Besides, how do you envisage that a file format which is essentially a detailed description of the actual binary data structure is going to be missing something? Because I've read the MSOOXML spec, and that's exactly what they did in there. Since MSOOXML seems like a simple translation of the binary format into XML, it would assume that the same important parts of the spec will be missing here.
Feel free to assert that, but your stance is wholly unscientific. How so? If I observe a rock to fall today, then no future observation will invalidate that observation that the rock fell. It may give a completely different reason for why that happens, but it will not change the fact that it did happen.
Everyone can witness Micro-Evolution (changes within one species).
No one has witnessed Macro-Evolution (changes from one species to another). There is no difference between the two, they are not separate theories or separate observations. It's like saying we can observe that a single photon travels at speed c, but we haven't observed 10 million photons traveling at c, so we don't have to believe it can happen.
Until you prove that the mechanism for "micro-evolution" is different than the mechanism for "macro-evolution", then belief one is belief in both.
Unless, of course, you'd like to claim omniscience and assert no such phenomena will ever be discovered. Never. However, I will go out on a limb and assert that no future observations will remove our current observations from existance, and therefore what we observe now is, and will forever be, a fact.
.Are you saying we understand EVERYTHING about gravity right now? No, and we don't know EVERYTHING about evolution right now either. But the fact remains that we know that both gravitation and evolution happen, even we don't fully understand why.
Actually, there is no theory of gravity yet. Actually there are many theories of gravity. To the best of my knowledge, there is the relativistic theory, a classical quantum mechanical theory, many variations of string theory, and several others like loop quantum gravity. The problem is that there isn't any one theory that can explain the all of the same phenomena.
These all differ from hypotheses because they are more than just a prediction of the outcome of a test, but an explanation for why we should expect that outcome.
Regardless, evolution is still just a theory. You realize that you basically just said "Regardless of the fact that evolution is an observed phenomena, it is still just a theory". I just want to make sure.
It's a good theory based on solid observed evidence, but without being able to see the process in nature, it is difficult to justify calling it scientific fact. Yes, that would definitely be true, except that we are able to see the process in nature, that makes it rather easy to justify calling it a scientific fact.
We have been able to quantify gravity; modeling it and testing those models. We can not quite yet say the same for Evolution. But at least evolution knows the mechanism that drives it, DNA is not a hypothetical particle like the graviton, we know it exists.
Fact: Objects thrown off a building have always fallen Law: All objects thrown off a building will fall Theory: Objects thrown off buildings fall because of a mutual attraction between the faller and the ground Hypothesis: If I throw somebody off a building, he will fall
Evolution *is* a theory. Perhaps they should also teach what "theory" means. There is a theory of Evolution just like there is a theory of Gravity, each explaining the factual phenomena for which they are named.
Thanks for highlighting the positives. As I've already said, Windows doesn't support highlighting, and for that matter doesn't seem to have any positives. At least I didn't call it a worthless piece of trash. oops.
I get that it was a joke, but you seemed to be misunderstanding _my_ joke, where it's pronounces "ass-sex", which to me makes for better punchlines that "asexual", such as:
You need Windows to view "ass-sex". or Linux doesn't support "ass-sex". or [Insert Mac-users-are-gay joke here]
Not if you use the GIF example, where the first letter's sound is used instead of it's name. Think of the 'a' sound in 'animal', instead of 'atypical'.
So what happens when you click "view"? Well, it creates a popup window that opens up Windows Media Player! Good luck viewing a.asx file all you non-Windows users. Hmmm, if GIF is pronouned "jiff", and JPG is pronounced "jay-peg", wouldn't that make ASX....oh....oh my......suddenly it all makes sense.
In other words - if you do something related to a spec that isn't covered, it isn't covered. How could it be any different?! I think the concern is that the "something related to the spec" is actually something vitally important to the spec.
Programmers didn't understand why Hungarian originally used his famous notation It wasn't created by some guy named "Hungarian", it was created by Charles Simonyi.
Hmm, thanks for reminding me about colours in a Windows console. Do they even have colour? No, that was kind of my point. To get colors working in a Windows console, you'd have to change it's code to support it, which of course you can't do because it's closed source.
In short, to get colors, you have to understand dircolors, bashrc, and their relevant ~/ files. That's a lot of work for just colour, I always just configure them from within gnome-terminal. But even if you have to understand bashrc, it's easier than getting colors in a Windows console.
I'm assuming that part of that cryptic mess involves recompiling something called JFS. Not re-compiling, jfs_makefs creates a new volume using JFS, it's the equivalent of "format" in Windows. So he's basically saying "Format some device using JFS with the case-insensitive option". It's really no different than saying "format c:/FS:NTFS/C" in windows.
Speaking as a computer professional with 15 years of Windows software development experience in C++ and now C#/.NET, I would not have a clue how to do half of that. Perhaps that's my own fault for using Windows almost exclusively for 15 years - or perhaps Linux ought to be just a touch easier to use. As I pointed out above, it's no more complex than Windows. I wouldn't expect most Windows users to understand "format c:/FS:NTFS/C". However, given the large number of supported filesystems on Linux compared to the relative few on Windows, it shouldn't be surprising that most Windows users and developers don't have a firm grasp of the concept, just like most Windows users and developers don't understand the concept of a window manager.
How about a dialog box with a check-box on it for enabling case sensitivity? Why bother making a dialog box for something 99% of the users will never do, or add a check-box for a feature 99% of the remaining 1% will never want? Not even Windows provides a UI for all of it's settings, most are hidden away in registry values. The difference is that Linux users have documentation for those features (RTFM).
So to answer your question, it's not that Linux makes this possible, it's the totally inaccessible manner in which it makes it possible that is the problem. Ok then, how do you make Windows case-sensitive? Is it any easier than making JFS insensitive?
Accompany that with the fact that it can actually be case sensitive on some installations and not others, and your users and applications get completely confused as to the difference. That is the price you pay when you customize. It's not a Linux thing, or even a computer thing. If you heavily customize your car, don't expect every after-market accessory to work.
As an experiment, try explaining that above-mentioned procedure to the least computer-literate person you know. I think I just did....
As long as Linux maintains this "oh, just recompile it on your system to get it to work" philosophy, Windows is perfectly safe as King of the Desktop and will be for years to come. Once again, this was not a "recompile", it's a simple flag passed to a simple command. Any Linux admin will know how to create an ISO9660 filesystem on Linux, and any curious Linux user could figure it out in about an hour. How many people know how to do the same on Windows?
But using your example, there are about 4 things I can think of that are killing Ubuntu's chances on becoming my primary OS.
When I click on a PSD file, it doesn't open Photoshop. When I click on an HTML file, it doesn't open Dreamweaver. When I click on an EPS file, it doesn't open Illustrator. When I click on a PNG file, it doesn't open Fireworks. That's funny, because neither Windows nor Mac OSX will do that either.
I'm confused, are you saying that Linux isn't catching on because it makes things like this possible, or are you saying Linux isn't catching on because it's easier to switch on/off case sensitivity in Windows?
Alright, I'm going to have to call BS on some of this:
followed by a brutal jre installation procedure sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre
even worse for postgresql sudo apt-get install postgresql
In the 4 months I have ubuntu on my machine, two video cards died, two hard drives died, my sound card, a usb port, and my ps/2 mouse port. Seriously? You're going to claim the OS killed them? You've got a short in your mother board somewhere and you're frying circuits. No wonder your install experience was so bad.
Finally, all your driver problems would have been identified during a LiveCD session, so again I'm going to call BS on this whole post.
Another thing that forces me to run Windows in VMware on my Linux laptop, is our corporate VPN that only works with Windows. I ran into the same problem with a former employer's Nortel VPN, but it turns out that a development branch of VPNC worked for that. Just an aside, in case that is what you're using.
how is the average joe going to find out what in the heck Synaptic is if they don't know enough about computer to know the difference between downloading and installing? Because the average user will just use "Add/Remove Programs", which will tell them when they need to use Synaptic, and what they need to use it for.
Windows has far less installation issues, if only because the hardware is made for it That seems like common sense, but in reality anybody who has tried recently will tell you that it is simply not the case. Yes more hardware is supported on Windows, but more drivers are included in a typical Linux install than come on the Windows install CD. For example, on the same laptop that Gateway shipped with WinXP, a vanilla WindowsXP install didn't have drivers for the video, audio, wired or wireless networking. Linux was only missing wireless.
Windows is far simpler to use than Linux right now, sorry but that's the facts. Linux is far more useful than Windows but it's still not easy enough for primetime. Opinions are never facts, and concepts like "simpler" are always opinions. My own anecdote is my wife, who had no problems adjusting to my Ubuntu, but can't figure out how to do simple things on her parent's new Vista machine.
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No one has witnessed Macro-Evolution (changes from one species to another). There is no difference between the two, they are not separate theories or separate observations. It's like saying we can observe that a single photon travels at speed c, but we haven't observed 10 million photons traveling at c, so we don't have to believe it can happen.
Until you prove that the mechanism for "micro-evolution" is different than the mechanism for "macro-evolution", then belief one is belief in both.
I don't think I'm who's misusing his terms. It's best to follow your own advice on this particular topic my friend.
.Are you saying we understand EVERYTHING about gravity right now? No, and we don't know EVERYTHING about evolution right now either. But the fact remains that we know that both gravitation and evolution happen, even we don't fully understand why.These all differ from hypotheses because they are more than just a prediction of the outcome of a test, but an explanation for why we should expect that outcome.
Fact: Objects thrown off a building have always fallen
Law: All objects thrown off a building will fall
Theory: Objects thrown off buildings fall because of a mutual attraction between the faller and the ground
Hypothesis: If I throw somebody off a building, he will fall
I get that it was a joke, but you seemed to be misunderstanding _my_ joke, where it's pronounces "ass-sex", which to me makes for better punchlines that "asexual", such as:
You need Windows to view "ass-sex".
or
Linux doesn't support "ass-sex".
or
[Insert Mac-users-are-gay joke here]
Not if you use the GIF example, where the first letter's sound is used instead of it's name. Think of the 'a' sound in 'animal', instead of 'atypical'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation
When I click on a PSD file, it doesn't open Photoshop.
When I click on an HTML file, it doesn't open Dreamweaver.
When I click on an EPS file, it doesn't open Illustrator.
When I click on a PNG file, it doesn't open Fireworks. That's funny, because neither Windows nor Mac OSX will do that either.
I'm confused, are you saying that Linux isn't catching on because it makes things like this possible, or are you saying Linux isn't catching on because it's easier to switch on/off case sensitivity in Windows?
Are you talking about ~/.bashrc, or the one in /etc? You should put your changes in to ~/.bashrc, as the one in /etc/ may get overwritten by an upgrade.
Finally, all your driver problems would have been identified during a LiveCD session, so again I'm going to call BS on this whole post.