Aren't We Supposed To Be Smarter Than Microsoft?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    He was probably referring to the DMCA which makes it illegal (in the US) to crack DVD encryption.  AFAIK (and I may be completely wrong) there are no licensed DVD players for Linux which means you have to use software that cracks DVD encryption (and hence is illegal) to watch DVDs.  I thought the EU had similar legislation, but quite frankly we've been bombarded with so many bizarre successful and failed attempts at IP laws from every governing body on Earth for the last 15 years, so I may be remembering incorrectly. 

     If you buy an Ubuntu PC from Dell, you get licensed DVD playback from Cyberlink. Just like you get if you buy a PC with Windows OEM.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I thought the EU had similar legislation, but quite frankly we've been bombarded with so many bizarre successful and failed attempts at IP laws from every governing body on Earth for the last 15 years, so I may be remembering incorrectly. 

    I imagine the majority of IP law in my particular corner of Europe is like the laws for everything else where it's unclear whether any actual wrong is being committed; so complicated and contradictory that it'd be well-nigh impossible to enforce if anyone could be bothered to try.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    He was probably referring to the DMCA which makes it illegal (in the US) to crack DVD encryption.  AFAIK (and I may be completely wrong) there are no licensed DVD players for Linux which means you have to use software that cracks DVD encryption (and hence is illegal) to watch DVDs. 

    In the US libdvdcss [used in vlc] is legal and covered in section 1201(f) of the DMCA. So, for instance, if you own a legally-purchased DVD and are trying to play it on your own computer with Linux, using libdvdcss is legal because you are merely exercising the license that you acquired when you obtained the DVD. However, if you use libdvdcss for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection, such as for file sharing or redistributing the content, libdvdcss would be classed as an illegal 'circumvention device'.

    Also, in Europe, playing DVDs on Linux as well as backing them up is legal.



  • When I refered to spreadsheet that do stuff I was making the point that OpenOffice, the subject of so much linux fanboy drivel, Calculate is at best a mediocre spreadsheet lacking the power and ability to get done what modern businesses currently get done in Excel.
    And 90% of those things are front page material.

    I like Linux, I run it on my server, and have a dual boot with XP. But Linux not a full windows XP with Office and Photoshop. Anyone saying it's better for the office user needs a reality check. I'm native dutch, and the dutch spelling checker in OpenOffice is pants. Gimp is ... nothing really, compared to photoshop. But, you get what you pay for.

    But windows has it's lacks. I miss the multiple desktops feature (sorry, the powertoys one fails) right mouse button -> new remains butt slow after many versions. And it comes without anything useful, just an kernel, browser and some setup windows for 100$, even the drivers are missing or horrible.



  • @tster said:

    Wow, you made a lot of great points, but only served to prove the point that linux sucks at doing most things.  As I already noted these are all things that can be reasonably considered problematic on *nix.  Obviously when I refered to games I'm not looking to boot up and get emersed in a great game of Pong.  Whether you like games with good graphics or not, OpenGL is now widely considered by most people to be a joke compared  to DirectX. 

    When I refered to spreadsheet that do stuff I was making the point that OpenOffice, the subject of so much linux fanboy drivel, Calculate is at best a mediocre spreadsheet lacking the power and ability to get done what modern businesses currently get done in Excel.

    Also you try and say all my examples are old because some researcher in the 90s got it working, or the standard was layed down.  I am talking about when things achieved common usage in the home/office.   Watching DVDs on computes only became common perhaps 5-7 years ago, video conferencing wasn't done on home/office desktops until the 90s.  

    So basically my point is:  Yeah, lots of that stuff came in the 90s, but most of it came post-boom wheras everything thati said wasn't modern came pre-boom.  And even if you disagree with me there, the point is that Linux has problems with doing these tasks, no matter the hardware.  Even beyond that point, the original post I was replying to implied that Linux was so effecient that his old computer could perform the same tasks that would require a much newer computer running Windows. 

    I'm probably not the best person to point out how Linux is capable of those things, since I'm very technical and more of the "ready to do whatever it takes to get things working" variety.  I can solve in minutes technical problems that your average Joe User would be completely clueless with.  I'm not afraid to turn to the source code if things don't work as I expect them to (and the ability to do that is one of the reasons I value in Linux - Windows just can't compete in this).  Still, from what I've heard from other uses, at least CD/DVD burning, DVD playback and Youtube work out of the box.  The bleeding edge 3D games don't usually work with Wine, but many older games do.  Ubuntu even integrates Wine in it's UI so that you can run Windows programs like they were native ones.

    OpenGL vs. DirectX is a whole another battle.  From some arguments I've heard, it seems that many DirectX advocates don't know OpenGL too well.  There are a feq quirks, such as the bind-to-modify paradigm, but overall I think it's a solid graphics API.  It is true (and rather unfortunate) that ATI's OpenGL implementation sucks, but Nvidia's is quite good.  Perhaps you'd like to provide me with some more specific points about why OpenGL is a joke? 

    As for things being in use by home and office users...  Come on, how many companies even had digital workstations in the 70s, much less an internet connection and email?  I'd place both email and web much closer to the year 2000.  Graphical word processors emerged in the late 80s, so I'll give you a point for that.  I know little about the early history of the software industry, but the first version of make was created in 1977, so I'd place its widespread adoption in the 80s.



  • @GreyWolf said:

    So which was the "modern task" you were thinking of?

    Perhaps converting over 1000 pages of hand drawn and digitially drawn story boards into a leica reel without an editor having to touch them?

    What about automatically scene planning an entire episode's assets into their respective shots?

    How about running Maya 2009 on your machine and letting me know what realtime frame rates you achieve on a typical skinweighted character?

    Or maybe rendering up to 7 render passes per character in up to 450 shots per episode in under a week?

    Or even batch processing 450 shots of HD720 footage per episode to merge it all into a single episode assembly with scene burn in for each shot?  in one hour?

    Not all "modern tasks" involve shuffling your mp3s or organizing your vacation photos.  If you think the HDTVs are expensive, wait until you see the cost of the machines needed to composite HD footage in real time.

    But really, I jest.  I like to pick on people who give the "it still works just fine" arguement.  Mainly because it reeks of sour grapes a lot of the time.  No hard feelings.



  • @Soviut said:

    I like to pick on people who give the "it still works just fine" arguement.  Mainly because it reeks of sour grapes a lot of the time. 
     

    Maybe in some cases, but there are definitely people out there who need to wake up to the fact that spending thousands on upgrades or new machines just so Word loads ten seconds faster is not mission-critical, particularly not in the middle of a recession.



  • @AssimilatedByBorg said:

    @Jake Gray said:

    With slight trepidation I typed 'ping someaddressorother.com' into Terminal, offered a brief prayer that 'ping' wasn't a Linux command for 'wipe your entire drive, then anally rape the user's mother whilst pouring sugar in his gas tank' and hit Enter.

    Yes, that's what ping on Unix does. I consider this to be a feature. Hit Ctrl-C to interrupt.

    FTFY.



  • @Jake Grey said:

    @Soviut said:

    I like to pick on people who give the "it still works just fine" arguement.  Mainly because it reeks of sour grapes a lot of the time. 
     

    Maybe in some cases, but there are definitely people out there who need to wake up to the fact that spending thousands on upgrades or new machines just so Word loads ten seconds faster is not mission-critical, particularly not in the middle of a recession.

    Public spending is what gets you out of recessions.  I can assure you that my time is more valuable than the cost of performance upgrades than trying to massage (ie: force) Linux to do what I want it to.  Face it, people don't buy quad cores to run Word, they buy them to run games or in my case, renderers and massive batch tools.  Try installing Maya on even a common Linux distro and let me know how smoothly it went.  While you're at it, see if you can get multi-monitor support working with its OpenGL layer without crashing the entire machine.



  •  My comment wasn't actually aimed at you personally, Soviut; you're doing processor and RAM-intensive stuff and really do need all you can get, not to mention reliant on software that doesn't come in a Linux flavour. Someone who never does anything more complicated than a Powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet, however, can probably muddle through with an old PIII and OpenOffice; it'd be a pain in the rear at times, but it'd be functional with adequate maintenance. And charitable organisations, low-priority government departments and small businesses on a narrow profit margin have no choice but to muddle through with what they've got.



  • @Jake Grey said:

    Someone who never does anything more complicated than a Powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet, however, can probably muddle through with an old PIII and OpenOffice; it'd be a pain in the rear at times, but it'd be functional with adequate maintenance.

    So they fixed the fact that OOo is a bloated POS? Or is that still considered a feature to copy from MS Office?

    I'd rather pay for something like SoftMaker (which is absurdly low cost to begin with) than use OOo anyways.



  •  Saving still brings everything to a grinding halt for thirty seconds, but it seems to load a bit quicker. Also, if you don't like the autocomplete function then you still have to disable it manually in Version 3.

    These are not, however, big enough problems to justify spending whatever asinine amount a site license for Office costs these days; can't comment on SoftMaker because I've not used it.



  • @Jake Grey said:

    not to mention reliant on software that doesn't come in a Linux flavour

    Maya comes in Windows, Linux and OSX versions, its just a pain in the ass to get it running in Linux, which is ironic considering its predecessor, PowerAnimator, hails from the Unix/Irix days on the old SGIs.

    @Jake Grey said:

    Someone who never does anything more complicated than a Powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet, however, can probably muddle through with an old PIII and OpenOffice;

    This where I bring up the whole "modern task" remark again.  Those arn't modern tasks.

    @Jake Grey said:

    low-priority government departments and small businesses on a narrow profit margin have no choice but to muddle through with what they've got.

    Considering even bare bones PCs that run for $300-400 can typically run Vista, why would I want to put myself through the agony of using antiquated hardware, running a proof-of-concept OS on it.  Likewise, why would I want to run a sad office clone like Open Office when Office Home and Student 2007 costs a measley $100 CND.  If a $500 overhead is too much for a modern business workstation, then they probably shouldn't be in business.  Either that, or just keep running the software that ran on the systems they're still using when they were considered new...version lock in.



  • @Soviut said:

    Public spending is what gets you out of recessions.

    No it isn't.  Public spending and government interference into the economy is what usually causes recessions.  Having the government redirect resources to non-market ends only squanders resources and decreases the amount of wealth.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Soviut said:

    Public spending is what gets you out of recessions.

    No it isn't.  Public spending and government interference into the economy is what usually causes recessions.  Having the government redirect resources to non-market ends only squanders resources and decreases the amount of wealth.

    So you're saying all the penny pinching walmart shoppers are how you stave off a recession?  When I say public spending I don't mean tax money, I mean citizens buying goods at local stores.




  •  I support *nix because it is an environment which I beleive in, which has potential to scale and is excellent for developers. If you look at windows, what do you have at your hands? A big monolithic kernel with millions of boobietraps and on top of that a couple of hyped up technologies from Win 3.1 (OLE, COM, COM+ anyone)? Unix is at least designed and thought through. I would say that microsoft broke a _lot_ of best-practices when building windows. I would love to see a modular, at least semi-standardized computer environment to grow. Instead of supporting this, Microsoft "sponsors" (i.e basically bribes) companies in order to get them to stick with Windows.

    You can argue that Windows is the "coolest shit" because it has all the hyped up software, but that is _not_ the point. The point is that it is our job as developers to show the potential in a better OS. In order for that to happen, developers must choose for alternatives. This mostly doesn't happen because 80% of these decisions are made by management, and we all know what that means: Creatures of habit talking about what they think is the best, having only one point of reference.

      Open source was a good start, but I think it is time to let the thinkers into the management, and really push for what is best in the long run. For me, that is not Windows.

     



  • @Soviut said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Soviut said:

    Public spending is what gets you out of recessions.

    No it isn't.  Public spending and government interference into the economy is what usually causes recessions.  Having the government redirect resources to non-market ends only squanders resources and decreases the amount of wealth.

    So you're saying all the penny pinching walmart shoppers are how you stave off a recession?  When I say public spending I don't mean tax money, I mean citizens buying goods at local stores.


     

    In that case you don't know what the term "public spending" means.  What you are refering to is "consumer spending."



  • @Obfuscator said:

    Open source was a good start

    I'd have to argue that in the case of Linux, open source has been nothing but a massive pain in the ass.  Its impossible to target "linux" because its essentially a moving target with hundreds of flavours, variations, GUIs, graphics subsystems, audio subsystems, etc. None of which are very compatible.  Linux feels like, and to a large degree IS, a pet project that's been continually expanding and getting more and more out of control.



  • @tster said:

    @Soviut said:

    So you're saying all the penny pinching walmart shoppers are how you stave off a recession?  When I say public spending I don't mean tax money, I mean citizens buying goods at local stores.

     

    In that case you don't know what the term "public spending" means.  What you are refering to is "consumer spending."

    You're right, sorry for the confusion.



  • @tster said:

    <snip> creating spreadsheets that do more than simple arithmatic and statistics?

     And here we have it, folks: TRWTF.



  •  Two replies to the OP:

    1) Title: MS Is finally wisening up. For years they had a true monopoly. They did not have to change in order to survive. Up to windows vista it was always the same formula, then they find out Vista is bad and competitors like linux and mac are getting REALLY good. MS is going to become leader again, its fine, we just need to remind then that if they fuck up its a very very long drop down and the hole they leave behind will be closed by competitors VERY quickly. hey can you imagine the price tag additions to all software if the market share for desktop was 33%linux 33%windows 33%mac 1% BSD (to get to 100), cost of software would sky rocket because everyone is supporting every platform! As a developer at least I don't have 2 + all linux distros to QA for every release I make. I mean this is a damn tough thing to do (thats where Ruby, Python, Java will conquer).

     Look at openoffice. Openoffice put some major pressure on MS, and thus Office 2007 was born. Sure it has more MS proprietary crap but damn it is 100% more useable than openoffice, even I an OO enthusiest switched!

     

    2) That message is a general help message. Ubuntu does not know that the program is meant to diagnose a network problem. How can it? Does any program really know the intention of another unless specifically implemented?



  • @astonerbum said:

    Openoffice put some major pressure on MS, and thus Office 2007 was born. Sure it has more MS proprietary crap but damn it is 100% more useable than openoffice, even I an OO enthusiest switched!
     

    $100 to write your feeble Rich-text files 2.76% more efficiently, and a prettier, arguably better interface (i.e. the celebrated ribbon, which looks pretty good but I haven't used it yet).

    Bad deal, if you ask me.

    I'm sticking with OO, because of a very simple monetary numerical identity, which is $0 < $100.

    @astonerbum said:

    hey can you imagine the price tag additions to all software if the market share for desktop was 33%linux 33%windows 33%mac 1% BSD (to get to 100), cost of software would sky rocket because everyone is supporting every platform!

    Agreed. Multi-[platform|environment|framework|engine] support is A PAIN. Common example: web browsers.



  • @dhromed said:

    $100 to write your feeble Rich-text files 2.76% more efficiently, and a prettier, arguably better interface (i.e. the celebrated ribbon, which looks pretty good but I haven't used it yet).
     

    Then it's not arguably better, since you have no knowledge with which to argue the fact. It is much better, and I have used it and can therefore argue that opinion.

    @dhromed said:

    I'm sticking with OO, because of a very simple monetary numerical identity, which is $0 < $100.

    Great logic. By using that, you could also say that you're going to eat crap instead of buying food, because excrement cost < food cost. However, I'd have to imagine (no firsthand knowledge) that crap isn't as pleasant to eat as, for instance, a filet mignon or lobster.

    OO isn't an option for the majority of people, because they deal with businesses who use MS Office instead. It's important to be fully compatible with the people you have to interact with, because it avoids lots of problems. In a like way, most businesses use Windows (on the desktop), and therefore if you're writing software aimed at the desktop market you need to support Windows. If you decide to also earn revenue from that small market of Linux and OS X desktop users, and want to invest the effort and money to do so, fine. But if you're earning a living from desktop apps, you're much better off selling to the Windows market.

     



  • @Jake Grey said:

    -the UI's a nice mix of the best bits of Windows 9x+ and Mac OS X, but the file system's feels rather unintuitive

    This is why I prefer KDE over Gnome. Kubuntu would solve that dependency ;) but I stick mostly to Fedora as far as distros go.


  • @KenW said:

    It's important to be fully compatible with the people you have to interact with, because it avoids lots of problems.

    This is what ODF is supposed to solve; all these "open standards" are there for a reason. MS hasn't budged with Office by accepting ODF compatibility, but it has budged in other areas, like switching to Active Directory in Windows Server 2000. It may be MS's way of implementing LDAPv3, but at least it is LDAP, and not some weird directory system that only MS knows how it works.

    Of course, this is all assuming you're talking about Office compatibility; I've done some B2B interfaces and most of that stuff follows an age-old ISO format for length-delimited flat files (header, body, trailer) which is pretty much common use when talking to organizations who use mainframes. Newer B2B's involve either XML or Web Services, and none of these are MS-only. It is only the backoffice stuff that usually requires some kind of Word/Excel documents... and I think PDF also solves that particular problem. (Also take in mind that PDF's are not easily forged, especially when digitally signed.)



  • @KenW said:

    @dhromed said:

    an arguably better interface (i.e. the celebrated ribbon, which looks pretty good but I haven't used it yet).
     

    Then it's not arguably better, since you have no knowledge with which to argue the fact. It is much better, and I have used it and can therefore argue that opinion.

     

    You may criticise my arguing when I'm actually arguing an opinion, but as you can see I (explicitly) made 0 arguments and was referring to the fact that there's talk about it in general, with arguments and stuff and everything. Was I not clear on this? I believe this is within the scope of the meaning of "arguably".

    @KenW said:

    @dhromed said:
    I'm sticking with OO, because of a very simple monetary numerical identity, which is $0 < $100.

    Great logic. By using that, you could also say that you're going to eat crap instead of buying food, because excrement cost < food cost. However, I'd have to imagine (no firsthand knowledge) that crap isn't as pleasant to eat as, for instance, a filet mignon or lobster.

    In this particular case, I assumed it would be self-evident that the "$0 < $100 = better" rule is not applicable to the domain of eating shit or food. Metaphors and simili have the unfortunate property that they can never be fully mapped aspect-by-aspect to the object they're referring to, and I generally try to stay away form them.

    OO isn't an option for the majority of people, because they deal with businesses who use MS Office instead. etc etc

    I agree completely.



  • Just a few notes to the OP. These points haven't been raised yet if I read correctly:

    @Jake Grey said:

    the file system's feels rather unintuitive and I much prefer CNET to the built-in Add/Remove tool

    These aren't "problems in Linux". Linux != Windows; some stuff is just different. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. E.g., the file system can be confusing if you've only ever known "the Windows way" ("here's your C: drive, good luck") but makes migrating just about anything to a different system much easier (copying your settings? They're in /etc. Just your own files? /home/yourname etc.).

    @Jake Grey said:

    IRC and Instant Messenger continued to work but Firefox consistently returned timeout messages when trying to view webpages and Dillo just sort of sat there, refusing to budge from the splash page when I pressed Return.

    So what was the problem eventually? Sounds like your DNS was a bit botched or something. When my internet connection goes down IRC usually keeps working for a bit (prolly caching the DNS or something).

    @Jake Grey said:

    To my great relief, it worked, though for some reason it kept sending pings out continuously until I closed the window; is that normal?

    Okay, so maybe not DNS. And as pointed out before, yes, that's normal (closing the window to stop it is a bit overkill tho ;)).

    @Jake Grey said:

    So in order to use a program whose primary function is troubleshooting recalcitrant Internet connections for the first time, I must download it from the Internet.

    Well, that depends. Did you do a netinstall? In that case there wouldn't have been a need directly, since obviously your connection was working just fine earlier :) If you have the full CD or DVD package, just stick it in your drive a be on your way.

    @Jake Grey said:

    And by leaving it out of the default install package so that only users who really need it will install it, the Ubuntu team saved me a whopping 172kb of hard drive space.

    1. networkproblems that require tracert or similar tools (nmap etc.) to solve are relatively rare, especially in a home situation. Usually, your router's just acting up or something. And Ubuntu isn't aimed at the sort of people who understand the output or tracert anyway, but that's another story.

    2. gee, I wish I could do that on Windows. Who needs shitty stuff like Notepad anyway??? Again, you mistake a difference for a downside.

    3. as I said above, not in any case would there be a reason to install it by default. I use vim. Debian only installs vi by default. It also leaves out screen, findutils and some more stuff I use daily by default. Big deal; the average user doesn't need these (well, findutils may be disputable) and they'd just be taking up space.

    @Jake Grey said:

    It was at about this point that I began to wonder if this distro was really all it was cracked up to be.

    Can't really comment on that; I prefer Debian, and whenever I use an Ubuntu machine I'm thrown somewhat off by its "close but not exactly the same" way of doing things. Then again, I'd take it over RedHat any day.

    Still, choice is A Good Thing. Windows users essentially have only 1 choice: Vista (and XP, for the moment at least). And if you happen to not like Vista, you're ***.

    @Jake Grey said:

    PS: Things that suck about Community Server, number smeg knows what; the 'select tags' icon doesn't like Firefox in Linux.

     Hm? Works fine for me.



  • @Monomelodies said:

    @Jake Grey said:
    And by leaving it out of the default install package so that only users who really need it will install it, the Ubuntu team saved me a whopping 172kb of hard drive space.

    2. gee, I wish I could do that on Windows. Who needs shitty stuff like Notepad anyway??? Again, you mistake a difference for a downside.

    My main workstation's Linux installation fits in about 2.5GB, including all the software I use and some native games (but not including the Windows games I have in $HOME/.wine).  I challenge Jake or any Windows user to install Vista with a suite of software development tools, Java support and image manipulation, 3D modeling, word processing, publishing and spreadsheet applications in that space.


  • @tdb said:

    My main workstation's Linux installation fits in about 2.5GB, including all the software I use and some native games (but not including the Windows games I have in $HOME/.wine).  I challenge Jake or any Windows user to install Vista with a suite of software development tools, Java support and image manipulation, 3D modeling, word processing, publishing and spreadsheet applications in that space.
     

     Ummm... Why should I care? Vista installs just fine and doesn't use much of a percentage of the 750GB drive it's installed on (OK, actually it's installed into a 200GB partition on that 750GB drive - still plenty of space left on the partition).

    Worrying about your OS installing in 2.5GB is fine if you're still working with a late '90s vintage machine and drive.  Oh, or unless you're one of those Linux fanbois who thinks that anything but Linux is bad, especially if it's made by MS. I happen to be neither of those things.

    Oh, and XP installs just fine and leaves lots of extra space on my laptop's 120GB drive as well. 



  • @KenW said:

    @tdb said:

    My main workstation's Linux installation fits in about 2.5GB, including all the software I use and some native games (but not including the Windows games I have in $HOME/.wine).  I challenge Jake or any Windows user to install Vista with a suite of software development tools, Java support and image manipulation, 3D modeling, word processing, publishing and spreadsheet applications in that space.
     

     Ummm... Why should I care? Vista installs just fine and doesn't use much of a percentage of the 750GB drive it's installed on (OK, actually it's installed into a 200GB partition on that 750GB drive - still plenty of space left on the partition).

    Worrying about your OS installing in 2.5GB is fine if you're still working with a late '90s vintage machine and drive.  Oh, or unless you're one of those Linux fanbois who thinks that anything but Linux is bad, especially if it's made by MS. I happen to be neither of those things.

    Oh, and XP installs just fine and leaves lots of extra space on my laptop's 120GB drive as well. 

    Right, it's like bragging because you've worked out a complex schedule of riding the bus so you only put 10 miles on your car every day instead of 11 miles.  I mean, it's fine I suppose, but the point of having the car is to drive it and it's not exactly something to be proud of.

     

    Also, 2.5 GB???  Christ.  My Linux desktops usually use about 500 megs between binaries and config files (but excluding data and log files). 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @KenW said:

    @tdb said:

    My main workstation's Linux installation fits in about 2.5GB, including all the software I use and some native games (but not including the Windows games I have in $HOME/.wine).  I challenge Jake or any Windows user to install Vista with a suite of software development tools, Java support and image manipulation, 3D modeling, word processing, publishing and spreadsheet applications in that space.
     

     Ummm... Why should I care? Vista installs just fine and doesn't use much of a percentage of the 750GB drive it's installed on (OK, actually it's installed into a 200GB partition on that 750GB drive - still plenty of space left on the partition).

    Worrying about your OS installing in 2.5GB is fine if you're still working with a late '90s vintage machine and drive.  Oh, or unless you're one of those Linux fanbois who thinks that anything but Linux is bad, especially if it's made by MS. I happen to be neither of those things.

    Oh, and XP installs just fine and leaves lots of extra space on my laptop's 120GB drive as well. 

    Right, it's like bragging because you've worked out a complex schedule of riding the bus so you only put 10 miles on your car every day instead of 11 miles.  I mean, it's fine I suppose, but the point of having the car is to drive it and it's not exactly something to be proud of.

     

    Also, 2.5 GB???  Christ.  My Linux desktops usually use about 500 megs between binaries and config files (but excluding data and log files). 

    I only excluded my swap file from the installation size.  Some of the biggest applications I have installed include: MinGW (120MB), Sun Java (100MB), Valgrind (50MB), Wine (50MB), Gimp (40MB), Iceape (40MB), Qemu (30MB), Nvidia display driver (30MB), Blender (20MB).  Those already make up almost 500MB.

    And why do I care about my OS installation sizes?  You see, I have a lot of computers.  I acquire more of them through leftover parts from upgrades and by scavenging various components that would be thrown away.  Most of them are not in active use anymore, but almost all have been at some point.  Had I bought new large disks for all of them, the cost would quickly add up.  Instead, I reuse old, small disks.  I have a whole bunch of them in the range from 6GB to 20GB.  A couple years ago I got an idea of building a single centralized file server with a large RAID array and putting all my new OS installations there.  Since then I have used that method for five installations, for a total of 32GB of disk images.



  • I came up with some more things to say and of course the edit timeout expired, so here's a new post.

    I don't really get this trend of making software more resource-consuming, seemingly just for the sake of itself.  It's like making cars bigger and with more powerful engines even when they don't need to be.  It also goes hand in hand with encouraging people to spend more than they can afford, mortgaging their houses etc.  Vista's Aero skin may look nice, but does it make you more productive?  Do you even notice it after the first few days?  Does it have any other value whatsoever than making the software sell better (which is pretty big value for the vendor and resellers, but not for the end users)?  I can understand developing better graphics for games, but even there I value a good game over good graphics.  The sensible choice for business software would be to reduce resource consumption, so companies can use the same computers longer.  This would mean huge savings for the companies, and also for the environment, as manufacturing volumes could be cut.  Computers from the companies that genuinely do need to upgrade their hardware often could be refurbished and sold at affordable prices to home users and other businesses.

    In essense: What the fsck for does today's society encourage people to consume so much? 



  • @tdb said:

    It's like making cars bigger and with more powerful engines even when they don't need to be.  It also goes hand in hand with encouraging people to spend more than they can afford, mortgaging their houses etc.

    And look what happened to car manufacturers and the housing industry. It seems to be more about "the American lifestyle" creeping into the IT industry. Really, does MS Office really do that much more things after each major release? Basically the only thing I remember between Office 97 and Office 2003 might be support for the XML office docs; this is the only useful thing I've found there as it allows me to output Excel and Word documents without using any weird Office document generating APIs. However, its footprint is larger.

    Windows has an even worse growth ratio. My C:\windows dir is soaring around 1.63 for the core Windows system. How much would Vista eat away from my HD? Granted, given a 200Gb HDD it's only 1%, but I don't really see why the core components for an OS should amount to that. Hell, Windows seems to grow on each iteration as much as videogames ... but at least those have an excuse; most of the videogame's space is used on game data (maps, textures, objects, whatever).



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    Basically the only thing I remember between Office 97 and Office 2003 might be support for the XML office docs; this is the only useful thing I've found there as it allows me to output Excel and Word documents without using any weird Office document generating APIs. However, its footprint is larger.
    The biggest thing I remember is that, starting in 2000, they had a better backwards-compatibility scheme.  

    What I mean is this:  I was running Office 97 well into 2003 (I know I know, but I was a cheapass college student, even though I could have purchased it from the bookstore for like $17).  All my friends that had Office 2000 would create Office2k documents and I couldn't open them.  Some error would pop up and Word would shut down.  When the paradigm shifted from 2k to 2k3, Office2k was a lot better at this.  I could open a document in Word2000 and if it was a 2k3 document, Word2000 would kindly inform me that not all features of the document would be available, but it would still open it and display it.

    I probably should have switched to OpenOffice.org a lot sooner, but I didn't know about it.

    BTW, when one of my roomates shelled out his hard-earned $17 for Office 2000, the salesperson tried to convince him that it would only ever install twice because there was a special crystal in the CD that would deteriorate after the laser passed through it twice, making the CD unreadable.



  • @tdb said:

    which is pretty big value for the vendor and resellers

    Which is kind of the point. I am very glad you don't run any business I have any stake in.



  • @tdb said:

    In essense: What the fsck for does today's society encourage people to consume so much?

    Because people like consuming stuff?  Society doesn't make people do shit -- people consume because they like it, because they are sold on it.  If you don't like it, don't participate.  Nobody is making you.  But bitching about it is just pathetic. 



  • @belgariontheking said:

    What I mean is this:  I was running Office 97 well into 2003 (I know I know, but I was a cheapass college student, even though I could have purchased it from the bookstore for like $17).  All my friends that had Office 2000 would create Office2k documents and I couldn't open them.  Some error would pop up and Word would shut down.  When the paradigm shifted from 2k to 2k3, Office2k was a lot better at this.  I could open a document in Word2000 and if it was a 2k3 document, Word2000 would kindly inform me that not all features of the document would be available, but it would still open it and display it.

    I'm interested to know what other value did you get out of the upgrade besides being able to open your friends documents?

     

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @tdb said:

    In essense: What the fsck for does today's society encourage people to consume so much?

    Because people like consuming stuff?  Society doesn't make people do shit -- people consume because they like it, because they are sold on it.  If you don't like it, don't participate.  Nobody is making you.  But bitching about it is just pathetic. 

    You really think advertising has no part in it?  And peer pressure?  Society has a pretty damn big impact to what people do.  We are moving towards a throwaway society - people are already throwing computers in the trash when they stop working due to a virus or whatnot and buying new ones.  Toys are increasingly fragile and get happily put in the trashcan when they break.  A ludicrous amount of packaging waste is produced each year.  This all needs to stop if we want to keep this planet habitable for another thousand years.


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @tdb said:

    In essense: What the fsck for does today's society encourage people to consume so much?

    Because people like consuming stuff? I don't care and I'm sticking my head in the sand.

    FTFY.



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    Windows has an even worse growth ratio. My C:\windows dir is soaring around 1.63 for the core Windows system.

    Vista/Win2008 keep all installation files there, too, so you don't need to get your DVD every time it needs to install an in-box driver or add a feature.



  • @tdb said:

    You really think advertising has no part in it?  And peer pressure?  Society has a pretty damn big impact to what people do.

    It's still voluntary action.  If people want to make, sell and buy, that's fine and it's none of your damn business.

     

    @tdb said:

    We are moving towards a throwaway society - people are already throwing computers in the trash when they stop working due to a virus or whatnot and buying new ones.  Toys are increasingly fragile and get happily put in the trashcan when they break.  A ludicrous amount of packaging waste is produced each year.  This all needs to stop if we want to keep this planet habitable for another thousand years.

    Throwing stuff away is generally more economical than trying to repair it.  When it comes to garbage, there is no shortage of land that can be used as landfill.  The ability for humanity to persist for a long time has nothing to do with conserving resources.  It will happen as it always has, through human ingenuity in utilizing resources in different ways.  The long-term prospects of mankind are not dependent on us reducing our waste output by a meager 20% or whatever per year.  Please stop spreading this environmentalist propaganda.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @alegr said:

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Windows has an even worse growth ratio. My C:\windows dir is soaring around 1.63 for the core Windows system.

    Vista/Win2008 keep all installation files there, too, so you don't need to get your DVD every time [...]

    Wasn't that what c:\i686 was for?


  • @tdb said:

    I'm interested to know what other value did you get out of the upgrade besides being able to open your friends documents?

    I have a copy of office 97 I keep around because very occasionally I need to create a spreadsheet for work that uses macros. It's easy to forget but there have been big overall improvements in software since 97. For example when I open a file in excel it loads everything ok then shows an error saying a sheet with that name is already open and it can't open the file. Gets annoying pretty quickly. I expect there are dozens of similar issues that have been fixed in later versions of office. Software from that era is generally a lot buggier than current software.

    While on the topic of office software I never understood why openoffice gets so much praise. I've found abiword and gnumeric to be much nicer and a heck of a lot less resource intensive. gnumeric in particular has to be one of my favourite pieces of open source software. On the other hand I don't think they run as well on windows as open office,



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @tdb said:

    We are moving towards a throwaway society - people are already throwing computers in the trash when they stop working due to a virus or whatnot and buying new ones.  Toys are increasingly fragile and get happily put in the trashcan when they break.  A ludicrous amount of packaging waste is produced each year.  This all needs to stop if we want to keep this planet habitable for another thousand years.

    Throwing stuff away is generally more economical than trying to repair it.  When it comes to garbage, there is no shortage of land that can be used as landfill.  The ability for humanity to persist for a long time has nothing to do with conserving resources.  It will happen as it always has, through human ingenuity in utilizing resources in different ways.  The long-term prospects of mankind are not dependent on us reducing our waste output by a meager 20% or whatever per year.  Please stop spreading this environmentalist propaganda.

     

     

    http://www.storyofstuff.com/ 

     

    I'm certainly not buying all of what is said in this peace but it's not too hard to see some or many of the points are very valid and frightning. Tbh I don't want to be living on this earth 2 or 3 generations from now. Already at this point in time it's a huge garbage dumpster. Only takes a walk down the street to realize this. I do hate environmentalist propaganda as much as you do, but honestly the words you are spreading are naive and just as stupid.



  • @tdb said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    What I mean is this:  I was running Office 97 well into 2003 (I know I know, but I was a cheapass college student, even though I could have purchased it from the bookstore for like $17).  All my friends that had Office 2000 would create Office2k documents and I couldn't open them.  Some error would pop up and Word would shut down.  When the paradigm shifted from 2k to 2k3, Office2k was a lot better at this.  I could open a document in Word2000 and if it was a 2k3 document, Word2000 would kindly inform me that not all features of the document would be available, but it would still open it and display it.

    I'm interested to know what other value did you get out of the upgrade besides being able to open your friends documents?
    That was pretty much it.  There were a bunch of smaller features, but this is so long ago now that I can't remember which ones came from which version.  IIRC autocompleting the current day was introduced in 2000. 

    I didn't actually make an investment, even the $17 I mentioned.  I just borrowed the discs from a friend.



  • @seriousJoker said:

    Only takes a walk down the street to realize this.

    Streets don't have garbage on them because of inadequate disposal methods; it's because of littering.  There is plenty of land that can be used for garbage dumps.  I'm not sure what your point is -- are you saying that we are living in our own garbage because of a "throwaway society"?  Garbage is just a part of a productive society and attempts to reduce garbage output have so far generally been worse than just throwing stuff away (like recycling).  Obviously there may come a day when we have to reduce the amount of garbage we produce, but we're nowhere close to that now.  Eventually we will probably end up with better waste-disposal technology than just dumping the garbage in the ground, but at this point it is quite sufficient.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Streets don't have garbage on them because of inadequate disposal methods; it's because of littering.
    Which is why my shire council has implemented mark-and-sweep GC.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Throwing stuff away is generally more economical than trying to repair it.

    This is exactly why the "American way" is broken. The only reason the throwing off option is cheaper in the US is because of the consumerist culture. Steve Jobs would rather have you buy a new iPhone when its battery dies out, for example. Fixing stuff, however, is more common in other countries where buying new isn't that cheap. Eventually, there will be a time when fixing stuff will be more expensive than throwing it away, but that will be when the thing is old enough to justify a new buy.

    Quality stuff already follows this rule; repairing a PS3 past warranty with a dead Blu-Ray drive ($150) vs. buying a new PS3 ($400? $500?).

    @morbiuswilters said:

    When it comes to garbage, there is no shortage of land that can be used as landfill.  The ability for humanity to persist for a long time has nothing to do with conserving resources.  It will happen as it always has, through human ingenuity in utilizing resources in different ways.  The long-term prospects of mankind are not dependent on us reducing our waste output by a meager 20% or whatever per year.  Please stop spreading this environmentalist propaganda.

    Actually, we don't. Of course, recycling stuff reduces the total land needed for landfills, but there is stuff that still ends up in them. Mexico City is pushing on mandatory garbage separation (organic/non-organic) and battery recycling dropboxes to reduce on waste output; the current city's landfill is near 100% capacity and trash has been a major concern for some time now.


  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    This is exactly why the "American way" is broken. The only reason the throwing off option is cheaper in the US is because of the consumerist culture. Steve Jobs would rather have you buy a new iPhone when its battery dies out, for example. Fixing stuff, however, is more common in other countries where buying new isn't that cheap. Eventually, there will be a time when fixing stuff will be more expensive than throwing it away, but that will be when the thing is old enough to justify a new buy.

    This makes absolutely no sense.  Throwing stuff away is more economical because we have a productive society, yes.  That's what tends to tip the scale from "fix" to "replace".  Yes, poorer countries still tend to stick to a "fix" model.  That's not a problem, it's just the way economics works.  When those countries become wealthier, mass production will become a better use of resources than having individual workers laboriously repair something to extend its usable life.

     

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Quality stuff already follows this rule; repairing a PS3 past warranty with a dead Blu-Ray drive ($150) vs. buying a new PS3 ($400? $500?).

    The Blu-Ray drive is a fairly independent, modular component that can be easily replaced.  What's more, it's also a fairly cheap component to replace, compared to the rest of the system.  And even then it's still 1/3rd of the cost of just replacing the whole console.

     

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Actually, we don't. Of course, recycling stuff reduces the total land needed for landfills, but there is stuff that still ends up in them. Mexico City is pushing on mandatory garbage separation (organic/non-organic) and battery recycling dropboxes to reduce on waste output; the current city's landfill is near 100% capacity and trash has been a major concern for some time now.

    There's plenty of land.  That doesn't mean it is always utilized properly.  Some cities (like Mexico City) have had poorly-planned expansion and have not ensured necessary landfill facilities are available.  This is a failure of your city government.  And if you think they can't handle managing a hole in the ground where everything gets thrown, how do you think they will do at managing a more complex endeavor like recycling?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    This is exactly why the "American way" is broken. The only reason the throwing off option is cheaper in the US is because of the consumerist culture. Steve Jobs would rather have you buy a new iPhone when its battery dies out, for example. Fixing stuff, however, is more common in other countries where buying new isn't that cheap. Eventually, there will be a time when fixing stuff will be more expensive than throwing it away, but that will be when the thing is old enough to justify a new buy.

    This makes absolutely no sense.  Throwing stuff away is more economical because we have a productive society, yes.  That's what tends to tip the scale from "fix" to "replace".  Yes, poorer countries still tend to stick to a "fix" model.  That's not a problem, it's just the way economics works.  When those countries become wealthier, mass production will become a better use of resources than having individual workers laboriously repair something to extend its usable life.

    Hey, I have a great business idea that will get multiple birds with one stone.  You know how record labels and movie studios bitch about piracy, right?  Well, instead of selling easily-copyable media like CDs and DVDs, let's start selling music and movies directly on single-chip players with non-removable media.  They can be equipped with ultra-cheap batteries that last just long enough to play the contents once.  If consumers want to listen to the same song again, they can just buy another player, right?  Or stockpile on their favorites.  Better not to store them for too long though, the memory contents may go bad and you won't get a refund (this should further encourage consumption).  The artists will get a ton of money, economy will get a big boost, and all the throwaway players will provide nice filling for all that empty land and ocean floors.  Everyone will be happy!

    @morbiuswilters said:

     

    @danixdefcon5 said:

    Actually, we don't. Of course, recycling stuff reduces the total land needed for landfills, but there is stuff that still ends up in them. Mexico City is pushing on mandatory garbage separation (organic/non-organic) and battery recycling dropboxes to reduce on waste output; the current city's landfill is near 100% capacity and trash has been a major concern for some time now.

    There's plenty of land.  That doesn't mean it is always utilized properly.  Some cities (like Mexico City) have had poorly-planned expansion and have not ensured necessary landfill facilities are available.  This is a failure of your city government.  And if you think they can't handle managing a hole in the ground where everything gets thrown, how do you think they will do at managing a more complex endeavor like recycling?

    I'm becoming convinced that you're either an idiot or a troll.


  • @tdb said:

    Hey, I have a great business idea that will get multiple birds with one stone.  You know how record labels and movie studios bitch about piracy, right?  Well, instead of selling easily-copyable media like CDs and DVDs, let's start selling music and movies directly on single-chip players with non-removable media.  They can be equipped with ultra-cheap batteries that last just long enough to play the contents once.  If consumers want to listen to the same song again, they can just buy another player, right?  Or stockpile on their favorites.  Better not to store them for too long though, the memory contents may go bad and you won't get a refund (this should further encourage consumption).  The artists will get a ton of money, economy will get a big boost, and all the throwaway players will provide nice filling for all that empty land and ocean floors.  Everyone will be happy!

    What does this have to do with anything??  Did you smoke extra crack this morning or something?

     

    @tdb said:

    I'm becoming convinced that you're either an idiot or a troll.

    What's the point of this flamebait?  You're not even replying to any point I made, just spouting of random nonsense.


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