I forgot, this is slashdot, where VxWorks is the eternal enemy, and second-guessing actual rocket scientists is the national sport.
I see. So instead of addressing any of the four points, you tell me I'm wrong, and accuse me of being biassed.
IIRC, memory protection was removed from the early versions by popular request, because the cost was too high. Clearly not everyone out there agrees with the opinions stated by sibling posts to yours.
Design by democracy? Is that the patriotic version of designed by a committee? We all know how well that turns out!
Me, personally, I don't give a rat's ass one way or the other. (I don't use VxWorks,
Guess what. I do.
and haven't had a single segfault in any of my code since I stopped using C.) I just dislike seeing the groupthink mentality defended so vigourously, thus my initial post.
I think it's interesting that somebody who has never used VxWorks is such an expert, while anybody who disagrees is afflicted with groupthink.
Stuff running in such environments is damn near bug-free. It's not like, say, Mozilla, or even the Linux kernel, or even/bin/ls. These things get tested rigourously, not as an afterthought deligated to the junior programmer.
That's false reasoning.
1. No practical software is bug-free.
2. Testing is never complete.
3. People make mistakes, even during testing.
4. Spirit broke down.
It makes sense, when building a robust system, to do rigorous testing AND have the memory protection.
VxWorks obviously has a brilliant team of brainwashers^Wsalesmen because they've convinced you that you don't need a feature they don't offer. Perfect!
While we're at it, why are we wasting our time with this "free" Linux kernel.
Because it actually makes sense (not that coding Linux is wasting time)?
You merks really have trouble with sarcasm.
We've been developing Linux for almost 13 years now. It's mature! It works! It rocks!
Do you think XFree86 and Mesa were written last week? They're very old projects. They're very mature. The DRI is a big piece but it's by no means the bulk of the graphics subsystem on your Linux-based desktop.
I dare you, find a group of skilled engineers who will work for free on OpenGL/3D Linux hardware drivers. Hint: the biggest concentration are probably working at TungstenGraphics [tungstengraphics.com] and I don't think they work for free either.
I don't need the hint. I know full well the history of the DRI.
The same argument could be said for kernels. It's not a convincing argument.
Actually QEMU has mode where they are emulating the hardware. Right there are reports of windows 98 booting in the full virtual machine that qemu can now do.
That's great! The last time I checked I knew it was in development, but I didn't realise how fast the work has been progressing. Truly amazing.
Better to spend our resources improving other things (like GNOME, D-BUS, whatnot) than to duplicate driver magic, just for the sake of being open source.
Yeah. While we're at it, why are we wasting our time with this "free" Linux kernel. I mean, it's not really free unless your time is worth nothing, right? We should just focus on free applications running on Windows XP. That's already got a decent set of drivers and a good kernel.
I sometimes wonder if there is a more thankless group out there than the Linux user market.
It seems to me that whenever there's this ongoing (and fruitless) nVidia flamewar that the overwhelming majority of Slashdotters support nVidia. Far from being thankless, I think nVidia has more cheerleaders than detractors.
"Buying an X-box technically doesn't give MS any money."
This is a fallacy that many here on Slashdot seem to repeat far more often then they should. If you buy an X-Box - you are still sending MS money - they lose money on the sale based on the cost to produce the unit, but it you didn't buy one MS would lose THAT MUCH MORE money.
It depends on the rules for inventory. If Microsoft keeps their warehouse stocked with a fixed number of Xbox (eg, 1000 Xbox) then buying an Xbox causes Microsoft to manufacture another Xbox. If the manufacturing costs are higher than the sale price then buying an Xbox costs Microsoft more than not buying an Xbox.
Think of it this way. Let's say for every Xbox sold, Microsoft produces another one. Let's guess that an Xbox costs $M to make and $S to sell. You buy an Xbox for $S (credit you, debit Microsoft). Microsoft then manufactures another Xbox for $M (credit Microsoft, debit manufacturer).
If M is greater than S (and we believe it is) then Microsoft just lost another $(M-S) despite you giving them your money! The fault here is Microsoft keeps a fixed stock in their inventory.
Now if Microsoft were running out their stock (ie, not manufacturing more Xbox) then you would be right; the best way to harm Microsoft would be to not buy it at all. But I'm pretty sure that they're still manufacturing Xbox.
Errr no, the dB scale starts at 0, thre is no negative axis, hence no possibility of negative infinity. As such, 0dB is perfectly silent.
You are wrong. 0dB means a unity gain. In other words, the signal you are measuring is exactly the same intensity as the reference signal.
In audio, 0dBA (notice the A) means it's the same intensity as the smallest discernible noise to "standard" human ears. Basically it's pretty damn quiet.
You most certainly can have negative dB. It just means attenuation (ie, the signal you are measuring has less intensity than the reference signal). 0 gain (which would be truly silent) is the same as negative infinity dB.
I admit that I'm not a fanatic like some, but I have never heard that particular string used as a short way to refer to the Hitchiker's Guide series. I've seen HHGttG once or twice, but usually I just see the whole thing written out.
According to their FAQ, they aren't using Bochs for x86 emulation, but QEMU. I have no experience with QEMU, but according to some of the posts on Darwine's sourceforge message board, it's much much faster than Bochs. I wish these guys luck. I'd love to have wine running on OS X.
The reason QEMU is faster is because of dynamic translation.
Bochs decodes each and every instruction just before it is executed. So if you have a loop that executes 100 times, you have to decode the same instructions 100 times. That's incredibly slow. I have seen estimates that Bochs needs 160,000 native CPU instructions to emulate a single x86 instruction.
QEMU takes a block of code (typically a whole page) and translates the block into the native instruction set. Then it executes the translated block of code. QEMU tries to keep translated blocks around as long as possible, using dirty bits to determine when retranslation is needed. This is the same technique used by VirtualPC on the Macintosh. It is much faster than Bochs!
There is experimental code in Plex86 to do dynamic translation and Bochs can use Plex86 as the backend (it offloads entire pages of code to Plex86). So it's possible that Bochs will one day achieve the performance of QEMU.
Take note that QEMU is usable today, just so long as you're running purely Linux binaries. It is possible to use QEMU to run Linux/x86 binaries on Linux/PPC for example. QEMU's dynamic translation engine is pretty decent. QEMU doesn't emulate the PC hardware. Bochs does emulate the PC hardware. If you could cherry pick the dynamic translation from QEMU and the PC hardware emulation from Bochs then you'd have something to compete with VirtualPC right now.
The story about the Linux geek who got burnt by a fault that affects less than 0.2% of units shipped hits the front page, letting him complain about "hardware lock in". The vendor response about replacing the faulty part, and reimbursing people who've paid to get it fixed, makes only the apple.slashdot pages (ie buried in the paper).
Uhhh... I only ever read the slashdot.org front page and I'm seeing this story. What are you doing wrong?
I think it might be a good idea to go revisit what I wrote. If you still feel offended, I think you might take a hard look at exactly what's making you mad.
I'm not mad. I get sullen when I get mad and I don't write anything at all.
Take it from me--the words weren't directed against anyone who's spent a single hour developing, using, or learning about something, whether it's Linux, Windows or poetry. There's nothing wrong with being passionate about something you like doing.
Sure, but I don't think there's anything wrong with being passionate about things that other people are doing either. For example, some people become very emotionally attached to their football teams, even if they never participate in the game themselves. I've seen people break down in tears when their team loses the grand final. I don't personally feel that way about any sport, but I don't ridicule these people for feeling an emotional attachment to something.
What I do take issue with is when people start flaming and whining because other people don't feel the same way they do. What I take issue with is people who act as if the "other side" is morally bankrupt, is an enemy, or should change, simply because they don't agree. The thing about zealots is that they aren't comfortable enough in their passions to just let other people do something different.
Those people aren't zealots, they're dickheads. Don't confuse the two.
Well, to be more precise, they might be both zealots and dickheads. But the part of their personality that makes them flame and whine is their dickheadness, not their zeal.
I'm happy you feel passionate about OSS and Linux. Believe me, I'm quite passionate about OSS myself. But there's a clear difference between passion and zealotry.
I disagree. Zeal is passion. Look it up in a dictionary. From Webster's:
1. Passionate ardor in the pursuit of anything; eagerness in
favor of a person or cause; ardent and active interest;
engagedness; enthusiasm;
The word "zealot" has been corrupted by people who want to cast "zealots" in the worst possible light. Don't contribute to the problem! Try and fix it through education. There's nothing wrong with being zealous. It's dickheads that we need to get rid of. Call them dickheads. Don't call them zealots. Calling them zealots leads to confusion because it implies that if you're passionate about Linux then there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with being passionate about Linux! It's a uniquely important thing. Everybody can see that. Free software is something that could potentially change the world for the better. How can you not be excited about that.
I rather enjoy that when I write a file no matter what I name it it will still be identifiable to the GUI as a particular type of file created by a particular application. Note that HFS+ actually has THREE forks. The main is of course the data fork and I strongly believe that all data belogns in it. The second is the resource fork which I also strongly believe should go the way of the dodo. However, the third is where type and creator information as well as a few handy bits of info are stored. This fork is really vital to a properly functioning GUI. If implemented properly (as it is in OS X) a file can be completely stripped of it and make it across the network with all file data intact. However, when on a local system (or network) the meta data that the GUI stores really adds to the user experience.
Metadata is fine. Even the UNIX filesystem has metadata (eg, the rwx bits, atime, mtime, ctime, the filename itself). I have a real gripe with forked filesystems like HFS and HFS+ and NTFS and HPFS. I think they introduce needless complexity that could be more simply achieved with extensible metadata.
But I don't really want to be drawn into this argument because I lose it everytime I try:-/
Now, OS X and Apple hardware are making hardcore linux users quiver and twitch......:)
Then they weren't really hardcore.
I'm being serious. If these people were just flitting from Windows to Linux, then Linux to MacOS, then they're going to flit to something else pretty soon. They're not hardcore. They're ADHD. Hardcore means hardcore. It means you'll stick with it, no matter what. It doesn't mean enthusiastic-until-the-next-shiny-thing-comes-alon g.
Listen up, buddy, it's a fricking tool. Get over yourself and find something worthwhile to fight for. It's a shame that hordes of idiots--who don't even have a vested interest in it--flame and whine until you drown out all relevant and reasonable discussion of what makes one tool the right one for a particular task.
I really have an issue with this "it's just a tool" mantra. It ignores the basic human instinct to grow attached to inanimate objects or seemingly irrelevant things.
For example, during the 2000 olympics there was an Australian speed walker who was doing really well. She was less than 200m from the finish line, entering the stadium, when she was disqualified for lifting both feet off the ground. She burst into tears. She walked back along the course, in obvious emotional pain. Would you walk up to that person and say "it's just a race, get over it you idiot"?
Of course not. She had invested years of her life in training for that event. She was strongly and emotionally tied to the event. It meant a lot to her. It was a horrible thing, to have that moment taken away from her.
There were some recent bushfires in my city. Several 100 homes were destroyed (in a city of 300,000 people that's significant). During the TV coverage a number of distraught homeowners burst into tears. They were completely devastated by what had happened. Would you walk up to these people and say "they were just things, get over it you idiot"?
I'd hope not! These "things" represented their entire lives. Decades of work and investment into their hobbies and their retirement, gone in an instant. They had strong emotional attachment to the homes; they'd raised their children in those homes. To see it all gone was painful to these people.
But the most touching example, and perhaps the one you won't understand, was while reading www.folklore.org. Andy was one of the original Apple Mac developers. He had invested years of his life into helping create the original Mac 128k. No holidays. 7 days a week. 12 hours a day. He had poured his heart and soul into the software. Then one day, a clueless manager (Bob) threatened to fire Andy unless he kissed Bob's arse in front of the other Apple techies. Andy broke down into tears and bawled his eyes out. Would you walk up to Andy and say "it's just a tool, don't be an idiot"?
If you could do such a thing then you're a heartless monster. Andy had obviously formed an emotional attachment to the Mac. Afterall, he had been with it from the first logic gate. He had put so much time and effort into it, that it was painful to him to even imagine losing it. It's like a gifted artist who spends years creating a painting, only to watch it burn in a house fire. It's incredibly painful to see something that represents all of your skill, your time, and your effort, being destroyed or taken away from you.
So to you it's "just a tool". But to other people it's so much more. I see Linux (and all free software) as being a way to bring greater prosperity to the world. It's a way for poorer countries and poorer people to have access to the same great software that I have. I've invested 100s of hours into it, and even though that's a tiny percentage of the billions of man hours invested in Linux, to have it taken away from me would be emotionally painful. It means something to me.
So you might think that's stupid. But I think that says more about you than it says about me.
You clearly havne't been visiting/. long enough.;) Apple is the underdog and a competitor to Microsoft, so it has to be good.
Actually Apple has always been good and they weren't always the underdog to Microsoft. Go back 25 years and they were both shoestring operations but Apple was bigger than Microsoft.
Apple has always been good because they are a combined hardware/software company with geniuses on the payroll (eg, Raskin, Burcell, and Wozniak). What Apple does is Real Computing. Microsoft is a software company that rips off ideas from others, then rewrites history to pretend that Microsoft did it first. There's no honour in what Microsoft does. It's kinda lame.
Apple-critics like to say that Apple ripped off the GUI from Xerox. But it's not true. Xerox had basic ideas like windows and mice. Apple had to create dozens of new concepts for the GUIs used on the Lisa and the Macintosh. It's fairer to say that Xerox started something and Apple finished it. That's another big point in Apple's favour.
One thing I've always disliked about Apple is (sadly) the Apple community. They're more rabid than Linux fanatics and more clueless to boot. I have listened to various Apple-fanatics defending cooperative multitasking, lack of protected memory, benefits of RAM Doubler, any justification at all for forked filesystems, etc. It always boggles my mind that they can talk about how much more "productive" they are because of 2-second savings in changing focus, but they suddenly go quiet when they have to wait 5 minutes during a reboot because their computer crashed. Thankfully MacOSX has fixed the foundational problems with MacOS.
But leaving the rabid community aside, Apple from the 70s and 80s would have been top of my list of Places I'd Like To Work if I'd been old enough at the time. Even with the downside of Steve Jobs having to be there. Apple does cool stuff. They always have. They still are. They're among the few companies that have kudos in the geek community, even if you didn't particularly like MacOS <= 9 because of the foundational faults in its design.
But Microsoft has always sucked. Bill Gates has always been a dickhead and his company has always been the McDonalds of computing. He might be rich but he has never been cool. There's nothing nifty about Microsoft software. It gets the job done on a budget. That's about the nicest thing you can say about Microsoft.
OpenOffice. Check. Evolution. Check. Galeon. Check. Linux has all the applications that I need to get along.
I like having some games.
So do I. That's why I installed DOSBOX and X-MAME. I've got 100s of games. All very high quality. Sure, they're a little old, but they're still fun.
I like having stuff like iSync & iTunes.
I like Rhythmbox and Grip.
Yes, I know there's Linux apps, but I like how everything works *together* and isn't an ugly kludge.
I really don't see how my desktop is a kludge. It all Just Works(tm) for me. My measure of a good desktop is how many times I feel the need to go to the command line instead of using the GUI tools. I am pleased to find that in a modern GNOME desktop I've never felt that need.
See, at work, I need to get *work* done.. I don't have time to futz around with Xconfig.
Now I needed to jump through a lot of hoops to get Linux working on this iBook, but XConfig wasn't one of them. The X installation was simple as could be; the default configuration worked. Mostly thanks to XFree86 using DDC and EDID these days to autoprobe everything.
I think Linux has a loooong way to go as a desktop OS.
You go ahead use what you want - maybe your application and gaming needs are different - but your criticisms of Linux are a personal thing. It's naive of you to claim that because Linux isn't appropriate for you that it's no good for anybody else. Linux is perfectly adequate for many of us as a desktop, right now.
I don't really have a problem with Indians having work, the thing I have a problem with is that I, as someone living in the United states cannot compete with someone from India, it isn't possible, because of the relative cost of living an Indian programmer can be well off on a salary that wouldn't pay my rent. I can't fix that, I can't turn 10 grand into a maintainable lifestyle, they can. There is absolutely nothing I can do about that.
This isn't a dig at you, but I just spotted something I think is worth pointing out.
The problem as you see it is that you are just as talented, just as hard-working, just as experienced, and just as educated as the Indian programmer.
But the job still goes to him instead of you because of circumstances beyond your control.
It reminds me of black people who were never given jobs - white people given preference - for no "better" reason than their skin colour (which was definitely beyond their control).
I hope somebody out there feels some empathy now, if they didn't already.
I know the die-hards will nay-say this, but being able to use native Windows drivers would be absolutely great. Now, maybe you don't use MPlayer (and the other "native" driver apps) but there are a hell of a lot of us that do and love it. The same thing should be done for all drivers. Video, USB, firewire, PCI, whatever... Make it so we can use Windows drivers in Linux because there are way too many half-assed reverse engineered Linux drivers that just don't work right.
That's great for you at home on your Intel/x86 32-bit box running Mplayer. But how is that going to help me on my Apple iBook with a PowerPC CPU? Or how about powering up your new AMD-64 with a 64-bit kernel only to find you have to run the Linux kernel in 32-bit mode because the Windows drivers are all 32-bit.
This is ignoring other issues like stability, maintenance, integration, support, debugging,... legality.
5 years from now, your employer may not need a domestic "outsourcing manager" either. You might try being afraid for yourself.
20 years from now the only computing experts in USA will be hobbyists. All the professionals will be overseas. No more mentoring. No more masters handing down their knowledge to the starry-eyed pupils. No more in-house talent. You'll have outsourced it all.
Then the prices will go up.
It's a simple fact about outsourcing. It's a short-term win and a long-term loss. This is true for any field, including blue-collar workers. I've come to realise that there is just as much unspoken handed-down knowledge in those fields as in any other.
National service is a repugnant concept unto itself. Frankly I don't care whether you got out of it for completely selfish reasons, genuine medical reasons or as some sort of protest against the very idea, I am just pleased that you did.
How anybody can be an advocate of forcing someone to spend their time and energy to kill people or assist those doing the killing in some sort of misguided notion of compulsary patriotism is utterly beyond me.
I don't see how it's morally any worse than the USA where your tax dollars are used to pay somebody else to do your killing on your behalf.
Slashdot Mirror
I see. So instead of addressing any of the four points, you tell me I'm wrong, and accuse me of being biassed.
Design by democracy? Is that the patriotic version of designed by a committee? We all know how well that turns out!
Guess what. I do.
I think it's interesting that somebody who has never used VxWorks is such an expert, while anybody who disagrees is afflicted with groupthink.
I bet you haven't even read 1984.
May I suggest that as you're extremely sedentary that you stop drinking sodas. Drink water.
That's false reasoning.
1. No practical software is bug-free.
2. Testing is never complete.
3. People make mistakes, even during testing.
4. Spirit broke down.
It makes sense, when building a robust system, to do rigorous testing AND have the memory protection.
VxWorks obviously has a brilliant team of brainwashers^Wsalesmen because they've convinced you that you don't need a feature they don't offer. Perfect!
You merks really have trouble with sarcasm.
Do you think XFree86 and Mesa were written last week? They're very old projects. They're very mature. The DRI is a big piece but it's by no means the bulk of the graphics subsystem on your Linux-based desktop.
I don't need the hint. I know full well the history of the DRI.
The same argument could be said for kernels. It's not a convincing argument.
That's great! The last time I checked I knew it was in development, but I didn't realise how fast the work has been progressing. Truly amazing.
Yeah. While we're at it, why are we wasting our time with this "free" Linux kernel. I mean, it's not really free unless your time is worth nothing, right? We should just focus on free applications running on Windows XP. That's already got a decent set of drivers and a good kernel.
I think you have missed the point.
It seems to me that whenever there's this ongoing (and fruitless) nVidia flamewar that the overwhelming majority of Slashdotters support nVidia. Far from being thankless, I think nVidia has more cheerleaders than detractors.
It depends on the rules for inventory. If Microsoft keeps their warehouse stocked with a fixed number of Xbox (eg, 1000 Xbox) then buying an Xbox causes Microsoft to manufacture another Xbox. If the manufacturing costs are higher than the sale price then buying an Xbox costs Microsoft more than not buying an Xbox.
Think of it this way. Let's say for every Xbox sold, Microsoft produces another one. Let's guess that an Xbox costs $M to make and $S to sell. You buy an Xbox for $S (credit you, debit Microsoft). Microsoft then manufactures another Xbox for $M (credit Microsoft, debit manufacturer).
If M is greater than S (and we believe it is) then Microsoft just lost another $(M-S) despite you giving them your money! The fault here is Microsoft keeps a fixed stock in their inventory.
Now if Microsoft were running out their stock (ie, not manufacturing more Xbox) then you would be right; the best way to harm Microsoft would be to not buy it at all. But I'm pretty sure that they're still manufacturing Xbox.
Weapons of Mail Dissemination?
You are wrong. 0dB means a unity gain. In other words, the signal you are measuring is exactly the same intensity as the reference signal.
In audio, 0dBA (notice the A) means it's the same intensity as the smallest discernible noise to "standard" human ears. Basically it's pretty damn quiet.
You most certainly can have negative dB. It just means attenuation (ie, the signal you are measuring has less intensity than the reference signal). 0 gain (which would be truly silent) is the same as negative infinity dB.
So I'm guessing you've never been to h2g2.com.
It's about as official as it gets.
The reason QEMU is faster is because of dynamic translation.
Bochs decodes each and every instruction just before it is executed. So if you have a loop that executes 100 times, you have to decode the same instructions 100 times. That's incredibly slow. I have seen estimates that Bochs needs 160,000 native CPU instructions to emulate a single x86 instruction.
QEMU takes a block of code (typically a whole page) and translates the block into the native instruction set. Then it executes the translated block of code. QEMU tries to keep translated blocks around as long as possible, using dirty bits to determine when retranslation is needed. This is the same technique used by VirtualPC on the Macintosh. It is much faster than Bochs!
There is experimental code in Plex86 to do dynamic translation and Bochs can use Plex86 as the backend (it offloads entire pages of code to Plex86). So it's possible that Bochs will one day achieve the performance of QEMU.
Take note that QEMU is usable today, just so long as you're running purely Linux binaries. It is possible to use QEMU to run Linux/x86 binaries on Linux/PPC for example. QEMU's dynamic translation engine is pretty decent. QEMU doesn't emulate the PC hardware. Bochs does emulate the PC hardware. If you could cherry pick the dynamic translation from QEMU and the PC hardware emulation from Bochs then you'd have something to compete with VirtualPC right now.
Maybe it only appears if you're logged in. I always browse while logged in.
Uhhh... I only ever read the slashdot.org front page and I'm seeing this story. What are you doing wrong?
... that he gets a three-finger salute when he leaves the building.
I'm not mad. I get sullen when I get mad and I don't write anything at all.
Sure, but I don't think there's anything wrong with being passionate about things that other people are doing either. For example, some people become very emotionally attached to their football teams, even if they never participate in the game themselves. I've seen people break down in tears when their team loses the grand final. I don't personally feel that way about any sport, but I don't ridicule these people for feeling an emotional attachment to something.
Those people aren't zealots, they're dickheads. Don't confuse the two.
Well, to be more precise, they might be both zealots and dickheads. But the part of their personality that makes them flame and whine is their dickheadness, not their zeal.
I disagree. Zeal is passion. Look it up in a dictionary. From Webster's:
The word "zealot" has been corrupted by people who want to cast "zealots" in the worst possible light. Don't contribute to the problem! Try and fix it through education. There's nothing wrong with being zealous. It's dickheads that we need to get rid of. Call them dickheads. Don't call them zealots. Calling them zealots leads to confusion because it implies that if you're passionate about Linux then there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with being passionate about Linux! It's a uniquely important thing. Everybody can see that. Free software is something that could potentially change the world for the better. How can you not be excited about that.
Metadata is fine. Even the UNIX filesystem has metadata (eg, the rwx bits, atime, mtime, ctime, the filename itself). I have a real gripe with forked filesystems like HFS and HFS+ and NTFS and HPFS. I think they introduce needless complexity that could be more simply achieved with extensible metadata.
But I don't really want to be drawn into this argument because I lose it everytime I try :-/
Then they weren't really hardcore.
I'm being serious. If these people were just flitting from Windows to Linux, then Linux to MacOS, then they're going to flit to something else pretty soon. They're not hardcore. They're ADHD. Hardcore means hardcore. It means you'll stick with it, no matter what. It doesn't mean enthusiastic-until-the-next-shiny-thing-comes-alon g.
I really have an issue with this "it's just a tool" mantra. It ignores the basic human instinct to grow attached to inanimate objects or seemingly irrelevant things.
For example, during the 2000 olympics there was an Australian speed walker who was doing really well. She was less than 200m from the finish line, entering the stadium, when she was disqualified for lifting both feet off the ground. She burst into tears. She walked back along the course, in obvious emotional pain. Would you walk up to that person and say "it's just a race, get over it you idiot"?
Of course not. She had invested years of her life in training for that event. She was strongly and emotionally tied to the event. It meant a lot to her. It was a horrible thing, to have that moment taken away from her.
There were some recent bushfires in my city. Several 100 homes were destroyed (in a city of 300,000 people that's significant). During the TV coverage a number of distraught homeowners burst into tears. They were completely devastated by what had happened. Would you walk up to these people and say "they were just things, get over it you idiot"?
I'd hope not! These "things" represented their entire lives. Decades of work and investment into their hobbies and their retirement, gone in an instant. They had strong emotional attachment to the homes; they'd raised their children in those homes. To see it all gone was painful to these people.
But the most touching example, and perhaps the one you won't understand, was while reading www.folklore.org. Andy was one of the original Apple Mac developers. He had invested years of his life into helping create the original Mac 128k. No holidays. 7 days a week. 12 hours a day. He had poured his heart and soul into the software. Then one day, a clueless manager (Bob) threatened to fire Andy unless he kissed Bob's arse in front of the other Apple techies. Andy broke down into tears and bawled his eyes out. Would you walk up to Andy and say "it's just a tool, don't be an idiot"?
If you could do such a thing then you're a heartless monster. Andy had obviously formed an emotional attachment to the Mac. Afterall, he had been with it from the first logic gate. He had put so much time and effort into it, that it was painful to him to even imagine losing it. It's like a gifted artist who spends years creating a painting, only to watch it burn in a house fire. It's incredibly painful to see something that represents all of your skill, your time, and your effort, being destroyed or taken away from you.
So to you it's "just a tool". But to other people it's so much more. I see Linux (and all free software) as being a way to bring greater prosperity to the world. It's a way for poorer countries and poorer people to have access to the same great software that I have. I've invested 100s of hours into it, and even though that's a tiny percentage of the billions of man hours invested in Linux, to have it taken away from me would be emotionally painful. It means something to me.
So you might think that's stupid. But I think that says more about you than it says about me.
Actually Apple has always been good and they weren't always the underdog to Microsoft. Go back 25 years and they were both shoestring operations but Apple was bigger than Microsoft.
Apple has always been good because they are a combined hardware/software company with geniuses on the payroll (eg, Raskin, Burcell, and Wozniak). What Apple does is Real Computing. Microsoft is a software company that rips off ideas from others, then rewrites history to pretend that Microsoft did it first. There's no honour in what Microsoft does. It's kinda lame.
Apple-critics like to say that Apple ripped off the GUI from Xerox. But it's not true. Xerox had basic ideas like windows and mice. Apple had to create dozens of new concepts for the GUIs used on the Lisa and the Macintosh. It's fairer to say that Xerox started something and Apple finished it. That's another big point in Apple's favour.
One thing I've always disliked about Apple is (sadly) the Apple community. They're more rabid than Linux fanatics and more clueless to boot. I have listened to various Apple-fanatics defending cooperative multitasking, lack of protected memory, benefits of RAM Doubler, any justification at all for forked filesystems, etc. It always boggles my mind that they can talk about how much more "productive" they are because of 2-second savings in changing focus, but they suddenly go quiet when they have to wait 5 minutes during a reboot because their computer crashed. Thankfully MacOSX has fixed the foundational problems with MacOS.
But leaving the rabid community aside, Apple from the 70s and 80s would have been top of my list of Places I'd Like To Work if I'd been old enough at the time. Even with the downside of Steve Jobs having to be there. Apple does cool stuff. They always have. They still are. They're among the few companies that have kudos in the geek community, even if you didn't particularly like MacOS <= 9 because of the foundational faults in its design.
But Microsoft has always sucked. Bill Gates has always been a dickhead and his company has always been the McDonalds of computing. He might be rich but he has never been cool. There's nothing nifty about Microsoft software. It gets the job done on a budget. That's about the nicest thing you can say about Microsoft.
OpenOffice. Check. Evolution. Check. Galeon. Check. Linux has all the applications that I need to get along.
So do I. That's why I installed DOSBOX and X-MAME. I've got 100s of games. All very high quality. Sure, they're a little old, but they're still fun.
I like Rhythmbox and Grip.
I really don't see how my desktop is a kludge. It all Just Works(tm) for me. My measure of a good desktop is how many times I feel the need to go to the command line instead of using the GUI tools. I am pleased to find that in a modern GNOME desktop I've never felt that need.
Now I needed to jump through a lot of hoops to get Linux working on this iBook, but XConfig wasn't one of them. The X installation was simple as could be; the default configuration worked. Mostly thanks to XFree86 using DDC and EDID these days to autoprobe everything.
You go ahead use what you want - maybe your application and gaming needs are different - but your criticisms of Linux are a personal thing. It's naive of you to claim that because Linux isn't appropriate for you that it's no good for anybody else. Linux is perfectly adequate for many of us as a desktop, right now.
This isn't a dig at you, but I just spotted something I think is worth pointing out.
The problem as you see it is that you are just as talented, just as hard-working, just as experienced, and just as educated as the Indian programmer.
But the job still goes to him instead of you because of circumstances beyond your control.
It reminds me of black people who were never given jobs - white people given preference - for no "better" reason than their skin colour (which was definitely beyond their control).
I hope somebody out there feels some empathy now, if they didn't already.
That's great for you at home on your Intel/x86 32-bit box running Mplayer. But how is that going to help me on my Apple iBook with a PowerPC CPU? Or how about powering up your new AMD-64 with a 64-bit kernel only to find you have to run the Linux kernel in 32-bit mode because the Windows drivers are all 32-bit.
This is ignoring other issues like stability, maintenance, integration, support, debugging, ... legality.
No thanks.
20 years from now the only computing experts in USA will be hobbyists. All the professionals will be overseas. No more mentoring. No more masters handing down their knowledge to the starry-eyed pupils. No more in-house talent. You'll have outsourced it all.
Then the prices will go up.
It's a simple fact about outsourcing. It's a short-term win and a long-term loss. This is true for any field, including blue-collar workers. I've come to realise that there is just as much unspoken handed-down knowledge in those fields as in any other.
I don't see how it's morally any worse than the USA where your tax dollars are used to pay somebody else to do your killing on your behalf.