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Whose Desktop Would You Most Like To See?
An anonymous reader writes "Have you ever been curious about what someone else's computing environment looks like? Would you like to see what tools and products someone like Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, George Bush, or Steve Jobs uses on a daily basis? What percentage of time is spent browsing the web, working in spreadsheets, programming, debugging, designing, or writing documents? How many monitors or devices do they have attached to their PC? What kind of security or anonymizers do they have in place?" For good or ill, open source developers' desktops at least are often visible in screenshots of their pet projects.
Jennas desktop is the one *I* would like to see the most!
I'd love to see RMS' desktop.
No contest
Who wants to start photoshopping this immediately?
Rap music is an oxymoron.
Right here :)
Darl.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I'm curious to see what Georgie Bush's computer's like, but it's a pretty strong bet that someone just gave him an Etch-a-Sketch to play with.
Read the subject.
++mse61--
George Bush's Desktop:
None. You can't put a desktop on a Etch-A-Sketch.
Gates uses MacOS, Torvalds uses Windows, and Jobs uses Linux. They're a bunch of swingaas babyyy!
Personally, I'd love to see which distro Linus uses (or whether he still rolls his own).
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
The one thing I'd like to see is Richard Stallman's .emacs init file.
I'm not curious anymore about what Richard Stallman's desktop looks like. I happened to be sitting behind him at the last FOSDEM conference, just before his presentation. Two observations about his desktop as I saw it that day.
:)
First of all, he doesn't use a GUI.
Second, the desktop environment that he was using was not vi.
Michael Jackson's desktop.
I was fortunate enough to be able to find a screenshot of Billy G's desktop
be forewarned.
Yes, I certainly would like to know what percentage of time George W. spends on programming.. but I probably wouldn't like to see that code.
This would fare better as a Fark photoshop contest than as an ask slashdot.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Because it's as close to Harry Potter's desktop as you can come
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
CowboyNeal's Desktop
Vonal Declosion
A) Why isn't this a poll?
B) IMPORTANT people don't have desktops, sometimes semi-important people have consoles.
C) How about CmdrTaco?
==========
Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
==========
How about MY desktop?
p ng
http://www.mindspring.com/~joekiser/Screenshot.
Bill Gates would be envious.
The World is Yours.
Dubya's Computer: Super Secret Pictures
Especially the alledged copied source folder :)
siggy played guitar
Bill Gates uses M$ Bob. or would that be George Bush aka King Dubya?
I bet Darl uses Linux of some sort. (just like the pot calling the kettle black)
I'm good with numbers -
Darl McBride
Eric S Raymound
Linus Torvalds
Paul Graham
Now we all know the real question here is...how much of this percentage of time involves porn?
Proof here.
I would be surprised if George W could even turn on a computer, but he could probably "put the off button on"
Says here he uses NT
Doesn't George Bush use Mircosoft Bob?
I can't for the life of me remember where I saw it, but there were some photos of a presentation Linus Torvalds was giving. And on the snaps, it clearly showed Red Hat's 'Bluecurve' theme. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to determine the distro, or indeed the desktop as RH themed GNOME and KDE in an almost exactly similar fashion.
:)
Nonetheless, I know from a KDE developer that Torvalds has submitted bug reports to the project, and in a recent interview he expressed his view that KDE was a bit further ahead in the desktop race, so I'd bet it was KDE.
In an interview about 5 years back, via IRC, Torvalds was asked "Do you use X" and he responded with: "Yes, all the time, and I tend to use FVWM". So make of that what you will
It isn't any secret or key to their success. My desktop has evolved around making actions easiest for me. I could care less about what someone else's desktop looks like.
But, then again, I have a life.
Okay-- go ahead. I know you want to:
-1 troll
(always happens when I tell the truth)
I would like to see Jesus' desktop; I bet he uses OS X.
What kind of security or anonymizers do they have in place?
well, for one thing they don't put screenshots on the web.
but how about tim berners-lee, if we're going to ask.
...my monitor died last week.
bhu dhu dhum dhum *crash*
Thank you, thank you... I'll be here all week.
#SickNotWeak
I'd like to see the desktop of Larry's other brother Darryl.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
i'd like to see debbie murdock's or ian murdock's desktop. they'e made so many available for the rest of the world... .
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
we already know what George Bush's desktop looks like.
The shareholder is always right.
Solitaire...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Linus uses Red Hat at work, and SuSE at Home.
Tim Berners-Lee and Doug Engelbart.
Thanks for the insight.
I seriously doubt that George Bush -has- a desktop. What is he going to do with it? Write a reply to the Secretary of State via eMail? Look at the budget on Excel? Put together the state of the union with PowerPOint?
Come on, people in powerful places don't waste their time with this kind of crap. They have lots of people doing "stuff" for them.
The exception is likely those in the computer industry - like Gates and Jobs. Those folks have a technical background, and want to experience their own industry (obviously, having a computer on your desktop can be a help if you're a leader in the world of technology).
CEOs and other people of power are not like you and me. They have people like you and me. Or, more likely, they have people that have people like you and me. Well, twice more removed.
I'd like to see which software Mitch Bainwol has on his desktop: Shareaza, eMule, BitTorrent, or DC++.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
how about Steven Hawking's?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Too many Etcha-a-sketch-George-W-Bush-Jokes! Gaaaaah!
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
So, what's your IP address and root password? :)
You are not the customer.
I'd really love to see what tools they were using/are using still, when coding the vehicles. In fact, I really think Slashdot should try hard to get some info from the development team as to what OS they're running on those little vehicles, not to mention the basic hardware platform. It would be a real eye-opener, in fact, if it was discovered that they were using off-the-shelf components for the core computing systems, or if the specs turn out to be less complex than current-generation mini-itx class boards you can buy on the open market.
:)
They're supposedly a publicly-funded scientific project, so it would be revealing in itself if they refused to answer, claiming the need for secrecy. I dare you to file some FOIAs, Timothy
Get off my launchpad!
I would like to see what Neal Stephenson's desktop looks like, as well as his editor of choice.
Have you ever been curious about what someone else's computing environment looks like?
No. No I have not. I have been so not curious that the very question takes me aback.
Is this something like "Geeks Uncensored" or the "Weekly Geek News"? What's the favorite programing language of the Bat Boy anyway? Are we going to see Linus throwing his jacket over his monitor as the paparazzi descend upon him?
What a peculiar concept.
KFG
He is most infamous for ruining the Gnome desktop, which caused RedHat to cancel their desktop distribution, make many former pro gnome distributions go to kde, such as Debian for example.
Ever since Gnome 2.0 was released, Gnomes market share on the Linux desktop plummetted from 40% to just 8.5%. Sun has publicly admitted that the Java desktop was a faliure too.
So, I want to se Havoc Penningtons desktop, what motivated him to do so much crap to gnome!
That horribly slow window manager.
That horrible registry editor clone
That horrible hig.
Not to mention the file dialog STILL SUCKS!
Did i forget to mention that the FILE DIALOG STILL SUCKS!
In a word, he isn't called havoc for nothing!
Dont just mod me down. Grab an older Linux distro with Gnome 1.4 in it, Such as Debian Potato or Suse 8.0, and compare it to one Such as Mandrake 9.2 or Fedora and see why Gnome has failed because of Havoc Pennington.
Linus uses an sophisticated email filter with a lot of sco.com addresses in it
Bill Gates uses a scepter and fake British lord's robes of state, to rehearse his meeting with Liz
Steve Jobs would use the stress reduction and temper control cdrom he got at Christmas if Macs could run Windows binaries.
Bush uses a Microsoft Barney
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'll bet she has icons scattered randomly over the desktop, and all the colors clash.
A while ago in a far off land, I noticed in someone's sig in a forum a link to see his desktop. Seems he had a script to give a live shot of it every time someone hit his box. (He was running Apache on OS X)
... and there was much laughter.
I thought this was interesting, so I hit refresh every couple seconds. I noticed he was looking at porn, he had quite a bit. Also he was in an IRC chat at the same time. Some Mac Clan or something. Then I realized this would probably slow down his box considerably. So I kept refreshing. I hit refresh and see the goatse.cx warning page. He opens up TextEdit and types "Whoever the fuck is watching me you're lucky goatse.cx is down!"
The swedish site Unix.se has screenshots from several famous computeers (hey, it could be a word!) desktops here. The site is in swedish, but you'll most likely at least understand the names.
I'm coming, oh god Im coming!! OooooHHHH GOD IM shooting my wad all over you!!!!!!
Whenever I use one of my Windows PCs. He must be satisfied with it, otherwise he would see that it be improved. But he doesn't. You get what he wants.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
God uses Gentoo with blackbox. He's got more foo than you. His desktop reminds him why he needs to take breaks from playing The Sims in wine.
If he uses a computer it's only for playing solitaire.
You don't want to know what I use. Teehee. Come on, hot shot, you wanna have some fun tonight? I got Debian loaded up and ready to go. Just lemme ask my Gimp. I'm feeling all SuSE. Why don't you lemme Gzip that offa ya?
"wow look at mah cursor! it's got a tail! come over here condi... check this out, lookey, when I move my mouse 'round, there's a lil' tail it's like a real mousey!"
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I don't remember where I read it but apparently Steve Job's before returning to Apple used an IBM notebook running NeXTStep. The reason being, since NeXT stopped producing hardware and became an OS for x86, IBM's notebooks were ironically the only hardware compatable laptops on the market that could run NeXTStep.
High Bandwidth Version
or
Low Bandwidth Version
Richard Stallman, as I heard, uses Emacs to mostly everything, instead of a desktop. File management, websurfing, emails, hacking, all that kinds of stuff Emacs is able to do...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
As for his .emacs file, last time I looked, it wasn't empty, but contained a few lines to turn off the default disabling of novice-confusing commands like narrow-to-window, and I think he also enables debug-on-error. It no serious customization to speak of though. As someone else mentioned, he's presumably set up Emacs's defaults the way he already likes them.
In recent years because of injuries, he's often had to get other people to type for him while he tells them what to type ("control-F, meta-d, blah blah"). That wouldn't show up in a screen shot either, but somehow seems like it should be part of the picture. Typing for him is an interesting experience if you don't have to do it for too long. Volunteer for it sometime if the situation arises, I'm sure he'll appreciate it.
No.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I just wonder if his desktop picture has a cigar on it...
... if that's your best, your best won't do... - Twisted Sister
Actually, he seems to be pretty proficient with a computer. :-)
[For the high-bandwidth version go to http://bushin30seconds.org/finalists.shtml]
What is it with these guys and their fvwm love, eh?
esr
I used to use fvwm2, and tuned my desktop design very carefully to get maximum use out of the screen space. (Now I use GNOME + Sawfish, which is just as effective but harder to bundle up a configuration for).
screenie
dotfile
D. Knuth
This Fvwm2 setup file provides the basic emacs-centered environment
that I have found most comfortable on my standalone machine at home.
Basically it gives me a big Emacs window at the left and a slightly
smaller XTerm at the right, together with a clock and CPU monitor
and a few buttons for accessing independent desktops.
screenie
dotfile
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Windows - Recycle bin= Finish him, my computer= My outworld, Network neighborhood= Network realm, Start= Fight!, background= stage, blue screen= pit stage.
I have always dreamed of seeing the setup of those who work on the low-level stuff in BSD and Linux, especially today.
There are so many tools and configurations that the ultimate programmers could use to help them.
i saw the console of one of the people who worked on BSD in the late 70s and 80s...
Surprisingly, he was running Redhat 8, (almost) default install.
The default install includes such great applications like OpenOffice and Mozilla.
However, he never used those applications.
Also, he had X with GNOME installed.
However, he never used X.
I also notice vi and emacs were installed. Everyone who uses seriously uses console likes either vi or emacs (but never both).
However, he never used vi or emacs.
Yes, he installed Redhat 9.0, but he didn't really use it to its full potential.
All he used was csh, telnet, and ed.
Yes, ed.
For those who do not know ed, it is a text-only edittor that can only change the contents of one line at a time. It was mainly used back in the 60s and 70s when most computers did not have monitors, and every line had to be printed out.
However, despite his lack of creativity in the tool-selection, he is the best programmer I know, and knows the bsd kernal inside and out, as well as many of the popular device drivers.
His code is beautiful too, conforming to K&R.
nobody wanted to see what tubgirl or goatse have on their desktop
On a 50 foot wall projected! That would be sweet.
I don't give a damn. I would have perhaps when I was thirteen and trying to emulate my heroes, but it would be utterly pointless now. Thus, I don't care to see any of those desktops.
A blog like any other.
Correction: it's not a typewriter that's on his desk. It's a fountain pen. That's what he used to write Quicksilver.
What about the man who invented the Internet?
End of Line.
The funny/sad thing was one of his specialties was supposed to be user interface. He wasn't please when the X10 to X11 upgrade moved the windows. Plus the line was in permanent marker.
That was one desktop I didn't need to see...
Here is a Screenshot of the computer on the desk in the Oval Office...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
since Macintosh is a religion as well.
but his "interactive shell" is tcsh.
(some day he posted some example of some bug or something, I don't recall completely, on LKML, where he c&p'd the tcsh command prompt together with commands)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Out of this crowd who would you call hero?
Party of the first? Well, we know you ain't gettting laid. Party of the second? You have no self respect. Party of the third? Well, you know, he does fly onto aircraft carriers in a rented flight suit occasionally. Party of the fourth? Hmmm. Maybe in Bizarro world if men were women or something....
FUNNY! MOD PARENT UP!
I'm not clicking any link with the word "goat" in the path.
Oh wait, you mean their physical desktop.
No, I want to see what goodies he has installed on his Powerbook -- I'd love to see what the next Keynote-type surprise is...
we dont have to show you any stupid desktop shots..
:)
well someone had to say it!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I think this is a fundamental difference between even the most passionate Microsoft Windows user... In GNU/Linux and Unix in general, the desktop is a person thing. We change it to fit our needs, our key bindings, our window dressing, our themeable widgets.
So what does it matter what someone else's desktop looks like- particularly a non-technical person? They'll likely be using something more "out of the box" than I will. I'm sometimes curious about technical user's desktops to find out tricks about how they've made thier system more productive (such as dedicating each key on the numeric keypad to a screen in X, or using virtual dekstops to represnt connections to a given remote host via SSH, or a desktop where all the windows are automatically tiled so there's no wasted space.
Those are interesting, finding out what Tony Danza uses isn't.
No offense Tony.
- Serge
I dont know what Steve Job's desktop looks like, but I do know what his wallpaper is:
http://goatse.cx
Not just for the sake of completeness. It would certainly be interesting to compare software and hardware, and I don't mean in the competitive sense. I'm more interested in seeing whether each group has independently evolved the same tool suites to do the same tasks, or whether each group has realms of innovation.
You can bet it would be a great kickstart for the next generation of entrepreneurs to have a rudimentary insight into the types of problems (and early-generation solutions) they will have to work with in their own potential projects. Ironically, of course, that may be one reason for attempting to keep this information secret, keeping an ivory-tower mystique (and securing their jobs and their governments' scientific edge) rather than opening the next "space race" to all comers.
Get off my launchpad!
Alan Cooper's book, About Face, describes an ideal desktop: not a metaphor for something else, but an easily learned, symbolic interface.
The closest thing to it currently is GNOME.
His code is beautiful too, conforming to K&R.
Well? Which is it? Beautiful, or K&R? It can't be both.
I don't have an Amiga, but I find it interesting that Mr. Van Dyke is such a fan (and advocate) of the platform. I wonder if he runs Linux.
It's probably a sketchpad though, or a mac.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
I'd like to stare at her desktop while she gives me head and slaps my cock with her big fat titties.
Hits F11 key... Aah yes, so that's what my desktop looks like. I suppose I should change it. I mean, Christmas has been over for a month now.
Maybe that is where the hidden weapons in Iraq are ...
... or on Tony Blair's desktop
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
My own desktop. It's so cluttered with icons and documents that I can't see what background looks like anymore.
:)
Where was that report again?
[Narrator] William Shatner.
I'm willing to bet he's got three folders on the desktop:
...of course, there's no 'Sucessful Legal Shit' anywhere...
Actually....I think I may have to see my desktop...There are too many windows open...I haven't seen my desktop in a week or so...
--<Mike>--
* Jr. himself stated that he doesn't read the newspaper.
Links
* In his book "Stupid White Men," Michael Moore claims that Bush has cabinet members read their reports to him.
* Moore also claims that Jr's parents heavily favor illiteracy foundations in their charitable contributions.
If you can find a link to that report that says Jr doesn't "trust" e-mail, I'd really like to check it out. Googling hasn't turned it up for me.
I think its safe to say they were using an MS variant - this explains why the only feed back they saw from Beagle was a... Blue screen from a red planet - how odd!
hello jello
see subject.
A few years back when I had JavaScript enabled without any restrictions (like not allowing popups), I often got the feeling that it would be very nice to see my very own desktop instead of windows I hadn't asked for. I still occasionally get the same feeling when some applications suddenly grab all the attention and display warnings like "host foo.com not found". Clicking a dead link hardly warrants attention-grabbing popup warning that appears in a minute or two when I'm probably doing something else on another virtual desktop.
Of course, since John posts here, I'm hoping that he'd be kind enough to take a screenshot of the current desktop he has, and post it here.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I'd have to check out her media library in Windows Media Player though.
Jax
Yeah, the Wilson, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton administrations were just terrible, what with ending WWI, ending WWII, creating the United Nations, establishing Social Security and Medicare, presiding over the greatest economic expansion in the history of the world. They were such tyrants. *cough*
smart move- I checked it out and sure enough there is a goatse shot in there. unfortunately it's the the only scary item in the shot.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
... here (linus torvalds playing frozen bubble at linux.conf.au). and you can get a glimpse of his desktop.
What does it run? Crayon?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I think I'd enjoy the irony just as much as seeing what crazy things he had on his desktop.
...because he reads Slashdot and might just read this and might just actually POST his desktop where I can see it!
Life is short: void the warranty.
This is a perfect Fark photoshop topic. Someone pass it along.
We'll just say it was sometime during the sometime during the Bush admin, post 9/11. I was there because the place where I work did designed a small computer system for them. I went as part of a small team for one-on-one user training. On one particular ocassion, I had to show a staffer (a USAF General, mind you) how to use the system. I sat down at the computer(w2k) in his private office and was pretty much flabergasted to find that it was not unlike any other Luser's desktop settings. 15 icons in the system tray(think realplayer, weatherbug, etc), goofy desktop wallpaper, and of course the requisite Internet Explorer home page set to MSN.com.
I didn't get to see W's desktop, but I bet it looks pretty much the same.
And how, exactly, is this Flamebait? Dumb ass mods.
Because the person who posted it deserves to burn in hell for posting a link to tubgirl.
How about mine. Hmm, on second thought it might be a little Embarrassing if you look at the code; and yes, it's windows... but I have lots of gnu stuff on it! does that redeem me a little?
Really.. I could care less what sort of a mess their desk, or office is in.
Why should any normal person care?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
steve jobs, linus peter jackson, maybe.
As a Mac user, I'd be extremely interested to see what third-party system utilities, if any, he has installed on his machine, especially given the apparent hostility Apple has to user-interface modifications.
...posting a little late for this discussion:
DEK's desktop
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Issues.
Of course, I mean you.
Probably all of Nokia's software in a folder, text files with ICBM launch codes and a picture of his dear computer that passed away during his time in prison.
11 1101 1011111 0100 000 110 1011111 0101 10 01 1011111 101 1 011 1011111 0 1111 11 111 1011111 101
Howard Deans desktop. And make sure to mute the audio from his latest motivational speech.
Does RMS use GNU Screen or not?
I could easily imagine a productive environment based around GNU screen and a terminal-based editor, mail client, news client, and IM client. Throw in something like w3m, and other for images, its good.
Strike that. In most cases, multi-tasking can be very counterproductive. Shell escapes and $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE is good enough.
Ronald Regans it would be new to me and probably him too.
George W Bush: Microsoft BoB
my friends went on a teacher's computer and took a screenshot of porn set in a Internet Explorer window and set it as the background picture.
Suffice to say, the teacher had many problems closing the window, even after restart.
(I'd like to see Darl's desktop. I bet he has underpants gnomes as his background.)
... or all three!
A colleague's (genius stock trader, harvard MBA with honors, etc) Windows desktop would be to me simply unmanageable. He's got two monitors, both at very high resolution, and both completely full of icons. I'm not kidding, he has to have at least 200 icons of programs, folders, files, etc, on his desktop. He has at least 3 add-on Windows macro programs running. I told him I would have no idea how he could work in such an environment, and he said it was "easy once you just assigned the icon in your visual map". Uhh... OK. That's why he's the Harvard MBA honors genius, and I'm a code slave.
My Windows desktop has 5 icons on it: "My Documents", "My Computer", "Recycle Bin", a shortcut to my "Projects" folder, and a shortcut to "My Music". My "Quick Launch" area shows 4 icons, "Show Desktop", "Mozilla Firebird", Mozilla Thunderbird", and "Lotus Notes 6", with 9 more "often used" shortcuts if you click on the ">>" portion of the "Quick Launch". (SecureCRT, iTunes, QuickTime, Napster, QCD Player, IE, WSAD, Jabber, and my VPN connection tool). I've got 1 application (Calculator, if you must know) "pinned" to my "Start Menu".
If my desktop starts to accumulate a lot of clutter due to a hectic project, etc, I make a folder called "CURRENT" on the desktop and move it all there. I just can't stand it when I get a second column of desktop icons. It bothers me. I need help.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I want a table-oriented envoronment. I want to be able to query, sort, and filter my view of programs and files how I want when I want. I would then be able to put attributes associated with each item to futher customize my view of stuff. If I want to put a traditional GUI front-end on it all, I can, but am not locked into that because the front end is just a view into the database.
Table-ized A.I.
I haven't gotten down there in a while....
I do not see how a video of the presidents desktop is irrelevant in a discussion on fomous desktops.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
are you saying Jesus wrote Emacs?
These guys have a cool desktop, if you can call it that.
Riccardo Giacconi was using a fairly ordinary CDE on Solaris desktop on a beautiful 24 inch wide-screen monitor the last time I saw it, with some very cool galaxy images from the Chandra Deep Field.
Steven Squyres probably also has an interesting desktop, and I think I saw it on ABC News last week, before they switched to talking about the problems with the rover.
You can see Asia Carrera's desktop in the background, but it's not safe from work. Looks mundane.
I wonder if Pheobe has a cool desktop. Not Alyssa Milano, but her character.
Speaking of fiction, I wonder whether David Kay uses Windows or Mac?
While I like innovators, I'm more interested in users. They at least try to do useful things. That was the problem with Alan Kay. He always has interesting desktops. He showed squeak at a conference a few years ago that just stunned people, but none of us could figure out what we would actually do with it.
tc>
Most Americans don't understand science, and they wouldn't like it if they did.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Linus Torvalds: Uses blackbox on three monitors, all full of Xterms running vi. The background is a roll of toilet paper, edited in The Gimp to look like a roll of Transmeta, RedHat and VA Linux stock shares.
Bill Gates: Last night's build of longhorn. Has 5 monitors: one for the PowerPoint slideshow he's rehearsing, one for Outlook, and three for all the extra clocks, sliders, gizmos, icons, etc. that Longhorn puts on the desktop. His background is one of the default WinXP images.
George W. Bush: Cheney and Rumsfeld won't let him touch the "big kid computers", but he has an Etch-a-Sketch with a caricature of Saddam Hussein sitting on a canister of nerve gas.
Steve Jobs: 3 21" Apple Cinema displays. Beta build of OSX 10.4 ("Puma"). Only has one icon on the desktop, but damn if it doesn't look *really cool*.
0 1 - just my two bits
Stop imaginating... that's exactly what I use when I leave home. And I know of a few others who do the same.
:-)
There's nothing as comfortable as having the exact same instances of your apps available anywhere you (and an Internet connection) are. And not paying for an expensive laptop, mind you.
I frequently conclude that GNU Screen is the one of the most useful and undervalued piece of software available today. There are pretty good console apps for just about anything, and this beauty renders them independent of the "viewpoint" and interruption-resistant.
BTW: mutt, emacs, slrn and centericq are almost all you need to be "online", besides a browser (which, if you are connected back home, you will almost surely have at your disposal locally).
Also, if you get lucky and get your hands on an X server and a ssh client, you can also check out your emacs window just as you left it on your $display at home. Think of a multi-head enabled X app, speaking compressed-X11 to you, instead of a VNC-ish solution
NO ITS NOT FFS
is cut off.
The shareholder is always right.
I'm very curious to see Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini's, him being an interaction design guru 'n' all. For that matter, I wouldn't mind seeing any of the alleged experts' from the Nielson Norman Group.
Some people only learn well visually.
Some people only learn well verbally.
Most people can learn well both ways, usually with a slight preference either way.
If the preference goes far enough, it's classified as a learning disability, or 'alternate learning style'.
Given the trouble Bush has with a teleprompter, it's pretty clear he has trouble with visual learning, most likely a visual processing delay. Moore's claims would support his preference for a verbal learning style.
But what I want to know is when did it become OK to make fun of people for their learning disabilites? I thought Hollywood Liberals were sensitive and caring? I guess it's OK to pick on disabled people if they're conservatives.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
tell us how you REALLY feel!
No, I just really don't like RMS.
Yep, bet he has some interesting stuff on his desktop.
---------
George W. Bush in 2004!
It's what all the Christian Hackers use...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Mirror anyone? If you have pics available I'd be willing host them. Email me at c l a m o t h e @ e s s e n t u s . com
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
I don't think he feels "too cool to use a window system", but rather just doesn't feel like he needs one for what he does. He's the author of an old Lisp machine window system and has written plenty of X code, so it's not like the idea of a window system is unknown or scary to him.
Part of his setup's weirdness is because he travels a lot and has limited net access on the road. He does very little online. Instead, if he visits you at your company or university, he'll typically plug his laptop into your ethernet and spend a few minutes downloading his unread email (however many hundred messages that is) into it. Then he unplugs and reads the email offline while going on his way, spooling his replies onto disk. Then at his next stop, he plugs in again, uploads his replies to the old email and downloads new mail that's arrived since the last stop. He usually doesn't use web browsers. If you mail him a URL he should see, he prefers if you send him a text dump of the contents along with it. If he only gets the URL and thinks it's likely to be interesting, he emails it to a special daemon he's set up back home, that retrieves the URL's text contents and dumps it into his next batch of email. Images? What images?
All in all it actually seems like a pretty practical system, less conducive to wasting time web surfing than what most of us are used to, but he doesn't care about that.
http://unix.se/gallery/folk Dennis Ritchie, Jordan K. Hubbard, Jon "maddog" Hall, Rasmus Lerdorf etc.
I can't post my screenshot because the background image is copyrighted by some big company, with no strings attached. Too bad :(
...has the name "Fisher-Price" on it somewhere.
I'd forgotten about George Bush's pet project; breaking as many sections of the Geneva convention as possible. :P
Probably Windows. Probably a Pirated version.
Silence Bossy Meat Creatures!
http://www.sjsfalcons.org/images/EtchaSketch.jpg
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
I want to see my desktop. I am blind, you insensitive clod!
Dude, he wrote the OS. He uses his own distro.
What kind of dumb-ass question is this? Who cares? Its about as stupid as asking: "whats your ring tone on your cell phone???"
There's a desk somewhere under the landfill in my office... might be nice to see the actual top of it someday.
I'd like to see mine. Haven't seen it in quite some years, buried underneath all these windows.
Pelé!
Bill Gates shows off his new pet project. I'm sure he does read Slashdot and pays many others to do the same, not that he pays them much. I wonder if he's offshored his trolling division. Steve Barkto was so embarasing AND expensive.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It should have it's own desktop. If you make a seperate desktop for each project you are working on, you can spare yourself much hunting. Well labled window blinds in Window Maker, KDE etc, help too. You will never have to hunt for tiny icons again. Ten desktops do it for me and I sit the workspace selector on the side, where it will pop out when I mouse over it.
How do people function with the single desktop nightmare that Windoze gives them?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...isn't running an old as MacOS 9 desktop. He's the President - the most powerful man on the planet, leader of the greatest nation on earth. He can at least spring for OS X.
The only way Dean could beat Bush is with a baseball bat, and then only on the occasion that every secret service agent suddenly drops dead (you'll be able to tell because their expression will change).
(see subject line)
That's a good start. Chances are that you can organize the common things you do into catagories and make subfolders. I think of it a psuedo program manager and make something like that anytime I'm forced to use one of those painfully obsolete GUI's. HTML indexed files work on any environment and are a good way to organize your work too. It's better to use your own desktop folder or a link to a folder in a non standard location for some marginal improvement in security.
Your friend is not very clever, he's just working around the limitations of very bad tools he has at his disposal. All that mental efort would better be expened on something else.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...somewhere I have a picture of Dubya staring at a Dell laptop while seated on Air Force One. Most of the time he's got papers in his hand though. Decision makers tend to prefer hard copies, stacks of paper, et al.
My desktop has been covered in piles of papers and books for years.
I don't recall the rest of the world having a problem with him either. Lets see, the French, Russians, Chinese, Germans, and Libyans, Czechs, Swedes, and Japanese all sold Saddam Hussein military and technical hardware over the past thirty years, but oh yes...it's the US that "kept" him in power. Just get your braindead tattoo on your forehead and save us all the trouble of disecting your logic.
My desktop is so cluttered with papers, I can't even find my keyboard or mouse sometimes.
Now how can I click that Preview button?
Watching the flight control specialists lately has made me wish the NASA channel didn't come in so fuzzy on my cable system.
I'd really like to see some of those specialist's screens up close. They look like X desktops. The fact that they are the desktops for roles where lives and billions of dollars are at stake makes them interesting.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I will slashdot could pull that off, it would pretty cool to actually see all the weird crap torvald's has.
Comboy Neal's!!!
-- 404: sig not found
But I also want ethereal on it.
it seems Bill's looks an awful lot like my windows desktop.
ôó
Seriously it's wood. The man does not use Email or a Cell phone. He lets all his aides handle the techy stuff for him. He's more comfortable with a regular phone and letters. By far the most non tech president I've ever heard of.
Bush "Ma what's this nifty red phone for?"
Yup, that's pretty close to the way I've worked for most of the last year or two. For me it's screen, of course, along with:
It varies :-), though I agree generally speaking. I'm using KDE3.2beta
at the moment for a bit of a change, though most of the action is
still inside my screen(1) terminal(s). You do tend to (or at least
I tend to) find yourself more productive when you don't have
stray graphical bits and pieces around the place to distract you.
Of course if you need the GUI for your normal working environment (ie. you're developing a GUI app), then, well there's not much you can do but live with it. :)
Pete.Mr Gates this quesition presents a great chance for you to reveal your slashdot user id and fess up to running linux for your webservers..
Jeoin
How about Jeff "It's all the programmer's fault" Raskin? Whips and chains. Have a desktop of geeks in S&M bondage.
George W. Bush.
Sorry, I just couldn't resist. It's the winner of the animated category.
My
Limekiller
Seriously... what do these people have on their primary work desks, and in the drawers?
Does RMS have a glass pipe and a couple of buds in the top drawer?
Does ESR have a pistol in the bottom side drawer?
Does G.W. Bush have a golden pen that's dedicated to the veto, but never been used?
What kind of desk configuration do they prefer? Something like the extravagant desk of the Oval Office, to something simple and effective, like my $50 U-put-it-together computer desk?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Or Albert Einstein's desktop. Everything would be relative.
Here you can see Bush's desktop in the background :- P24 358-01a.jpg
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/images/400
Bjork.
My
Limekiller
"Thank you, thank you... I'll be here all week."
I'll be out of town that week.
Why mine of course. But I'm running most of mine out of CVS so EVAS and some of the new stuff that Keith Packard's working with. Throw in some OpenGL 3D desktop fun (seen that SUN demo?) and I'm just having too much fun. I love Open source.
Fuck you. Anyone that says they are not interested in what "famous" people's machines look like are complete liars. A person's desktop tells a lot about them. I'm sure Linus has a bunch of system monitoring stuff, ie gkrellm. Bill gates prolly has the same, but it always GPFs, crashes, and burns. So he has to re-install MS office.
I'm not drunk, I'm just in touch with pi.
I just sshed to root@127.0.0.1, put in your root password, and typed rm -rf / and will hit enter as soon as this is posted. You've got that long to pull your cord or your hard disk and files will have been your hard disk and files, but not no more!
Eat that, douchebag!
I wasn't trying to suggest people actually use standard mini-itx boards, but it certainly would serve as an eye opener to see that you could easily and cheaply get something similar (or "better") off-the-shelf.
:) Any books that you can recommend?
As far as 386s go, I'm still excited over what the Soviets did in the 70s with the Venus missions, which were covered here recently. If they could get those pictures back then, the upcoming European Venus projects should be quite exciting.
Out of curiosity, how hard is it to learn vxWorks?
Get off my launchpad!
You can see Donald knuth's fvwm desktop and also his fvwm2rc on the bottom of this page
-Brendan
and it's a dual boot system with Redhat on the boot menu. I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't upgraded yet to Office XP either :)
Um, isn't Bush illiterate? (Stupid White Men has fairly convincing points with regards to this). I'm guessing that'd inherently make em computer illiterate too, as even GUIs use a lot of words once you're in the programs. So I'm guessing ey doesn't use word processors or anything.
then what does his backyard look like, or does he just sneak out late at night, prowling around the UW campus, Green Lake or Gas Works parks, netting a Canadian Goose here or there to pluck out a couple of wing primary feathers to keep his quill supply full?
Did he agree to EULA?
OK OK OK - it's not the dev tools but it's something they are really using.
Greetz
I don't know, JFK read something like six newspapers every morning and he was President in times arguably more perilous than these (IMHO, impending nuclear doom trumps car-bombing terrorists in the "world peril" department, but, that's a value judgement, take it for what its worth).
I really would like to see SteveB's computer working. I wonder if he got someone there to write him a natty aphorism-generating engine that runs sort of like motd (even better, just use the motd engine ported to Windows, but a different database, of course, perhaps with some Bayesian word selection generations), along with some sort of flash-based stick figure animation generator, so he can work on his routines. Probably has a rotating background generator that makes those promotional posters and their witty aphorisms that we've all seen for things like "Teamwork", "Security", "Innovate or Die", and "Extend and Embrace".
Or maybe his desktop background is simply that of the embedded webcam on his laptop popping pictures every 5 minutes of his face (face-recognition software lets it know when its master is not there), along with a moving MSFT stock ticker chart with trend analysis, a couple of projected stock trajectories, and where his 1-billion share stop-loss order is at.
Maybe it's got a little WMP video showing Chris Farley's motivational speaker loop from his SNL days, but of course ending before the heart attack as well as a loop of the hypnotist from "Office Space"...which leads to the next question: what is SteveB's trigger phrase?
The other app is probably just an Access-based app that he can edit about 10 text boxes and pump out new PowerPoint presentations, and an Excel spreadsheet to pump out new quarterly reports for the various people he meets regarding MSFT's stock price.
Howard Dean really needs to watch SteveB's various speeches before he does another hypermanic speech.
He can tell me more about the world than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs can, and in the right places, too.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The page the parent poster linked is already slashdotted. Fortunately, some sites have copied the screenshot: http://www.beotop.com/ananasshow/images/warwizard. jpg
http://www.rockcitynews.com/photos3/antibushwar5/i mages/WarWizard.gif
http://www.sheffieldagainstwar.org.uk/.static/imag es/5295088006/c-warwizard.jpg
(_) Bill Gates
(_) Linus Torvalds
(_) George W. Bush
(_) Darl McBride
(_) Richard M. Stallman
(_) The Pope
(_) CowboyNeal
I bet CowboyNeal would win. ;)
The page the parent poster linked is already slashdotted. Fortunately, some sites have copied the screenshot.
Sorry for reposting, these are the correct links:
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Mirror 3
Hello, Thanks for posting the link to my image, unfortunately it blew the bandwidth on my site! I'm also very thankful to all who have mirrored the image, cheers guys - you've kept the image going when I could not. I'm trying to get my site re-enabled now (without the image) but if the requests are breaking the server the hosts will switch it off again. Thanks, Thirtyfootscrew.
She plays UT and occasionally hosts LAN parties. A LAN party with a porn start. What could be better ?
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
I just KNOW he gets the best pr0n!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Best debunked? Really?
I think this is a debate about the amount of destruction.
The GSA didn't find much damage to the offices and utilities themselves.
But did they fan through paper trays and listen to all the voicemail themselves?
The Post says there was no "wholesale" destruction, that doesn't exclude some pranks.
It's not like they burned down the White House or caused millions of USD damage. From the BBC story, I think they could just put those W keys back in the keyboards.
Office pranks. Actually quite funny.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Bill doesn't even use a computer. I check his email for him...
You wrote all that and you didn't even get a single mod up.
Sad.
My man! also, the squirrel with big nuts, the mustard guy, domo-kun, the masturbating kittens, chirtopher walken, and will wheaton!
It's a trap!
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
wow, that took all of .45 seconds to google:
.19 seconds gets us:
...and, as others have pointed out, FDR was physically sick.
longest presidential vacation in 32 years
let's see what another
Bush has taken 250 days off as of August 2003. That's 27% of his presidency spent on vacation.
I haven't read the whole discussion, so I'm not sure if it has been said already. Once I found a webpage for a Swedish LUG, I think, that hosted some 15 screenshots of famous Linux persons' desktops, including Brian Kernighan and Richard Stallman as far as I remember. If anyone can find it, please post it here.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
I remember Linus Torvalds being quoted as saying that he used microemacs( he thought GNU & XEmacs were ridiculously bloated for editors ) and many, many xterms.
Its the internet, so take it with a grain of salt
Steve
I read that the Beady Eyed Texas Twit spends his days working out, napping and playing video games. That's when he isn't 'working' by travelling around the country meeting his supporters and having dissidents blocked off from his sight. Back to the video games: any ideas? Think he can work through all of the solitaire games in four years? Or is 'Railroad Tycoon' a better match? I'd suggest RT but only if a lot of advisors helped him out.
Linus' Desktop: here
Bill's Desktop: here
GW's Desktop: here
Blabbering fool needs to learn to stop trolling
that had me ROTFL!!!
"What the fuck man... what an elitist prick, RMS that is. Is he that in love with his beloved EMACS that he is "too cool" to use a window system? Jesus Christ, get with the times RMS. I can understand using something other than Windows, but to NOT use a Window System at all, it just seems like he is maybe too afraid to advance to the window age. Obviously, the window system is accepted by the masses and it has its advantages over the old text mode system. Get with the times RMS. And if anyone sees him tell him to fuck off."
Amazing how you think everyone should see things exactly the way you do, and act only as you desire. No creativity. No ingenuity. No regard to the man's productivity. No regard to personal liberty, and his promotion thereof.
You wonder who the "Elitis Prick" is.
Mod the parent up!
... blah
Indeed he is out of touch with dissenting voices.
Look at his state of the union address! "The few who oppose"
Really out of touch
He's written a compiler, debugger, editor and other assorted programs used by millions of people each day. He started a movement that has changed the world.
What have you done?
Heaven help you, though, if you have the wrong window in focus. Many Windows programs do Bad Things (like closing windows or dialogs) when receiving ESC.
You always know who are the Unix guys in the office, because they're the ones sitting at the Windows machines, who every once in a while will reflexively hit ESC 5 or 6 times just to feel better. They can't help it.
Really? The quote I've hear repeated from the GSA is:"the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."
This this FAIR follow-up states:
I think I'll let this article stand as my last link on this matter. The white house staff left some pranks, mess and some things missing, but the pundits blew it out of proportion.
But I replied to this: The missing W key story is one of the best debunked lies of this administration. Which is an impressive feat.
If this is the best debunked story, you Americans are pretty starved of debunkings.
P.S. I'm neither Democrat nor Republican. I don't like lying and spin; from either side.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Regarding Bill's main home kit...
He uses a fairly recent Alienware box. I don't know the exact model. There are three Nokia Multigraph 447X monitors hooked up to it. It runs (naturally) Windows XP Professional.
you seem to know his system pretty well... should he be concerned by this?
Oh wait, he can't use a computer!
<nelson laugh>ha haa</nelson laugh>
If you primarily used a competing product, you might get a sense for that product but you would lose a sense of your own. That way, you try to emulate the good things in competing product Y while not fixing up the really bad things in your own product X.
That was Jesus.
He just thinks he's RMS.
Boo-hooo, i'm teh soo smartestest becuase i cann qote some obskure reference to somme incident that happen in fucking 1998 as proof that im teh smartestest!!!1! Get a fucking life you worthless loser.
That was real sweet and deserves to be elevated from it's AC 0 rating. It's a story everyone should know along with Microsoft's other PR gaffs, like forging letters to Congress criters, the apple switcher and other nice fat lies.
It never ceases to amaze me how much time people waste on flames like that. Keep it comming, your time must be paid for but mine is free. You can't be paid much and you're not worth it but I'm happy you are wasting money that could be spent really harming free software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't see why. He's not secretive about it. Type for him sometime and you'll see it all too.
no my mother called me 'Jeffrey Daniel' [Cliff], my peers in the music feild baptized me [prophet] themusicgod1.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I have the pic saved to my HD and was originally just going to upload it myself and post a link. But I figured the right thing to do, copyright-wise, would be to link straight to the source. Didn't mean to cause you any trouble!!
-MFS
John's Desktop after finishing Daikatanan rdesk.jpg
c reekdesk.j pg
http://home.arcor.de/sordit/linked/joh
For god's sake he has switched to Mozilla, checking it out after getting compatibilty complains about his website. He's also unsing Trillian instead of ICQ and I don't think his wallpaper is still featuring Daikatana art.
You might also be interested in an older shot of Killcreek's Desktop.
http://home.arcor.de/sordit/linked/kill
The reason he wasn't effective as a Chief Executive was that he wasn't a macro kind of guy.
He wanted to know the DETAILS of everything.
gewg_
Nazism and Fascism are not the same thing, you logic-bereft moron! If everyone on the left is as stupid as you, it'll be no problem keeping you behind the counter at mcdonalds where you belong.