RE: Nonsense Re: Next release of RedHat Installer

["Taylor, ForrestX" <forrestx taylor intel com>]

> (TO ALL: THIS *IS* ABOUT LINUX AND RED HAT, PLEASE READ TO THE END)
> 
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 21:51:57 at 09:51:57PM +0100, Jean 
> Francois Martinez wrote:
> > >
> > Excuse me to tell you that that above is pure non sense.   
> As hardware 
> > becomes obsolete
> > and first worlders put it in the trash can some of it finds 
> its way in 
> > third world.  Furthermore
> 
> Jean Francois,
> 
> an Indio in the middle of Amazonas will be grateful for a wood stove,
> but will kick your axx if you give him a microwave oven...

Then why would that person want a computer?

> 
> If thing will go as you say, every computer user in the third world
> will be forced to pollute as much as we are doing now, provided that
> he:
> 
>       can afford a house with space for a desk,
> 
>       can afford the electric bill of the black hole we give him, and
> 
>       is connected to a reliable, very POWERFUL power grid, like the
>       American one (hey, wait: it was San Francisco and the Silicon
>       Valley that were forced to scheduled black outs last year,
>       wasn't it? How much uselessly powerful PCs contributed to freeze
>       elevators, ATM machines, fire alarms, etc..?) 
> 
> Please try to think to the whole world, and to the *necessary* uses of
> computers: write, spreadsheet, email, web surfing... for education and
> business. 3-D games and DVD are nothing bad, but they are luxury, and
> never were in the scope of this discussion. 
> 
> The real non sense is believing that this "more is always better"
> mentality is the solution to everything, or that we can really
> afford to keep ONLY this kind of computing around.
> 
> The third world should make going with what is already obsolete, 
> because it is ALREADY ENOUGH for most cases. AND THE FIRST WORLD 
> (Open Source Programmers first) SHOULD DO THE SAME, instead of keeping
> drooling about clock speeds.
> 
> The "few hundred dollars" a PC costs today are still one years salary
> for the majority of human beings. And  waste is bad. Period. If your
> needs are simple you don't take an Athlon or throw away "seven years
> old" hardware only because it's seven years old. We were all able to
> write ASCII and PostScript, print, email, surf the net and store the
> family or store budget with a P75 with 16 MB RAM, 300 MB HD.

If the needs are simple, then why not use an older version of Red Hat (e.g.
Red Hat 6.2)?  If the needs are simple, I don't think that performance
impovements would matter.  Security does matter, but how many worms are
going around affecting Red Hat 5.2?

Forrest

> Hence, a MODERN, WELL PACKAGED Linux distribution, with all security
> and performance improvements, must do the same.
> 
> Before talking about non sense, and before replying, please go and
> read the threads (that we ran on this very list around mid-january)
> with the following titles: 
> 
>         Bloatware and the 80/20 myth
>         Pollution and HW trends
>         Bloatware and bloatdisks
> 
> 		Ciao,
> 				Marco Fioretti
> 
> -- 
> Non si vive se non il tempo che si ama.			
> C. A. Helvetius