Please don't confuse me with the Windows advocate who replied to my message. I was comparing GNOME with KDE, not with Windows; Windows makes me retch. --
GNOME will have no future unless it's stable, convenient to use, and supports the basic features that users want. The release that came with RedHat 6.0 didn't meet any of these criteria, and adding OLE-like functionality isn't going to solve the basic problems. I quickly got fed up with GNOME 1.1, and switched to KDE, which has been much more reliable and does what I need.
Moreover, as a developer, I can't see myself wanting to develop for a desktop environment written in C, when I can develop for one that's written in C++. I don't think C has much of a future for the development of distributed, component-based applications.
My impression is that most of us (at least, those of us who are male) are spending lonely nights hacking, not being followed around at parties by adoring crowds. My personal experience suggests that most people associate "computer programmer" with "boring"; if they ask what I do for a living, I tell them very quickly, and then change the subject to something they can relate to.
There might be some glamorization of programmers in the popular imagination, but for me and the other hackers I know, it doesn't seem to translate into any real social opportunities. Despite the profusion of chat services, the web is still an extremely difficult place to make friends, and even if you do manage to connect with someone, you're unlikely to ever meet them in person.
When we're away from our computers, we're in the same boat as everyone else.
Most Americans fear and despise everything that they have no knowledge of, and this usually includes all foreign countries.
As a matter of fact, many French people are fascinated by the U.S., so it's no surprise that most of the TV shows and movies shown in France, and most of the songs on French radio, are American. And French foreign and economic policy heavily favors the interests of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations.
It's silly to make blanket generalizations about the attitudes of whole countries. Governments often do unpopular things. Would it have been logical for a Vietnamese person in 1972 to conclude that most Americans hated Vietnamese people?
It seems, from the replies that slashdot's French readers have posted, that this article is completely wrong--a gross distortion produced by a deranged francophobic British journalist's imagination. I suggest that the article be removed from slashdot.
a country with a committee to monitor that the language not change from 16th Century forms
This is simply false. You must be thinking of the Académie Française, whose only job is to write a dictionary from time to time, and to recommend words for designating new technologies. Some of these suggestions are widely accepted because people like them; others are simply forgotten.
Recent neurological research suggests that each neuron contains thousands of microtubule computers, each operating at perhaps 10 million cycles per second; this would make each of the human brain's 10 billion neurons about as powerful as one of our supercomputers. Don't expect neurobiology to give us much understanding of the human psyche during our lifetime.
Scientists and philosophers have been debating for a long time about what science is, and about the relationship between science and truth. These issues are far from settled. It is not, therefore, so easy to say what constitutes scientifically or unscientifically obtained and analyzed information.
Religion, philosophy, and the irrational have always played important roles in science. Copernicus' scientific writings included a significant religious component. The structure of benzene was discovered thanks to a researcher's dream. Political, cultural, and economic realities have an immense effect on scientific research: they largely determine which research gets funded, as well as the sorts of theories that occur to scientists. There is no clear boundary between facts and values. The notion that scientific truth is the product of the pure application of a "scientific method" is a fiction.
This fiction exists because of a power struggle over the role of science in society. The question is, who gets to decide what is true for all of society? Religious and scientific groups, among others, have been fighting this battle for centuries. Each group tries to present its kind of truth as pure and infallible.
The human activity we call science encompasses a great variety of approches to truth. Chemistry, astrophysics, archeology, and Chinese medicine don't use the same methods or criteria of success. Rather than defining science in terms of its methods, it would be more appropriate to define it in terms of its goals, which might be described this way: to understand nature, usually in order to control it.
If you're interested in these themes, two classic works are Against Method by Paul Feyerabend and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.
The string class in the standard C++ libraries does bounds checking. Perhaps some Microsoft programmers aren't making adequate use of standard libraries.
Personally, I'd like a manual that assumed I know C++ and have some experience with GUI programming on other platforms, and walked me through writing a GNOME app, introducing all of GNOME's major features along the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't confuse me with the Windows advocate who replied to my message. I was comparing GNOME with KDE, not with Windows; Windows makes me retch.
--
Moreover, as a developer, I can't see myself wanting to develop for a desktop environment written in C, when I can develop for one that's written in C++. I don't think C has much of a future for the development of distributed, component-based applications.
--
My impression is that most of us (at least, those of us who are male) are spending lonely nights hacking, not being followed around at parties by adoring crowds. My personal experience suggests that most people associate "computer programmer" with "boring"; if they ask what I do for a living, I tell them very quickly, and then change the subject to something they can relate to.
There might be some glamorization of programmers in the popular imagination, but for me and the other hackers I know, it doesn't seem to translate into any real social opportunities. Despite the profusion of chat services, the web is still an extremely difficult place to make friends, and even if you do manage to connect with someone, you're unlikely to ever meet them in person.
When we're away from our computers, we're in the same boat as everyone else.
--
>Quick note on standards of female/male beauty:
>in our (still patriarchal) society, men can be
>sexy/desireable without being attractive
If they're rich.
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It's irrelevant what size the average woman wears. In the U.S., "average" does not mean healthy or beautiful. Forty percent of Americans are obese.
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As a matter of fact, many French people are fascinated by the U.S., so it's no surprise that most of the TV shows and movies shown in France, and most of the songs on French radio, are American. And French foreign and economic policy heavily favors the interests of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations.
It's silly to make blanket generalizations about the attitudes of whole countries. Governments often do unpopular things. Would it have been logical for a Vietnamese person in 1972 to conclude that most Americans hated Vietnamese people?
--
It seems, from the replies that slashdot's French readers have posted, that this article is completely wrong--a gross distortion produced by a deranged francophobic British journalist's imagination. I suggest that the article be removed from slashdot.
--
This is simply false. You must be thinking of the Académie Française, whose only job is to write a dictionary from time to time, and to recommend words for designating new technologies. Some of these suggestions are widely accepted because people like them; others are simply forgotten.
--
(Source: Neural Networks - Artifical Brains by Chris Lucas)
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Religion, philosophy, and the irrational have always played important roles in science. Copernicus' scientific writings included a significant religious component. The structure of benzene was discovered thanks to a researcher's dream. Political, cultural, and economic realities have an immense effect on scientific research: they largely determine which research gets funded, as well as the sorts of theories that occur to scientists. There is no clear boundary between facts and values. The notion that scientific truth is the product of the pure application of a "scientific method" is a fiction.
This fiction exists because of a power struggle over the role of science in society. The question is, who gets to decide what is true for all of society? Religious and scientific groups, among others, have been fighting this battle for centuries. Each group tries to present its kind of truth as pure and infallible.
The human activity we call science encompasses a great variety of approches to truth. Chemistry, astrophysics, archeology, and Chinese medicine don't use the same methods or criteria of success. Rather than defining science in terms of its methods, it would be more appropriate to define it in terms of its goals, which might be described this way: to understand nature, usually in order to control it.
If you're interested in these themes, two classic works are Against Method by Paul Feyerabend and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.
--
The string class in the standard C++ libraries does bounds checking. Perhaps some Microsoft programmers aren't making adequate use of standard libraries.
--
Personally, I'd like a manual that assumed I know C++ and have some experience with GUI programming on other platforms, and walked me through writing a GNOME app, introducing all of GNOME's major features along the way.
--