Linux won't be ready for the desktop, until it's a pure GUI OS.
So, OS X isn't ready for the desktop? What does it mean to be a pure GUI OS other than to lack a command line?
If you mean that Linux GUIs needs to cover a broader range of system functions, then I agree with you -- but that is not mutually exclusive with a powerful command line.
.... Linux is something "most computer users" have heard of whereas SVR4 is not. This is just something to get noticed.
I seriously doubt that most of the sellers of SVR4 care whether or not "most computer users" have heard of them. They don't exactly expect Joe Sixpack to buy a System V box; he's not the target customer.
Sorry, but X11 is something which should have died a quiet death circa 1994. Even with the newer WMs you can still spot an X11 app a mile away (although to be fair, that has a lot to do with all the crap GUIs designed for unix apps...I'm looking at you, Gimp.)
Um... X11 is the underlying technology. I don't have any real Unix GUI experience, so somebody correct me if/when I'm wrong: X11 has no concept of a button. Buttons, text boxes, list boxes and other "widgets" are drawn by a toolkit. GTK is used for Gnome and its stuff; Qt is used for KDE and its stuff.
The programs you are talking about just use old-fashioned toolkits. For a better explanation, look at the above link by a guy with a really spiffy first name.
It doesn't look native....such actions are not tolerated on the Mac.
This is very true.
... Every program looks different in Windows, the odd program looks different on UNIX/X11....
Um... you must have a different standard for "different" on Unix. Programs all look different on Unix, unless you are in a Mac-user mood and confine yourself to programs that follow the Gnome HIG or something. By comparison with Unix, Windows interfaces are pretty standardized.
Science is science, Religion is Religion. end of story.
That's all well and good, provided you remember what was said above about science. It constructs models, it is limited by its paradigms, and it has other constraints. A model is only an approximation of reality; science != Reality.
Indeed, legislating sexual morality is a great tool of dictators.... Which is what I find so interesting about the politics of sexuality in this country....
You may oppose such regulation, and perhaps you're right... but a tool of dictators? Where does that come from? How would regulating sexual morality be more useful to a dictator, than say, regulating political speech?
The maxim is, "Ignorance of the law is no defense." Other kinds of ignorance often are.
IANAL, but IIRC you have to have had an opportunity to read a contract before you can agree to it. If you were never presented with it, like the above poster said... well, how can you be bound by it?
Further, there should be different ideals of morality and existence. The artist shouldn't live by the same morality as the warrior or the politician or the farmer. This is why polytheism is so much better than monotheism.
Better in what way? Your other comments would seem to suggest that you see the purpose of religion to be to serve the civilization.
But isn't this the question to be asked of religion: Is it true? Service of civilization should be secondary to truth; besides, building a culture on lies seems counterproductive in the long run.
It really doesn't matter what people believe in their heads. We are assessing our civilization by their deeds. By any measure, the west has become so thoroughly decadent it is almost comical the vast majority of people belong to an established religion. Religion is dying because it offers nothing of value to people living in our current world.
You assume that religions exist to serve people. But you must see that if a religion, any religion is true, then it must dictate the goals of humanity. Only if religion is false can one say that its purpose should be to serve humanity, and then to observe a religion would be silly.
The central question is one of truth, not of function.
Okay, I completely agree with the notion that Western culture is in many ways a product of Christianity. (This is not to say, of course, that it's a product only of Christianity.) I agree that if an individual is going to understand this, he has to have at least a rudimentary understanding of Christianity.
This is what I don't get:
For example, the concept "freedom of religion" is derived from Christianity.
Being a Christian, I can't bring to mind any passages of Scripture that argue this. It's certainly not one of the extra-biblical elements of Christian tradition. Freedom of religion is a product of post-Renaissance Western philosophy, as far as I can tell; it may be compatible with Christianity, but it didn't originate there.
I don't know how you can reconcile these two beliefs:
Wikipedia entries are often entered by experts in that field
there is no verification of expertise of the wiki writers so it's more or less a "use at your own risk".
"...they not only stopped taking 100s and 50s, they refused to take the "old" 5s 10s and 20s, and even held the new ones up to the light. We had to wait in line while they did this for every single customer."
And you continued to patronize this establishment why?
"If the mugger doesn't have a gun, and you do, and you threaten him with it, the law will be on his side. If anybody were to die in that encounter, it would more likely be the lesser-armed mugger, and you would be deemed a cold-blooded murderer."
Only because people do not understand the meaning of those words. First, if you murder someone in the middle of an argument (or mugging), you have killed him in hot blood, not cold blood.
That, however, is irrelevent. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the definition of self-defense in American law derives from the English one. (I haven't a clue about Scotland.) That ought to make shooting a mugger self defense, not murder.
That is, unless you decided to make self defense a crime on the other side of the Big Pond. I'd believe it, too.
I'm a big fan of following things to see where they lead, but going from home schooling to Nazism and civil war in one sentance seems a bit much. Slow down a bit and consider all the factors likely to mitigate the dangers of that particular slope.
"They use the word 'banned' to describe books that were actually, you know, banned."
Merriam-Webster:ban: to prohibit especially by legal means; also: to prohibit the use, performance, or distribution of
The ALA: A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.
Removing Daddy's Roommate from a grade-school library is not a prohibition (legal or otherwise) on use or distribution. There's a big difference between, "You may not carry that book," which is a ban, and, "We will not carry that book," which is not (even if due to someone's objections).
Some objections are absurd, especially many of those directed at high school libraries (usually 9th-12th grade or approximately 14-18 years old, for non-Americans). The ALA has some good points, but they ought to get their terminology straight.
"I have a feeling that the 'average' user really does not care to go out of their way to save a Word document in plain text."
I think there's a pretty significant range of people between Joe Sixpack and the folks that know the difference between EBCDIC and ASCII. Some of them might want to save in plain text without having to know to avoid ancient and arcane character sets such as EBCDIC.
SimCity for Windows 3.x had a bug in its handling of memory that caused it to crash on Windows 95. Microsoft had to add code to test if SimCity was running and handle it appropriately; if they had not done so, the crash would not have been Microsoft's fault-- the bug wasn't.
MS has been moving away from their mantra of absolute reverse compatability. That's said, since that's one thing at which the used to be very good. Still, if SP2 uncovered a bug in someone else's software, that's not SP2's fault; you have to know whose bug it was.
Slashdot Mirror
That's easy. Traveling Salesman Problem for one node: visit the node. Then, slack off.
So, OS X isn't ready for the desktop? What does it mean to be a pure GUI OS other than to lack a command line?
If you mean that Linux GUIs needs to cover a broader range of system functions, then I agree with you -- but that is not mutually exclusive with a powerful command line.
I seriously doubt that most of the sellers of SVR4 care whether or not "most computer users" have heard of them. They don't exactly expect Joe Sixpack to buy a System V box; he's not the target customer.
Um... X11 is the underlying technology. I don't have any real Unix GUI experience, so somebody correct me if/when I'm wrong: X11 has no concept of a button. Buttons, text boxes, list boxes and other "widgets" are drawn by a toolkit. GTK is used for Gnome and its stuff; Qt is used for KDE and its stuff.
The programs you are talking about just use old-fashioned toolkits. For a better explanation, look at the above link by a guy with a really spiffy first name.
This is very true.
Um... you must have a different standard for "different" on Unix. Programs all look different on Unix, unless you are in a Mac-user mood and confine yourself to programs that follow the Gnome HIG or something. By comparison with Unix, Windows interfaces are pretty standardized.
That's all well and good, provided you remember what was said above about science. It constructs models, it is limited by its paradigms, and it has other constraints. A model is only an approximation of reality; science != Reality.
I don't know much about B5, but it sounds like they're using the name of the physician.
Do you know what fundamentalist means ?
You may oppose such regulation, and perhaps you're right... but a tool of dictators? Where does that come from? How would regulating sexual morality be more useful to a dictator, than say, regulating political speech?
The maxim is, "Ignorance of the law is no defense." Other kinds of ignorance often are.
IANAL, but IIRC you have to have had an opportunity to read a contract before you can agree to it. If you were never presented with it, like the above poster said... well, how can you be bound by it?
Is that an allusion to Robinson Crusoe, or to some piece of Scandanavian history I wouldn't get?
Better in what way? Your other comments would seem to suggest that you see the purpose of religion to be to serve the civilization.
But isn't this the question to be asked of religion: Is it true? Service of civilization should be secondary to truth; besides, building a culture on lies seems counterproductive in the long run.
You assume that religions exist to serve people. But you must see that if a religion, any religion is true, then it must dictate the goals of humanity. Only if religion is false can one say that its purpose should be to serve humanity, and then to observe a religion would be silly.
The central question is one of truth, not of function.
Or the Anglo-American judicial one.
This is what I don't get:
Being a Christian, I can't bring to mind any passages of Scripture that argue this. It's certainly not one of the extra-biblical elements of Christian tradition. Freedom of religion is a product of post-Renaissance Western philosophy, as far as I can tell; it may be compatible with Christianity, but it didn't originate there.
often != always
And you continued to patronize this establishment why?
Only because people do not understand the meaning of those words. First, if you murder someone in the middle of an argument (or mugging), you have killed him in hot blood, not cold blood.
That, however, is irrelevent. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the definition of self-defense in American law derives from the English one. (I haven't a clue about Scotland.) That ought to make shooting a mugger self defense, not murder.
That is, unless you decided to make self defense a crime on the other side of the Big Pond. I'd believe it, too.
"If it were only so easy."
I'm a big fan of following things to see where they lead, but going from home schooling to Nazism and civil war in one sentance seems a bit much. Slow down a bit and consider all the factors likely to mitigate the dangers of that particular slope.
"most hosting companies don't even charge for bandwidth anymore..."
What kind of hosting companies are those? How long have they been in business?
"They use the word 'banned' to describe books that were actually, you know, banned."
Merriam-Webster: ban: to prohibit especially by legal means; also: to prohibit the use, performance, or distribution of
The ALA: A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.
Removing Daddy's Roommate from a grade-school library is not a prohibition (legal or otherwise) on use or distribution. There's a big difference between, "You may not carry that book," which is a ban, and, "We will not carry that book," which is not (even if due to someone's objections).
Some objections are absurd, especially many of those directed at high school libraries (usually 9th-12th grade or approximately 14-18 years old, for non-Americans). The ALA has some good points, but they ought to get their terminology straight.
"I have a feeling that the 'average' user really does not care to go out of their way to save a Word document in plain text."
I think there's a pretty significant range of people between Joe Sixpack and the folks that know the difference between EBCDIC and ASCII. Some of them might want to save in plain text without having to know to avoid ancient and arcane character sets such as EBCDIC.
SimCity for Windows 3.x had a bug in its handling of memory that caused it to crash on Windows 95. Microsoft had to add code to test if SimCity was running and handle it appropriately; if they had not done so, the crash would not have been Microsoft's fault-- the bug wasn't.
MS has been moving away from their mantra of absolute reverse compatability. That's said, since that's one thing at which the used to be very good. Still, if SP2 uncovered a bug in someone else's software, that's not SP2's fault; you have to know whose bug it was.
"On a similar subject Duke Nukem Forever is the seminal vaporware of our generation, bar none."
And, I predict, it will be the seminal vaporware of many generations -- perhaps all generations.
"When you can't spell, you look like an idiot in front of us all. Go back to 3rd grad and try again."
Sorry, Mr. Coward, but "grade" has an E in it.