Hugo Chavez, the Bush Administration will get you yet! Perhaps if all of the USA's neocons would get together in one place and hate him simultaneously, Mr. Chavez might actually burst into flames and.... uh..... wait... they tried that with Bill Clinton and it didn't work.
I agree wholeheartedly. Most systems fail to gain popularity not based on their code quality, but on their documentation. The more documentation, the better..... That is so true and it is also amazing how many developers have trouble understanding that. I'll pick a second rate solution over a faster/less bloated/better written one every time if it has superior documentation. Nothing pisses me off more than people whose idea of documentation is setting up a Wiki and having the users write the docu for them. Wiki's are nice, I use them, but properly written developer and user guides are better. The only thing that will make me rethink this policy is stability and security issues. When I can't get the software running, or in case of a software library, get a simple demo app coded in a reasonable time with the documentation on the project website I'll write the application/library off unless I have no alternative but to use it. If there is anything in the software developing world that needs fixing it's introducing more developers to various documentation tools like Javadoc, Doxygen, Visio, ROBODoc, Omnigraffle,.... the list goes on. User documentation is even simpler, just fire up OOo Writer, Pages, VI/Emacs if you are a hardcore developer or even, dare I suggest it.... it MS Word.
2) When I decide to just quit all windows of my web-browser to clean up my desktop I hate that the mail gets closed too. Don't close the tab you run Gmail in...? What are you "cleaning up your desktop" for if you want some stuff to remain open? Sorry, I must simply not get this part. It's pretty simple, if you have a heavy mail client all you have to do to close a couple of dozen browser windows is bring one into focus and hit [CMD]+[Q] or whatever key combination you use in WIndows/Linux to get rid of all of them instantly. The moment you start using a web browser as your e-mail client you have to close each browser window individually using [CMD]+[W] ([ALT]+[F4] on Windows IIRC) to filter out the one you want to keep. I usually use Safari for browsing but I always open my web-mail in Firefox for this very reason. This may seem to be a very strange thing to do but It works for me and it obviously works for the author of the OP. It's one of those things you have to file away under: 'Computer holy wars', sSub category: 'Heretical behavior'.
Anyway, one big advantage for me with webmail is that it has the environment independence going for it. Not just platform or software independence, but usually not even dependent on your OS configuration or software installs. That's a pretty big one for me. And web-mail's greatest disadvantage is precisely what the OP pointed out, plus a few others. Basically web mail has it's uses but it won't replace heavy mail clients any time soon for all sorts of reasons starting with lack of integration and it goes on from there, right through issues like lack of privacy and security to crappy gripes like the fact that the admin of my web-mail client at work decided that for security reasons it should log me out after a certain period of inactivity. It's a nice rule, and from a security standpoint it makes a lot of sense to me and I agree with it 100% but it's pretty annoying if you want to use your web-mail client as a heavy mail client substitute since it means logging back into the thing a couple of dozen times a day.
what every other person does that is not a Computer expert. Call someone to fix it. Windows PC, MAC, linux. ALL typical users do the exact same thing to "fix it". I have used all three of these OS'es and in IMHO the order is as follows (most favorite OS at the top lest favorite one at the bottom):
Windows
Linux
Mac OS.X
From my point of view OS X and Linux are in many ways comparable. The Mac largely wins because in my (experience at least) it almost always 'just works' while with Linux there is always something you have trouble with. I'll grant you that these days my Linux troubles are a shadow of what they were when I started using Linux over 10 years ago but there are still enough small issues to make it a close second to OS X. I simply have no patience for spending any significant amount of time debugging the OS, I have more important things to use my time for. Windows ends up at the bottom because I find that problems can be hard and therefore time consuming to diagnose and because of the money (the price for a decent security suite for Windows XP seems to start at c.a. $50 for a 12 month license) and also the work you have to sink into maintaining the tactical fortifications needed to keep Windows malware free. On the other hand all sorts of gizmos like GPS devices, Mobile Phones, Palmtop Computers, Camera... etc... often work neither on OS X or Linux so I suppose that counts in favor of Windows since it is annoying to have to boycott products simply because they don't work with your OS.
Distributions like Ubuntu and SLED are actually not that much more challenging for the normal user than Windows is. I would say that for normal Linux has reached a point where it's user unfriendliness actually looks like it will soon become less of a hurdle than the 'Gizmo' factor and the culture shock of adapting to a desktop environment that isn't an exact clone of that used by Windows.
The kind of mil-tech that makes the Tom Clancy crowd cream their jeans is great (except when it isn't) but in the end it comes down to the grunts. By that math China is the world's sole superpower, since they can field the most grunts. That's what won WWII, grunts. Although one might get the impression from watching some TV documentaries that are currently circulating that WWII was won on the beaches of Normandy by British and US soldiers, Normandy was simply the coup de grace. The offensive power of the German army was mostly broken at Kursk in July 1943 by Soviet soldiers who man for man were worse trained than the Germans and who drove T-34 tanks that were qualitatively and technologically inferior to state of the art German equipment. The quality didn't matter given the short life-spans of equipment in battle but the technological advantage did matter at first glance, the exchange ratio of tanks was approximately one German Panther or Tiger tank for three, four or in some situations even five or more Russian T-34 tanks. Unfortunately for the Germans the Russians had more than just five T-34s for each one German Tiger or Panther so having a superabundance of relatively lower tech eqipment mattered more than having much fewer numbers of much higher quality/tech and more expensive gear. The fate of Germany was largely sealed during the subsequent Soviet campaigns on the eastern front. It was Soviet Russians 'grunts' who deserve much of the credit for routing the Nazis although the magnitude and significance of their contribution is all to often either ignored or marginalized in the west. The power of 'Horde' mathematics should not be underestimated.
I don't think anybody seriously believes that China is likely to invade the USA any time soon so the most likely alternative scenario for a conflict is an out and out conventinal (as in non-nuclear) land war in on the Asian mainland and/or the Asia-Pacific region between the USA and China. Who do you think would win, assuming such a conflict can be 'won' in any conventional sense of that word? The Americans certainly have naval supremacy and the Chinese may not have stealth fighters (yet) so that gives the USA a major edge in any air war although this will be rectified within the next couple of decades at the latest by the Chinese gaining stealth capability. Chinese high tech war fighting capability is still evolving but having lots of 'grunts' and being willing ruthlessly throw them at the enemy with little regard for losses still counts for a lot. It has served China well in the past and this as recently as the Korean war of 1953.
The point about systems not being so punitive is a valid one and should be brought up more often and louder. People who've paid money for their product should not be punished for an error on microsofts end. That's the beauty of a monopoly isn't it? Even if you paid good money for your Microsoft products you have no choice but to take what Microsoft decides to let you have. No matter how much their products suck you have no choice but to buy them. Unless of course you feel like switching OS'es which was an option for me and a lot of other nerds I know but for a variety of (IMHO understandable) reasons it's not an option for a lot of both corporate and private customers.
there's a reason why people who have used Unix for a while look down on Linux in general Oh, you mean because they're elitist fuckwads that always want to be different so they can pretend to be cool? Yeah I know that reason. This is beginning to look like a computer holy war.
Please tell me where the word "Windows" even appears in this license. I don't see it. Maybe you should actually read them before you make such comments The permissive license (Ms-PL) doesn't but the limited-permissive (Ms-LPL) one does, bottom of page section 3-F 'Platform Limitation':
Actually try it out with any non-trivial document -- especially documents imported from previous versions of Word. You won't like the results. It's "compatible" in the sense that it can read and write OOXML documents, but not with more than 90% accuracy. Comparing the iWork suite to Office and actually being disappointed that it's neither as powerful as MS Office nor 100% compatible and doesn't contain all of MS Office's legion of power user features is pretty silly. I did not have high hopes for the iWork 08 suite when I downloaded the trial but it performed a lot better than I had expected. I tried importing considerably complicated PowerPoint and Word documents. Both Pages and Keynote did surprisingly well considering both documents were in the old Office formats. The only thing Keynote screwed up was the slide numbers, while Pages imported in 14 seconds (including 2 seconds wasted to click away the demo notification nag screen) a 130+ page tech manual I wrote with lots of diagrams and auto-generated crap a table of content and an index. Pages showed no glitches in image placement and only had a minor issues with a missing horizontal line in the page header. Numbers still has quite a ways to go before it can replace Excel but it does moderately complex Excel documents well enough. I'm not going to dump on Apple for not having included prime power user stuff like VB since that would be unreasonable so all in all I'm rather pleased with iWork 08. Basically I wouldn't recommend iWork as an MS Office replacement for power users but it can handle most of the Office documents I get at work and it will be more than adequate until the next iteration of MS Office for Mac arrives at the end of the year or the OO.o Mac port matures. Hopefully iWork 08 will improve with the next few point releases and, dare one hope, gain small but useful features like custom date and numerical formats in Numbers.
Normally I'd agree completely, but aren't you starting to get the feeling that the people that run these giant media conglomerates just have a huge cigarbox in the boardroom for their cash? As in:
Suit 1: (opens box) "Hey, there used to be more cash in here! I want more!" Suit 2: "Oh noes! Why did the box stop making cash?!" Suit 1: "Maybe someone TOOK OUR CASH!" Suit 2: "Took... you mean, like... pirates?" Suit 1: (gasp) "Pirates! Yes, must be pirates! We must kill the pirates!" Janitor: "Hey, don't you guys actually make money from helping new artists distribute their music to a wider audience?" Suit 1: "Huh? Who are you? Someone throw him out... Now, let's vote, who wants to kill pirates and so the box makes more cash?" Suits 2,3: "Yay! More cash!" ...and there it lay, the prize they sought. A financial district swollen with multinationals, conglomerates and fat, bloated, merchant-banks.
I won't speculate on the accuracy of these sites but it's interesting to compare the w3 statistics with the hitslink.com statistics. Linux for example gets twice the share on the w3 counter as on the hitslink.com site. Vista gets fewer hits on the w3 counter than on the hitslink.com site, it's currently standing at 5,4%, I thought it would be in more widespread use by now. The older Macs are completely missing from the w3 counter although I know for a fact that loads of people are still using them.
But where are the ready-made commands to paste into terminal? The neat perl scripts? I thought the whole point of Mac was that you could use the UNIX underneath for administration? In my experience OS X administration is pretty much the same as administrating a BSD, Linux or Unix system. There are and always will be differences between them but the basic principles are the same. On OS X I very rarely go for point and click interfaces except the System Preferences and the Disk Utility and I can usually transfer what I know about Linux/BSD/Unix to OS X.
I mean if the extent of possibilities is "click here, then click here" you might as well run server 2003. Contrary to what seems to be the popular opinion, Windows 2003 server has a quite powerful command-line interface. For some reason surprisingly few Windows admits seem to be inclined to make heavy use of it.
Linux isn't UNIX for cost reasons. UNIX is a copyrighted compatibility certification. It costs a lot of money to get that moniker, and it really doesn't mean anything in these days of Linux and BSD.
Linux is Linux, it doesn't NEED to be UNIX. A Unix certification is a bit more than a moniker. It means that the level of software portability between Unix 03 compliant systems is guaranteed to be very high. That may not be important to you but to companies/corporations seeking to reduce costs and development times and to achieve the maximum level of reliability and portability in their business critical software a Unix 03 certification has meaning. Also keep in mind that although no linux or BSD flavor other than OS X has gone for actual certification apparently many Linux distributions for example still make sure they are more or less Unix compliant and they do it using Open Group test suites. So even if no Linux distro has officially applied for certification it looks to me as if they are keeping their options open.
Anyway, the process is expensive. So expensive that none of the *BSDs are certified, no Linux, of course, is certified (yes, a Linux distro could be), etc. I keep hearing that but I have never actually seen any concrete figures, just various claims ranging from $40.000 or so and up to $500.000 total cost to get certification. I'm assuming that doesn't include the annual license fee for using the brand. So just out of curiosity does anybody have an idea of exactly how expensive getting a Unix 03 certification really is? If the previously cited figures are true the cost of a Unix 03 Cert is peanuts for a company like Apple. If this is really all about getting the Open group to stop complaining about Apple using 'Unix' in it's advertising, as somebody suggested, Apple is probably getting off fairly cheaply plus the certification can only be a plus for the server version of OS.X.
Hybrids have been a huge hit over the past couple years. So, given the lack of any fully electric cars, that's about as close an equivalent as you can get. I'd say people are at least clamoring for SOMETHING different. The rich aren't going to toss their leather-clad Hummers, and those that need trucks will continue to buy them, but I expect there's a whole lot of demand in the market for some, ANYTHING that doesn't use up lots of gasoline. I agree, the SUV craze is going to take a downturn sooner or later for a number of mainly economic (but also cultural and political) reasons starting with rising oil prices which aren't going to go on a permanent downward spiral any time soon. Eventually, be it within the next few years, the next couple of decades, or an even longer period, people will simply be forced to admit that they can't afford to own an expensive and extravagantly inefficient SUV when their needs (i.e. for driving the kids to school, driving to work and making trips to the supermarket) would be more than adequately served by a fuel efficient vehicle optimized for urban use such as a station wagon or a hatchback. I agree that the rich will continue to drive what they want and people who need SUVs will continue to buy them but the SUV will decline as the car of choice for the average suburbanite and city dweller. This will also present US American car makers with a unique problem since many of them suck at making small fuel efficient cars, that's what Toyota & friends are good at.
Electric cars, however, bring their own problems. If we shift 1.000.000 drivers that used to drive fossil fueled cars to electric cars we don't really solve anything since the electricity that powers those cars is going to have to come from somewhere. That means building a lot more electric power-plants. In the USA in particular there is likely to be huge pressure from the corporate lobby and other special interest groups to build lots of coal fired power-plants and China also seems unlikely to stop building them. The one advantage of electric cars is that at least you exercise some measure of control over the pollution generated by millions of cars in a few locations, the power-plants, and once a new technology for generating energy with less pollution comes along you can switch to it in a matter of years by building new power-plants or upgrading the old ones. You don't have to wait while for several generations of fossil fueled cars to go out of circulation and are replaced by more efficient models like we do today.
I just want to know why you would want to replace OS X with Linux? I understand the FOSS ideals, but you could always run linux in a virtual machine. I've installed Linux on quite a few of my Macs over the years, but since OS X I find that almost all of the linux functionality is sitting right in OS X. What do you hope to gain by installing Linux as the full-time OS? Please don't flame me, I'd like some logical points, or even a "just because". Relax... just be glad that he didn't ask for advice on how to replace OS X on his Mac with Windows Vista. If he had done that your computer would have melted the moment you loaded this article from the combined heat of thousands of flamewars and outraged comments. But all fun aside... What is wrong with "just because" as a reason to install Linux on a Mac? As has been pointed out by other people in previous discussions on this forum: Nerds do not need a reason to do nerdy things.. I applaud his nerdyness and urge him to actively avoid trying to justify what he plans to do, it would completely take the fun out of doing it.
As for "... didn't even bother putting any UI components in to help you diagnose what the problem is", again I don't really see your point. It's UNIX. It has logs. Use them. If you want pretty UI-based logs, then open up the console application, and you can see all the logs in a nice pretty format. Personally I prefer grep. That's true, It's amazing how many people don't seem to know that the OS X log viewer exists. One can find it here:/Applications/Utilities/Console.app. To draw a parallel, the Console.app serves a roughly similar purpose as "Event Viewer" in Windows (Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event Viewer). Personally I feel the OS X logs are somewhat less cryptic than the ones in Windows but that's probably just because I don't have much experience with debugging Windows since I haven't used it seriously for almost a decade except occasionally having to work with Windows 2003 servers (at work). The Console.app gives you access to all, or at least most the OS X system logs although much of the time the console log and the syslog are enough to diagnose a problem.
I heard that, this one time, this guy, got like cooties from a cell tower, true story. That usually only happens when a cell tower is located to close an all female university or some other place that has an unusually large concentration of adult human females such as a shoe store or a Zara store (You don't even want to know what happens to men who haven't been preemptively medicated and who happen to be in the vicinity of a cell tower on friday and saturday nights if that cell tower was located next to a male stripper club). Estrogen poisoning via cell tower signals is a well know phenomenon and taking it into account when locating cell towers is taught in basic telecommunications courses by all respectable Universities. Your friend should sue the telco that owns the tower for causing him to contract estrogen poisoning. Unless they get compensating testosterone shots coupled with a course of heavy beer drinking, potato chip eating and watching violent movies and contact sports to balance out the estrogen levels, estrogen poisoning can lead to excessive breast tissue growth and a general increase in effeminate traits and behavior in human males.
This post was intended to make no sense what so ever, if you do see the slightest spark of logic in it I pity you...
I hate to be a jerk, but I have to question why the farmers just don't stick to their traditional crops (versus the GM versions) if Monsanto is so horrible. Not one is forcing them to buy GM seeds (they could have kept saving and resuing their old seeds forever, without having to buy anything from Monsanto). So either buying Monsanto seeds isn't a losing deal (i.e. the farmers still make more money than they would have otherwise) or the farmers have poor judgement. Am I missing something?
It seems to me that a lot of them are pretty much suckered into it. They are made to think that this is the latest thing in modern agriculture and that it will benefit them with higher crop yields and thus higher profit margins. To people who are often already having trouble turning a profit this is hard to refuse. Not that is easy to get your hands on unmodified seed stock any more. To add insult to injury even if you inadvertently planted GM seeds you are also fucked. To quote TFA:
American farmers are hard pushed to find high quality, conventional varieties of corn, soy and cottonseed. Anecdotal evidence supports this. Troy Roush, an Indiana soybean farmer says, "You can't even purchase them in this market. They are not available." Similar reports come from the corn and cotton farmers who say, "There are not too many seeds available that are not genetically altered in some way.".....
.....Farmers are under pressure to confirm their identity as modern agriculturalists, particularly in developing countries. But replacing the traditional strategy of saving and replanting seeds from diverse varieties by a patented seed with all its restrictions threatens food security at household and global levels......
.....A further example is seed dealers who sell seeds in plain brown bags so farmers sow them unknowingly. This happened to Farmer Thomason who was harassed into court by Monsanto and sued for over a million dollars. He had no choice but to file for bankruptcy despite never intending to plant Bt cotton.
Here's another choice quote:
Researchers at the University of Manitoba, Canada tested 33 samples of certified canola (oilseed rape) seed stock and 32 were contaminated with GM. The Union of Concerned Scientists tested traditional US seed stocks of corn, soy and canola and found 50% corn, 50% soy and 83% canola contaminated by GM.
One hundred percent purity is no longer achievable, and even if non-contaminated seed could be purchased, some contamination can take place in the field either by transfer of seed by wind, animals or via farm equipment.
Monsanto dominates the sale of seed stocks yet puts the onus of finding markets for crops on the farmer. Within their contract is the "Technology Use Guide" which gives directions on how to find grain handlers willing to accept crops not approved for use in the EU. While Monsanto acknowledges that pollen flow and seed movement are sufficient to contaminate neighbouring non-GM fields their implicit rule is that "the growers of the non-GM crops must assume responsibility and receive the benefit for ensuring that their crops meet specifications for purity.".....
.....Outcomes of lawsuits brought by Monsanto against farmers are mostly kept under wraps. If farmers are tempted to breach confidentiality they can face fines greater than the settlements. But where judgments have been publicly recorded, sizeable payments benefit not only Monsanto, but also partner companies.
Combined financial penalties have forced many farmers into bankruptcy and off their land. Agriculture is suffering losses all around because of the disappearance of foreign markets. The US Farm Bureau estimates that farmers lose over $300 million a year because European markets refuse GM corn. The US State Department says that as much as $4 billion could be lost in agricultural exports due to EU labelling and traceability requirements. Organic and conventional farmers
After the war, torture, Gitmo, NSA's unwarranted wiretapping and all the other crap that has made me ashamed to be an American, I'm glad that we can even for one brief moment have something cool like this. This is cool? The thing wont even fit on a sharks head... unless the US Army has managed to clone a Megalodon from DNA salvaged from a fossilized tooth or some such artifact in which case they have really pissed off the Navy. The Army should have gone for cloning T-Rexes. Now imagine that, a whole regiment of T-Rexes with lasers on their heads, that would convince those Iraqi insurgents to behave in no time flat. It just goes to show what a mess the Pentagon is still in even though Rumsfeld is long gone.
He's saying that someone afraid of their computer can't do it. And until Linux can be used by people afraid of their computer, it won't appeal to the majority of the desktop PC market. I don't think that will work. Eventually you will realize that you have to teach those people not to be afraid of their computers anymore. Just don't forget totell them that the CD drive's tray isn't an electrically operated beverage cup holder. Only then will they truly be ready for Linux on the desktop.
BBecause the existing framework is kludgy, unstable and insecure, but highly backwards compatible.
The idea is to build a whole new OS which avoids the pitfalls of the NT line and drops backwards compatibility to do so. Any legacy apps can run in "classic" Windows in a VM. That's kind of what I was trying and apparently failing to advocate in a way that is easily understood. MS could build a new desktop component on top of whatever framework is that they choose to use. For all I care MS could build a totally new OS and run old software using VM technology to achieve the same thing as Apple did with Rosetta and the Classic environment. Old software would seamlessly integrate into the new OS and it's Desktop environment. The average user who still doesn't give a rodent's fundament about the underlying OS, it's kernel and it's technical intricacies since he/she still thinks OS==Desktop environment would be none the wiser except perhaps that he/she would be annoyed by the increase in hardware requirements due to the VM extravaganza.
I couldn't agree more. There's no way they're going to split again. They're going to continue what they're doing: same basic underlying framework, but the "Server" version has more features and services tacked on to the basic system. I can't believe that anybody who can remember 10 years ago would ever suggest going back to that again. Why go back to 10 years ago and create many different operating systems? For most average users OS==Desktop environment and they don't give a rodent's fundament about what kernel it's running on top of. All MS has to do is expand what on you have already suggested. What's to stop MS from making two OS versions based on the same underlying framework? One version could be geared towards business. This corporate version would stick to the old crappy desktop environment to keep the bean-counters from blowing gaskets over increased training costs and lowered productivity per worker drone. The other version could be geared directly toward the consumer with an innovative and easy to use desktop environment. That's of course assuming that Microsoft is capable of creating an innovative and easy to use desktop environment that doesn't require tediously long sequences of mouse clicks and nag screens to accomplish the simplest of tasks.
This is actually a pet peeve for me. This same stupid shortcut approach to cross-platform development is why things developed on Windows and ported directly to OS X look mildly schizophrenic and get complaints about 'not being well-designed for OS X' from Mac users. It's also why a lot of cross-platform software ported from Linux using GTK+ for Windows or running under X11.app on OS X doesn't 'fit in' either. Why would Apple think this braindead approach to cross-platform development would work any better for them?
If you're going to do something cross-platform, bloody well develop it cross-platform instead of designing it just for one platform and then taking shortcuts to port it without thinking whether or not your design works in the new context. Basically no matter what programming language you use, if a product is developed on operating system A and ported to B it is highly likely to be sucky and to suffer from bugs on operating system B. The reason is that in order to limit costs, you will always want to re-use as much of the code you have already developed on operating system A when you port it to operating system B. Things like look, feel and UI standards/guidelines tend to become victims of fiscal reality and marketing concerns. Stuff that gets ported from Windows to OS X sucks on OS X, stuff that was developed on OS X tends to suck when ported to Windows and Java Swing and other portable GUI programs suck everywhere because there are always some bugs on each platform and GUI wise they can only make use of GUI components that are common to all platforms unless you start writing OS specific branches plus the 'look and feel' feature in Java never seems to work out of the box without tweaking. The moment you want to use all the innovative, OS specific components from each OS such as the for example the 'Drawer' feature on OS X you have to solve the problem in some other OS specific way on Windows. That is extra work which is extra costs. Another downside of heavily adapting a portable application to each host OS that you'll also confuse your users because the app will work very differently each time they switch platforms. The basic lesson is that portable GUI apps are always a compromise, you can never make everybody happy and portable apps will always be sucky on some of the platforms they run on. Just be glad people bother to write portable apps at all.
Slashdot Mirror
- Windows
- Linux
- Mac OS.X
From my point of view OS X and Linux are in many ways comparable. The Mac largely wins because in my (experience at least) it almost always 'just works' while with Linux there is always something you have trouble with. I'll grant you that these days my Linux troubles are a shadow of what they were when I started using Linux over 10 years ago but there are still enough small issues to make it a close second to OS X. I simply have no patience for spending any significant amount of time debugging the OS, I have more important things to use my time for. Windows ends up at the bottom because I find that problems can be hard and therefore time consuming to diagnose and because of the money (the price for a decent security suite for Windows XP seems to start at c.a. $50 for a 12 month license) and also the work you have to sink into maintaining the tactical fortifications needed to keep Windows malware free. On the other hand all sorts of gizmos like GPS devices, Mobile Phones, Palmtop Computers, Camera... etc... often work neither on OS X or Linux so I suppose that counts in favor of Windows since it is annoying to have to boycott products simply because they don't work with your OS.Distributions like Ubuntu and SLED are actually not that much more challenging for the normal user than Windows is. I would say that for normal Linux has reached a point where it's user unfriendliness actually looks like it will soon become less of a hurdle than the 'Gizmo' factor and the culture shock of adapting to a desktop environment that isn't an exact clone of that used by Windows.
By that math China is the world's sole superpower, since they can field the most grunts. That's what won WWII, grunts. Although one might get the impression from watching some TV documentaries that are currently circulating that WWII was won on the beaches of Normandy by British and US soldiers, Normandy was simply the coup de grace. The offensive power of the German army was mostly broken at Kursk in July 1943 by Soviet soldiers who man for man were worse trained than the Germans and who drove T-34 tanks that were qualitatively and technologically inferior to state of the art German equipment. The quality didn't matter given the short life-spans of equipment in battle but the technological advantage did matter at first glance, the exchange ratio of tanks was approximately one German Panther or Tiger tank for three, four or in some situations even five or more Russian T-34 tanks. Unfortunately for the Germans the Russians had more than just five T-34s for each one German Tiger or Panther so having a superabundance of relatively lower tech eqipment mattered more than having much fewer numbers of much higher quality/tech and more expensive gear. The fate of Germany was largely sealed during the subsequent Soviet campaigns on the eastern front. It was Soviet Russians 'grunts' who deserve much of the credit for routing the Nazis although the magnitude and significance of their contribution is all to often either ignored or marginalized in the west. The power of 'Horde' mathematics should not be underestimated.
I don't think anybody seriously believes that China is likely to invade the USA any time soon so the most likely alternative scenario for a conflict is an out and out conventinal (as in non-nuclear) land war in on the Asian mainland and/or the Asia-Pacific region between the USA and China. Who do you think would win, assuming such a conflict can be 'won' in any conventional sense of that word? The Americans certainly have naval supremacy and the Chinese may not have stealth fighters (yet) so that gives the USA a major edge in any air war although this will be rectified within the next couple of decades at the latest by the Chinese gaining stealth capability. Chinese high tech war fighting capability is still evolving but having lots of 'grunts' and being willing ruthlessly throw them at the enemy with little regard for losses still counts for a lot. It has served China well in the past and this as recently as the Korean war of 1953.
- Review this information about use of commas as punctuation
- Consult a dictionary for the correct spelling of 'useful'
- See you tomorrow!
Allow me to shamelessly mutilate a famous Adam Savage quote:I redject yer sbelling and zubstitude my ovn....
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/l
There is more than one MS-Permissive license and one of them does indeed mention Windows so let's be nice to each other and try to get along.
Suit 1: (opens box) "Hey, there used to be more cash in here! I want more!"
Suit 2: "Oh noes! Why did the box stop making cash?!"
Suit 1: "Maybe someone TOOK OUR CASH!"
Suit 2: "Took... you mean, like... pirates?"
Suit 1: (gasp) "Pirates! Yes, must be pirates! We must kill the pirates!"
Janitor: "Hey, don't you guys actually make money from helping new artists distribute their music to a wider audience?"
Suit 1: "Huh? Who are you? Someone throw him out... Now, let's vote, who wants to kill pirates and so the box makes more cash?"
Suits 2,3: "Yay! More cash!"
Did something like this happen next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iakR7sB0skw
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/default.aspx
I won't speculate on the accuracy of these sites but it's interesting to compare the w3 statistics with the hitslink.com statistics. Linux for example gets twice the share on the w3 counter as on the hitslink.com site. Vista gets fewer hits on the w3 counter than on the hitslink.com site, it's currently standing at 5,4%, I thought it would be in more widespread use by now. The older Macs are completely missing from the w3 counter although I know for a fact that loads of people are still using them.
Linux is Linux, it doesn't NEED to be UNIX. A Unix certification is a bit more than a moniker. It means that the level of software portability between Unix 03 compliant systems is guaranteed to be very high. That may not be important to you but to companies/corporations seeking to reduce costs and development times and to achieve the maximum level of reliability and portability in their business critical software a Unix 03 certification has meaning. Also keep in mind that although no linux or BSD flavor other than OS X has gone for actual certification apparently many Linux distributions for example still make sure they are more or less Unix compliant and they do it using Open Group test suites. So even if no Linux distro has officially applied for certification it looks to me as if they are keeping their options open.
Electric cars, however, bring their own problems. If we shift 1.000.000 drivers that used to drive fossil fueled cars to electric cars we don't really solve anything since the electricity that powers those cars is going to have to come from somewhere. That means building a lot more electric power-plants. In the USA in particular there is likely to be huge pressure from the corporate lobby and other special interest groups to build lots of coal fired power-plants and China also seems unlikely to stop building them. The one advantage of electric cars is that at least you exercise some measure of control over the pollution generated by millions of cars in a few locations, the power-plants, and once a new technology for generating energy with less pollution comes along you can switch to it in a matter of years by building new power-plants or upgrading the old ones. You don't have to wait while for several generations of fossil fueled cars to go out of circulation and are replaced by more efficient models like we do today.
What do you hope to gain by installing Linux as the full-time OS? Please don't flame me, I'd like some logical points, or even a "just because". Relax... just be glad that he didn't ask for advice on how to replace OS X on his Mac with Windows Vista. If he had done that your computer would have melted the moment you loaded this article from the combined heat of thousands of flamewars and outraged comments. But all fun aside... What is wrong with "just because" as a reason to install Linux on a Mac? As has been pointed out by other people in previous discussions on this forum: Nerds do not need a reason to do nerdy things.. I applaud his nerdyness and urge him to actively avoid trying to justify what he plans to do, it would completely take the fun out of doing it.
This post was intended to make no sense what so ever, if you do see the slightest spark of logic in it I pity you...
I hate to be a jerk, but I have to question why the farmers just don't stick to their traditional crops (versus the GM versions) if Monsanto is so horrible. Not one is forcing them to buy GM seeds (they could have kept saving and resuing their old seeds forever, without having to buy anything from Monsanto). So either buying Monsanto seeds isn't a losing deal (i.e. the farmers still make more money than they would have otherwise) or the farmers have poor judgement. Am I missing something?
It seems to me that a lot of them are pretty much suckered into it. They are made to think that this is the latest thing in modern agriculture and that it will benefit them with higher crop yields and thus higher profit margins. To people who are often already having trouble turning a profit this is hard to refuse. Not that is easy to get your hands on unmodified seed stock any more. To add insult to injury even if you inadvertently planted GM seeds you are also fucked. To quote TFA:
American farmers are hard pushed to find high quality, conventional varieties of corn, soy and cottonseed. Anecdotal evidence supports this. Troy Roush, an Indiana soybean farmer says, "You can't even purchase them in this market. They are not available." Similar reports come from the corn and cotton farmers who say, "There are not too many seeds available that are not genetically altered in some way.".....
.....A further example is seed dealers who sell seeds in plain brown bags so farmers sow them unknowingly. This happened to Farmer Thomason who was harassed into court by Monsanto and sued for over a million dollars. He had no choice but to file for bankruptcy despite never intending to plant Bt cotton.
.....Farmers are under pressure to confirm their identity as modern agriculturalists, particularly in developing countries. But replacing the traditional strategy of saving and replanting seeds from diverse varieties by a patented seed with all its restrictions threatens food security at household and global levels......
Here's another choice quote:
Researchers at the University of Manitoba, Canada tested 33 samples of certified canola (oilseed rape) seed stock and 32 were contaminated with GM. The Union of Concerned Scientists tested traditional US seed stocks of corn, soy and canola and found 50% corn, 50% soy and 83% canola contaminated by GM.
.....Outcomes of lawsuits brought by Monsanto against farmers are mostly kept under wraps. If farmers are tempted to breach confidentiality they can face fines greater than the settlements. But where judgments have been publicly recorded, sizeable payments benefit not only Monsanto, but also partner companies.
One hundred percent purity is no longer achievable, and even if non-contaminated seed could be purchased, some contamination can take place in the field either by transfer of seed by wind, animals or via farm equipment.
Monsanto dominates the sale of seed stocks yet puts the onus of finding markets for crops on the farmer. Within their contract is the "Technology Use Guide" which gives directions on how to find grain handlers willing to accept crops not approved for use in the EU. While Monsanto acknowledges that pollen flow and seed movement are sufficient to contaminate neighbouring non-GM fields their implicit rule is that "the growers of the non-GM crops must assume responsibility and receive the benefit for ensuring that their crops meet specifications for purity.".....
Combined financial penalties have forced many farmers into bankruptcy and off their land. Agriculture is suffering losses all around because of the disappearance of foreign markets. The US Farm Bureau estimates that farmers lose over $300 million a year because European markets refuse GM corn. The US State Department says that as much as $4 billion could be lost in agricultural exports due to EU labelling and traceability requirements. Organic and conventional farmers
The idea is to build a whole new OS which avoids the pitfalls of the NT line and drops backwards compatibility to do so. Any legacy apps can run in "classic" Windows in a VM. That's kind of what I was trying and apparently failing to advocate in a way that is easily understood. MS could build a new desktop component on top of whatever framework is that they choose to use. For all I care MS could build a totally new OS and run old software using VM technology to achieve the same thing as Apple did with Rosetta and the Classic environment. Old software would seamlessly integrate into the new OS and it's Desktop environment. The average user who still doesn't give a rodent's fundament about the underlying OS, it's kernel and it's technical intricacies since he/she still thinks OS==Desktop environment would be none the wiser except perhaps that he/she would be annoyed by the increase in hardware requirements due to the VM extravaganza.
If you're going to do something cross-platform, bloody well develop it cross-platform instead of designing it just for one platform and then taking shortcuts to port it without thinking whether or not your design works in the new context. Basically no matter what programming language you use, if a product is developed on operating system A and ported to B it is highly likely to be sucky and to suffer from bugs on operating system B. The reason is that in order to limit costs, you will always want to re-use as much of the code you have already developed on operating system A when you port it to operating system B. Things like look, feel and UI standards/guidelines tend to become victims of fiscal reality and marketing concerns. Stuff that gets ported from Windows to OS X sucks on OS X, stuff that was developed on OS X tends to suck when ported to Windows and Java Swing and other portable GUI programs suck everywhere because there are always some bugs on each platform and GUI wise they can only make use of GUI components that are common to all platforms unless you start writing OS specific branches plus the 'look and feel' feature in Java never seems to work out of the box without tweaking. The moment you want to use all the innovative, OS specific components from each OS such as the for example the 'Drawer' feature on OS X you have to solve the problem in some other OS specific way on Windows. That is extra work which is extra costs. Another downside of heavily adapting a portable application to each host OS that you'll also confuse your users because the app will work very differently each time they switch platforms. The basic lesson is that portable GUI apps are always a compromise, you can never make everybody happy and portable apps will always be sucky on some of the platforms they run on. Just be glad people bother to write portable apps at all.