On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:15:41 -0800, plenty900 wrote: > > One thing that drew me to computers from the start > was going to computer clubs and seeing the cool hacks > that people had managed to get working using their > computers. For instance, I once saw a VIC-20 with > a "real" 80x25 video card, for instance, and a guy > who created his own OS. > > As time went by, clubs were less important and the > Internet took over as a place to swap ideas and > clever software hacks. For instance, there is the > typesetting system TeX, and a guy once put > an entire TeX DVI viewer with fonts into just one small > executable, enabling me to do real word processing > on a 386 DX. > > Later, some guy named Linus did what others > had also done -- the Mach group for example -- > he created a workstation-class kernel for the 486, however > Linus did something wonderful. He didn't try to price-gouge > consumers with it, nor refuse to give it away while whining > about how parts of the OS were owned by such-and-such > Regents. No, he gave it away for free. Soon after, > some clever people had ported X Windows to it, and > suddenly my 486 DX2 laptop was something like > a workstation -- it was really civilized. > > In every case of something amazing like this > happening, I remarked that it was "cool", clever or novel. > Just as was the subsequent creation of LAME and the > posting of MP3 files to Usenet. And later the creation > of Divx and Xvid. > > However I am not entirely sure that the hobbyist > movement has continued to be cool, clever, and > doing novel things. The hobbyist was always > the core of such successes, pushing the envelope > for fun, not because he was paid to. Today however > Linux is rather business-minded, and money > seems to be the primary concern of everyone. > It's become mainly a bandwagon for business. > > I am not convinced that truly cool things > are happening any longer, because I am not > seeing barriers being broken through at least > in the area of software. Indeed, nor in hardware. > Everyone involved in Linux seems to be using > a hot-rod system that offers no barriers. > Where is the cool?
What I've recently found to be cool - the WalMart $200 computer - buying the same mobo for $60 from clubit, populating it with 2gb ddr2 for $25 and installing the 'distro of the month' from the Linux Pro DVD. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
