How about on-demand services? It could be a fine way to counter the PVR market if you could watch any show, any time, but not be able to skip commercials.
It would be amusing to see all the people who claim they don't skip commercials on their Tivo come screaming out of the closet.
It's assuming everything went smoothly with the Ubuntu install. Up until 7.04, it took some monkey work to get certain Nvidia chipsets working due to not being detected correctly by the install. Sure, you would get a functional 2D desktop, but the first time a 3D application is fired up, problems start.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, it always turns into that in each of these threads because people are going to sit around and look for every fault Windows has while glossing over and making Linux sound like a dream to work with or install, while this often isn't the case.
For instance, in the time it took you to reply to my message, you could have hit the sites needed and got your driver downloads started for a Windows installation. Not a big deal. Slower, yes, but still it's nothing at all like people exaggerate it into.
Anyone that works around Windows boxes should already have a USB floppy hanging around if they have RAID. It's just a $30 fact of life if they have yet to slip stream it. Still, it's not something (as referenced later in the thread) a multi-hour, a full day, a two day ordeal. It's simply not what folks are cracking it up to be.
If you want to say which one is better, yes, Linux is the obvious choice, but it's not going to be the simplest and easiest thing on earth depending on your hardware and requirements of the system.
I'd prefer at least a P3 for firewalls (way more efficient). a P1 would be able to handle a fairly small ruleset but if you want to do anything slightly more advanced, like running snort, it's not doing to keep up with much more than a home broadband connection. Your consumption vs what you are getting done would make just running Linux on a WRT54G router, or similar equipment, much more feasible.
Beyond the processor, the rest of the old equipment associated are the power suckers.
Good luck decoding and playing back video in mplayer on a pentium1. Mine had trouble with mp3 files. The stock distribution of debian should have worked fine, so getting DSL seems kind of an odd choice here.
It's probably wise to ditch any P1 era machine unless it's absolutely needed and there's no other hardware to run. Those systems drink a lot of electricity for the amount of work they get done.
The simple fact that you can't write anything without implied meaning and not get modded a troll or off-topic is a good indicator of the average on here.
Often there will be a number of responses about how you've got to spell things out, cover all bases or someone's going to tear into a post with a tyrant of information already posted in the very same thread, get modded +5 and so forth gives further evidence towards this theory.
It's sad, but a lot of coders I've known were far more OCD than intelligent. Don't get me wrong, I've known some ingenious people in the field, but most are social outcasts for their inability to comprehend normal conversation as much as the non-tech savvy person can't understand code.
Unfortunately, so much media hoopla and parents wanting to be proud of their kid for picking up things they themselves don't understand have inflated egos in dramatic fashion.
Much less the 2-day adventure of reinstalling the OS every 6 months to 1 year. Try installing Ubuntu on a formatted HDD and compare it to installing Windows. It takes less than an hour for me to install XP and have all the drivers loaded. It takes about the same to get Ubuntu set up the way I like it if I don't copy over some config files.
It's funny, the further I scroll into this thread, the more time it takes to install Windows.
Tracking down drivers? If you play games, you know whether your card is Nvidia or ATI, so you go to their website. The rest you'll probably be able to get off the website smacked all over the box your PC came in. If you got the PC from a mom 'n pop shop, it's likely the motherboard vendor will be listed on the box and it's not very hard to find a website.
You guys make it sound like there's tens or hundreds of drivers to look for, but it's likely you'll only need to manually grab a video driver, RAID or audio driver at most.
If we want to compare it to Linux, sure "everything works" on a fresh Ubuntu install, but the system is in no way running as good as it could be. It's likely going to need a few visits to the web to get the video running up to snuff. It's going to take some monkey time with Wine to get applications working as well as they can, etc.
Yes, Microsoft sucks but let's not be so dramatic about using the Internet.
They work on just about any setup nowadays. I've got a logitech that worked out of the box, an Apple Elite that worked out of the box, and if we board the way-back machine, behold as I plugged in a Microsoft keyboard years ago and it's media functions worked.
It's just desperation in seeking FUD in the above arguments, lack of experience, or just bad memories from the 1990s.
Someone with mod points should spend them on this guy instead of the +5 posts justifying a moot point above. If I worked with anyone who took all day to get Linux up and running, it'd be time for a meeting with management.
Plus, I've never worked somewhere where it was considered a bad thing to nuke and pave a new machine. It's reasonable, since when you install your OS from scratch you are setting it up the way you want/need it and not fiddling around for short periods of time over the coming weeks getting things right as you run into issues.
Execu-drones are a different story, but the Helpdesk groups tend to slap their own images on new laptops and desktops.
Given the fact that most places are going to stick with "customized" Linux installs, I don't see many folks whether at the office or at home keeping the vendor's Linux install on the system. As far as Linux users go, they tend to have so many of their own preferences on window managers, software, etc that it just doesn't fit to expect one to make huge changes in their computing just because of a new piece of hardware. Personally, my desktop is like one of my musical instruments to me. It remains the same on every PC I use and I only get more efficient and comfortable over time.
Baby steps. Forward or backward? It's very easy to come across as a total crackpot in these situations. One of my friends takes every opportunity to do what you did, articulates well, but really just comes off as a cheap bastard or difficult customer most of the time.
They'll likely sell a ton of any decent performing system as long as the price is right and the fact that it doesn't come with Linux isn't going to be a big motivator for consumers to find something else any time in the perceivable future, as most people actually want Windows on the systems they purchase.
Conversely, when people buy Windows machines, hardware makers think people will only want/need Windows drivers. Many of those people will install some other OS, but how are the businesses supposed to know about that? In capitalism, buying decisions are the primary means of sending messages to the producers. Well, Google is only a click away and you'll figure out quickly whether there's any problems with motherboard X and any OS. I've rarely run into driver issues in Linux due to this.
Regardless, any sizable business worth staying in business will buy a test system or two and run them with the planned platform during a testing phase before rolling them out to the data center in full production. You know, the boxes you put clients on that are going to call your support group the first time a little problem happens-- you offer to stick them on these "higher performing systems we are testing" and you'll know pretty quick if they work. This, at least in the shops I've worked at, has been common practice.
This whole "ask/." thing has been getting lamer lately. The submitter answers his own question in the post, so the only other option is making a tiny little stand against Microsoft, while no matter what, they'll continue to make money off the masses and all you did was spend more on a system than you had to.
Plus, the day will likely come that an application will come out that you HAVE to use for whatever reason, or a game that you HAVE to play and you guessed it, it only works in Windows. In those cases, it would be nice to have a Vista or XP partition and some VMWare love. Sorry, Wine really sucks with the grand majority of software, plus you are still probably going to ding some copyright laws by downloading DLLs off the Internets. Maybe give the license to a friend if they want it. Plus, as others have pointed out, you can get a refund on the license later. It's not worth paying more for the hardware to not get Windows with it.
On the other hand, if he doesn't want to get involved in the whole ordeal of paying more for a system without preloaded software, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to go pick up the parts and build his own computer. The price will likely be higher overall but the system will be something you can be sure about since there's only a few mother boards on the top tier and they'll usually run anything. Again, Google is your friend here.
I know we all want to make a big stand on this issue. But until the broken capitalism thing is fixed, there won't be nearly enough people with strong enough opinions on the matter to make a dent in the issue.
If Apple was the big player, folks would likely be raising hell about not being able to buy a new system without OSX already installed or paid for on it.
Has anyone shown up in the proverbial front lawn over any Internet related issue? All I see is people posting in mad furies on message boards, with big opinions, but when it comes down to it, they give the impression of living in their parent's basement. Combine that with most politicians not reading the Internets, and things don't tend to get too far.
Look at all the hoopla over the DMCA in the US and it's injection in multiple forms around the world. Lots of hype on the web, but no governmental changes anywhere. Zippo.
Here in the US, I think life is seen as the moment Jesus strikes his magical staff and says it is so, or at least, that's what they tell us. With each medical advance, it is apparently discovered he does this earlier and earlier in the process.
Yeah, those people suck too. But, it's worth a few pokes into the ground to save the wildlife that isn't all cute and cuddly in pictures, more widespread, and more impacting on the environment than any amount of drilling would ever be.
I thought the DOE was all about subsidizing our tax dollars to pump them into already expensive, enormous businesses who simply want more market share while making it's decisions based upon politics and not reality.
Just look how well ethanol is working out. Been fishing in the Gulf of Mexico during the last few years? Notice the lack of fish and the tumors all over the ones still there? It looks like they are willing to allow the wiping out of what was once a great food source, while not drilling in areas we know there's good sources of hydrocarbons because it might interfere with a passing grazing creatures who are already overpopulated due to the lack of large predators?
The US.. Well, the "west" is a mess when it comes to getting anything done these days. It's like everyone started listening to the college kids going through their PETA hippy stage instead of dealing with the reality of a pending energy crisis. Thanks to this, we've got gas over $4 a gallon.
Eh? My Gnome desktop looks about a hundred times more like OSX than Windows. It's just about five clicks to make the transformation anyway. Both operating systems are so very similar in appearance these days.
No kidding. Had this happened, someone would know by now where it happened. Anyone who has been on the web for any amount of time should know that vague stories are usually falsies.
No, I was speaking more about the resulting game piracy due to softmods of the Wii. Regardless, it looks like someone has some shitty knickers and needs a change.
That's good. Let's hope the profit persists and allows for more to be made in the future.
Let's hope game developers don't get their panties too twisted and continue to make games for it, knowing a softmod is out there ready to take a chunk out of their end of the cut.
Nothing about modern economics is completely sustainable. Change, often rapid, is a part of our global reality. I think what the previous poster was getting to has more to do with the governments over there seeing what's going on here and not wanting any part of it.
When you have a certain population, the needs change from "how do I do this with less people?" to "how do I keep these billions of people busy and fed?"
And so it begins, watch as the Wii goes the way of the Dreamcast due to "no hardware mods needed" to run unsigned software.
No, I'm not being negative. This is just how consoles seem to die off quickly. You know, when the business model breaks down due to a large number of console sales (usually a loss) and a low number of game purchases due to them being free on P2P or usenet.
You can't stop people from remembering the Amiga as more powerful of a machine than it really was. It's like 80's arcade memories with a meth/crack combination haze.
I've gotten this a few times from silly people who had those front projection televisions in the late 70s/early 80s who swear up and down their television was brighter, clearer and had sharper color than current generation LCD panels. When in reality, they had overbearing reds and lost focus a couple of months after purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
How about on-demand services? It could be a fine way to counter the PVR market if you could watch any show, any time, but not be able to skip commercials.
It would be amusing to see all the people who claim they don't skip commercials on their Tivo come screaming out of the closet.
It's assuming everything went smoothly with the Ubuntu install. Up until 7.04, it took some monkey work to get certain Nvidia chipsets working due to not being detected correctly by the install. Sure, you would get a functional 2D desktop, but the first time a 3D application is fired up, problems start.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, it always turns into that in each of these threads because people are going to sit around and look for every fault Windows has while glossing over and making Linux sound like a dream to work with or install, while this often isn't the case.
For instance, in the time it took you to reply to my message, you could have hit the sites needed and got your driver downloads started for a Windows installation. Not a big deal. Slower, yes, but still it's nothing at all like people exaggerate it into.
Anyone that works around Windows boxes should already have a USB floppy hanging around if they have RAID. It's just a $30 fact of life if they have yet to slip stream it. Still, it's not something (as referenced later in the thread) a multi-hour, a full day, a two day ordeal. It's simply not what folks are cracking it up to be.
If you want to say which one is better, yes, Linux is the obvious choice, but it's not going to be the simplest and easiest thing on earth depending on your hardware and requirements of the system.
I'd prefer at least a P3 for firewalls (way more efficient). a P1 would be able to handle a fairly small ruleset but if you want to do anything slightly more advanced, like running snort, it's not doing to keep up with much more than a home broadband connection. Your consumption vs what you are getting done would make just running Linux on a WRT54G router, or similar equipment, much more feasible.
Beyond the processor, the rest of the old equipment associated are the power suckers.
Good luck decoding and playing back video in mplayer on a pentium1. Mine had trouble with mp3 files. The stock distribution of debian should have worked fine, so getting DSL seems kind of an odd choice here.
It's probably wise to ditch any P1 era machine unless it's absolutely needed and there's no other hardware to run. Those systems drink a lot of electricity for the amount of work they get done.
The simple fact that you can't write anything without implied meaning and not get modded a troll or off-topic is a good indicator of the average on here.
Often there will be a number of responses about how you've got to spell things out, cover all bases or someone's going to tear into a post with a tyrant of information already posted in the very same thread, get modded +5 and so forth gives further evidence towards this theory.
It's sad, but a lot of coders I've known were far more OCD than intelligent. Don't get me wrong, I've known some ingenious people in the field, but most are social outcasts for their inability to comprehend normal conversation as much as the non-tech savvy person can't understand code.
Unfortunately, so much media hoopla and parents wanting to be proud of their kid for picking up things they themselves don't understand have inflated egos in dramatic fashion.
13. boingboing.net 102.44
19. slashdot.org 101.27
lollerskates!
It's funny, the further I scroll into this thread, the more time it takes to install Windows.
Tracking down drivers? If you play games, you know whether your card is Nvidia or ATI, so you go to their website. The rest you'll probably be able to get off the website smacked all over the box your PC came in. If you got the PC from a mom 'n pop shop, it's likely the motherboard vendor will be listed on the box and it's not very hard to find a website.
You guys make it sound like there's tens or hundreds of drivers to look for, but it's likely you'll only need to manually grab a video driver, RAID or audio driver at most.
If we want to compare it to Linux, sure "everything works" on a fresh Ubuntu install, but the system is in no way running as good as it could be. It's likely going to need a few visits to the web to get the video running up to snuff. It's going to take some monkey time with Wine to get applications working as well as they can, etc.
Yes, Microsoft sucks but let's not be so dramatic about using the Internet.
They work on just about any setup nowadays. I've got a logitech that worked out of the box, an Apple Elite that worked out of the box, and if we board the way-back machine, behold as I plugged in a Microsoft keyboard years ago and it's media functions worked.
It's just desperation in seeking FUD in the above arguments, lack of experience, or just bad memories from the 1990s.
Someone with mod points should spend them on this guy instead of the +5 posts justifying a moot point above. If I worked with anyone who took all day to get Linux up and running, it'd be time for a meeting with management.
Plus, I've never worked somewhere where it was considered a bad thing to nuke and pave a new machine. It's reasonable, since when you install your OS from scratch you are setting it up the way you want/need it and not fiddling around for short periods of time over the coming weeks getting things right as you run into issues.
Execu-drones are a different story, but the Helpdesk groups tend to slap their own images on new laptops and desktops.
Given the fact that most places are going to stick with "customized" Linux installs, I don't see many folks whether at the office or at home keeping the vendor's Linux install on the system. As far as Linux users go, they tend to have so many of their own preferences on window managers, software, etc that it just doesn't fit to expect one to make huge changes in their computing just because of a new piece of hardware. Personally, my desktop is like one of my musical instruments to me. It remains the same on every PC I use and I only get more efficient and comfortable over time.
They'll likely sell a ton of any decent performing system as long as the price is right and the fact that it doesn't come with Linux isn't going to be a big motivator for consumers to find something else any time in the perceivable future, as most people actually want Windows on the systems they purchase.
Regardless, any sizable business worth staying in business will buy a test system or two and run them with the planned platform during a testing phase before rolling them out to the data center in full production. You know, the boxes you put clients on that are going to call your support group the first time a little problem happens-- you offer to stick them on these "higher performing systems we are testing" and you'll know pretty quick if they work. This, at least in the shops I've worked at, has been common practice.
This whole "ask
Plus, the day will likely come that an application will come out that you HAVE to use for whatever reason, or a game that you HAVE to play and you guessed it, it only works in Windows. In those cases, it would be nice to have a Vista or XP partition and some VMWare love. Sorry, Wine really sucks with the grand majority of software, plus you are still probably going to ding some copyright laws by downloading DLLs off the Internets. Maybe give the license to a friend if they want it. Plus, as others have pointed out, you can get a refund on the license later. It's not worth paying more for the hardware to not get Windows with it.
On the other hand, if he doesn't want to get involved in the whole ordeal of paying more for a system without preloaded software, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to go pick up the parts and build his own computer. The price will likely be higher overall but the system will be something you can be sure about since there's only a few mother boards on the top tier and they'll usually run anything. Again, Google is your friend here.
I know we all want to make a big stand on this issue. But until the broken capitalism thing is fixed, there won't be nearly enough people with strong enough opinions on the matter to make a dent in the issue.
If Apple was the big player, folks would likely be raising hell about not being able to buy a new system without OSX already installed or paid for on it.
Has anyone shown up in the proverbial front lawn over any Internet related issue? All I see is people posting in mad furies on message boards, with big opinions, but when it comes down to it, they give the impression of living in their parent's basement. Combine that with most politicians not reading the Internets, and things don't tend to get too far.
Look at all the hoopla over the DMCA in the US and it's injection in multiple forms around the world. Lots of hype on the web, but no governmental changes anywhere. Zippo.
Oh it'll go down further once I am done randomly clicking answers, saying I am from /. then deleting my cookie and repeating a few more times.
Here in the US, I think life is seen as the moment Jesus strikes his magical staff and says it is so, or at least, that's what they tell us. With each medical advance, it is apparently discovered he does this earlier and earlier in the process.
Pssst. As an avoid Internet troll, I can tell you he's trolling.
Yeah, those people suck too. But, it's worth a few pokes into the ground to save the wildlife that isn't all cute and cuddly in pictures, more widespread, and more impacting on the environment than any amount of drilling would ever be.
I thought the DOE was all about subsidizing our tax dollars to pump them into already expensive, enormous businesses who simply want more market share while making it's decisions based upon politics and not reality.
Just look how well ethanol is working out. Been fishing in the Gulf of Mexico during the last few years? Notice the lack of fish and the tumors all over the ones still there? It looks like they are willing to allow the wiping out of what was once a great food source, while not drilling in areas we know there's good sources of hydrocarbons because it might interfere with a passing grazing creatures who are already overpopulated due to the lack of large predators?
The US.. Well, the "west" is a mess when it comes to getting anything done these days. It's like everyone started listening to the college kids going through their PETA hippy stage instead of dealing with the reality of a pending energy crisis. Thanks to this, we've got gas over $4 a gallon.
Hold on, what were we talking about?
Eh? My Gnome desktop looks about a hundred times more like OSX than Windows. It's just about five clicks to make the transformation anyway. Both operating systems are so very similar in appearance these days.
No kidding. Had this happened, someone would know by now where it happened. Anyone who has been on the web for any amount of time should know that vague stories are usually falsies.
No, I was speaking more about the resulting game piracy due to softmods of the Wii. Regardless, it looks like someone has some shitty knickers and needs a change.
That's good. Let's hope the profit persists and allows for more to be made in the future.
Let's hope game developers don't get their panties too twisted and continue to make games for it, knowing a softmod is out there ready to take a chunk out of their end of the cut.
Nothing about modern economics is completely sustainable. Change, often rapid, is a part of our global reality. I think what the previous poster was getting to has more to do with the governments over there seeing what's going on here and not wanting any part of it.
When you have a certain population, the needs change from "how do I do this with less people?" to "how do I keep these billions of people busy and fed?"
And so it begins, watch as the Wii goes the way of the Dreamcast due to "no hardware mods needed" to run unsigned software.
No, I'm not being negative. This is just how consoles seem to die off quickly. You know, when the business model breaks down due to a large number of console sales (usually a loss) and a low number of game purchases due to them being free on P2P or usenet.
You can't stop people from remembering the Amiga as more powerful of a machine than it really was. It's like 80's arcade memories with a meth/crack combination haze.
I've gotten this a few times from silly people who had those front projection televisions in the late 70s/early 80s who swear up and down their television was brighter, clearer and had sharper color than current generation LCD panels. When in reality, they had overbearing reds and lost focus a couple of months after purchase.