Not so. If you subscribe to a socialist philosophy because you want more for yourself, then yes, you are greedy. Socialism its self however is fundamentally not greedy, or at least personally greedy (maybe it is greedy from societies perspective).
I'd be interested to see what Mac gaming is like in general. Since historically it's been PC>Mac for number of games, release date etc, and atm PC gaming is falling behind consoles, how is Mac gaming doing? Do you guys have the same rediculous DRM issues?
No, because they think someone should be paid for everything, and if you are using open source software, you aren't paying for it. It doesn't matter that the people who made it offer it for free, it's that you aren't using the competitions software that does cost money. They have the best interests of their members at heart, and those include encouraging profit for said members. It's a very capitalist idea, and very American to I might add, as the US is supremelly capitalist - by comparison europe in general is far more socialist, and I would guess Canada is as well. Can't really speak for anywhere else.
Except placebos aren't heavily diluted active ingredients, they have no active ingredients in them at all - that's the point. Homeopathy is essentially using the placebo effect, but a placebo in a medical trial has nothing in it which should have any effect (sugar pills, water etc). Homeopathy claims that the dilution of a symtom causing agent relieves the symptoms when applied. A placebo works basically because the taker believes it will - it is not the dilution that does it.
I don't think that's specific to the ubuntu forums. Have you ever tried to find a solution to a problem anywhere else, because you seem to get the same problems no matter where you go. With forums especially, people are lazy and often don't even read what your problem is properly (if I had £1 for every time I had a problem and specifically said "I have already tried fix (a)" and then somebody says "have you tried using (a)"...well you get the idea). There's also the problem that a lot of people feel themselves to be superior in some way or give useless answers like "just wipe your hard drive and install [insert their OS of choice here]" or "just go back XP newb - you can't handle linux". The problem isn't the forum, it's the people on it, and I highly doubt there's any forum out there that doesn't have at least some people like that.
That works in a perfect world where the listener has all information available. Lets use the example of a newspaper printing a story where some celebrity is shown to be abusive to their partner. It would likelly be read by millions of people. Then the celeb comes out and says "I do not beat my partner". Now, the average reader has no information available on the matter other than what the media tell them. If you have slander/libel laws, the paper must provide evidence and/or proof. Without them, it might as well be one persons word against the other. It is a relativelly simple thing to prove that it has happened - photos, audio recordings, wounds etc. However it is incredibly difficult to prove that you HAVN'T. How can you do it short of providing 24/7 footage for the past year (or whatever time period is applicable)? As a result, the career of the celeb is essentially over because there was nothing to stop the paper from printing the article. Also, in practice, it works by fear as much as actually going into practice - the paper doesn't want to get sued, shut down etc, so they don't print things without evidence (at least in most cases, and if they do, present it as speculation).
Apart from anything else, slander/libel laws do not "filter what another can hear or see", they provide guards against people spreading false information. Unless they are abused, such laws are a good thing and are neccessary in the real world.
I hope they do too, although I find it unlikelly it will reach my house any time this side of 2050 (I live in the country - with literally me and about 3 other houses and a farm, then the nearest place is 3 miles away). Possible, but unlikelly *crosses fingers*. It would definitelly be better than the ~1mbps I get at the moment (although ADSL2+ could get that to ~4mbps).
As I said, little to do with the crime, not nothing. That said, why does committing a crime mean that the government, or worse, a corporation (I can't remember WHO they said he had to turn the info over to) has the right to your personal information in order to see who else might be committing a crime?
Exactly. I don't think I've seen that many people on here advocate piracy, it's usually anti-anti-piracy laws, such as the proposed UK law where suspected filesharers can be cut off without trial, disproportionate fines (especially from the RIAA) or the treating of bittorrent as illigal regardless of what's being shared (open source software etc).
This can't really be treated as any of those. It would seem that the fine is roughly equivalent to 15000 copies of the game. That's assuming none is added for the crime, so it seems like a fairly reasonable fine. The only possible problem I can see is that he had to give over access to social networking sites etc. as that has little to do with the crime.
I understand the issue of the little resizing tab possibly being off screen, but the logical reason for not allowing other corners ad edges to be grabbed is that there is no window borders or dressings other than the tab in the lower right corner. They could add window borders or more corner doodads, but the one on the lower right fits right under commonly used vertical scroll bar widgets and keeps the interface clean. Upper left is off limits, up right is a possibility, and I'm not sure what the implications of sticking a widget in the lower left would be. Anyway, it might not be the best, but the reasoning is pretty clear.
That makes sense up to a point I suppose, but does adding 2 or 3 pixels at the edge really take up that much room or have that much visual impact? I have to admit the standard Vista/7 interface makes the scaling bars a bit big, but I'd still rather have that than not be able to scale from the sides. Actually, looking at it now, it would seem that the reason the X button is slightly to the left of the upper right corner is to facilitate scaling from that corner. It should be noted that other than the close/minimize/mazimize buttons and the addition of a menubar, iTunes on Windows looks pretty much the same as on OS X - it has the same look to the edges (no visual scaler bar) yet it can still be scaled the windows/linux way.
The Apple icon IS a system menu, but what you might be referring to is Finder's menu that you get when a Finder window is active, or you click on your desktop. For those who don't know, Finder is a file browser, like Explorer in Windows or Nautilus in Gnome. In OS X, the file browser is treated like any other application except that your desktop is also a Finder window of sorts. This is identical to Explorer in Windows, and pretty damned close to Nautilus aside from the 'Places' menu. I do wish Finder's 'Go' menu had a permanent placement on the menu bar next to 'Window' and 'Help'!
How does collocating menu bars with windows visually tie functionality to an application? You still have to click on a menu to discover it's functionality, which on any of the systems you've mentioned changes window focus and activates a different window, closing the current menu you have open. IF there was a windowing system that allowed you to keep open multiple menu's from different apps, maybe you'd be onto something, but the benefits of such a system are not immediately obvious, and I'm not aware of any that behave that way. So, if you can't use more than at a time, what use is it to display all those menu bars at once?
For linking the menu to the app visually - that is, making it obvious what the menu belongs to. As someone else mentioned it is not always immediately obvious which window is in focus, if any. Also, I didn't mean THE system menu, but system menus in general. The fact that the desktop has a menu seems a little counter-intuitive (but seamingly a necessary evil due to the rest of the UI).
Obviously the menu bars/panels in Windows and Gnome also both manage active windows and launch applications. Neither actually manage running tasks, just active windows - I'll come back to this. Dock zooming isn't on by default, for the last few releases of OS X anyway.
Well it was on by default in Leopard when my Dad got his iMac. Maybe it was disabled for you because you had had it disabled in the previous version before upgrading. I have no idea whether it is on by default on Snow Leopard, as that was an upgrade from Leopard, so would likely have remembered the setting. anyway, go on...
Yes, the 100% transparent areas that cannot be clicked through could be a problem when a window is behind it. As for the dock not showing multiple program windows, why on earth would need it do that? Managing multiple active windows is accomplished with Expose on OS X, not a bar. It is activated by squeezing your mouse by default.
I beg to differ. What I will say is that Apple are very good at making interfaces that LOOK nice. However, I don't find them all that functional. Here are some examples.
On Windows and Linux (KDE, Gnome...I can't speak for any other set up as I havn't used them. I'm pretty sure Xfce acts the same way though) you can scale windows from any edge or corner, but not on OS X. There seems to be no logical reason for this, and it causes problems if the scaling corner has been moved off-screen or underneath the dock. This is admitedly a minor gripe, but none the less present
The menus for an application over-write the menus for the OS. Other than the Apple menu at the end, you either have the applications menus or the systems menus. On Windows, KDE and Gnome the applications menus are tied to the window, so not only can you use both system and application menus, but the menus are also visually tied to the application, giving a more obvious link to application functions
The dock, to me, seems pretty broken. It is both an application launcher and task manager. Open apps have a little light under them to show that they are active. Other than that there is no visual identification for which apps are running and which aren't. Second, it gets in the way - it is all too easy to activate by accident, especially when the zoom animation is switched on. This also isn't helped by the fact that in between the icons is empty space, rather than a colid (or even transparent) bar - areas where you would expect to not activate the dock do. On Windows you have neither problem - running programs appear in the task-bar, and launcher icons in the quick launch. There is also the start menu which provides access to every installed program (with a few exceptions). It is also clear where the task-bar starts and ends. KDE is pretty much the same in that respect, and Gnome isn't far off. (I havn't tried Win 7 yet, so it should be interesting to see what that's like). As a side note, I hate to think what the dock would be like if it allowed multiple program windows like the other OSs.
Maximize on OSX is fairly useless. Often on Win/KDE/Gnome (which all work the same way) I maximize to get more area around a document. For example in Photoshop when scaling layer which are larger than, or go off the edge of, the document. Other times, it is simply because I don't want to be distracted by other apps. Of course this may be an artifact of the less functional task managment, app lauching and system menu access, as in the other three, you can more easily switch between windows, while on a Mac you have to have to leave the app to access anything else.
So, these, along with other, smaller issues make this particular Apple UI far from perfect, and for me, far out-weigh the good bits. It should also be noted that I am yet to find any UI element in OSX that I prefer over Windows, KDE or Gnome.
One of my friends made a similar PHP script about a month ago that drew Mandelbrot sets (again just for shits and giggles I think). Even at 400x400 it took like 10 seconds to load
They seemed to not want their kids to have a balanced education, instead they wanted them indoctrinated into their own religion from an early age.
Which is entirely within their rights and responsibilities as a parent. Whose responsibility should it be to select a religion for those children?
Further I humbly submit that religion in general is not bad for children and there's no basis for outrage against it.
Religion is a difficult thing to define precisely, but in the context of who's responsibility is it to select one, it pretty much means what a person believes with regard to life the universe and everything (where did we come from, how does it work etc). The only person who should, and indeed can "select a religion" is the person themself. If you are prevented from hearing/reading etc explainations other than the specific one that your parents (or any other person) adhere to, then you are being denied that choice. Being "given a religion" is pretty much saying this is how it happened, end of story, which creates a mindset that is very closed and won't easily waver from what has been preached. Schooling does not "select" (I think choose is a better word as it emphasises the choice rather than what is chosen) peoples religion (at least generally speaking not in the developed world). It doesn't go "some people believe this, so now you do to" (which is essentially what those home schoolers are doing). If a family wants to bring up their children to believe in something, then 9 times out of 10 they will end up succeeding. Thankfully not every parent believes that they should sensor information regarding religion to prevent them from going down "the wrong path". People like these are bad for their childrens development (their reasoning skills will surelly suffer if they are simply told "this is how it is" and nothing else) and bad for society in general.
As for religion not being bad for children, maybe not. Indoctrination into a religion however is Just look at all the people who dismiss all the other religions out of hand but find it difficult to understand why anyone wouldn't believe theirs. They understand rational arguments for anything other than their religion, because the beleif is ingrained in their consiousness, and would almost be like acknowledging a lack of their own existance (to a point)
There is absolutelly nothing stoping anyone from making a tablet that doesn't have an app-store. They've been around for years, just havn't been that popular. What they can't do is use Apples patented UI elements. That's it. Apple has no patent on "tablet computing", only specific ways to interact with tablet computers (and many of them are only valid in the US as said methods aren't covered under most countries patent laws. Pinch to zoom is a prime example, which isn't available on a lot of US smartphones, but is on their European counterparts)
First, if you wish to be taken seriously in an intellectual discussion, please learn the difference between your and you're. I am a grammar nazi (not that I'm proud of it - I can't help it and I blame my mum because she's even worse than I am:S) but things like that show a lack of thought behind posts.
Anyway, back on topic. Icebike did not say that horizontal gene transfer cannot influence fitness, but that the mechnaism itself has no effect. What has the effect is the genes, not how they got there.
Here's evolution by natural selection in a nut shell - organisms are different; some organisms are more suited to their environment than others; better ones survive and reproduce - their traits survive.
Furthermore, Darwin had no knowledge of genes, as they were not known of in his day. This means that his theory does not even touch on the cause of the differences, but focuses on how they propogate. Thus Icebikes statement "Further it has nothing at all to do with Darwinism." because, as I said, Darwinism has nothing to do with genes.
We now know how different traits come into being and what causes the changes (if not completelly then at least to a large degree - there's always more to be learned) so we can fill in the gaps, but that is evolutionary theory, not darwinism (the latter is a part of the former).
I wondered the same thing. If the guy before me is correct, it would seem that it is not molten diamond but simply molten carbon which turns back into diamond when frozen.
I should preface with the fact that I hate Macs. I hate the way OSX works (there are some good things but they are far out-weighed by the bad IMHO*), I hate that to run it you have to buy their specific hardware which has a rediculous mark-up on similarly specced PCs and I hate the "Cult of Mac"**.
That said there really isn't any more reason needed than you don't like it to not use Windows as long as there is another platform that can do what you need (Linux etc wouldn't be particularly good for art, but for other things they are good alternatives). There are things of course that you pretty much have to use Windows for (PC gaming for example, but there is other niché software that isn;'t available on other platforms)
* Of course most of the things I don't like are opinions rather than facts - like the maximizer. Others are more just bad design - the fact you can only resize a window from the bottom corner for example (both of these are of course simple examples, but some of them are far larger and more intrusive, like the dock for example)
** The very fact that they have got people to call them macs rather than just computers really annoys me. You don't see PC people going "I'll just do it on my Windows/Linux" or something, but if it is an Apple computer an aweful lot of people will refer to it almost exclusivelly as a mac(book). Of course the term PC is used for windows/linux/bsd... machines a lot of the time, but then, it does stand for personal computer. *Wonders how many people know that PC as a platform actually means IBM (compatible) PC.* Mac on the other hand is meaningless in that respect./rant
Presumably catering to whatever OS is no. 1 without them having been in the picture. Windows is not targeted for viruses because it is insecure, but because it has had probably 70%+ of the market share for the last 10-15 years at least (I don't honestly know how long they've been on top. Heck I was born in 1988 and didn't get a computer in the house 'til 1999).
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Not so. If you subscribe to a socialist philosophy because you want more for yourself, then yes, you are greedy. Socialism its self however is fundamentally not greedy, or at least personally greedy (maybe it is greedy from societies perspective).
I'd be interested to see what Mac gaming is like in general. Since historically it's been PC>Mac for number of games, release date etc, and atm PC gaming is falling behind consoles, how is Mac gaming doing? Do you guys have the same rediculous DRM issues?
Very true, but they are the exception, not the rule. It's like saying most games are supported on linux because UT2k4 is.
It still isn't commonplace for PEOPLE to steal such things though. Corporations maybe, people, no. (P.S. I'm not the AC above)
No, because they think someone should be paid for everything, and if you are using open source software, you aren't paying for it. It doesn't matter that the people who made it offer it for free, it's that you aren't using the competitions software that does cost money. They have the best interests of their members at heart, and those include encouraging profit for said members. It's a very capitalist idea, and very American to I might add, as the US is supremelly capitalist - by comparison europe in general is far more socialist, and I would guess Canada is as well. Can't really speak for anywhere else.
Except placebos aren't heavily diluted active ingredients, they have no active ingredients in them at all - that's the point. Homeopathy is essentially using the placebo effect, but a placebo in a medical trial has nothing in it which should have any effect (sugar pills, water etc). Homeopathy claims that the dilution of a symtom causing agent relieves the symptoms when applied. A placebo works basically because the taker believes it will - it is not the dilution that does it.
I don't think that's specific to the ubuntu forums. Have you ever tried to find a solution to a problem anywhere else, because you seem to get the same problems no matter where you go. With forums especially, people are lazy and often don't even read what your problem is properly (if I had £1 for every time I had a problem and specifically said "I have already tried fix (a)" and then somebody says "have you tried using (a)"...well you get the idea). There's also the problem that a lot of people feel themselves to be superior in some way or give useless answers like "just wipe your hard drive and install [insert their OS of choice here]" or "just go back XP newb - you can't handle linux". The problem isn't the forum, it's the people on it, and I highly doubt there's any forum out there that doesn't have at least some people like that.
And "the game" (you just lost BTW)
That works in a perfect world where the listener has all information available. Lets use the example of a newspaper printing a story where some celebrity is shown to be abusive to their partner. It would likelly be read by millions of people. Then the celeb comes out and says "I do not beat my partner". Now, the average reader has no information available on the matter other than what the media tell them. If you have slander/libel laws, the paper must provide evidence and/or proof. Without them, it might as well be one persons word against the other. It is a relativelly simple thing to prove that it has happened - photos, audio recordings, wounds etc. However it is incredibly difficult to prove that you HAVN'T. How can you do it short of providing 24/7 footage for the past year (or whatever time period is applicable)? As a result, the career of the celeb is essentially over because there was nothing to stop the paper from printing the article. Also, in practice, it works by fear as much as actually going into practice - the paper doesn't want to get sued, shut down etc, so they don't print things without evidence (at least in most cases, and if they do, present it as speculation).
Apart from anything else, slander/libel laws do not "filter what another can hear or see", they provide guards against people spreading false information. Unless they are abused, such laws are a good thing and are neccessary in the real world.
I hope they do too, although I find it unlikelly it will reach my house any time this side of 2050 (I live in the country - with literally me and about 3 other houses and a farm, then the nearest place is 3 miles away). Possible, but unlikelly *crosses fingers*. It would definitelly be better than the ~1mbps I get at the moment (although ADSL2+ could get that to ~4mbps).
As I said, little to do with the crime, not nothing. That said, why does committing a crime mean that the government, or worse, a corporation (I can't remember WHO they said he had to turn the info over to) has the right to your personal information in order to see who else might be committing a crime?
Exactly. I don't think I've seen that many people on here advocate piracy, it's usually anti-anti-piracy laws, such as the proposed UK law where suspected filesharers can be cut off without trial, disproportionate fines (especially from the RIAA) or the treating of bittorrent as illigal regardless of what's being shared (open source software etc). This can't really be treated as any of those. It would seem that the fine is roughly equivalent to 15000 copies of the game. That's assuming none is added for the crime, so it seems like a fairly reasonable fine. The only possible problem I can see is that he had to give over access to social networking sites etc. as that has little to do with the crime.
Actually ALL PS3 owners have backwards compatibility...with PS1 games (which both FFVII and FFVIII are). It's only PS2 BC they took out.
Live out our days in peace? But what happens when Ras brother comes along and steals our slave girl lover and declares war on Earth?
Portals you say...well wormholes and black holes do go hand in hand.
I understand the issue of the little resizing tab possibly being off screen, but the logical reason for not allowing other corners ad edges to be grabbed is that there is no window borders or dressings other than the tab in the lower right corner. They could add window borders or more corner doodads, but the one on the lower right fits right under commonly used vertical scroll bar widgets and keeps the interface clean. Upper left is off limits, up right is a possibility, and I'm not sure what the implications of sticking a widget in the lower left would be. Anyway, it might not be the best, but the reasoning is pretty clear.
That makes sense up to a point I suppose, but does adding 2 or 3 pixels at the edge really take up that much room or have that much visual impact? I have to admit the standard Vista/7 interface makes the scaling bars a bit big, but I'd still rather have that than not be able to scale from the sides. Actually, looking at it now, it would seem that the reason the X button is slightly to the left of the upper right corner is to facilitate scaling from that corner. It should be noted that other than the close/minimize/mazimize buttons and the addition of a menubar, iTunes on Windows looks pretty much the same as on OS X - it has the same look to the edges (no visual scaler bar) yet it can still be scaled the windows/linux way.
The Apple icon IS a system menu, but what you might be referring to is Finder's menu that you get when a Finder window is active, or you click on your desktop. For those who don't know, Finder is a file browser, like Explorer in Windows or Nautilus in Gnome. In OS X, the file browser is treated like any other application except that your desktop is also a Finder window of sorts. This is identical to Explorer in Windows, and pretty damned close to Nautilus aside from the 'Places' menu. I do wish Finder's 'Go' menu had a permanent placement on the menu bar next to 'Window' and 'Help'! How does collocating menu bars with windows visually tie functionality to an application? You still have to click on a menu to discover it's functionality, which on any of the systems you've mentioned changes window focus and activates a different window, closing the current menu you have open. IF there was a windowing system that allowed you to keep open multiple menu's from different apps, maybe you'd be onto something, but the benefits of such a system are not immediately obvious, and I'm not aware of any that behave that way. So, if you can't use more than at a time, what use is it to display all those menu bars at once?
For linking the menu to the app visually - that is, making it obvious what the menu belongs to. As someone else mentioned it is not always immediately obvious which window is in focus, if any. Also, I didn't mean THE system menu, but system menus in general. The fact that the desktop has a menu seems a little counter-intuitive (but seamingly a necessary evil due to the rest of the UI).
Obviously the menu bars/panels in Windows and Gnome also both manage active windows and launch applications. Neither actually manage running tasks, just active windows - I'll come back to this. Dock zooming isn't on by default, for the last few releases of OS X anyway.
Well it was on by default in Leopard when my Dad got his iMac. Maybe it was disabled for you because you had had it disabled in the previous version before upgrading. I have no idea whether it is on by default on Snow Leopard, as that was an upgrade from Leopard, so would likely have remembered the setting. anyway, go on...
Yes, the 100% transparent areas that cannot be clicked through could be a problem when a window is behind it. As for the dock not showing multiple program windows, why on earth would need it do that? Managing multiple active windows is accomplished with Expose on OS X, not a bar. It is activated by squeezing your mouse by default.
Why wouldn'
usually Apple gets interfaces near perfect.
I beg to differ. What I will say is that Apple are very good at making interfaces that LOOK nice. However, I don't find them all that functional. Here are some examples.
So, these, along with other, smaller issues make this particular Apple UI far from perfect, and for me, far out-weigh the good bits. It should also be noted that I am yet to find any UI element in OSX that I prefer over Windows, KDE or Gnome.
One of my friends made a similar PHP script about a month ago that drew Mandelbrot sets (again just for shits and giggles I think). Even at 400x400 it took like 10 seconds to load
They seemed to not want their kids to have a balanced education, instead they wanted them indoctrinated into their own religion from an early age.
Which is entirely within their rights and responsibilities as a parent. Whose responsibility should it be to select a religion for those children?
Further I humbly submit that religion in general is not bad for children and there's no basis for outrage against it.
Religion is a difficult thing to define precisely, but in the context of who's responsibility is it to select one, it pretty much means what a person believes with regard to life the universe and everything (where did we come from, how does it work etc). The only person who should, and indeed can "select a religion" is the person themself. If you are prevented from hearing/reading etc explainations other than the specific one that your parents (or any other person) adhere to, then you are being denied that choice. Being "given a religion" is pretty much saying this is how it happened, end of story, which creates a mindset that is very closed and won't easily waver from what has been preached. Schooling does not "select" (I think choose is a better word as it emphasises the choice rather than what is chosen) peoples religion (at least generally speaking not in the developed world). It doesn't go "some people believe this, so now you do to" (which is essentially what those home schoolers are doing). If a family wants to bring up their children to believe in something, then 9 times out of 10 they will end up succeeding. Thankfully not every parent believes that they should sensor information regarding religion to prevent them from going down "the wrong path". People like these are bad for their childrens development (their reasoning skills will surelly suffer if they are simply told "this is how it is" and nothing else) and bad for society in general.
As for religion not being bad for children, maybe not. Indoctrination into a religion however is Just look at all the people who dismiss all the other religions out of hand but find it difficult to understand why anyone wouldn't believe theirs. They understand rational arguments for anything other than their religion, because the beleif is ingrained in their consiousness, and would almost be like acknowledging a lack of their own existance (to a point)
There is absolutelly nothing stoping anyone from making a tablet that doesn't have an app-store. They've been around for years, just havn't been that popular. What they can't do is use Apples patented UI elements. That's it. Apple has no patent on "tablet computing", only specific ways to interact with tablet computers (and many of them are only valid in the US as said methods aren't covered under most countries patent laws. Pinch to zoom is a prime example, which isn't available on a lot of US smartphones, but is on their European counterparts)
FYI it still needs to eat, just not for energy. Still needs other things, like the components to build proteins.
First, if you wish to be taken seriously in an intellectual discussion, please learn the difference between your and you're. I am a grammar nazi (not that I'm proud of it - I can't help it and I blame my mum because she's even worse than I am :S) but things like that show a lack of thought behind posts.
Anyway, back on topic. Icebike did not say that horizontal gene transfer cannot influence fitness, but that the mechnaism itself has no effect. What has the effect is the genes, not how they got there.
Here's evolution by natural selection in a nut shell - organisms are different; some organisms are more suited to their environment than others; better ones survive and reproduce - their traits survive.
Furthermore, Darwin had no knowledge of genes, as they were not known of in his day. This means that his theory does not even touch on the cause of the differences, but focuses on how they propogate. Thus Icebikes statement "Further it has nothing at all to do with Darwinism." because, as I said, Darwinism has nothing to do with genes.
We now know how different traits come into being and what causes the changes (if not completelly then at least to a large degree - there's always more to be learned) so we can fill in the gaps, but that is evolutionary theory, not darwinism (the latter is a part of the former).
I wondered the same thing. If the guy before me is correct, it would seem that it is not molten diamond but simply molten carbon which turns back into diamond when frozen.
I should preface with the fact that I hate Macs. I hate the way OSX works (there are some good things but they are far out-weighed by the bad IMHO*), I hate that to run it you have to buy their specific hardware which has a rediculous mark-up on similarly specced PCs and I hate the "Cult of Mac"**.
/rant
That said there really isn't any more reason needed than you don't like it to not use Windows as long as there is another platform that can do what you need (Linux etc wouldn't be particularly good for art, but for other things they are good alternatives). There are things of course that you pretty much have to use Windows for (PC gaming for example, but there is other niché software that isn;'t available on other platforms)
* Of course most of the things I don't like are opinions rather than facts - like the maximizer. Others are more just bad design - the fact you can only resize a window from the bottom corner for example (both of these are of course simple examples, but some of them are far larger and more intrusive, like the dock for example)
** The very fact that they have got people to call them macs rather than just computers really annoys me. You don't see PC people going "I'll just do it on my Windows/Linux" or something, but if it is an Apple computer an aweful lot of people will refer to it almost exclusivelly as a mac(book). Of course the term PC is used for windows/linux/bsd... machines a lot of the time, but then, it does stand for personal computer. *Wonders how many people know that PC as a platform actually means IBM (compatible) PC.* Mac on the other hand is meaningless in that respect.
Presumably catering to whatever OS is no. 1 without them having been in the picture. Windows is not targeted for viruses because it is insecure, but because it has had probably 70%+ of the market share for the last 10-15 years at least (I don't honestly know how long they've been on top. Heck I was born in 1988 and didn't get a computer in the house 'til 1999).