[ale] BURNING A LIVE CD

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 17:24 -0500, Warren Myers wrote:

> This might get me banned from the list, but I would say that each OS
> has a purpose, and if you use the OS for the things it's good for,
> you're OK. 


Nah.  Everyone is entitled to their opinions, after all.  :-)


> Linux is great for almost everything I do on a regular basis. So is
> Mac OS X. For 'typical' users (email, web surfing, basic games) XP
> works fine. For more 'interesting' activities, yes, having those
> utilities ship with the OS (or distro) is helpful. Sure, it would be
> fanfriggintastic if MS would package an ISO burner, but then we'd
> probably be screaming antitrust again.


I kind of expect any desktop environment to have the functionality at
least available, even if it requires something to be installed.  While I
am not a major fan of cdrecord (well, I will correct that; I am, but
J?rg Shilling is something of an... irritating person), it works at
least on the Unix-like systems out there, and on some Windows
configurations.  It would probably be trivial for Microsoft to include a
CLI component to burn ISO images with their operating system and then
build a GUI front end to it... but, they don't do things that way.
That's UNIX philosophy right there.  I think that they didn't include
ISO burning functionality directly for probably some dark, sinister
reason (maybe to prevent people from trying out other operating systems,
or claiming that ISOs are just of their own pirated, bloated,
over-priced office suite).


> So, yes, I have to go out and download the components I want any time
> I install Windows, they're not just on the CD (or DVD), but that's
> what we get when we're worried about antitrust issues versus usability
> and convenience.


I know that my major issues with Microsoft systems is that it is quite
hard to modify the system to not have their components after the thing
is installed.  Internet Explorer, for an example.  Many things really do
rely upon it.  Ever tried just removing it?

For that matter, if you want to extend your copy of Windows, you can
download things that modify the core files, but that is against the
license, as I recall.  That's silly.  People should be able to customize
their systems at will, not be restricted from doing so because of a
stupid legalese POS.

    -- Mike

--
Michael B. Trausch
                    fd0man at gmail.com
Phone: (404) 592-5746
                          Jabber IM:
                    fd0man at gmail.com
              fd0man at livejournal.com
Demand Freedom!  Use open and free protocols, standards, and software!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part