On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 13:46 -0400, Ben Scott wrote: > On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Tom Buskey <t...@buskey.name> wrote: > >>> ... I got a mini displayport to composite adapter. *bzzt*. .... > >>> ... the mini just works for everything I want to do. ... > >> > >> Reality Distortion Field is in effect, I see. > > > > Nope. I wanted ... While I waited to get the HDTV, it didn't work with > > the old TV ... > > The fact remains that everything "just worked" only after you > adjusted your definition of "just worked". This appears to be a > common symptom of RDF exposure: Repeated claims of "it just works", > but careful attention notices that any scenario in which it does not > or would not "just work" is excluded by changing the terms of the > test. It becomes impossible for things to not "just work" by careful > manipulation of the scenario. > > -- Ben
I think, in general, the rule that Mac stuff "just works" with other Mac stuff implies the comparison to how PC stuff doesn't typically "just work" with other PC stuff. However, I think that all of us techies can pretty much agree that nothing in computing (whether PC, Mac, or Mainframe) ever really "just works" as much as we want it to, and that's why we're so dedicated to FOSS. Case in point: OS X never "just worked" with my old HP psc1315 inkjet Printer/Scanner/Copier, which claimed support "out of the box". I actually had to install ESP GhostScript, CUPS 1.3.x, HPLIP, and the Foomatic filter database over the top of the versions that shipped with Mac OS X. The ramification of this was that I had to go back and reinstall all of those packages when a new Mac OS X patch-release clobbered them via Apple Software Updater. However, using the HPLIP driver package, I was able to get it to "just work" under GNU/Linux systems as well as under FreeBSD systems. This includes the scanner/copier portion of the device. Later, when Leopard (10.5) was released, they "fixed" some of the problems by simply removing support for the built-in scanner/copier portions. Even in Windows, the support for the printer was pretty lackluster. I had to resort to serving it up via CUPS with a postscript filter, and use the ImageWriter driver from Windows. Of these platforms, GNU/Linux and FreeBSD are the only two that actually empowered the user to investigate and attempt to solve the problems. The other two are quite hostile to this approach, and a user could easily render their system unusable, incompatible with another software package, or have their work unwittingly undone by a future software update. -- Coleman Kane _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
