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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.
All kidding aside, why would George Bush need a personal computer? What's he going to do, write up the new federal budget in Excel? Make a PowerPoint about why we should go to Mars? Type up the State of the Union address in Word? Schedule cabinet meetings in Outlook? Read emails sent to whitehouse.gov?
I'm sure the closest he comes to working with a computer is reading a few select emails that someone printed out for him.
Gates uses MacOS, Torvalds uses Windows, and Jobs uses Linux. They're a bunch of swingaas babyyy!
Actually, I would make sense for them to have an almost-primary computer be the competing OS. This way they'd have to get used to it and see the good points as well as the bad.
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LOL I guess you're not a Windows user to make that kind of broad assumption. A lot of people customize thier desktops with backgrounds, layouts, dual monitor layouts, winamp/trillian/etc. set just so, what shortcut icons are on the desktop and what in the toolbar, etc.
To assume a Windows desktop isn't/can't be customized is naive and biased.
Pardon me for not trying to be funny, but George W. Bush doesn't use a computer unless he absolutely has to. He's said this before. He also doesn't watch television unless it's sports, he doesn't like to use the telephone, he doesn't use cell-phones, and so on.
All of this should be no surprise for someone who doesn't even read the news himself, and has his advisors act as a "news filter" for him so he only hears and learns about what he wants to hear and learn about, or what his advisors want him to hear or learn about.
You can be pro-Bush or anti-Bush, but that's hardcore ignorance, especially for a president. I don't think there's much of anything funny about it.
Why?
Wanting to fuck your secretary is a perfectly rational human desire, wanting to murder thousands of people to please your oil industry sponsors is not.
That was classic intercourse!
To assume a Windows desktop isn't/can't be customized is naive and biased.
To think that "customization" means the same thing to Windows and *nix users demonstrates inexperience with *nix.
A "custom" Windows desktop is like a custom van -- some furniture, a lifted roof, some art on the sides and windows. A "custom" Linux desktop is more like a custom airplane -- it *probably* has two wings and an engine, but there are exceptions.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Doesn't say much for Harvard or Yale then does it?
That MBA didn't get him his jobs, his political connections did. (Like most of us.)
He's run at least one company into the ground before becoming President, which says he wasn't paying much attention at Harvard. (Not to mention he knew he'd still have money even if all of his workers were unemployed.)
Come to think of it, doesn't say much for the thoughtfulness of the people who voted for him either -- thinking that he was somehow qualified to do the job because his father was.
His father was a WWII vet, spent decades in Ambassadorships and eventually headed the CIA before becoming President. I can see a lot of reasons to "hire" a person like that for the Presidency.
His son, on the other hand, slacked off through Yale and Harvard on Grandpa's money, snorted cocaine through much of that process, went AWOL from his Guard unit, ran a successful oil business into the ground... and people adore him more than his dear-old-dad.
Sad.
+++OK ATH
Saved us from Carter?
The Carter administration had its problems, to say the least, but in economic terms, he left office with real gains in GDP of 14% never experiencing contraction. Reagan left up 25%, with two years of contraction and a tripled national debt. Bush I left up a pathetic 5%--one third the gains of Carter, the last year with contraction and 38% more debt. Together, Reagan and Bush increased the national debt by 430%. Clinton left with an economy having gained 33% and not a single year of contraction, admittedly the debt increased the same as under Bush I, but over twice the time. Nixon-Ford left with a net gain of 14%, with two years of contraction and 56% more debt, compared to Kennedy-Johnson over the same amount of time leaving with gains of 43% with no contraction and only 20% more debt. Roosevelt in nine years managed to leave with an economy 226% larger than that he inheirited from Hoover, who commandeered a 25% contraction.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Even if we credit Reagan and Bush with expansion--they increased the debt by over three trillion dollars in doing it. When Bush left office, the economy was 7.1 trillion. Over the whole of ReaganBush, the economy grew by 38%--by increasing the debt to practically 50% of GDP. Terrific. What an accomplishment.
My point was that the "Democrats are bad" argument posed by a certain poster was rather unfounded as the Dems have been at the helm during the greatest crises and the greatest economic recoveries. The Republicans have been in power during the greatest political and military clusterfucks and economic contractions...so one could argue that saying "Democrats are bad, we can't afford another one" is simply based in fantasy. Carter had a better economic record than Daddy Bush, for godssake, and he's the Republican's punching bag for economics.
He's President. Surely he should be able to pronounce "nuclear", eat pretzels without choking, and not make up words on the spot.
How can anyone defend such a poor excuse for a politician? Every time he steps up to the podium it looks like an episode of Days of Our Lives gone bad. He can't even read what everyone else has written for him without getting in a state. Pausing every. Two. Seconds. Trying to. Add. Emphasis. Incorrect. ly.
It doesn't take a genius to realise when someone shouldn't be in office. Even Bush himself admitted he shouldn't be there.