understand that KDE has Klipper that is supposed to facilitate cutting and pasting between programs and, as I said, newer Linux distros get this right about 95% of the time. It's just that nagging 5% when it doesn't.
I neglected to point out SP1 since Windows XP tends to ship with it built in now, thus not requiring the 125 meg download. The other Windows patches thereafter are not particularly large, granted I don't have an exact number handy.
But like you said, a Linux update essentially updates every aspect of the system in one swoop, including software you might not ever have a need for. Moreover, it's typically the complete program that gets downloaded, as opposed to a patch that tweaks certain parts of an existing program (in many ways, a recipe for disaster).
Indeed, this is one of the most delightful aspects of Linux distributions such as Red Hat, SuSe, and Mandrake. Everything is there from the beginning. You don't have to fumble around with the Office CDs, and then the random driver CDs, and all of that nonsense. It's all there from the beginning - many Internet browsers, several GUIs, and tons of stuff you'll never have a need for. There's a lot of virtue to that.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what happened to Jak II is strange though. Some reviewers called Jak II what happened after the first Jak starting hanging with the wrong crowd and doing drugs. While Jak II is undoubtedly a great game, the paradigm shift that happened is kinda' strange.
The answer is rather simple. You choose the one that won't sell out to big corporations. Even though ICANN eventually took some form of action against Verisign, it was little more than a slap on the wrist. A meaningful entity would have stripped Verisign of its registrar power outright and made an example of them.
If some organization must "control" the Internet, it must act in accordance with the greater Internet mobocracy. In essence, it should do nothing unless provoked, at which point it snaps like a rabid dog.
Course, I don't trust any government regime to effect such an organization...
Because they make the ISOs available for free on-line, I don't see where the trouble lies or why one would be compelled to pay for the Enterprise or other Red Hat editions other than potentially "moral" reasons.
For years, AT&T has been selling services that are supposed to cut back on telemarketers soliciting consumers. Case in point, they offer caller ID.
Except here's the deal. Ever notice that telemarketers consistently slip under the radar when it comes to caller ID with the infamous "Unavailable" tag? I would believe that in exchange for the caller ID, AT&T would likewise sell telemarketers a tool to circumvent it.
My suspicion was raised when, prior to the no call act, I had received many telemarketer calls. Ironically, these were not identified on the caller ID system, but were calls from the telephone company itself, promoting their new services. The telephone company (U.S. West) circumvented their own technology.
To me, it's a sinister cycle. Telephone company sells consumers technology to dodge telemarketers, company sells telemarketers a way to circumvent said technology. Who profits? The phone company, of course. And so long as the system "sort of" works - that is, as long as not all telemarketers can circumvent the system - no one would be the wiser, right?
Now, you might argue that spam is different from telemarketing and you would be right. After all, spam can be blindly sent anywhere and you don't need an army of people to wreck havoc. Still, I would be suspicious of the phone company having such a patent. There are many other ways they could punish spammers if need be - why patent a circumvention technology? Unless they intend to turn around and... yeah, you know the rest.
Course, I might just be cynical about telecommunication companies. And I might just be overreacting to something very common. But in this day and age I don't think such suspicion is unjustified.
Thing I noticed is that it was a lot like Gentoo. Which isn't a good thing - not because I don't like Gentoo - but because Gentoo never worked well on this computer due to some strange unresolved issues with the stupid way a certain computer manufacterer *cough* DELL *cough* implemented their keyboards, USB mice, and other peripherals. I've tried workarounds to this, including flashing the BIOS to the newest version, but the problem persists. I can install Gentoo, but once I get to the graphical login prompt, no keyboard. It could be simple, for all I know, but I haven't the time to mess with it. Since Gentoo is based on Debian, I might imagine Debian has the same issue, though a cursory Google search didn't illuminate anything.
It's also probably worth asking - how unstable is "unstable"? Is it "Don't use this for mission-critical tasks" unstable? What about "testing"? I mean, else, you're essentially running on a Linux as old as Red Hat 7.3. :)
A question remains though - and it's a rhetorical damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't type - if Red Hat worked with the Debian project and ported, among other things, the Anaconda installer over, wouldn't the majority of Debian users flinch at the "dumbing down" of their brand of Linux? Would we see the same venomous outcry against Red Hat from the zealots for "tainting" Debian? Maybe.
It is not at all redundant because the distros exist for different reasons and attract different users. The person who is more used to a GUI like Windows will feel more at home in Red Hat than Debian/Gentoo because most everything "works" right out of the box with minimal fuss.
Having used Fedora since the Severn version, I'm very happy with it. If you enjoyed Red Hat 9, this is more of the same, only with the latest versions of everything. Remember that for all intents and purposes, Fedora Core 1 == Red Hat Linux 10. Although you have to do some minor twiddling to get MP3 and NTFS support in the beginning, I feel it is better than Mandrake 9.1 because it seems to work much faster and smoother. The graphical loading screen is just slick and gives it a very professional sheen. I have not encountered any significant problems with it.
The two critiques I have aren't leveled against the product, but against a couple of booboos Red Hat made. First, they were completely unprepared for the deluge when Fedora Core 1 was released. And by unprepared, I mean even less prepared than usual. Literally, the BitTorrent was the only way to score the file since only a handful of servers (mostly universities) had the ISOs. This was a real disaster. The second critique is that the Red Hat Network seems to have some issues with Fedora Core 1. Since there isn't any errata, it's hard to tell if it's actually working or not and there aren't any Channels to subscribe to.
But overall, I think Fedora Core 1 is a fine distro and I would recommend it to those wanting to try that new "Linux thing" they heard about.
I'm not convinced a "killer app" is necessarily the answer. As Microsoft has done time and again, when someone else comes out with a good idea, they are quick to clone it. In that sense, Microsoft takes our ideas and uses them against us.
When you compare this to the sub-$200 price point of the Xbox, it's not a bad decision at all. Especially when you also consider that Xbox games (and for that matter all console games) have incentive to "work" from the get go. No installation sequence, worrying about system requirements, crashes, or odd bugs exclusive to your rig.
I don't own an Xbox myself - opting for a PS2 and GameCube instead. I can appreciate the sentiment of the console gamers.
The Internet is really the wild west - the great unexplored frontier. To me, it exists beyond governments and central control. When people with malicious intentions come to the Internet, the good people have no problem taking the unwritten law into their own hands. In a weird sense, the Internet is our one chance at an unbounded pseudo-utopia that is controlled by no entity. No one can tell us what to do or how to behave.
The real threat, as you said, are the government organizations that vie for control of this amorphous mass. They want to dictate what we see, record our actions, and like any government institution tax us to death. I would add corporations as our enemies as well. By pushing for legislation in the government, big business may one day control the Internet. We've already seen the frightening effects of this with Verisign's unbridled and unchecked power.
Both governments and corporations are an undeniable threat to the Internet. Indeed, they will destroy the Internet in their selfish quest for power and ruin it for everyone.
As Internet users, we must be aware of these ongoing assaults on our digital freedom. We cannot allow any organization to gain control of the Internet - no matter of said organization claims to work on behalf of the greater whole.
Well of course support can be added, just as it could in RH9 (and also RH8, which is where I think the MP3 limitation started). Thing is it's just another roadbump for newcomers to swerve around.
Indeed. Fedora has been particularly fiendish in this regard with very few of their mirror sites maintaining a copy. They are very disorganized when it comes to notifying everyone about the new releases.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I'll never understand from where all of the "Red Hate" sentiment derives from. God forbid a company distributing Linux takes to make money.
- Everywhere the Red Hat emblem used to appear, the new Fedora logo does. - Almost all of the major programs in Red Hat 9 have been updated to their most recent incarnations. - CUPS is used for all printing needs. - More recent version of the Linux kernel (still not 2.6, that's for the next version of Fedora). - Same lack of built-in NTFS read-only capailities and MP3 support in XMMS. Based on beta 3, that's about all I'd put down as new. I might go insofar as to say it's a tad bit faster, but it could be psychological. :)
"The fanboys kept demanding a longer Final Fantasy game, so we decided to give it to them. This one clocks in at 2,000 hours and the delay was due to the fact that we needed to beta test it."
For a time, I had been using FrontPage to manage a very large web site. When I lost the ability to use FrontPage, I was forced to convert it all by hand back to legible handtyped HTML. Let me tell you, it was a messy and arduous task. Though I was successful in doing it, it didn't stop me from going out and getting Dreamweaver MX to manage the site.
The other thing I dislike about FrontPage is the ease by which people can add annoying widgets to their web pages. Scrolling marquees, flashing text, all are things to be avoided by professional web designers. But FrontPage puts them all right out in the open as if they are expected features. Not only are they shunned, but Microsoft's implementation of them only solidifies the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and pseudo-HTML nonsense.
AFAIK, Macromedia's programs are supposed to work really well under Wine. Dreamweaver MX is reported to work just fine, except for the color selector under Properties causes a crash. But, in any case, a program of that complexity and nature shows that if Macromedia is not consciously supporting Linux, then at least they are rolling out some good, compatible code. ;)
I too have noticed that, though since I have never played the game I cannot see what attracts a cult following to it. :)
What Rare really needs to do is find some way of reinspiring and reinvigorating its games, especially in the way of gameplay. They are just tired models of gameplay - Rare should try their hand at something bold and new instead of the neverending item hunt. They have talented artists, designers, and programmers. It's making a compelling game with fun mechanics where I feel Rare continues to fall short. All of the graceful programming and pretty graphics can't save a game with a lackluster basis to begin with. And while there are some people who really enjoy item collection games, Rare slit its own throat by producing one after another after another on the Nintendo 64.
I see other posts in this thread talking about how the educational discount of $299 is a "steal." Perhaps this is true, relative to other Adobe products. But don't forget that vector drawing still necessitates Illustrator, which also costs a small fortune.
If you want a "steal," you want Paint Shop Pro. We're talking about $100 for the complete package, but a paltry $40 for upgrading users (and I found my copy of PSP7 with upgrade discount for measly $15 at Best Buy). Though the "professionals" will argue what they will (and believe me, they argue on why you should cough up hundreds more), Paint Shop has always worked for me and I can produce Photoshop-level work in it. I'd be willing to gamble that Jasc suffers less from piracy as well.
But rather than being a fanboy of Jasc products, my point is this. Adobe has to be ten times larger than Jasc is. Adobe's products are industry standards. In art circles, Adobe is a household name. So why is it, then, that Adobe charges five times as much for nearly the same program when the much smaller Jasc can get away selling it for a fraction? An economist would say supply and demand. I would say greed.
Often you hear people whine about all of the "starving artists" in the world. Ever walk into an art supply store and be dumbfounded at how much things cost? It's no wonder artists are starving. I see Photoshop in that same light. Yes it's a great program. Yes you can make awesome stuff with it. But thriftiness is also a virtue, and in that respect Photoshop is not worth the price when there are far comparable, cheaper alternatives.
What's "professional" does not immediately equate what's "best." It is merely what the majority is used to using.
Indeed, and I think this is definitely worth pointing out. The license makes it clear that they are only licensing the free runtime of the engine for NON GAMING USES. I suppose their intent is to have it exist for simulations, walkthroughs and whatnot. But, it's really meaningless as far as fan game creation goes, sad to say.
As any level builder can attest to, some of the largest components of a level pack are the textures and sounds. The Unreal Tournament engine can handle extremely detailed textures, most 1024x1024 in size, in a fairly uncompressed format. Moreover, all of the sounds are also generally uncompressed wave files. You couple those two things together and you end up with a lot of "bloat." However, performance is improved since the game doesn't have to work at uncompressing a dozen files at runtime. I'd hate to waltz through a world of overcompressed JPEGs, know what I mean?
One thing I did a while back was burn a CD with the installation programs for many of these. It was useful at the time, but since there are new versions now with new features, of course I'd prefer to have the newest edition most of the time. Then, the CD becomes useless.
My point is, Linux can get away with this because the typical release rate for any given distribution is much more frequent than Windows. As since, every new release has the latest and most stable versions of programs bundled right in. Considering that Windows has a delay of about four years, it just isn't feasible.
I understand that KDE has Klipper that is supposed to facilitate cutting and pasting between programs and, as I said, newer Linux distros get this right about 95% of the time. It's just that nagging 5% when it doesn't.
But like you said, a Linux update essentially updates every aspect of the system in one swoop, including software you might not ever have a need for. Moreover, it's typically the complete program that gets downloaded, as opposed to a patch that tweaks certain parts of an existing program (in many ways, a recipe for disaster).
Indeed, this is one of the most delightful aspects of Linux distributions such as Red Hat, SuSe, and Mandrake. Everything is there from the beginning. You don't have to fumble around with the Office CDs, and then the random driver CDs, and all of that nonsense. It's all there from the beginning - many Internet browsers, several GUIs, and tons of stuff you'll never have a need for. There's a lot of virtue to that.