Yeah, I've noticed a similar thing. Not neccesarily because of this, I do most of my pertinent shopping at a locally owned organic co-op a block away. If it's really important to you, stop by if you have one in the area, they have plenty of "clean" soap.:)
I've also not had problems finding non-anti-bacterial SoftSoap, which is a brand of liquid soap, in grocery or Target stores.:)
Silly ACs. What he doesn't know is that my girlfriend is a big geek too. Knows about as much (not much!:P) Klingon as I do. The tokhe straav must be jealous that I have someone with whom to watch TNG, IRC and make sweet love. hehe.:)
Yeah, I've heard similar things about Japanese culture, but I don't feel well versed enough to make any statements.
Indeed, the immune system needs to work up immunity. We have evolved to be the species we are over millions upon millions of years to live with bacteria.
Similarily, kids need to get sick when they're young, to be exposed to a community of people and thus a community for microbes for which they built resistance. Without that exposure, the immune system is an atrophied muscle with very few immunities.
No, not all antibiotics are the same, and I hope I didn't sound like I was saying that resistence to one particular drug or class of drugs meant resistance to all of them. However, as the effectiveness of the drug used in these products declines, it will be replaced by one that still works.
Yes, over-prescribing is a huge deal. I realize I made it sound like it's largely antibiotic deoderant, my bad. I was just trying to get across that it's up to *us* to turn down antibiotics unless neccesary.
The real danger is over prescribing of effective antibiotics in unnecessary cases. How many times have you taken antibiotics for a cold? for the flu?...bronchitis.
My mom is one of those people are generally try to avoid prescriptions, antibiotics and generally any drug unless the doc says that it's quite needed. It's a somewhat irrational fear, but grounded in fact. I've personally never taken antibiotics for a cold, flu, or brochitis (only had it once).
Of the ones I listed, triclosan or another drug-sounding active ingredient was listed. While pH may play a role in these products, there is no doubt that triclosan's presence must have a purpose. I tried to avoid listing the products that seemed to rely on alcohol as the bacteria terminating agent.
He also has an erythromycin-based acne medication which was prescribed to him. He has close to no acne (one zit every couple months), and has been like that for a long time. Doctor keeps giving him scripts for it, just in case.
Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity in my use of the terms, though.:)
I imagine that an organism could become resistant to something like bleach or alcohol. I imagine it would take a long time for such a trait (or a series of traits compounding to end up with that phenotype) to evolve.
Yes, some bacteria thrive in boiling water, super-high levels of sulfer, and extremely high saline levels.
As Analog Boy said, I think most the ones I listed are triclosan. I'm at work now though. I didn't list the non-drug-anti-bacterial agents. My roomate also has an alcohol-based no-water hand cleaner, but since it it has alcohol, I didn't think it really counted.
I've been chatting with some of the folks in #zaurus on OPN and I'm quite disapointed in some of the features of the Zaurus.
The code example I gave would rely on this OSA existing for both Mozilla's framework as well as on the Zaurus. Or a perl wrapper to make it appear so. According to the people with whom I spoke, the Zaurus doesn't have a consistent and elegant DB API to allow such data access. This perl wrapper would have to deal with the files on the Zaurus device. Sub-optimal. You'd think that without having to worry about legacy stuff, they would've taken the opportunity to do sometthing the right way, rather than the legacy way. Oh well!
Well, my PDA operating environment/system, Dynapad will be able to be scripted just like I'd like.;)
How many of you use anti-bacterial products? Until we start using anti-bacterial agents judiciously, bacteria will continue evolving to this new environment.
I choose to know use any anti-bacterial agents, with the exception of bleach, which kills by a different type of pathway than anti-biotics.
Unforunately, this isn't a case of something where one person can make a difference. As long a huge percentage of the people in this world (mostly Americans and Canadians, I imagine) continue overusing and over perscribing anti-biotics, we will just be making the bacteria populations stronger and better adapted to whatever drugs we throw at them.
For starters, try to get everyone in your household to stop using anti-bacterial products unless they need them. The people with whom you interact the most are the ones you live with, and swap the most bacteria.
No, this isn't just one of those things that "environmentalists" talk about. The possible danger is very real. That's evolution for you.
Looking through my roomate's things, I find:
* Anti-bacterial deoderant * Anti-bacterial shower soap bar * Anti-bacterial toothpaste * Anti-bacterial mouthwash * Anti-bacterial liquid hand soap * Anti-bacterial hand lotion (why?!)
There are probably more around here, stashed somewhere.
Yes, it'll even happen if you're a x-ian who "doesn't believe" in evolution. Unless you know something we don't- perhaps god is the anti-bacterial agent to which bacterial population cannot adapt!:P
Whenever I see this, it just makes me wish that most Unix apps- whether they were written against GTK+, Qt, KDE, Xlib, GTK+GNOME, Qt+KDE, XForms, FLTK, Prima, Motif, whatever- has some sort of AppleScript-like API. I know that KDE has DCOP, but that's for KDE apps, not all Qt apps. GNOME has CORBA, but again, only for GNOME apps, not all GTK+ apps.
Hell, they don't even have to be standard across toolkits. I'd be extra happy if they all just responded to XML-RPC.
Now, if we had something like Apple's OSA (Open Script Architecture, what AppleScript ties in to) in these GUI toolkits, we could write a perl script to act like a "hotsync conduit" on Windoze/Mac OS with the Palm desktop.
Except, it wouldn't have to be a thousand line pain in the ass C++ app. It'd just a 10 line perl script, looking something like:
foreach $name ( $cal->personKeys ) {
#getPerson returns undef if she doesn't exist
if ($pdaCal->getPerson($person) eq $person->asZaurusPerson) {#perhaps further checking
} else {
$pdaCal->newPerson( $person->asZaurusPerson);
} } $pda->close();
Now, this is hypothetical perl, it won't work, and the parts that normally would are probably malformed.
But this sort of thing is *so* far from impossible. It just has to be figured in from the start of a toolkit or even an app, which could implement it's own.
That's exactly how governments, charities, and NGOs get your political support and your money. Obviously, no one with any sense *wants* people to starve. Which makes it a classic us-against-them case- apathic, selfish republican assholes against sympathetic DFLers who just want to help.
Plenty of people have given their lives in vain for many causes, including the illusion that our aid helps people. It is truly sad that so many people have died- given their lives, or had it taken from them- in vain.
It has nothing to do with being selfish. If you prefer to be duped by the governments of the world, fine. Aid is often nothing but big business and pawns in a world-wide chess game. That's not all cases of charitable action, of course.
I have wanted to joint the Peace Corps for as long as I can remember. However, of the interviews I've done with those formerly apart of the Corps, and having read independent journalist correspondence throughough many of the government created famines (like those in Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda), I decided I could not justify so taking so much away from those who need it, so that the US government, and the governments of third-world countries could benefit off of my charity.
When I read comments like the parent, I know that no matter how much work I put in toward truth and justice (excuse the cliche), our current iteration of "civilization" won't survive it's ignorance. Perhaps we could work toward a common goal, that nuclear proliferation of which you speak. We'd be a lot better without nations like mine screwing around with the business of so many nations, pretending that we have a place their or that we know what is best.
I suggest you check out the book "The Road To Hell" by Michael Maren. There are other plenty of other books, journal articles, and other information to read that speaks of the truth of the effects of foreign aid on the peoples on which we inflict it. However, I fear that you'd just dismiss it, because it doesn't just reinforce what you already think you know, and make you feel warm any fuzzy about your $0.70/day you give to Save the Children (one of the worst of the shams in the chaity business).
I once thought like you. We can still help people, but the avenues made available by the majority of NGOs and government organizations do a lot more harm than good to the people who are supposed to need the help.
I'd love for my tax dollars to go to actually helping someone other than corporations and others in powerful positions. I'm not sure why you would associate my stance with the moron known as GWB. Neither pouring more money into what amounts to be stolen food and bribes into the pockets of third-world government pockets (not the people who need the help) nor bombing Iraq will help much of anyone.
I know this big post has probably been a waste of my time. You probably want to continue to be duped, and you probably won't read all this. But I wish you the best, even if you do not choose to find truth.
So, these buddies of yours hand-deliver this food to poor hungry children in South America? They spoon it into the sad mouths of starving people?
I'm sure your pals don't mean any harm. I'm not accusing them of being bad people.
Of course, one should not believe everything one reads. But most of the stuff I've read about aid cites actual experience as forgotten UN reports, rather than just some random site with banner ads.
Go do some research. Read a book, I reccomend "The Road To Hell" by Michael Maren. After finding out the truth of the aid business, it won't be worth clicking that button just to get the false sense that you helped someone.
Not quite. It doesn't add another morsel of food to the dictator's menu, but it will add a few US dollars.
Food Aid is quite the twisted web. Americans get to feel that they helped some starving Somali kid out, but the Aid Business harms a lot more than it helps.
I'm not a big gamer, but I've been to a handful of LAN parties.
Inevitably, at least at the ones I've been to, there is always someone spending half or a third of the day futzing with their spare machine to get a dedicated game server going. Which got me thinking... There are a bunch of these games with a dedicated server versions for Linux. Wouldn't it be sweet if you had, on a bootable CD, a barebones Linux install that booted straight into a pre-configured, and chock-full of maps, game server? You'd need a seperate CD for each game of course. Some games wouldn't even fit on a CD. Perhaps a bootable DVD is the answer? Or swapping CDs with 'mappacks?'
Unless you're going to homeschool your children (which would be wise), I don't know if any name that could be contorted to "Sexifuck" by recess bullies would be a good idea. Or "Sex" for short.
While I'm a user of hot-keys in Mac OS 9, X, and elsewhere and generally a keyboard navigation proponent, people can build up a muscle-memory for mousing as well. I'm not one, but I've known plenty of people, especially graphic designers (who seem to be more visual than myself) who work faster going to menus than I do by using hotkeys. Not because mousing is inherently faster, but because their muscle memory of using the mouse for certain operations is more developed.
Scriptability: You mention AppleScript, and claims it is like having shellscript for GUI. No it isn't: you are bound to use that specific language. They could easily have supplied a network protocol (like KDE's DCOP) or any other more generic interface. Since they didn't, everything has to go to this dreadful language. Any experienced programmer would instantly fear "an easy-to-use, approachable, English-like language".
Way to do your research, lil buddy.
The AppleScript system is open. In fact, AppleScript just happens to be the default language Apple gives you to use within their "Open Script Architecture" (OSA).
For example, you could use JavaScript to tie into all the hooks AppleScript can. There is an older list of other OSA languages available as well.
As an experienced programmer, I find AppleScript useful. When I'm scripting a bunch of Mac apps, the english-ness and gimpy-ness of AppleScript has never bothered me. Why? Because I'm not doing any "real" work. If I'd like to do a combination of "real" work and scripting apps, I could easily use a language from the above list, or call the script events from C or a C module access by a real language.
Huh? In one paragraph, you say that Mac OS X isn't intuitive. Then you say it is.
Indeed, I don't find Mac OS X's GUI to be much like Mac OS 9s. Ask any old-school Machead, and they'll tell you that it's nothing like OS 9, it's too much like NeXTSTEP. Ask any ex-NeXTie like myself, and we'll tell you it's too much like OS 9. It's somewhere in between. If it just stuck to pure NeXTSTEP or pure OS 9, more people would probably like it. OS 9's memory management is hell, but it's quite intuitive.
I've tried them all. OS X was my main OS for a year. As a desktop, I'd rank it #1 over the other available desktop options. I didn't find it a real pain to use, not 10.1 at least. DP4 was. I found it visually appealing, yet productive. Nothing wrong with that.
You may not like OS X. That is swell. However, it doesn't mean that it's cumbersome and annoying for everyone. Simiarliarily, there are many of us, including myself, who find GNOME, KDE and Windows a helluva pain in the ass to get anything done with. I've used them. They suck. Doesn't mean they can work well for you.
Before using Mac OS X, I used Linux for a couple years, and then found NeXTSTEP and OpenStep. Mac OS X hasn't annoyed me since DP4. I used OS X as my primary OS for about a year, until I recently switched back to Linux for a number of reasons, none of which had to do with OS X sucking or falling short.
Most Linux GUIs do suck. I've used Mac OS Classic, OS X, Linux, and *STEP extensively. Naturally, NeXTSTEP 3.3 is the epitome of all that is good (except POSIX compliance). Mac OS X is in the second place. BeOS wouldn't probably be up there if I ever had used it for anything.
If all these GNOME and KDE people are set on ripping something off, we'd all be better off it they were ripping off OS X than Windows. However, poorly copied OS X features could be quite disasterous. Far more than poorly copied Windows features.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I've noticed a similar thing. Not neccesarily because of this, I do most of my pertinent shopping at a locally owned organic co-op a block away. If it's really important to you, stop by if you have one in the area, they have plenty of "clean" soap. :)
:)
I've also not had problems finding non-anti-bacterial SoftSoap, which is a brand of liquid soap, in grocery or Target stores.
Silly ACs. What he doesn't know is that my girlfriend is a big geek too. Knows about as much (not much! :P) Klingon as I do. The tokhe straav must be jealous that I have someone with whom to watch TNG, IRC and make sweet love. hehe. :)
To the tokhe straav, I say: Hab soSlI' quch!
Qapla' jup!
Yeah, I've heard similar things about Japanese culture, but I don't feel well versed enough to make any statements.
Indeed, the immune system needs to work up immunity. We have evolved to be the species we are over millions upon millions of years to live with bacteria.
Similarily, kids need to get sick when they're young, to be exposed to a community of people and thus a community for microbes for which they built resistance. Without that exposure, the immune system is an atrophied muscle with very few immunities.
Kudos to you and your wife.
No, not all antibiotics are the same, and I hope I didn't sound like I was saying that resistence to one particular drug or class of drugs meant resistance to all of them. However, as the effectiveness of the drug used in these products declines, it will be replaced by one that still works.
...bronchitis.
Yes, over-prescribing is a huge deal. I realize I made it sound like it's largely antibiotic deoderant, my bad. I was just trying to get across that it's up to *us* to turn down antibiotics unless neccesary.
The real danger is over prescribing of effective antibiotics in unnecessary cases. How many times have you taken antibiotics for a cold? for the flu?
My mom is one of those people are generally try to avoid prescriptions, antibiotics and generally any drug unless the doc says that it's quite needed. It's a somewhat irrational fear, but grounded in fact. I've personally never taken antibiotics for a cold, flu, or brochitis (only had it once).
Of the ones I listed, triclosan or another drug-sounding active ingredient was listed. While pH may play a role in these products, there is no doubt that triclosan's presence must have a purpose. I tried to avoid listing the products that seemed to rely on alcohol as the bacteria terminating agent.
:)
He also has an erythromycin-based acne medication which was prescribed to him. He has close to no acne (one zit every couple months), and has been like that for a long time. Doctor keeps giving him scripts for it, just in case.
Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity in my use of the terms, though.
I imagine that an organism could become resistant to something like bleach or alcohol. I imagine it would take a long time for such a trait (or a series of traits compounding to end up with that phenotype) to evolve.
Yes, some bacteria thrive in boiling water, super-high levels of sulfer, and extremely high saline levels.
As Analog Boy said, I think most the ones I listed are triclosan. I'm at work now though. I didn't list the non-drug-anti-bacterial agents. My roomate also has an alcohol-based no-water hand cleaner, but since it it has alcohol, I didn't think it really counted.
I know, bad form, replying to oneself. :P
;)
I've been chatting with some of the folks in #zaurus on OPN and I'm quite disapointed in some of the features of the Zaurus.
The code example I gave would rely on this OSA existing for both Mozilla's framework as well as on the Zaurus. Or a perl wrapper to make it appear so. According to the people with whom I spoke, the Zaurus doesn't have a consistent and elegant DB API to allow such data access. This perl wrapper would have to deal with the files on the Zaurus device. Sub-optimal. You'd think that without having to worry about legacy stuff, they would've taken the opportunity to do sometthing the right way, rather than the legacy way. Oh well!
Well, my PDA operating environment/system, Dynapad will be able to be scripted just like I'd like.
From your sig:
You have good knowledge of UNIX and a girlfriend. Not many people can say that.
Luckily, I can! And I can speak a little Klingon!
How many of you use anti-bacterial products? Until we start using anti-bacterial agents judiciously, bacteria will continue evolving to this new environment.
:P
I choose to know use any anti-bacterial agents, with the exception of bleach, which kills by a different type of pathway than anti-biotics.
Unforunately, this isn't a case of something where one person can make a difference. As long a huge percentage of the people in this world (mostly Americans and Canadians, I imagine) continue overusing and over perscribing anti-biotics, we will just be making the bacteria populations stronger and better adapted to whatever drugs we throw at them.
For starters, try to get everyone in your household to stop using anti-bacterial products unless they need them. The people with whom you interact the most are the ones you live with, and swap the most bacteria.
No, this isn't just one of those things that "environmentalists" talk about. The possible danger is very real. That's evolution for you.
Looking through my roomate's things, I find:
* Anti-bacterial deoderant
* Anti-bacterial shower soap bar
* Anti-bacterial toothpaste
* Anti-bacterial mouthwash
* Anti-bacterial liquid hand soap
* Anti-bacterial hand lotion (why?!)
There are probably more around here, stashed somewhere.
Yes, it'll even happen if you're a x-ian who "doesn't believe" in evolution. Unless you know something we don't- perhaps god is the anti-bacterial agent to which bacterial population cannot adapt!
Whenever I see this, it just makes me wish that most Unix apps- whether they were written against GTK+, Qt, KDE, Xlib, GTK+GNOME, Qt+KDE, XForms, FLTK, Prima, Motif, whatever- has some sort of AppleScript-like API. I know that KDE has DCOP, but that's for KDE apps, not all Qt apps. GNOME has CORBA, but again, only for GNOME apps, not all GTK+ apps.
$ pdaCal = $pda->application("Qtopia:Addressbook");
Hell, they don't even have to be standard across toolkits. I'd be extra happy if they all just responded to XML-RPC.
Now, if we had something like Apple's OSA (Open Script Architecture, what AppleScript ties in to) in these GUI toolkits, we could write a perl script to act like a "hotsync conduit" on Windoze/Mac OS with the Palm desktop.
Except, it wouldn't have to be a thousand line pain in the ass C++ app. It'd just a 10 line perl script, looking something like:
use ZaurusSync;
use MozillaOSA;
$pda = ZaurusSync->new();
$pda->openOn("/dev/ttyS1");
$cal = MozillaOSA->new()->application("Mozilla:Addr essbook");
foreach $name ( $cal->personKeys ) {
#getPerson returns undef if she doesn't exist
if ($pdaCal->getPerson($person) eq $person->asZaurusPerson) {#perhaps further checking
} else {
$pdaCal->newPerson( $person->asZaurusPerson);
}
}
$pda->close();
Now, this is hypothetical perl, it won't work, and the parts that normally would are probably malformed.
But this sort of thing is *so* far from impossible. It just has to be figured in from the start of a toolkit or even an app, which could implement it's own.
If Mac OS can do it, why can't we Unix peeps?
No, he has seen the Save the Children commercials on TV and press releases from out government. We are the U-S-A, we no like tyrants! No sir!
I wonder if he's ever heard of Syaad Baare- also algosised as Siad Bare?
That's exactly how governments, charities, and NGOs get your political support and your money. Obviously, no one with any sense *wants* people to starve. Which makes it a classic us-against-them case- apathic, selfish republican assholes against sympathetic DFLers who just want to help.
Plenty of people have given their lives in vain for many causes, including the illusion that our aid helps people. It is truly sad that so many people have died- given their lives, or had it taken from them- in vain.
It has nothing to do with being selfish. If you prefer to be duped by the governments of the world, fine. Aid is often nothing but big business and pawns in a world-wide chess game. That's not all cases of charitable action, of course.
I have wanted to joint the Peace Corps for as long as I can remember. However, of the interviews I've done with those formerly apart of the Corps, and having read independent journalist correspondence throughough many of the government created famines (like those in Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda), I decided I could not justify so taking so much away from those who need it, so that the US government, and the governments of third-world countries could benefit off of my charity.
When I read comments like the parent, I know that no matter how much work I put in toward truth and justice (excuse the cliche), our current iteration of "civilization" won't survive it's ignorance. Perhaps we could work toward a common goal, that nuclear proliferation of which you speak. We'd be a lot better without nations like mine screwing around with the business of so many nations, pretending that we have a place their or that we know what is best.
I suggest you check out the book "The Road To Hell" by Michael Maren. There are other plenty of other books, journal articles, and other information to read that speaks of the truth of the effects of foreign aid on the peoples on which we inflict it. However, I fear that you'd just dismiss it, because it doesn't just reinforce what you already think you know, and make you feel warm any fuzzy about your $0.70/day you give to Save the Children (one of the worst of the shams in the chaity business).
I once thought like you. We can still help people, but the avenues made available by the majority of NGOs and government organizations do a lot more harm than good to the people who are supposed to need the help.
I'd love for my tax dollars to go to actually helping someone other than corporations and others in powerful positions. I'm not sure why you would associate my stance with the moron known as GWB. Neither pouring more money into what amounts to be stolen food and bribes into the pockets of third-world government pockets (not the people who need the help) nor bombing Iraq will help much of anyone.
I know this big post has probably been a waste of my time. You probably want to continue to be duped, and you probably won't read all this. But I wish you the best, even if you do not choose to find truth.
Peace-
So, these buddies of yours hand-deliver this food to poor hungry children in South America? They spoon it into the sad mouths of starving people?
I'm sure your pals don't mean any harm. I'm not accusing them of being bad people.
Of course, one should not believe everything one reads. But most of the stuff I've read about aid cites actual experience as forgotten UN reports, rather than just some random site with banner ads.
Go do some research. Read a book, I reccomend "The Road To Hell" by Michael Maren. After finding out the truth of the aid business, it won't be worth clicking that button just to get the false sense that you helped someone.
Not quite. It doesn't add another morsel of food to the dictator's menu, but it will add a few US dollars.
Food Aid is quite the twisted web. Americans get to feel that they helped some starving Somali kid out, but the Aid Business harms a lot more than it helps.
Three cheers for Cultural Imperialism!
I'm not a big gamer, but I've been to a handful of LAN parties.
Inevitably, at least at the ones I've been to, there is always someone spending half or a third of the day futzing with their spare machine to get a dedicated game server going. Which got me thinking... There are a bunch of these games with a dedicated server versions for Linux. Wouldn't it be sweet if you had, on a bootable CD, a barebones Linux install that booted straight into a pre-configured, and chock-full of maps, game server? You'd need a seperate CD for each game of course. Some games wouldn't even fit on a CD. Perhaps a bootable DVD is the answer? Or swapping CDs with 'mappacks?'
Unless you're going to homeschool your children (which would be wise), I don't know if any name that could be contorted to "Sexifuck" by recess bullies would be a good idea. Or "Sex" for short.
Heh, OK. I thought that was the case, but thought I'd make sure. ;)
While I'm a user of hot-keys in Mac OS 9, X, and elsewhere and generally a keyboard navigation proponent, people can build up a muscle-memory for mousing as well. I'm not one, but I've known plenty of people, especially graphic designers (who seem to be more visual than myself) who work faster going to menus than I do by using hotkeys. Not because mousing is inherently faster, but because their muscle memory of using the mouse for certain operations is more developed.
Goes both ways.
Scriptability: You mention AppleScript, and claims it is like having shellscript for GUI. No it isn't: you are bound to use that specific language. They could easily have supplied a network protocol (like KDE's DCOP) or any other more generic interface. Since they didn't, everything has to go to this dreadful language. Any experienced programmer would instantly fear "an easy-to-use, approachable, English-like language".
Way to do your research, lil buddy.
The AppleScript system is open. In fact, AppleScript just happens to be the default language Apple gives you to use within their "Open Script Architecture" (OSA).
For example, you could use JavaScript to tie into all the hooks AppleScript can. There is an older list of other OSA languages available as well.
As an experienced programmer, I find AppleScript useful. When I'm scripting a bunch of Mac apps, the english-ness and gimpy-ness of AppleScript has never bothered me. Why? Because I'm not doing any "real" work. If I'd like to do a combination of "real" work and scripting apps, I could easily use a language from the above list, or call the script events from C or a C module access by a real language.
Huh? In one paragraph, you say that Mac OS X isn't intuitive. Then you say it is.
Indeed, I don't find Mac OS X's GUI to be much like Mac OS 9s. Ask any old-school Machead, and they'll tell you that it's nothing like OS 9, it's too much like NeXTSTEP. Ask any ex-NeXTie like myself, and we'll tell you it's too much like OS 9. It's somewhere in between. If it just stuck to pure NeXTSTEP or pure OS 9, more people would probably like it. OS 9's memory management is hell, but it's quite intuitive.
I've tried them all. OS X was my main OS for a year. As a desktop, I'd rank it #1 over the other available desktop options. I didn't find it a real pain to use, not 10.1 at least. DP4 was. I found it visually appealing, yet productive. Nothing wrong with that.
You may not like OS X. That is swell. However, it doesn't mean that it's cumbersome and annoying for everyone. Simiarliarily, there are many of us, including myself, who find GNOME, KDE and Windows a helluva pain in the ass to get anything done with. I've used them. They suck. Doesn't mean they can work well for you.
Before using Mac OS X, I used Linux for a couple years, and then found NeXTSTEP and OpenStep. Mac OS X hasn't annoyed me since DP4. I used OS X as my primary OS for about a year, until I recently switched back to Linux for a number of reasons, none of which had to do with OS X sucking or falling short.
Most Linux GUIs do suck. I've used Mac OS Classic, OS X, Linux, and *STEP extensively. Naturally, NeXTSTEP 3.3 is the epitome of all that is good (except POSIX compliance). Mac OS X is in the second place. BeOS wouldn't probably be up there if I ever had used it for anything.
If all these GNOME and KDE people are set on ripping something off, we'd all be better off it they were ripping off OS X than Windows. However, poorly copied OS X features could be quite disasterous. Far more than poorly copied Windows features.
I was having this conversation with my girlfriend a while back.
How much do you think the vision of our future in Star Trek will and does affect the direction, form and function of our real future?
How will the starship designs in Star Trek influence real shuttle and space craft designs?
Communicators? Other technology?
Aaron