Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (was some unrelated subject)

["Marco" <m fioretti inwind it>]

In the "Evolution (was X (Was Y...." thread, somebody said:

> > Here is an article on this:
> > 
> >   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
> > 
> > Your 20% isn't anyone else's ;-)
> 
> 	As I said above, it was a stoopid question.  There's no way
>  around this that I can see. 

and the article says:

> And I don't think anyone will deny that on today's overpowered,
> under-priced computers, loading a huge program is still faster than
> loading a small program was even 5 years ago. So what's the problem?

The problem, i.e. *some* of the reasons to fight bloatware, is that:

1) This is an arrogant, egoistic, pompous and very "mentally closed"
   attitude: since we are talking 80/20 here, it means ignoring that
   today's computer's are "under-priced" only for 20% of the world
   population. The rest still has to work many months or years to buy
   stuff that makes KDE or GNOME look fast.

   (and when it comes to anything paid with your tax dollars nothing is
   cheap enough)

2) Even those with enough income to throw away a perfectly working PC
   every two years must not be forced to do it if their needs are not
   changed. They might prefer to spend that money on vacations, maybe.
   Today's free SW standard answer, "become a programmer and   
   recompile/write yourself" is a snob answer impossible in most cases.

3) It is *bad* to dump something which works perfectly. Especially PC
   hardware, one of the most polluting thing produced today.

The useful 20% being different for everybody today means that everybody
is forced to run the 100% monster, even with free software. It should
mean that it is very easy for (well, almost) everybody to download the whole thing, pick his very own 20% and throw away the rest for good.

Maybe it's just about packetization, I don't know (remember the thread about ghostscript rpm refusing to install on an english only PC if you
didn't give it 20> megs of *japanese* fonts?)

Conclusion: start saying to everybody claiming that "HW is cheap, so
 bloatware is harmless" "OK, if it's so cheap  *YOU* go and buy me a new 
PC"
		Ciao,

			Marco Fioretti



P.S.: for God's sake, *do* change the subject and start a new thread
      when needed. This very interesting discussion would have been
      impossible to find one week from now with an "Evolution" subject.
      And the same applies to *many* useful pieces of information in
      the archives: they are buried in messages with a totally unrelated
      subject