You obviously do not develop in an enterprise environment. Java and specifically J2EE currently commands between 95%-99% of the enterprise computing market with 1%-5% being commanded by other technologies such as.NET. The truth is that the major computing world doesn't give a damn about.NET and are building more and more Java infrastructure at a feverish pace. Microsoft does give a damn about Java and is working very hard to convince people of any advantage to.NET.
Sun's relationship and history with IBM is much more complex than you appear to understand.
They are control freaks when it comes to their projects.
Why, because Java is Sun's creation and Sun's code? What kind of goddamn whiny communist idiot are you? Sun has spent millions of dollars and man-hours creating Java and if they don't want to let anyone else tell them what to do with it then that is their own damn prerogative. More power to them.
If Sun hadn't been at the reigns for this long, especially with their unparalleled relentless pursuit of a truly platform agnostic programming language, Java would be in a much worse position today.
As a full-time Java developer, I can tell you that ~95% of the computing done in large/major corporations (I work with several Fortune 100/500 companies) is %100 Java. The remaining work is.NET.
As far as the desktop, Sun did not focus on the desktop during its initial development of Java. Platform agnostic network-enabled computing, server-side/client-side systems, remote management, web services, etc. were Sun's main goals at the time. With the upcoming release of JDK 1.6 and 1.7 Sun is aiming to make Java a contender on the desktop as well as on mobile systems and to make major improvements to J2EE. For example, to help Java become a major contender on the dekstop, Sun is introducing exciting new interface technologies such as Matisse in the official Sun JDK release and is planned on being fully included in JDK 1.7 and above. There is a long list of great improvements coming in JDK 1.6 on the Sun website (do a search for Mustang features). The future for Java on both the desktop and mobile devices is extremely bright!
This, combined with the ability to dual-boot to Windows and eventually the ability to run Windows apps through virtualization, makes the Mac platform more appealing to consumers, which will probably lead to an increase in Apple's market share.
Sure they know how to do their basic email, web surfing, music stuff but beyond that they have no clue.
You've just described about %99 of the people who use computers, Windows or OS X.
It's all about being an elitist for them. They look at Mac's and say if I get one of those i'll be cool.
Wrong. Doctors especially general practicioners are so fucking busy that they simply do not have time to get to know a computer operating system regardless of whether it is Windows or OS X. They generally work 8-16 hour days and on-call or working on the weekends. Sure, the doctors may use Windows without a problem at work, but maybe they simply want a different computing experience at home in their limited free time? Maybe their families use OS X both professionally and at the children's school. Why not buy something your entire family can use and enjoy? Maybe they are trying to keep up on the latest technology in any way that they can? Your views are highly jaded and out-of-touch with most of the medical and/or professional community.
The exact same way they purchase a car.
Bullshit. There isn't anyone who after 10-12 years of schooling/interning, a very limited amount of free-time and a very large salary wouldn't spend their money on the things that make them happy. If I had one day off a week and made $150,000 a year I sure as hell wouldn't buy a GM product and drive it around. Hell, even regardless of that who cares if people spend the money they earn on what makes them happy? They deserve every bit of what they have earned, purchased, and enjoy. Again, your views are highly jaded and your statements are highly jealous as well. Maybe you should do something with your life, buy the things you want, and then maybe you won't be so jealous of the people who have already done those things with their life.
Your ideas as a whole are false, but are on the correct track. Using words such as "impossible", "sufficiently" and "complex" can be highly ambiguous. What is true is that the universe operates Mathematically. As such, a much more accurate rephrasing of your ideas could say:
"Given a sufficiently computationally complex system, although complete accuracy can be calculated, it is often difficult to reach high levels of accuracy within reasonable periods of time. Therefore assumptions and other shortcuts may be used which can give rise to possible errors and ommisions in testing".
There is a fundamental difference between the fact that everything in the universe can be calculated and whether or not such calculations will actually yield improved results given the problem that is being solved.
In this case, AMD and other manufacturers test the issues which they feel are the most important to successfully bring their product to market. They do not fully test for issues which may or not improve their product, but would take extra time they cannot afford to take just to test, and in the end the testing may cause them to miss a product deadline, announcement window, or otherwise affect their time to market.
Note: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -only- applies to subatomic phenomena, not macroscopic physical phenomena. As the problem being discussed above is macroscopic in nature, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is irrelevant to this discussion. As well, while there is empirical evidence supporting the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, there are mathematical constructs which can be created to calculate beyond the time-energy uncertainty relation. Therefore, there is a debate as to whether the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is completely correct.
As an owner of a BMW I'm not sure that's a good thing
I also own two BMW's, a 1997 BMW M3 and a 1998 BMW 528i to be exact, and I absolutely love them. They have given me absolutely zero problems and have been %100 fun since I purchased them. The M3 is the most fun of all. I participate in the M3 in a fair number of Autocross Solo II and track day events as well. I am also looking at purchasing a BMW motorcycle in the near future. I plan on owning BMW's forever as far as I'm concerned. What is your problem with BMW? Have you had a bad dealership experience? Are you having problems that are uncommon with most people?
As a great note, BMW is known for having the most advanced normally aspirated engines in the world. So to anyone who wants to drive one, check out your nearest BMW dealership, and beg to take out any M-class Bimmer (M3, M5, M Roadster).
Who the fuck buys those horribly huge (and horribly expensive) 17" laptops anyway? If Apple were smart, they'd have given smaller models priority. I find it ridiculous that Apple released their 17" models before the 13.3" models. I bet their old 12" iBooks sold 20-to-1 over their old 17" PowerBooks.
You are the idiot. I own a 17" laptop and upgraded from both a 12" and 15" model. There are many reasons for this move:
1) Software development. Screen real estate is of maximum concern. Having a ton of programs, windows, menu bars overlapping each other makes program usage horrible. I also run software simulations and debug hardware. Having all of the necessary windows open at one time is not even possible on a 12" screen and is barely feasible on the 15" screen.
2) Video editing. Try doing this on a 12" model, it just doesn't happen. 1024x768 is a fucking joke.
3) Desktop replacement. I replaced two desktop computers with laptops in my home. Now, my wife and I can not only take our work with us any time we want, but we have a ton of free desk space that was previously taken up by large computer towers and CRTs. Not everyone uses a laptop for portable computing and a desktop for home computing. More and more people are using a laptop for both uses and it makes perfect sense to do so. Unless there is some unbelievable need for a desktop computer, I never plan on owning one again.
4) Watching movies. Watching movies on a 12" 1024x768 screen is a joke, especially if you attempt to watch any HD video. It is just feasible on the 15" screen.
5) Inadequate screen resolutions on smaller screens. If Apple came out with a 15" laptop with a 1680x1050 or 1900x1200 screen resolution I might consider it as well as the 17", but that is not the case, so that is not a consideration.
There are about 100 other reasons, but off the top of my head these are some of the most important ones to mention.
Quit your bitching. You have gotten a lot of great replies from people, but now you are bitching about not being able to run Windows and OS X on the same laptop, for under $1000. So, you need a MacBook, but don't want to pay what it costs to own one. The MacBook is not any more expensive than an equivalent laptop from any non-Apple competitor. How much of a cheapass are you? If you need to have a Core Duo processor laptop for under $1000, then wait 5 or more years and try to buy one off of eBay, Apple or non-Apple.
And it is almost gauranteed you do not need any special software on your Windows laptop that is not available on OS X as well.
You're signature shows that you are obviously a complete idiot who doesn't have the first damn clue what he is talking about concerning the Java language.
Fucking moron.
Or maybe you are just promoting your homosexuality? Fucking moron.
Science really only has a few theories, because scientific theory are based on disprovable, repeatable, predictable, and in this case observable evidence.
What happened is that two competing conjectures, maybe even hypothesis, were proven wrong. Okay, interesting, and we all learned something from it. But, conjecture and hypothesis are proven wrong all of the time, they are not very high on the scientific food chain. The misuse of the word theory by people is really, really ruining people's fundamental understanding of science and the scientific process. Some random bullshit idea someone comes up with is not a theory, even if it may be based on some kind of coincidental factual information (like the sun containing helium) for example. Maybe, after some more testing, an actual theory of the composition of the sun can be determined. Until then, it is all conjecture or hypothesis, just as the ones in this story.
Science as a community product isn't faith based, but only a fool would extend that to mean that anyone in a lab coat is an impartial participant.
Your comment is not a +5 Insighful. It is based on something you truly have no idea about, modded up by people who have no idea what is being talked about.
Every honest Ph.D. shares a common belief in the pursuit of impartial truth in everything. That is truly the point of being a scientist and the point of following the rigors of the scientific process. While there are those people who do give a bad name to scientists and to science, it is important to understand that these people are truly acting individually, and that these people and their acts need to be seen in that light as well.
What exactly are you trying to say with your signature? Freedom and self-determination are irrelevant to what? Freedom and self-determination are always relevant, or in other words, are irrelevant to nothing.
That is EXACTLY what I have been wanting to say, and have tried in various ways, after struggling with Linux dependency hell for about the past 10 years but never have I seen it so succinctly, elegantly, and humorously said.
Absolutely perfect.
The only reason I use Linux right now is because I am waiting until Apple releases their second generation MacBook Pro and then I am switching to OS X for good. I have had the pleasure of using an Apple iBook for the past 8 months and it has been an absolutely wonderful experience.
It is funny reading the posts by the Linux folks on this forum. Look, installing applications in OS X is a dream, and uninstalling them is a dream as well. Drag and drop, done.
Your first mistake was that you didn't buy an Apple.
Your second mistake was that you didn't realize if you hadn't made your first mistake you could right now have *nix and a fully working, beautiful GUI as well as fully supported hardware drivers.
AMD might not sell dual-core chips specifically for laptops, but you *can* buy a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 or FX in an Alienware Aurora m7700 laptop, for example, without a problem starting at ~$2600.
I was referring to the suggestion in the FAQ to use gcj. Also, I have not had any problems using the Sun JDK directly as an internet plug-in, using the installation instructions available directly on Sun's Java website, so I forgo the use of the JPackage.org packages. If I have any problems using Java as an internet plug-in with Fedora Core 5, I may look for other solutions, such as JPackage.org at that point.
Unfortunately, your last sentence is entirely speculation, based on absolutely no knowledge of the professor's motives whatsoever. That is the same problem as the parent poster, who is bad mouthing his professor in his post, although never actually asked his professor why he chose Fedora over RHEL.
If the parent poster was such a great Linux user, as he claims, he would have been interested in helping his fellow classmates to install, configure, and use Fedora so that everyone would be able to succeed at using Linux in a meaningful manner. Maybe he could have even setup a small user forum for his class to answer questions. There are a lot of possibilities, but the least of which would have been to ask his professor his reasoning for choosing Fedora over another distribution. Maybe with the proper arguments, it could have been brought to his professors attention that problems were occuring within the class by fellow classmates and that another solution or distribution could have been chosen to accomplish the tasks assigned to the class.
I will offer another speculation, that maybe Fedora was appropriate because it does not contain any non-GPL or possibly-illegal-in-the-US software out-of-the-box?
For years I have used The Unofficial Fedora Faq located at http://www.fedorafaq.org/ to install all of the software missing from the Fedora Core downloads.
I agree with everything on that page, except for Java support. I develop Java and suggest that anybody who wants to develop serious Java applications use the official Java JDK from Sun. Otherwise, everything else is spot-on to help make Fedora a serious Linux desktop distribution.
But what you don't seem to understand is that the Christian god is simply human make-believe, like all gods in all religions, there is no difference. Anything that is not disprovable, repeatable, and predictable is not real.
Let's make this even more clear, especially with consideration to one point, if the universe was created by the Christian god, who created the Christian god? Do you just make up new, non-logical make-believe answers to that question such as "he exists beyond the laws of the universe" or there are an infinite number of creators? And on and on. Again, religion is completely fantasy. Hey, if the Christian god could have simply existed, so could the universe, without a god.
Do you simply choose to ignore the completely, blatantly obvious fact that humans simply invented religion for their own needs? That the universe is exactly as it appears.
The one point people do not understand is that science and the scientific process applies to everything in this universe, not just want they want to pick and choose to apply it to. You must apply it completely or not at all. Science is proof through disproof, if any part of your explanation is false, it is all false.
And Mathematics is not just equations, it is truly the language of the universe. Physics is the modeling of the universe through the use of Mathematics.
I disagree with you, I believe one operating system is better than two. I need to get work done and be productive, as well as enjoy and play games, but I do not want to have to use two OS's to accomplish any of these tasks. While I dual-boot currently, it is to test Linux distros in hopes of finding one which I can move completely from Windows permanently. So, right now, it is for testing and experimentation, not for any other reason. Now that I have had a chance to use OS X 10.4 on an iBook for about 6 months, I am waiting until the next revision of the MacBook Pro to switch completely to Apple. Currently, there is no reason or software on Windows that is not available in an equal or better quality product on OS X for my needs. But, I am not interested in dual-booting on my Mac because it would be counter-productive to the reasons why I bought a Mac to begin with, which was to eliminate my use of Windows.
If I needed to have another OS booted in order to test something such as Java software development, I would either find a solution with a product like VMWare or simply have another cheap computer with Windows and/or Linux running on it to test directly. But this would only be for software testing purposes, not for everyday use.
And amazingly, you are trying to make an intelligent post, yet you use slanted and loaded statements like "it remains bullshit when applied to fashionable platforms, too". So, is Linux still just a hobby OS? The truth is that Mac OS X is both a popular and real Unix platform for both desktop and server use, which is now commercially supported on both PPC and Intel platforms.
And finally, it is not somehow a bad thing for a computer to be nice to use and look at as well.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously do not develop in an enterprise environment. Java and specifically J2EE currently commands between 95%-99% of the enterprise computing market with 1%-5% being commanded by other technologies such as .NET. The truth is that the major computing world doesn't give a damn about .NET and are building more and more Java infrastructure at a feverish pace. Microsoft does give a damn about Java and is working very hard to convince people of any advantage to .NET.
Sun's relationship and history with IBM is much more complex than you appear to understand.
They are control freaks when it comes to their projects.
Why, because Java is Sun's creation and Sun's code? What kind of goddamn whiny communist idiot are you? Sun has spent millions of dollars and man-hours creating Java and if they don't want to let anyone else tell them what to do with it then that is their own damn prerogative. More power to them.
If Sun hadn't been at the reigns for this long, especially with their unparalleled relentless pursuit of a truly platform agnostic programming language, Java would be in a much worse position today.
As a full-time Java developer, I can tell you that ~95% of the computing done in large/major corporations (I work with several Fortune 100/500 companies) is %100 Java. The remaining work is .NET.
As far as the desktop, Sun did not focus on the desktop during its initial development of Java. Platform agnostic network-enabled computing, server-side/client-side systems, remote management, web services, etc. were Sun's main goals at the time. With the upcoming release of JDK 1.6 and 1.7 Sun is aiming to make Java a contender on the desktop as well as on mobile systems and to make major improvements to J2EE. For example, to help Java become a major contender on the dekstop, Sun is introducing exciting new interface technologies such as Matisse in the official Sun JDK release and is planned on being fully included in JDK 1.7 and above. There is a long list of great improvements coming in JDK 1.6 on the Sun website (do a search for Mustang features). The future for Java on both the desktop and mobile devices is extremely bright!
This, combined with the ability to dual-boot to Windows and eventually the ability to run Windows apps through virtualization, makes the Mac platform more appealing to consumers, which will probably lead to an increase in Apple's market share.
m ac/
Already done:
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/
Our company is already using Parallels as part of our full-time Java development and support. It is excellent product.
Sure they know how to do their basic email, web surfing, music stuff but beyond that they have no clue.
You've just described about %99 of the people who use computers, Windows or OS X.
It's all about being an elitist for them. They look at Mac's and say if I get one of those i'll be cool.
Wrong. Doctors especially general practicioners are so fucking busy that they simply do not have time to get to know a computer operating system regardless of whether it is Windows or OS X. They generally work 8-16 hour days and on-call or working on the weekends. Sure, the doctors may use Windows without a problem at work, but maybe they simply want a different computing experience at home in their limited free time? Maybe their families use OS X both professionally and at the children's school. Why not buy something your entire family can use and enjoy? Maybe they are trying to keep up on the latest technology in any way that they can? Your views are highly jaded and out-of-touch with most of the medical and/or professional community.
The exact same way they purchase a car.
Bullshit. There isn't anyone who after 10-12 years of schooling/interning, a very limited amount of free-time and a very large salary wouldn't spend their money on the things that make them happy. If I had one day off a week and made $150,000 a year I sure as hell wouldn't buy a GM product and drive it around. Hell, even regardless of that who cares if people spend the money they earn on what makes them happy? They deserve every bit of what they have earned, purchased, and enjoy. Again, your views are highly jaded and your statements are highly jealous as well. Maybe you should do something with your life, buy the things you want, and then maybe you won't be so jealous of the people who have already done those things with their life.
Your ideas as a whole are false, but are on the correct track. Using words such as "impossible", "sufficiently" and "complex" can be highly ambiguous. What is true is that the universe operates Mathematically. As such, a much more accurate rephrasing of your ideas could say:
"Given a sufficiently computationally complex system, although complete accuracy can be calculated, it is often difficult to reach high levels of accuracy within reasonable periods of time. Therefore assumptions and other shortcuts may be used which can give rise to possible errors and ommisions in testing".
There is a fundamental difference between the fact that everything in the universe can be calculated and whether or not such calculations will actually yield improved results given the problem that is being solved.
In this case, AMD and other manufacturers test the issues which they feel are the most important to successfully bring their product to market. They do not fully test for issues which may or not improve their product, but would take extra time they cannot afford to take just to test, and in the end the testing may cause them to miss a product deadline, announcement window, or otherwise affect their time to market.
Note: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -only- applies to subatomic phenomena, not macroscopic physical phenomena. As the problem being discussed above is macroscopic in nature, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is irrelevant to this discussion. As well, while there is empirical evidence supporting the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, there are mathematical constructs which can be created to calculate beyond the time-energy uncertainty relation. Therefore, there is a debate as to whether the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is completely correct.
As an owner of a BMW I'm not sure that's a good thing
I also own two BMW's, a 1997 BMW M3 and a 1998 BMW 528i to be exact, and I absolutely love them. They have given me absolutely zero problems and have been %100 fun since I purchased them. The M3 is the most fun of all. I participate in the M3 in a fair number of Autocross Solo II and track day events as well. I am also looking at purchasing a BMW motorcycle in the near future. I plan on owning BMW's forever as far as I'm concerned. What is your problem with BMW? Have you had a bad dealership experience? Are you having problems that are uncommon with most people?
As a great note, BMW is known for having the most advanced normally aspirated engines in the world. So to anyone who wants to drive one, check out your nearest BMW dealership, and beg to take out any M-class Bimmer (M3, M5, M Roadster).
Who the fuck buys those horribly huge (and horribly expensive) 17" laptops anyway? If Apple were smart, they'd have given smaller models priority. I find it ridiculous that Apple released their 17" models before the 13.3" models. I bet their old 12" iBooks sold 20-to-1 over their old 17" PowerBooks.
You are the idiot. I own a 17" laptop and upgraded from both a 12" and 15" model. There are many reasons for this move:
1) Software development. Screen real estate is of maximum concern. Having a ton of programs, windows, menu bars overlapping each other makes program usage horrible. I also run software simulations and debug hardware. Having all of the necessary windows open at one time is not even possible on a 12" screen and is barely feasible on the 15" screen.
2) Video editing. Try doing this on a 12" model, it just doesn't happen. 1024x768 is a fucking joke.
3) Desktop replacement. I replaced two desktop computers with laptops in my home. Now, my wife and I can not only take our work with us any time we want, but we have a ton of free desk space that was previously taken up by large computer towers and CRTs. Not everyone uses a laptop for portable computing and a desktop for home computing. More and more people are using a laptop for both uses and it makes perfect sense to do so. Unless there is some unbelievable need for a desktop computer, I never plan on owning one again.
4) Watching movies. Watching movies on a 12" 1024x768 screen is a joke, especially if you attempt to watch any HD video. It is just feasible on the 15" screen.
5) Inadequate screen resolutions on smaller screens. If Apple came out with a 15" laptop with a 1680x1050 or 1900x1200 screen resolution I might consider it as well as the 17", but that is not the case, so that is not a consideration.
There are about 100 other reasons, but off the top of my head these are some of the most important ones to mention.
Quit your bitching. You have gotten a lot of great replies from people, but now you are bitching about not being able to run Windows and OS X on the same laptop, for under $1000. So, you need a MacBook, but don't want to pay what it costs to own one. The MacBook is not any more expensive than an equivalent laptop from any non-Apple competitor. How much of a cheapass are you? If you need to have a Core Duo processor laptop for under $1000, then wait 5 or more years and try to buy one off of eBay, Apple or non-Apple.
And it is almost gauranteed you do not need any special software on your Windows laptop that is not available on OS X as well.
You're signature shows that you are obviously a complete idiot who doesn't have the first damn clue what he is talking about concerning the Java language.
Fucking moron.
Or maybe you are just promoting your homosexuality? Fucking moron.
Science really only has a few theories, because scientific theory are based on disprovable, repeatable, predictable, and in this case observable evidence.
What happened is that two competing conjectures, maybe even hypothesis, were proven wrong. Okay, interesting, and we all learned something from it. But, conjecture and hypothesis are proven wrong all of the time, they are not very high on the scientific food chain. The misuse of the word theory by people is really, really ruining people's fundamental understanding of science and the scientific process. Some random bullshit idea someone comes up with is not a theory, even if it may be based on some kind of coincidental factual information (like the sun containing helium) for example. Maybe, after some more testing, an actual theory of the composition of the sun can be determined. Until then, it is all conjecture or hypothesis, just as the ones in this story.
Nothing to see here, move on now.
Science as a community product isn't faith based, but only a fool would extend that to mean that anyone in a lab coat is an impartial participant.
Your comment is not a +5 Insighful. It is based on something you truly have no idea about, modded up by people who have no idea what is being talked about.
Every honest Ph.D. shares a common belief in the pursuit of impartial truth in everything. That is truly the point of being a scientist and the point of following the rigors of the scientific process. While there are those people who do give a bad name to scientists and to science, it is important to understand that these people are truly acting individually, and that these people and their acts need to be seen in that light as well.
What exactly are you trying to say with your signature? Freedom and self-determination are irrelevant to what? Freedom and self-determination are always relevant, or in other words, are irrelevant to nothing.
LOL!!!
LMAO!!!
That is EXACTLY what I have been wanting to say, and have tried in various ways, after struggling with Linux dependency hell for about the past 10 years but never have I seen it so succinctly, elegantly, and humorously said.
Absolutely perfect.
The only reason I use Linux right now is because I am waiting until Apple releases their second generation MacBook Pro and then I am switching to OS X for good. I have had the pleasure of using an Apple iBook for the past 8 months and it has been an absolutely wonderful experience.
It is funny reading the posts by the Linux folks on this forum. Look, installing applications in OS X is a dream, and uninstalling them is a dream as well. Drag and drop, done.
Your first mistake was that you didn't buy an Apple.
Your second mistake was that you didn't realize if you hadn't made your first mistake you could right now have *nix and a fully working, beautiful GUI as well as fully supported hardware drivers.
Your wording is misleading...
AMD might not sell dual-core chips specifically for laptops, but you *can* buy a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 or FX in an Alienware Aurora m7700 laptop, for example, without a problem starting at ~$2600.
Another excellent website for Fedora Core configuration is http://easylinux.info/wiki/Fedora
I was referring to the suggestion in the FAQ to use gcj. Also, I have not had any problems using the Sun JDK directly as an internet plug-in, using the installation instructions available directly on Sun's Java website, so I forgo the use of the JPackage.org packages. If I have any problems using Java as an internet plug-in with Fedora Core 5, I may look for other solutions, such as JPackage.org at that point.
Unfortunately, your last sentence is entirely speculation, based on absolutely no knowledge of the professor's motives whatsoever. That is the same problem as the parent poster, who is bad mouthing his professor in his post, although never actually asked his professor why he chose Fedora over RHEL.
If the parent poster was such a great Linux user, as he claims, he would have been interested in helping his fellow classmates to install, configure, and use Fedora so that everyone would be able to succeed at using Linux in a meaningful manner. Maybe he could have even setup a small user forum for his class to answer questions. There are a lot of possibilities, but the least of which would have been to ask his professor his reasoning for choosing Fedora over another distribution. Maybe with the proper arguments, it could have been brought to his professors attention that problems were occuring within the class by fellow classmates and that another solution or distribution could have been chosen to accomplish the tasks assigned to the class.
I will offer another speculation, that maybe Fedora was appropriate because it does not contain any non-GPL or possibly-illegal-in-the-US software out-of-the-box?
all three are just tools
And so are you.
For years I have used The Unofficial Fedora Faq located at http://www.fedorafaq.org/ to install all of the software missing from the Fedora Core downloads.
I agree with everything on that page, except for Java support. I develop Java and suggest that anybody who wants to develop serious Java applications use the official Java JDK from Sun. Otherwise, everything else is spot-on to help make Fedora a serious Linux desktop distribution.
But what you don't seem to understand is that the Christian god is simply human make-believe, like all gods in all religions, there is no difference. Anything that is not disprovable, repeatable, and predictable is not real.
Let's make this even more clear, especially with consideration to one point, if the universe was created by the Christian god, who created the Christian god? Do you just make up new, non-logical make-believe answers to that question such as "he exists beyond the laws of the universe" or there are an infinite number of creators? And on and on. Again, religion is completely fantasy. Hey, if the Christian god could have simply existed, so could the universe, without a god.
Do you simply choose to ignore the completely, blatantly obvious fact that humans simply invented religion for their own needs? That the universe is exactly as it appears.
The one point people do not understand is that science and the scientific process applies to everything in this universe, not just want they want to pick and choose to apply it to. You must apply it completely or not at all. Science is proof through disproof, if any part of your explanation is false, it is all false.
And Mathematics is not just equations, it is truly the language of the universe. Physics is the modeling of the universe through the use of Mathematics.
I disagree with you, I believe one operating system is better than two. I need to get work done and be productive, as well as enjoy and play games, but I do not want to have to use two OS's to accomplish any of these tasks. While I dual-boot currently, it is to test Linux distros in hopes of finding one which I can move completely from Windows permanently. So, right now, it is for testing and experimentation, not for any other reason. Now that I have had a chance to use OS X 10.4 on an iBook for about 6 months, I am waiting until the next revision of the MacBook Pro to switch completely to Apple. Currently, there is no reason or software on Windows that is not available in an equal or better quality product on OS X for my needs. But, I am not interested in dual-booting on my Mac because it would be counter-productive to the reasons why I bought a Mac to begin with, which was to eliminate my use of Windows.
If I needed to have another OS booted in order to test something such as Java software development, I would either find a solution with a product like VMWare or simply have another cheap computer with Windows and/or Linux running on it to test directly. But this would only be for software testing purposes, not for everyday use.
And amazingly, you are trying to make an intelligent post, yet you use slanted and loaded statements like "it remains bullshit when applied to fashionable platforms, too". So, is Linux still just a hobby OS? The truth is that Mac OS X is both a popular and real Unix platform for both desktop and server use, which is now commercially supported on both PPC and Intel platforms.
And finally, it is not somehow a bad thing for a computer to be nice to use and look at as well.