The claw
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jacog May 04, 2009 9:23 AM EDT |
"The claw is our master. The claw chooses who will go and who will stay." ( The claw grabs one of them ) "I have been chosen! Farewell my friends. I go on to a better place. Nirvana is coming. The mystic portal awaits!" ( Camera cuts to the toy-torturing Cid. Our delusional little green friend is about to learn that the payoff for his blind faith is in fact nothing good at all ) ... Was going to delve deeper, but how about I just remain vague... is more fun that way. :) |
| Bob_Robertson May 04, 2009 11:07 AM EDT |
Jacog, That particular sequence has so much to teach the world, it's too bad that everybody thinks it only applies to other people's delusions. |
| caitlyn May 04, 2009 3:56 PM EDT |
Not the craw, the CRAW! Sorry, I couldn't resist. (Will anyone even get the reference?) |
| caitlyn May 04, 2009 4:00 PM EDT |
I read Helios' article and I know other folks who have basically experienced the same sort of response from Dell. That Microsoft dictates to hardware vendors is nothing new. Want a netbook with a processor faster than 1.6MHz? Sorry, Microsoft has told the vendors no, not if they want to be able to sell Windows XP on any of their systems. Better than a 1024x768 resolution? Not without special dispensation from Redmond. More than a 160GB hard drive? No, certainly not. The 160GB drives DID receive a special dispensation from Redmond. The limit used to be 80GB. I guess the folks at MS figured their Windows 7 bait-and-switch campaign would need more storage. What I hate most about Microsoft is not their proprietary code. It's their business practices. |
| techiem2 May 04, 2009 4:09 PM EDT |
Yeah. Especially after reading that report from the group in the EU that was up recently.
I'd known some of what they talked about, but hadn't heard about others.
Such as requiring schools to pay for Windows for all machines on their network, no matter what OS they install.
Or their outright extortion of Intel...twice
etc. The code? Who cares. If they want to write and try to sell buggy, insecure, closed code, that's their right. But to try to force everyone to buy it whether they want it or not? And to continuously abuse the marketplace to make it happen to the detriment of real competition, innovation, and progress? |
| caitlyn May 04, 2009 5:36 PM EDT |
@techiem2: Well, some of us refuse to play their game. I bought my netbook in January and only considered models with Linux preloaded. That is going to be my plan for all new system purchases in the future. There are enough good Linux choices out there. |
| techiem2 May 04, 2009 5:55 PM EDT |
Yup. I either build my own or buy Linux preinstalled.
Most of my systems of course I build myself.
But I can't really do that with a laptop. :P
But that's what ZaReason is there for. :) Why mess with the Windows World if you don't need to or want to? |
| Steven_Rosenber May 04, 2009 7:27 PM EDT |
I don't work at Dell (or any hardware/software maker), but I really fail to see how a company like Dell doesn't seem all that interested in explaining, pushing and generally selling what a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu has to offer in terms of all the free applications you can easily install from a single, secure repository, and all that you can do with a modern Linux system. They never seem to say more than, "if you order a machine from this page, you're not getting Windows, and if you really, really want Windows and don't want this here Ubuntu thingy, then please, please, please click here for systems preloaded with Windows." Unless I'm missing it, I don't see Canonical (or anybody else who distributes a Linux distribution and has sufficient marketing muscle) making the case for Linux out there where the general, non-geeky masses do their reading about/shopping for computers. Having a booth and doing speeches at Linux conventions isn't what free, open-source software needs. If anybody does way too much preaching to the choir, and not nearly enough explaining what it has to offer to the rest of the world, it's the Linux community. Ground-level "this is what Linux is all about, and yes, you can do it, and this is why it's better than Microsoft/Apple" is what we need. Of course that first requires quantifying exactly where the distributions in question stand on giving users the features they need (both think they need and don't know they need). I think we're pretty close. And there needs to be lots of education as well as hackery: Explain why Apple is doing all of us no favors by dragging the entire music industry into iTunes when most of the control stays with Apple, where even without DRM it's hard to manage an iPod (you need to sync it with a single iTunes-running PC, and you can't easily get files out of an iPod without resorting to same said hackery), and how everything would be much better if you could use a program as ubiquitous and "cross-platformy" as Firefox (perhaps Songbird?) to accomplish the same task, and how much better it is when free, open solutions are available. Of course we also need to nail down how to make proprietory stuff like iTunes work under Wine or in a VM ... I get that Ubuntu is doing well with the already techie/geeky crowd, but what is Canonical and the community doing about the rest of the world? And I don't mean individuals who are out there in the field helping people give up proprietary software. That's still important, but it's nothing compared to what a major hardware manufacturer or software company can do. So how is Ubuntu/Canonical (or anybody else for that matter) doing in getting the word out about Linux in the general media (I mention it somewhat regularly in my print column, but I can't write about Ubuntu and OpenBSD every week -- not in print anyway)? I'm not at all convinced that we're doing much of a job at all, good or bad. That begs the question, is Linux (and more generally Ubuntu; I don't see anybody else really out there doing this) really ready for the general user? (As an aside, when my 5-year-old's Ubuntu-running laptop wouldn't boot yesterday, I started it up in "recovery mode," and when the boot stalled and the root prompt came up, I ran fsck on the root filesystem, which must've been corrupted during a crash, likely due to a flaky power plug, and then the machine started working again ... but only because I've typed "fsck /dev/sda2" more than a few times in my past ... a new user would have no idea what to do). Never mind that Windows isn't all that ready either; most non-technical people depend rather heavily on the legions of people who can fix their MS desktop things go awry. Out of 1,000 Windows users, how many do you think have ever done an install of their operating system? Not many, I'd expect. But is Linux really at the point where it can compete for the user who has never run it before and maybe has barely heard of it? The netbook market has much to tell us about this, and in between all the FUD we'll have to figure out how Linux preloads such as the Asus Eee and Dell Mini 9 are faring. Looking at all the writing I do about FOSS, the great majority of it is aimed at people already using Linux and BSD operating systems. I don't often write a post or column meant to educate the general reader about what it is I'm doing and why. I need to do better. So I am to blame as much as anybody. My approach is more, "If I can do this, you can, too — I'm no super genius, I don't code, I just do this a lot," but maybe I need to writing more things along the lines of, "keep an old PC or three or four around, start doing Linux and BSD installs, start experiencing these user environments and applications and start thinking about what free, open-source software can mean for you and your work — and also think about what you're putting up with in the world of proprietary software." Maybe we need a Linux distribution not necessarily with Wine but with virtualization already set up and an easy way for a user to install Windows in a VM to run the one or two apps that they feel they can't live without. And then I remember that most Windows users don't even have an install disc — MS knows how to get you. |
| Scott_Ruecker May 04, 2009 9:32 PM EDT |
That would have made a great article Steven... |
| Bob_Robertson May 05, 2009 10:57 AM EDT |
> What I hate most about Microsoft is not their proprietary code. It's their business practices. Catlyn, it's nice to find common ground regardless of other disagreements. > And then I remember that most Windows users don't even have an install disc Steven, that's a FEATURE. It makes the user feel more comfortable, knowing that Microsoft has made install disks un-needed any more. Their system is robust, and the "restore" from hidden partitions on the disk will work every time. ...right? |
| techiem2 May 05, 2009 11:31 AM EDT |
Quoting:Their system is robust, and the "restore" from hidden partitions on the disk will work every time. Assuming the user remembered to use their one shot at making a recovery disc set. And hasn't lost them. Or the machine hasn't failed bad enough to prevent you from making the set yourself for them. If you can't make those, you're probably out of luck (the last machine I worked on needed to boot off the recovery set in order to even use the hidden partition). |
| gus3 May 05, 2009 12:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:Assuming the user remembered to use their one shot at making a recovery disc set.I was happy to miss my one shot. Yay, voided warranty with terms I never viewed! |
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