Wow. That has to be one of the most intelligent things I have read in a
long time. If you dont mind I would like to post that on my webpage.
If you do mind I kindly will not post it.
Jeff
"Your Moma is so fat she makes Emacs look like Pico"
On 04 May 2001 13:58:10 -0400, Derek Glidden wrote:
> 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.
>
> --
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> $_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map
> {$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;
> $t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)
> [$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join
> "",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=
> unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d
> >>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*
> 8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}
> print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
>
> 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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