GLUG: OT: Types of machines

["Richard Meyer" <Richard_Meyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Benico wrote:

>On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Richard Meyer wrote:
>> I see no problem with people buying machines for games. ...
>> I have difficulty understanding your opinion - surely technology is
>developed to be used, not "respected". People who want to know how things
>work, will find out, and people who don't will just use those things. In the
>meantime, you and I benefit from the economies of scale that makes and Intel
>P3 or Athlon affordable to us mere mortals. So what if 80% of all systems
>sold just run Win 98 and occasionally create a document or balance a cheque
>book and retrieve 10 emails a day, and barely average more than 1% CPU
>utilisation over their lives.

>Richard

>I must admit, I'm perhaps a bit paranoid about this one .. but for a reason and
>by choice.  Perhaps is it a matter of appreciation and not of respect.
>You know the feeling you get when showing people Linux and they
>say: "O,  ... and ... um do they have Office yet ?  Mmm looks nice ...
>What ! You mean gnumeric can't even do graphs yet ?" ... and you get that
>'shame ... the poor guy' - look from them.

The suits who actually pay for the majority of business machines have no respect
or appreciation for what they're getting. maybe you're just idealistic ;)

I agree that (in theory), everone who uses a piece of technology *should* have a
very good idea of how it works, but this is the real world, unfortunately, and
we can't learn everything about everything we use. We have specialists to do the
specialised jobs. Mechanics for the car, panel beaters for after an accident,
Unix administrators for our Unix machines etc.

>I grew up to appreciate the fact that I could do some calculations
>on a  x286 that previously required a "human computer".  (That room full
>of people doing calculations all day long passing papers from the desks at
>the back to the desks at the front.  I appreciate color screens because I
>remember my monocrome.)

>I just don't like people taking things for granted because they're ignorant
>about the amount of effort and development that went into it.

Although it would be nice, you can't really expect them to show proper
appreciation. Most people who get engaged go out and buy a diamond ring - they
have no clue as to what work went into mining and smelting the gold, mining the
diamond, cutting the diamond, making the ring etc, etc, ad nauseum. Or for that
matter, think of food -  anyone know how much work goes into growing veggies and
cattle? - do they care? - as long as the prices don't rise too quickly, they're
happy. (ignorant, but happy)

>Perhaps I feel frustrated when while boasting about their new Jones-beating
>PC I ask them what they're going to do with it, they don't know.  And when
>they hear I have "ONLY a celeron ! ? ... Naa but the full P3 is better for
>games !"  and again that 'shame ... you poor guy' - look.

I think I see the problem here -  you don't like being patronised by the
ignorant - well neither do I.    :)

>> If you can think of a better way of stressing a system, please let me know.

>You mean things like:
>- Running a 200 000 node CFD / FEA simulation for a few days ?
>- Compiling the Kernel ?
>- Doing 3D CAD modeling with SolidWorks, etc ?

When I sent this off, I knew *someone* would come up with a list of things that
were better. ;)    But seriously it's because of *games* that modern prebuilt
PC's come with good graphics, sound, lots of memory and GHz chips. You don't
need them to read mail, but to make Quake really ROCK, they're indispensible.


Cheers
RM


PS May I suggest that if we have any more to say on this, that we take it
off-list?