for some boneheaded reason Funcom released an open beta client with full debugging code compiled in and turned on.
Surely that would be normal in a beta?
I guess the beta could be fine-tuning the game's stats and data though, but I'd imagine the clients would still be delivering an awful lot of data back to the server to help analysis.
The WoW endgame is amazingly tiresome. You have to have a guild, which means guild politics, guild drama. You have to run big instances, which is hours and hours of work for occasional payouts, and it's HUGELY repetitive; you'll run the same instances dozens and dozens of times.
I'm there already. I have a level 64 Paladin, but have lost interest in the game largely due to my realisation of the massive mountain I'd have to climb to see the end-game content.
I'll probably level to 70 in preparation for the next expansion, and I'll give that a go eventually, but I've done nearly all the exploration I can in the game. I'm looking for new places and things to do, and Warhammer looks like it'll fit that bill.
And all for what? Incremental equipment upgrades? Lot of people here are complaining about the long upgrade cycles in WoW...They'd lose all their hardcore players if their upgrade cycle was quicker, because you'd just get your full set of top-tier gear when the expansion would come out and it would all be replaced with crappy quest greens.
The hardcore players are already upset over what they call "welfare epics" (rewards given to battleground players for time played, not success) and dumbing down of raid bosses over time. There's an elitism out there that's (thankfully) minor but definitely present.
I look forward to day one of the new expansion, where they kill a frost bear or frost pig or maybe a frost murloc, and pick up a green item with better stats than the purple item they slaved for in raid after identical raid.
Imho instead of servers why not pay for a oceanic cable for dedicated WAR servers in the states to decrease the latency to around 200-250?
Because the price of laying a cable across the world's widest body of water is going to be hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.
You probably can't afford that.
Even leasing dedicated space on the existing cables will run into millions per year (I worked with a company that leased a line to India, cost hundreds of thousands per year for a low quality line just enough for a few hundred simultaneous voice calls; expect a high quality line to the US for a few thousand data connections to cost a lot more).
I agree with you, except to say that this is a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft.
Internally, I imagine many people at Microsoft knew that Silverlight was coming, and had access to the team behind it. The issue of 'turning the ship' is just an excuse. Internal communication may be terrible, but major new products should be trumpeted far and wide in a company like Microsoft.
Imagine the impact of an entirely Silverlight-based Microsoft site on launch day, from their front page through to MSDN. That would highlight the new web platform amazingly well, greatly increase the uptake (every visitor would choose to download it or view old Flash content, perhaps) and present a solid, unified front from the entire company.
The only justification required for rewriting their web presence is simply this - do they want Silverlight to succeed or not? Right now people can point to Microsoft's own site and argue with some justification that Microsoft has no faith in their own product. It's just as bad as if they were hosting their site on Linux servers.
It's not just a 'dog-fooding' thing either. It's also advertising without buying ad space. How will Silverlight pick up unless people know about it? One way for people to find out is to pay for ads, another is to lead by example and show how it's better. Lead the web developers and the users will follow.
It would've been a massive undertaking and expensive, so I can see why few would advocate it. It would also have been a massive statement about the company really getting behind their new web platform, and an excellent example of the power of Silverlight.
I use gzip to page in and decompress map data for my permanently-in-development massive RPG. It's ideal and with a bit of care causes little to no user interruption.
There are situations like that where processing power and speed really matter. Not many these days, but gaming is one of them.
Enjoy! Don't forget to read all the way through it. It's high concept.
I can't see how anyone could call Doom 3 a misstep. It had a great engine that sold really well to the major customers - other games developers. On top of that id managed to sell the demo to games players as well, a great achievement.
I'm pretty sure Clarke had a successful writing career going before the film 2001. The City and the Stars and Childhood's End spring to mind as his greatest works.
While that is an important email, and pretty damning as well, what were the changes being pushed that caused that response?
To be honest, I probably will forget to come back and check a reply, I'm just saying that there are two sides here and seeing both may give more information (or as seems likely, prove the email is completely unwarranted and there's a real problem with Wikipedia).
I think your post should be modded up as relevant.
"I'm not an anti-semite, I'm just anti-Israel" ranks up with "I'm not a racist, some of my best friends are (black, hispanic, asian, etc)" on the bullshit-o-meter, buddy.
That's pretty unfair, and definitely doesn't fit the other poster's comments.
We can separate the actions of governments from the people they govern, and criticise them accordingly. That's normal, rational behaviour.
I look at the previous government of Australia (my country) and often criticised them for their policies. I'm not anti-Australian, I'm just not pro-Liberal (the local conservatives have an ironic name).
Similarly I can criticise the governments of the US, UK and Israel for various things without being anti-US, anti-UK and anti-Israeli (or anti-Semite) respectively.
For the record, I definitely do criticise the Israeli government for their lying about nuclear capability, for their often lethal attacks on civilians and for their habit of occasionally killing a foreign journalist in cold blood and then pretending they didn't spot the bright orange outfits or the camera crews. I also criticise the Palestinian government and Hamas for their insane campaign of terrorism, their willingness to kill and die rather than shut up until they get to the negotiating table and the atrocious tactic of using civilians as shields so that they can then paint Israel as evil for killing civilians.
Maybe you'll call me anti-Semite too, but it's bullshit and we both know it.
Lastly, it's entirely possible that Wikipedia has issues of bias. Just about every publication around the world seems to be biased for or against someone. Exposing it is a good thing, as is exposing any unwillingness to correct bias.
Mac OS 9 was nothing like a *real* OS. Now System 7, that was a real OS. It had everything - small, fast, stable and modern. 7.1 was probably the finest pre-OS X version of the Mac OS ever.
Ha! 9.22! I laugh at your 9.22! I dance on the grave of 9.22!
No, that's just not true (thankfully!). Final Cut Pro outputs to lots of different formats. It's just that this guy chose to output into a QuickTime container. He's probably lazy.
But competitors of that Redmond-based company haven't done so well. Where are BeOS, OS/2 and the others?
Selling OS at retail can't be anywhere near as profitable for Apple as selling hardware and OS at retail.
The quick maths on this (numbers are guesses, and illustrative more than accurate): Each quarter Apple sells 2M Macs at (say) an average $500 profit. That's $1B profit. If each OS X box makes $100 profit, Apple need to sell $1B/$100 = 10M copies of OS X.
Can we identify ten million new OS customers every quarter? I really doubt it. Even if my numbers are way off, we're probably still looking at at least five million sales every quarter to replace hardware.
If people move en masse from Apple hardware to el cheapo hardware running OS X then Apple will very shortly be out of business. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, if you consider a world with less competition and less diversity better than the current world.
Of course, if these clones become the norm we'll probably see Apple hardware continue to be sold almost as much as currently, given the premium people are willing to pay for a quality laptop or high-end desktop. The iMacs will be hurt, and maybe the Mac Pros, but we probably won't see the sort of Apple-doomsday I outlined above.
Well, I guess we don't want to upset the two million actual players and eight million gold farmers.
Hmm... I'd like a scene where someone runs around Stormwind or Darnassus screaming "Interrupt! Hello. Ten dollar buy epic gold! Go www.goldscam.com! Power-level too!"
I think that'd help bring those eight million gold farmers in. About half of them would wonder if that character was based on them.
I go to the store and buy eggs. They're my eggs. Yup. You can do whatever you like with those eggs, provided you don't break a law (try egging a police officer if you don't believe me). Mmm... eggs.
I go to the store and buy a TV. It's my TV. True. You own that TV. You can do whatever you like with it, provided you don't break a law. Okay, throwing this at a police officer might be hard, but now we've got a designed object, and copying then reselling the design might be against the law. Is it patented in some way?
I go to the store and buy a book. It's my book. It's your copy of the book, but they're not your words. You don't have the right to do anything you like with those words (ie republish them), but it is your copy of the book. You can eat it, burn it, resell it or whatever.
I go to the store and buy a program. It's my program. It's your copy of the program, but... well, you get the idea.
If you think otherwise, then there's something seriously wrong with your sense of property rights. Ownership of an object doesn't automatically confer rights to do anything with it. Everything you own, everything you do, is constrained by the laws of the society you live in. We're not talking about property rights here, and none of the examples you gave are only about property rights. Other legal issues come into play when you use an object, depending on what you do with it.
Apple's EULA may or may not stand up in court on the 'only install on a Apple-branded' clause, but you'd have to test that in court. Until that point, it's a grey area and potentially ruinous for a person or small company to challenge on. My personal feeling is that it wouldn't stand up very long, but a lot of money would be spent getting to that point. Deeper pockets would be needed that this little company has.
Linux and Windows both suffer from the same issue: theres so much variety of hardware out there that you just can't write it perfect for everything right off-the-bat so you need to release and incrementally improve.
Yes, but like all modern OSs, they have driver APIs which control how any devices work. That presents a stable system for the OS developers to code against, and it's an issue if they can't manage that.
Macs have fewer 'inside the box' choices (but about the same for external devices), true, but what's causing instability in Windows when the APIs are well known?
I can only see two choices here - either the APIs allow code to bring down the OS, or drivers can write around the APIs (and their bad coding brings down the OS). Either way, it's a failure of the OS either in the APIs or in making the 'bare metal' visible.
I'm yet to experience really bad device issues on any of the PCs I've owned or built over the years, so I wonder if this whole point (PCs have vast hardware range => instability) is really true. I tend to blame the OS whenever a computer crashes (and I've seen a couple of kernel panics in my time - bad OS X!) unless there are actual faulty hardware devices such as cracked motherboards, dead RAM chips, etc.
Or you could just buy a new machine with Ubuntu installed and have it just work. Installing it on random hardware is *your choice*, and if it fails to work because you have unsupported hardware it's *your fault*. Ubuntu works great on supported hardware, and everyone knows that there are a couple pieces of hardware that simply won't work.
Really, hearing stories about WinModems and Dell wireless not working stopped being interesting in like 2001. If you can handle installing the OS, you can handle installing a PCI card with hardware that works.
Just to round this out, I agree that it was largely my fault. I looked around at buying a new modem and decided that it wasn't worth doing just to play around in Linux.
These days I would fully expect that I could get the broadband working fine, although my wireless network may be tricky.
These little roadblocks don't help uptake though, and buying a pre-installed Ubuntu box isn't so simple, sadly. Apart from anything else, it means the cost of getting Linux is the cost of a new machine!
I'll be installing the new Ubuntu on my spare PC when it comes out of beta. Should be fun!
> Cool bananas. So you're saying that Linux is not ready for the general market yet. Huh? How did you get that from my comment?
You argue that the general masses shouldn't install Linux, but then argue that it's ready for them. I see installation of an OS as key to uptake. Preinstalled systems are almost entirely Windows installs, so the only way for Linux to grow today is to install the OS. You can talk all you like about preinstalled Linux systems, but they're so thin on the ground as to be not worth talking up. Linux growth will not happen through a handful of choices hidden away from 'normal' people. Growth will be from installing Linux next to or over Windows.
You can think that all you want, but it doesn't make it true. "Normal users" have *never* been able to "easily install" any OS. Not Windows. Not Mac OS. An OS is installed when they get a computer, and that OS stays installed until they replace the whole computer....
Installing an OS simply isn't something that most of computer users will ever do or even think about doing.
Here's where we differ completely. I see normal users upgrade all the time. Remember the Windows 95 launch? That was aimed at selling software boxes in retail stores. I remember seeing reports of people queuing around the block, stores full of customers at midnight, all sorts of excitement as people bought their new OS to install later at home. I see retail Vista boxes in computer stores all the time.
Are you saying that no-one buys these retail boxes? That the entire retail OS business for Microsoft and Apple is not selling to 'normal' people?
I don't believe that for a second.
If you don't believe normal people will (or should) install your OS, you won't design for them and as a result they will never install your OS. It's a circular thing.
Take a look at the installation process in OS X. It's simple, clear and works for any level of user. Windows is a little more complex, but I've seen people at all levels of technical prowess manage it without difficulty.
Linux *needs* simple installation that's targeted at normal people. Windows and OS X have done this for years or decades. I think Linux is easily there today (and has been for quite some time, but I've not installed it for years now). It's not something people need to do often, but it is something anyone should be able to do. If they can't, the problem is with the developers.
Linux has already "reached the masses", pre-installed on embedded devices. O... kay. Yes, that's completely true but you're changing your point somewhat. The thread is about Hardy Heron, not embedded Linux. I don't think Ubuntu is the distro of choice for embedding into toasters and washing machines.
Everyone who's interested in personally installing Linux did it long ago.
Rubbish! I tried Linux once some years back (didn't play well with the WinModem on the PC I used, dumped it after a few fruitless days searching for help or drivers) and I've been thinking of giving it another go on a (different) spare PC I have. As a semi-technical person, I might grow to love Linux but if I can't get simple stuff to work I'll just dump it for another five years.
I'm only one case, but one case is all that's needed to disprove a blanket statement.
You're too cynical about normal people. They can do all this and more, provided developers go the extra mile and make the installation processes straightforward.
The question should not be "Why can't normal people install this?" but "Why can't the developers design with normal people in mind?"
I plug in a monitor and it just works. It's always been like that, because Apple actually did a lot of work to make it that simple. It's hard for Apple, but simple for users.
A Mac newbie can do it. Anyone can do it.
If you want to change resolutions or toggle mirroring, you just go to your control panel. Same as always, and exactly where you would expect. Easy as anything.
When you talk about fifteen minute processes, you're not talking about simple.
I have no idea why my previous comment was modded flamebait. I guess some mods here disagree that having to research the steps required for *plugging* *in* *a* *monitor* is ridiculous.
Right. And an install of OSX suddenly detects and works with wireless every single time? I don't think so.
Well, you're wrong. It just works.
Try plugging a random monitor into a Mac laptop. I'll bet 9 out of 10 of them show similar symptoms to your Ubuntu experience, just because 9 out of 10 monitors aren't made by Apple.
Again, you're wrong. It just works. I've never had to install a driver for a monitor to any Mac I've had, but have plugged in many, many monitors over the years. Hell, even my 1080p TV works fine.
First time, every time.
Why are your expectations so low?
As for RAID, we're not talking OSX server here, wihtout that you're not doing RAID of any kind on OSX.
Well, that's a real point although you can buy the tower which has hardware RAID built in. OS X installs without blinking at the RAID set-up, and since there's only one user-level version of OS X, that means that all OS X installs are 'RAID ready'. I've also plugged in a RAID NAS box as my backup/home server, but since that serves up to the Mac I wouldn't have expected to have to install anything anyway.
OS X isn't perfect by any means, but you're not hitting any of your marks with those criticisms. In fact, it does all those things very well indeed.
So why hasn't such a simple command been wrapped in a trivial GUI and placed where a new user will find it?
Simple is a button. Complex is a command full of weird syntax.
(The answer I usually get to these sorts of questions is "Well, you do it then!" which would be great if I was both a Linux dev and someone who has a real, vested interest in the rise of Linux as a viable consumer-level OS.)
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php
Probably a bit harsh, but I saw your comment about ten minutes after I read that comic, and couldn't help linking the two.
for some boneheaded reason Funcom released an open beta client with full debugging code compiled in and turned on.
Surely that would be normal in a beta?
I guess the beta could be fine-tuning the game's stats and data though, but I'd imagine the clients would still be delivering an awful lot of data back to the server to help analysis.
The WoW endgame is amazingly tiresome. You have to have a guild, which means guild politics, guild drama. You have to run big instances, which is hours and hours of work for occasional payouts, and it's HUGELY repetitive; you'll run the same instances dozens and dozens of times.
I'm there already. I have a level 64 Paladin, but have lost interest in the game largely due to my realisation of the massive mountain I'd have to climb to see the end-game content.
I'll probably level to 70 in preparation for the next expansion, and I'll give that a go eventually, but I've done nearly all the exploration I can in the game. I'm looking for new places and things to do, and Warhammer looks like it'll fit that bill.
And all for what? Incremental equipment upgrades? Lot of people here are complaining about the long upgrade cycles in WoW...They'd lose all their hardcore players if their upgrade cycle was quicker, because you'd just get your full set of top-tier gear when the expansion would come out and it would all be replaced with crappy quest greens.
The hardcore players are already upset over what they call "welfare epics" (rewards given to battleground players for time played, not success) and dumbing down of raid bosses over time. There's an elitism out there that's (thankfully) minor but definitely present.
I look forward to day one of the new expansion, where they kill a frost bear or frost pig or maybe a frost murloc, and pick up a green item with better stats than the purple item they slaved for in raid after identical raid.
Imho instead of servers why not pay for a oceanic cable for dedicated WAR servers in the states to decrease the latency to around 200-250?
Because the price of laying a cable across the world's widest body of water is going to be hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.
You probably can't afford that.
Even leasing dedicated space on the existing cables will run into millions per year (I worked with a company that leased a line to India, cost hundreds of thousands per year for a low quality line just enough for a few hundred simultaneous voice calls; expect a high quality line to the US for a few thousand data connections to cost a lot more).
You probably can't afford that either.
Unless... Jamie Packer? Is that you?
I agree with you, except to say that this is a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft.
Internally, I imagine many people at Microsoft knew that Silverlight was coming, and had access to the team behind it. The issue of 'turning the ship' is just an excuse. Internal communication may be terrible, but major new products should be trumpeted far and wide in a company like Microsoft.
Imagine the impact of an entirely Silverlight-based Microsoft site on launch day, from their front page through to MSDN. That would highlight the new web platform amazingly well, greatly increase the uptake (every visitor would choose to download it or view old Flash content, perhaps) and present a solid, unified front from the entire company.
The only justification required for rewriting their web presence is simply this - do they want Silverlight to succeed or not? Right now people can point to Microsoft's own site and argue with some justification that Microsoft has no faith in their own product. It's just as bad as if they were hosting their site on Linux servers.
It's not just a 'dog-fooding' thing either. It's also advertising without buying ad space. How will Silverlight pick up unless people know about it? One way for people to find out is to pay for ads, another is to lead by example and show how it's better. Lead the web developers and the users will follow.
It would've been a massive undertaking and expensive, so I can see why few would advocate it. It would also have been a massive statement about the company really getting behind their new web platform, and an excellent example of the power of Silverlight.
A missed opportunity, unfortunately.
I use gzip to page in and decompress map data for my permanently-in-development massive RPG. It's ideal and with a bit of care causes little to no user interruption.
There are situations like that where processing power and speed really matter. Not many these days, but gaming is one of them.
Enjoy! Don't forget to read all the way through it. It's high concept.
I can't see how anyone could call Doom 3 a misstep. It had a great engine that sold really well to the major customers - other games developers. On top of that id managed to sell the demo to games players as well, a great achievement.
We produce possibly harmful waste and bury it deep underground.
What can possibly go wrong with such a foolproof plan?
I'm pretty sure Clarke had a successful writing career going before the film 2001. The City and the Stars and Childhood's End spring to mind as his greatest works.
While that is an important email, and pretty damning as well, what were the changes being pushed that caused that response?
To be honest, I probably will forget to come back and check a reply, I'm just saying that there are two sides here and seeing both may give more information (or as seems likely, prove the email is completely unwarranted and there's a real problem with Wikipedia).
I think your post should be modded up as relevant.
"I'm not an anti-semite, I'm just anti-Israel" ranks up with "I'm not a racist, some of my best friends are (black, hispanic, asian, etc)" on the bullshit-o-meter, buddy.
That's pretty unfair, and definitely doesn't fit the other poster's comments.
We can separate the actions of governments from the people they govern, and criticise them accordingly. That's normal, rational behaviour.
I look at the previous government of Australia (my country) and often criticised them for their policies. I'm not anti-Australian, I'm just not pro-Liberal (the local conservatives have an ironic name).
Similarly I can criticise the governments of the US, UK and Israel for various things without being anti-US, anti-UK and anti-Israeli (or anti-Semite) respectively.
For the record, I definitely do criticise the Israeli government for their lying about nuclear capability, for their often lethal attacks on civilians and for their habit of occasionally killing a foreign journalist in cold blood and then pretending they didn't spot the bright orange outfits or the camera crews. I also criticise the Palestinian government and Hamas for their insane campaign of terrorism, their willingness to kill and die rather than shut up until they get to the negotiating table and the atrocious tactic of using civilians as shields so that they can then paint Israel as evil for killing civilians.
Maybe you'll call me anti-Semite too, but it's bullshit and we both know it.
Lastly, it's entirely possible that Wikipedia has issues of bias. Just about every publication around the world seems to be biased for or against someone. Exposing it is a good thing, as is exposing any unwillingness to correct bias.
Mac OS 9 was nothing like a *real* OS. Now System 7, that was a real OS. It had everything - small, fast, stable and modern. 7.1 was probably the finest pre-OS X version of the Mac OS ever.
Ha! 9.22! I laugh at your 9.22! I dance on the grave of 9.22!
No, that's just not true (thankfully!). Final Cut Pro outputs to lots of different formats. It's just that this guy chose to output into a QuickTime container. He's probably lazy.
But competitors of that Redmond-based company haven't done so well. Where are BeOS, OS/2 and the others?
Selling OS at retail can't be anywhere near as profitable for Apple as selling hardware and OS at retail.
The quick maths on this (numbers are guesses, and illustrative more than accurate):
Each quarter Apple sells 2M Macs at (say) an average $500 profit. That's $1B profit.
If each OS X box makes $100 profit, Apple need to sell $1B/$100 = 10M copies of OS X.
Can we identify ten million new OS customers every quarter? I really doubt it. Even if my numbers are way off, we're probably still looking at at least five million sales every quarter to replace hardware.
If people move en masse from Apple hardware to el cheapo hardware running OS X then Apple will very shortly be out of business. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, if you consider a world with less competition and less diversity better than the current world.
Of course, if these clones become the norm we'll probably see Apple hardware continue to be sold almost as much as currently, given the premium people are willing to pay for a quality laptop or high-end desktop. The iMacs will be hurt, and maybe the Mac Pros, but we probably won't see the sort of Apple-doomsday I outlined above.
A few of those crystal icons bear more than a passing resemblance to some of Apple's OS X icons.
I'm hoping against hope that this isn't related to any product we know about. I'd love to see something new and unexpected from Apple.
Maybe something along the lines of ubiquitous computing or a clever home-based device. Who (outside of Apple) knows?
Well, I guess we don't want to upset the two million actual players and eight million gold farmers.
Hmm... I'd like a scene where someone runs around Stormwind or Darnassus screaming "Interrupt! Hello. Ten dollar buy epic gold! Go www.goldscam.com! Power-level too!"
I think that'd help bring those eight million gold farmers in. About half of them would wonder if that character was based on them.
I go to the store and buy eggs. They're my eggs.
Yup. You can do whatever you like with those eggs, provided you don't break a law (try egging a police officer if you don't believe me). Mmm... eggs.
I go to the store and buy a TV. It's my TV.
True. You own that TV. You can do whatever you like with it, provided you don't break a law. Okay, throwing this at a police officer might be hard, but now we've got a designed object, and copying then reselling the design might be against the law. Is it patented in some way?
I go to the store and buy a book. It's my book.
It's your copy of the book, but they're not your words. You don't have the right to do anything you like with those words (ie republish them), but it is your copy of the book. You can eat it, burn it, resell it or whatever.
I go to the store and buy a program. It's my program.
It's your copy of the program, but... well, you get the idea.
If you think otherwise, then there's something seriously wrong with your sense of property rights.
Ownership of an object doesn't automatically confer rights to do anything with it. Everything you own, everything you do, is constrained by the laws of the society you live in. We're not talking about property rights here, and none of the examples you gave are only about property rights. Other legal issues come into play when you use an object, depending on what you do with it.
Apple's EULA may or may not stand up in court on the 'only install on a Apple-branded' clause, but you'd have to test that in court. Until that point, it's a grey area and potentially ruinous for a person or small company to challenge on. My personal feeling is that it wouldn't stand up very long, but a lot of money would be spent getting to that point. Deeper pockets would be needed that this little company has.
Linux and Windows both suffer from the same issue: theres so much variety of hardware out there that you just can't write it perfect for everything right off-the-bat so you need to release and incrementally improve.
Yes, but like all modern OSs, they have driver APIs which control how any devices work. That presents a stable system for the OS developers to code against, and it's an issue if they can't manage that.
Macs have fewer 'inside the box' choices (but about the same for external devices), true, but what's causing instability in Windows when the APIs are well known?
I can only see two choices here - either the APIs allow code to bring down the OS, or drivers can write around the APIs (and their bad coding brings down the OS). Either way, it's a failure of the OS either in the APIs or in making the 'bare metal' visible.
I'm yet to experience really bad device issues on any of the PCs I've owned or built over the years, so I wonder if this whole point (PCs have vast hardware range => instability) is really true. I tend to blame the OS whenever a computer crashes (and I've seen a couple of kernel panics in my time - bad OS X!) unless there are actual faulty hardware devices such as cracked motherboards, dead RAM chips, etc.
10.5 was meant as a service pack and bug fix to 10.4 ...
... each 10.X is a major release
No it wasn't.
Correct.
Wow, you contradicted yourself in the very next sentence.
Or you could just buy a new machine with Ubuntu installed and have it just work. Installing it on random hardware is *your choice*, and if it fails to work because you have unsupported hardware it's *your fault*. Ubuntu works great on supported hardware, and everyone knows that there are a couple pieces of hardware that simply won't work.
Really, hearing stories about WinModems and Dell wireless not working stopped being interesting in like 2001. If you can handle installing the OS, you can handle installing a PCI card with hardware that works.
Just to round this out, I agree that it was largely my fault. I looked around at buying a new modem and decided that it wasn't worth doing just to play around in Linux.
These days I would fully expect that I could get the broadband working fine, although my wireless network may be tricky.
These little roadblocks don't help uptake though, and buying a pre-installed Ubuntu box isn't so simple, sadly. Apart from anything else, it means the cost of getting Linux is the cost of a new machine!
I'll be installing the new Ubuntu on my spare PC when it comes out of beta. Should be fun!
> Cool bananas. So you're saying that Linux is not ready for the general market yet.
...
Huh? How did you get that from my comment?
You argue that the general masses shouldn't install Linux, but then argue that it's ready for them. I see installation of an OS as key to uptake. Preinstalled systems are almost entirely Windows installs, so the only way for Linux to grow today is to install the OS. You can talk all you like about preinstalled Linux systems, but they're so thin on the ground as to be not worth talking up. Linux growth will not happen through a handful of choices hidden away from 'normal' people. Growth will be from installing Linux next to or over Windows.
You can think that all you want, but it doesn't make it true. "Normal users" have *never* been able to "easily install" any OS. Not Windows. Not Mac OS. An OS is installed when they get a computer, and that OS stays installed until they replace the whole computer.
Installing an OS simply isn't something that most of computer users will ever do or even think about doing.
Here's where we differ completely. I see normal users upgrade all the time. Remember the Windows 95 launch? That was aimed at selling software boxes in retail stores. I remember seeing reports of people queuing around the block, stores full of customers at midnight, all sorts of excitement as people bought their new OS to install later at home. I see retail Vista boxes in computer stores all the time.
Are you saying that no-one buys these retail boxes? That the entire retail OS business for Microsoft and Apple is not selling to 'normal' people?
I don't believe that for a second.
If you don't believe normal people will (or should) install your OS, you won't design for them and as a result they will never install your OS. It's a circular thing.
Take a look at the installation process in OS X. It's simple, clear and works for any level of user. Windows is a little more complex, but I've seen people at all levels of technical prowess manage it without difficulty.
Linux *needs* simple installation that's targeted at normal people. Windows and OS X have done this for years or decades. I think Linux is easily there today (and has been for quite some time, but I've not installed it for years now). It's not something people need to do often, but it is something anyone should be able to do. If they can't, the problem is with the developers.
Linux has already "reached the masses", pre-installed on embedded devices.
O... kay. Yes, that's completely true but you're changing your point somewhat. The thread is about Hardy Heron, not embedded Linux. I don't think Ubuntu is the distro of choice for embedding into toasters and washing machines.
Everyone who's interested in personally installing Linux did it long ago.
Rubbish! I tried Linux once some years back (didn't play well with the WinModem on the PC I used, dumped it after a few fruitless days searching for help or drivers) and I've been thinking of giving it another go on a (different) spare PC I have. As a semi-technical person, I might grow to love Linux but if I can't get simple stuff to work I'll just dump it for another five years.
I'm only one case, but one case is all that's needed to disprove a blanket statement.
You're too cynical about normal people. They can do all this and more, provided developers go the extra mile and make the installation processes straightforward.
The question should not be "Why can't normal people install this?" but "Why can't the developers design with normal people in mind?"
I use a Mac.
I plug in a monitor and it just works. It's always been like that, because Apple actually did a lot of work to make it that simple. It's hard for Apple, but simple for users.
A Mac newbie can do it. Anyone can do it.
If you want to change resolutions or toggle mirroring, you just go to your control panel. Same as always, and exactly where you would expect. Easy as anything.
When you talk about fifteen minute processes, you're not talking about simple.
I have no idea why my previous comment was modded flamebait. I guess some mods here disagree that having to research the steps required for *plugging* *in* *a* *monitor* is ridiculous.
Right. And an install of OSX suddenly detects and works with wireless every single time? I don't think so.
Well, you're wrong. It just works.
Try plugging a random monitor into a Mac laptop. I'll bet 9 out of 10 of them show similar symptoms to your Ubuntu experience, just because 9 out of 10 monitors aren't made by Apple.
Again, you're wrong. It just works. I've never had to install a driver for a monitor to any Mac I've had, but have plugged in many, many monitors over the years. Hell, even my 1080p TV works fine.
First time, every time.
Why are your expectations so low?
As for RAID, we're not talking OSX server here, wihtout that you're not doing RAID of any kind on OSX.
Well, that's a real point although you can buy the tower which has hardware RAID built in. OS X installs without blinking at the RAID set-up, and since there's only one user-level version of OS X, that means that all OS X installs are 'RAID ready'. I've also plugged in a RAID NAS box as my backup/home server, but since that serves up to the Mac I wouldn't have expected to have to install anything anyway.
OS X isn't perfect by any means, but you're not hitting any of your marks with those criticisms. In fact, it does all those things very well indeed.
So why hasn't such a simple command been wrapped in a trivial GUI and placed where a new user will find it?
Simple is a button. Complex is a command full of weird syntax.
(The answer I usually get to these sorts of questions is "Well, you do it then!" which would be great if I was both a Linux dev and someone who has a real, vested interest in the rise of Linux as a viable consumer-level OS.)