ramiro souto wrote:
>
> [....]
> C- I want something that comes out of the box AND WORKS!!!!!
> Up to day, by reading all of the e-mails posted to this list I.M.H.O MOST
> of the people in this list have an extremely advanced knowledge of
> hardware, and some programming.
> Does this mean I don't know hardware, well enough to get me in trouble.
> Does this mean I don't know programming, well I have taken a couple of
> classes in C.
> AND MY POINT!
> If you and me and everyone else wants everyone to run Linux, IT HAS TO BE
> IDIOT (this is me by the way) PROOF, not tweak this download that, plug
> this etc..
> [....]
This brings up a point that some might think of as rather "elitist" of
me, but is something I feel very strongly about and is something that I
usually talk to people about when I talk about Linux and what it can do
for them, for their company, etc.
It used to be that people had lots of nice things to say about DOS and
even Windows 3.x as opposed to MacOS because "the problem with MacOS is
that it hides the hardware from the end-user. With DOS and Windows,
you're right there and can do a lot of stuff directly on the hardware
you just can't do with MacOS. It assumes the user is an idiot." And
that used to be a _bad_ thing.
Nowadays, people seem to *want* to have an operating system that assumes
the user is an idiot, and presuming that the user might have *some* clue
about the hardware they're using is a _negative_ aspect rather than
positive. It's funny to me to see how attitudes have flip-flopped
thanks to the Marketing Monster that is Microsoft.
Obviously, I personally still hold the opposite opinion. It's going to
be many many years before home computers reach the stage where they are
equivalent to cars. i.e. Nowadays, you don't have to know anything
about how a car works to run one. You still have to understand a little
bit about how a computer works to operate one, and assuming otherwise is
just going to get you into trouble.
I would personally say that it hasn't been until very very recently,
like late 1990's - almost 100 years since they've been in existence -
that cars have really become easily utilized by the "Average consumer"
and not partially because of things like high-tech materials and
microprocessors that have been able to make cars stronger, safer, more
comfortable, more efficient, easier to drive and more reliable than at
any time in their history.
Most computers, with the exception of multi-million dollar mainframe
systems, are none of these things. They're still balky, unreliable,
buggy, difficult to manage and frequently don't do what you want them to
do, but are very quick to do what you've told them. (All things you
could say about most consumer automobiles, even just twenty years ago.)
Assuming you can just turn a computer on and get something done is,
IMNSHO, still a myth. (Although the iMac is about as close as anyone
has gotten with modern computers.)
Even so, as "user-friendly" as they've become, there are still a few
things you need to know about cars to keep them running properly. You
have to know how to put gas in them, give them regular maintenance like
oil changes, brake jobs, you have to rotate or change the tires
periodically, and so on. Assuming you can buy a car and drive it for
200,000 miles without _ever_ doing any of those things is folly. Just
as it's folly to assume you can take a computer home and run it for
three years without ever needing to do any maintenance on it. And just
like with cars, if you understand the underlying technology and
hardware, /just a little bit/, you are going to have so much more luck
at keeping your car/computer running cleanly and smoothly for years and
years, just because you understand what's going on "under the hood" and
can make educated guesses as to what's wrong if something isn't working
quite right.
That, I think, is one of the biggest strengths of Linux and biggest
weaknesses of Windows today. I tell people, sure it's *easy* to become
an NT administrator, the problem is, if something breaks and you can't
fix it without clicking on pretty little pictures, you're up S- creek
without a paddle because you're so insulated from the underlying
technology (and insulated *on purpose*) that you have no hope of
understanding what's gone wrong if it's not something that's been taken
into account by the person who wrote the OS/admin tools. And let's face
it, how many times do you have system problems that are things you've
predicted to happen? It's kind of an oxymoron: predictable failure
mode. If it's predictable, then you do something to avert it and you
don't have the problem. The problems that cause the biggest headaches
are the ones you *weren't* expecting.
With Linux, on the other hand, yeah it's a little harder to get up to
speed because you have to understand things like disk partitions, device
nodes, interrupts, DMA channels, network interfaces, and stuff like
that, but guess what - if you *know* that stuff to begin with, you are
already so far ahead of the average NT admin, that if you do happen to
have problems, you've got a really great foundation upon which to base
your assumptions as to what's gone wrong, while that NT admin just tries
clicking different icons to see if things get better. (And note that
I'm not slamming on NT admins - I do know a few who are pretty smart and
really do understand the underlying technology - but I know orders of
magnitude more who are complete idiots and can barely figure out which
icons to click to do even the most basic of tasks.)
So what's my point? Merely that Linux is a technology that's designed
to *empower* its user, while Microsoft Operating systems are
technologies that are designed to *restrict* their users. If you're
using Linux because you just want something that will run your computer,
that's fine, but you're missing the point. If you just want an OS that
will run games, you shouldn't even be running Windows - you should buy a
Playstation. If you want an OS that will let you take the most
advantage of the hardware you have and let you do anything you can think
of - you should be running Linux and you should take a little bit of
extra time and effort to understand what it's doing under the hood.
But why does this division exist to begin with? I believe that it has
everything to do with the computing industry as a whole, and companies
like Microsoft and Intel in particular.
You've heard all the analogies of cars versus computers - nobody would
ever drive a car that crashed every fifteen miles and only took gas from
one company's stations. Unfortunately, that's what has kept the computer
industry going. Microsoft and Intel *live* off of regular upgrade
cycles. So they have to keep the hardware changing, make new versions
of the operating system not compatible with older applications, make the
new software require new hardware, and so on. They have to keep that
upgrade cycle rolling, or they're dead. Which means everything keeps
changing, and everyone should understand how difficult it is to hit a
moving target. That, I believe, more than anything is why home
computers, after 20 years, which in computer years is at least as long
as the 100 years we've had cars, are still much more difficult to use
than the average american auto.
If you don't see this, just take a look at USB, USB 2.0, Firewire, SCSI,
SCSI-2, Ultra SCSI, Ultrawide SCSI, Ultra-2 Wide SCSI, UDMA33 IDE,
UDMA66 IDE, UDMA100 IDE, ISA, VESA, PCI, PCI33, PCI66, DIMM, DRAM,
SDRAM, RDRAM, Socket 7, Slot 1, Slot A... should I keep going? Nah, you
get the idea.
If any aspect of home computing became commoditized, once it becomes
silly to keep pushing the upgrade cycle on hardware specs, once the
software already does everything any sane human being would want it to,
once there is no more money to be made in writing operating systems, the
whole cycle will collapse. The only way companies would be able to
distinguish themselves is by making the systems easier to use, more
reliable, less buggy. Sound familiar? It's what the car companies do
because they know that, relatively speaking, a Toyota is going to give
you exactly what an Audi will, but with different colors. Commoditize
any aspect of home computing so that there is no money left in the
constant upgrade cycle, and one computer will do just as well as any
other, and all of a sudden computers will become something that your
grandmother /really can/ use because *that* will be what distinguishes
one from another.
Until then, you *have* to know a little bit, no matter what OS you run,
it's just that Windows users have been misled into thinking this is not
true. We're still in the hand-cranking, manual choke, twiddle under the
hood days of home computing. And I just don't believe that *any*
operating system on the market today is idiot-proof. Expecting Linux to
be when nothing else is is unrealistic at best, misleading and
disappointing at worst. Does that make me elitist? I dunno. I think
I'm just being realistic.
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.opendvd.org/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
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