On 08/30/2012 09:25 AM, John wrote: > Let us assume you do win the lottery and lets also assume that the acquired > riches have not spoiled you completely and that you are still interested in > using computers. > What operating system would you use?
If I had unlimited money to pour down the well to pay for what I'd most prefer to use, I genuinely think I'd most prefer to use pretty much all the stuff I'm already using. What I'd change about it is I would have this stuff do what it's supposed to do, instead of what it wanted to do but couldn't quite pull off. Now that I think about it some more though, I'm not sure there's enough money in a good sized lottery pot to actually pay for all that. Maybe. Let's take Linux audio, for example. The first thing we have to do is take ALSA, OSS, JACK, PulseAudio, GStreamer, and everything else you can think off off the top of your head, gather all of that up and shove it right down the garbage disposer. Linux audio is just about the most ludicrous example of design by committee I can think of. See obligatory xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/927/ I have no idea what to replace it with. That's why I'll pay millions to some genius to get it done. It has to be possible, but the route to achieving it sure as hell hasn't been discovered. Linux audio is always a nightmare. Sometimes the fire-breathing dragons actually go to sleep and leave you in peace, but they just get replaced by man-sized scorpions and spiders, and if you vanquish those foes, there will be giant flying sharks that shoot lasers, or legions of zombie warriors. The best I can ever achieve in my years-long battle with Linux audio is a temporary, short-lived truce. I don't know, man. Really, when I think about it fairly, Windows has just about as many problems as we do with audio, and if OS-X doesn't, it's only because the hardware ecosystem OS-X is expected to function with is extremely narrow and limited. I guess the problem ain't just Linux, it's these damned computational machine box things generally. They say they're supposed to do stuff, and there are even books telling you what to expect them to do, but in practice, they fail to perform so often, and year after year, decade after decade, the problems never really go away and stay gone. There are happy moments, little islands of stability where everything works flawlessly, and life is good, but these moments are always temporary. Sigh. Maybe I'm just fed up with computers. I never made a living with these damn things anyway. I tried everything I could think of, went out of business three times without turning a profit, and here I am hauling gasoline for a living. Where one of the most annoying things about my job is all the problems caused by the DAMNED COMPUTERS. Because the software is completely full of bugs, and they only ever get fixed at the expense of creating new bugs somewhere else. Maybe I should invest that lottery pot in a desert island instead. -- D. Michael McIntyre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-user mailing list [email protected] - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
