Since it's an intranet site, I assume you know which one browser your company supports. So, assuming it's Internet Explorer, you could easily use an ActiveX download ala Windows Update to modify the cookie settings on your user's machines. ActiveX may be a nasty hazard for the internet, but there are some useful features available if you're a trusted intranet site. That solution would have been much easier than rewriting your site's functionality.
Back in the days before Firefox existed, IE was the only browser that let you do some of the fancy things with XML/XSLT in a web page like dynamically sorting an HTML table without making a round trip to the server. But, you had to be sure your users had their XML parser up to date. So we used an ActiveX install in the website to ensure that the latest MSXML parser was installed on our users machines. Though I'm a Firefox convert, IE had some super handy solutions for intranets.
You're right in many respects, of course. From my perspective of having grown up in the post-Challenger world, I'm probably a little more on the conservative viewpoint on manned space flight. I think we rushed it in the 60's because Kennedy wanted to beat the commies, because we finally had the technology to accomplish the dream, and because we were so exicted to do it that no cost was too great. Now, I think it's only right that we take a few steps back and evaluate what we're doing. Not to the point where we're afraid to get back on the horse - just enough so that our technology again can catch up with our need. The financial cost and the cost of life, while likely worth it in the long run, is not something to take as lightly as we did in the 60s. The Apollo 13 astronauts were an anomaly - they should have been dead but they beat the odds. Challenger and Columbia astronauts were not as fortunate. I think it's only right that things have slowed down some so that space exploration will overall benfit humanity. To lose money is one thing - to lose your best crews, even if they understand the risks and are willing to take them , is just not acceptable. My only point was that from a bigger picture, it was the right thing to do to slow down. To suggest that we're not still moving forward in a positive direction was the only point I felt I had to take issue with. Cheers.
You know, when I first read your post I nodded my head understanding your position - though not really agreeing with it, I understood it. But the more I looked at everyone else's posts, the more I realize that your opinion is pretty widespread - and, in my opinion, it's a pretty cynical and clouded view.
I guess I see the state of space exploration differently. Instead of all the glitz and glamor of manned space flight from the past, the focus is shifting. Space exploration is undergoing a maturing phase. To the naked eye, I can see how it may look like things have stagnated, but that's really not true. Yes, the equipment is getting older. Yes, we've not bothered to repeat some of the past successes in favor of attempting new ones. And yes, NASA's goals are sometimes less obvious to the general public while the failures are more pronounced. But the dreams and the talent were not lost with the sixties! If you think that I can see why you'd be crying in your Cheerios.
Look - the focus has shifted some from manned space flight to research. The focus is shifting from a government run program to the private sector. Things can't always move at break-neck speed. But, if you look at the progress made in less than half a century, it adds up to more than was made in all humankind's existence prior. The dreams aren't dead and it isn't at all boo-hoo-sad. I believe your perspective, like many people's, is just narrowed to your acute view from your short lifetime. Look at it from a different standpoint - pushing aside all the mire of politics and funding and failure and memories of glamorous missions from the past - push all that aside and looking at it from what we as a species still dream to accomplish. And if history is any indicator, we'll keep finding a way to move forward. Maybe not fast enough for you to recognize it, but still faster than humanity has moved ever before.
It's an elegant system if you are tracking files that have some relationship to one another like compiling a C program, but what about things like SQL scripts. I manage a project where we track changes to our SQL statements via Visual Source Safe. Each SQL script can change without affecting anything else, but if we were to use Subversion, revision numbers would become meaningles.
Don't get me wrong - free as in $$$ is good and I use Subversion at home because it works on Windows and I'm too cheap to pay for anything, but the revisioning model doesn't makes sense unless you're managing a compilable program. Or, perhaps I'm still missing something.
I've read the free subversion PDF, and I was interested enough to install it for use at home on my Windows box. The PDF does a great job of describing subversion's revisioning system, which is based on tracking directory revisions rather than file versions. That's great and all, but I've never read a valid explanation as to why this is a better way to do things than the way VSS and CVS work. VSS and I think CVS also use file revisions which makes it super easy to look at one file's revision history. With Subversion, how is it beneficial to have a file that hasn't changed have its revision number incremented on every check-in? Doesn't that make it very difficult to track changes to one source file? Does the Pragmatic Programmer book delve into source control theory at all?
Exactly! The big part that I think everyone's missing is that the languages themselves don't have to change, but potentially their storage does. Or, instead of changes to the storage, perhaps the IDE or a 3rd party tool just knows how to convert it to common XML code. Remember, code is just data after all. It has structure too.
So where's the advantage in this? I think it lies in 2 places:
1.) Having code be self documenting become so much easier. Think JavaDoc, only for any language.
2.) Language conversion. Say you find some open source Perl code that does exactly what you want, but you are a Java shop. So, just run the XML version of the code through an XSLT and voila!
#1 is probably more likely to happen sooner than #2 given that code conversion will be held back by different languages having different styles and ways of accomplishing tasks, but code conversion would really be the major benefit of this.
Why is this modded insightful? It's a complete misinterpretation of the Establisment Clause. There is no "prohibitions against teachign{sic} religion in public schools". The only thing the Establisment Clause prohibits is a state sponsored religion.
Red Hat was mentioned 110 times and SuSE was only mentioned 15 times
I'm currently working with IBM consultants on a POC and they mentioned to me (unofficially) that they use SuSE for their development and once their code is working there they port to RedHat. This of course does not mean anything more significant than the number of references to RedHat over SuSE in the article.
So, I wonder if PeopleSoft customers can take advantage of the full refunds on their software licenses that were being offered if Oracle succeeded. The article's a little short on details.
Never fear. As of this afternoon I was running 1.6.2 too and tonight I'm on 2.0 with minimal effort.
I used bittorrent to download the new 2.0 ISO image, I checked the MD5 sig, I burned a CD, I booted the CD, I choose "upgrade existing install", and I hit the enter key through a few minor dialogs... and voila! With less than an hour total effort (I didn't stay to watch the install) I'm back up and running with no noticeable glitches (YMMV). And, all that with absolutely no reading of any documentation whatsoever on my part. Amazing. Simply simple. Gotta love NetBSD.
I have always wondered what would happen if one of our representatives hosted a web site that allowed people in his/her district to know what votes were coming up in Congress, how he/she is planning to vote and why, and allowed some informal polling and commentary on the issues. I know this isn't what this guy is doing, but I wonder if it isn't the logical next step. You'd have to think that that sort of system would be the ideal of a representative democracy, but alas I don't expect any career politician to actually document their position on everything and set themselves up to be held accountable to their constituency. Especially since if they ever run for higher office that sort of thing gets used against them.
Though my position on this issue probably doesn't sync with the norm, I've found the problem with PG-13 to be the exact opposite of yours. Sometimes I'd just like to see a good movie without any of the questionable junk. (I know, I know - lots of people seem to prefer to see the stuff I just called junk in their moves - I'd rather that stuff be in movies rated R though.) Movies which for the most part probably could be rated PG throw some gratuitous scene or language in just to get the coveted PG-13 rating so that the teenage crowd won't dismiss it. So, what you end up with are movies which are mostly pretty good, but have some questionable content which may or may not fit with the rest of the story or the intended audience in one small scene just to get the more mature rating. So, from my perspective, the PG-13 rating has actually worsened my movie going experience. But, I recognize I'll be hard pressed to have very many other people on Slashdot agree. Let the puritanical accusations commence!
The marketing department at Unisys has a lot to learn. Last October, they ran an ad that said:
We helped JetBlue Airways do something unique with their data: treat customers like people. Unisys Imagine it. Done.
This wasn't a terrible ad, except that they ran it right after the JetBlue scandal. It was like they were completely out of touch with what was going on in the industry. I couldn't help but send them a little message asking if I could work for their marketing department, since there was no possible way I could do any worse than the one they presently have.
It's absolutely amazing to me that we seem to think that we can homogenize boys and girls into one common sex. It's even more amazing to me that anyone actually thinks this is even a good idea!
As this article claims, boys and girls are DIFFERENT! They play different, they have different interests, and they have different skills. I'm not saying that girls can't do what boys do and boys can't do what girls do! But I am saying that this feminist agenda myth that we should all be bucking nature is crazy. If you give a typical boy dolls, he'll engage them in war games or dissect them or perform some other manner of harsh play with them. Likewise, if you give a little girl toys which are traditionally "boy" toys, she will not engage in play with them the same way a little boy would. And the argument that this is social conditioning doesn't hold any water; my son is less than 18 months old and he already exhibitsthis behavior. The differences between men and women are natural - we're wired to be different, and contrary to the recent trends, those differences are actually GOOD.
I think it's great that there is an attempt to show women that they are capable of doing jobs traditionally performed by men, but I think it's wrong to make those fields artificially attractive. Women can be doctors, lawyers, construction workers, and IT professionals, but if the woman isn't naturally interested in what it means to be those things, them it does those women a disservice to artificially make those fields more appealing to them just to push an agenda.
I agree with you that 99% of the time you would never want NULL to equal NULL. "BatMan" shouldn't ever equal "555-5555" the same way an unknown Name (NULL) is not the same as an unknown PhoneNumber (NULL). And my phone number, though you don't know what it is (NULL), is not the same as your phone number thought I don't know what it is (NULL).
However, since you asked, I can give you an example of when it would be nice to have NULL = NULL. In data warehousing, you have two types of tables - dimension tables and fact tables. There is always a 1-to-many relationship from dimensions to a fact table. Dimensions ALWAYS have a surrogate key (if your data modeler knows anything at all about dimensional modeling) and should only receive an insert if that record in its entirety (except for the surrogate key) does not already exist in the table. In order to check if a new dimensional record needs inserted or not, you have to do something like this:
insert into dimGeography (
-- ALL COLUMNS FROM dimGeography EXCEPT FOR THE SURROGATE KEY
-- GeographyId (autonumber surrogate key)
Country,
State,
City ) select distinct (
Country,
State,
City ) from
dimGeography_Stage a left join
dimGeography b on
a.Country = b.Country and
a.State = b.State and
a.City = b.City where
b.GeographyId is null
Now where you run into problems is when a field in your join allows NULLs. For example, Mexico does not have states, so when adding a record for Mexico, you may have NULL as your State. So... no matter how many times ('Mexico', NULL, 'Mexico City') shows up in dimGeography_Stage, it will always be inserted into dimGeography as a new record. This is where NULL = NULL would be handy. However, there are some easy workarounds such as saying COALESCE(a.State, 'SOME DISTINCT VALUE') = COALESCE(b.State, 'SOME DISTINCT VALUE') in your join. Or, you could always disallow NULLs in the State column and use the Country as the State when inserting values from Mexico.
The interesting thing about infinity is (as ridiculous as this sounds) that it goes on forever. So, I could conclude that if I took the number "1" and tacked every combination of zeros on the end of it, then every word in every language - every sound possible - would not be enough to name every single number. So, all I'd have to do to sue would be to take 10^x where x is sufficiently large enough that no one has named it yet and name it, oh, say slashdot.org. Let the lawsuits commence!
The other problem with some of the early macs that you forgot to mention was the multitasking was subpar.
I remember that if you held the mouse button down to drag something or kept it down during a moment of indecision on a menu, the entire system would wait to process anything else until you to released it. Man, have Macs come a long way!
Personally, I find apps that have options not available in the GUI to be personally offensive. Text files are not intuitive, they are generally poorly documented, and are a poor way to configure a program.
Wait a minute... do you run a *nix operating system or not then? Let me be the first to apologize on behalf of rc.conf for offending you.
This I don't understand. I mean, one of the most common complaints about KDE is "it has too many options!". Well, how is GNOME better? It has less options, fine. But you could achieve that in KDE as well: just don't change the options!
From a newbie perspective (which is what I am - honest) this actually is a problem for me. The "too many options" thing is difficult not because fewer options is necessarily better, but because it's extremely difficult to find the specific options I'm looking for with all the extra clutter! I actually switched from Knoppix to PCLinuxOS (Gnoppix is still beta and it shows) because I just like the lack of clutter that GNOME provides and I wanted that choice. I'm not saying that gearing a desktop towards a newbie is better. Actually, as potentially an eventual power user I want to have the... well, the power. But, there's nothing I despise more than clutter when I'm just trying to get things done. Each person will have their own preferences, and I'm not arguing that your preference for KDE is wrong - for me it was just things like Konq's vertical sidebar with zillions of unnecessary buttons and the control panel without an easily navigable organization that lead me to just like the simplicity and the look of GNOME better.
The problem with using a fake name on a card ends up being that they ultimately know who you are (at least your name) if you pay by credit card. You'd have to pay for everything in cash to be really safe. And though I use a fake name too, I just don't carry enough cash around to handle all my purchases.
I'm a Linux user, but I do consider trying FreeBSD. The only thing that turns me off is people like you.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but what do "people like [him]" have anything to do with you trying an operating system? Either try it because you're curious, or geeky, or bored, or interested in expanding your horizons. Or... don't try it because you're happy with what you have, or because you aren't interested, or because you don't have the time. Geez... do crappy drivers keep you from owning a car?
Slashdot Mirror
Since it's an intranet site, I assume you know which one browser your company supports. So, assuming it's Internet Explorer, you could easily use an ActiveX download ala Windows Update to modify the cookie settings on your user's machines. ActiveX may be a nasty hazard for the internet, but there are some useful features available if you're a trusted intranet site. That solution would have been much easier than rewriting your site's functionality.
Back in the days before Firefox existed, IE was the only browser that let you do some of the fancy things with XML/XSLT in a web page like dynamically sorting an HTML table without making a round trip to the server. But, you had to be sure your users had their XML parser up to date. So we used an ActiveX install in the website to ensure that the latest MSXML parser was installed on our users machines. Though I'm a Firefox convert, IE had some super handy solutions for intranets.
Yeah, but an upgrade from Windows to OSX requires a downgrade in hardware. No thanks. Karma to burn, karma to burn.
You're right in many respects, of course. From my perspective of having grown up in the post-Challenger world, I'm probably a little more on the conservative viewpoint on manned space flight. I think we rushed it in the 60's because Kennedy wanted to beat the commies, because we finally had the technology to accomplish the dream, and because we were so exicted to do it that no cost was too great. Now, I think it's only right that we take a few steps back and evaluate what we're doing. Not to the point where we're afraid to get back on the horse - just enough so that our technology again can catch up with our need. The financial cost and the cost of life, while likely worth it in the long run, is not something to take as lightly as we did in the 60s. The Apollo 13 astronauts were an anomaly - they should have been dead but they beat the odds. Challenger and Columbia astronauts were not as fortunate. I think it's only right that things have slowed down some so that space exploration will overall benfit humanity. To lose money is one thing - to lose your best crews, even if they understand the risks and are willing to take them , is just not acceptable. My only point was that from a bigger picture, it was the right thing to do to slow down. To suggest that we're not still moving forward in a positive direction was the only point I felt I had to take issue with. Cheers.
You know, when I first read your post I nodded my head understanding your position - though not really agreeing with it, I understood it. But the more I looked at everyone else's posts, the more I realize that your opinion is pretty widespread - and, in my opinion, it's a pretty cynical and clouded view.
I guess I see the state of space exploration differently. Instead of all the glitz and glamor of manned space flight from the past, the focus is shifting. Space exploration is undergoing a maturing phase. To the naked eye, I can see how it may look like things have stagnated, but that's really not true. Yes, the equipment is getting older. Yes, we've not bothered to repeat some of the past successes in favor of attempting new ones. And yes, NASA's goals are sometimes less obvious to the general public while the failures are more pronounced. But the dreams and the talent were not lost with the sixties! If you think that I can see why you'd be crying in your Cheerios.
Look - the focus has shifted some from manned space flight to research. The focus is shifting from a government run program to the private sector. Things can't always move at break-neck speed. But, if you look at the progress made in less than half a century, it adds up to more than was made in all humankind's existence prior. The dreams aren't dead and it isn't at all boo-hoo-sad. I believe your perspective, like many people's, is just narrowed to your acute view from your short lifetime. Look at it from a different standpoint - pushing aside all the mire of politics and funding and failure and memories of glamorous missions from the past - push all that aside and looking at it from what we as a species still dream to accomplish. And if history is any indicator, we'll keep finding a way to move forward. Maybe not fast enough for you to recognize it, but still faster than humanity has moved ever before.
It's an elegant system if you are tracking files that have some relationship to one another like compiling a C program, but what about things like SQL scripts. I manage a project where we track changes to our SQL statements via Visual Source Safe. Each SQL script can change without affecting anything else, but if we were to use Subversion, revision numbers would become meaningles.
Don't get me wrong - free as in $$$ is good and I use Subversion at home because it works on Windows and I'm too cheap to pay for anything, but the revisioning model doesn't makes sense unless you're managing a compilable program. Or, perhaps I'm still missing something.
I've read the free subversion PDF, and I was interested enough to install it for use at home on my Windows box. The PDF does a great job of describing subversion's revisioning system, which is based on tracking directory revisions rather than file versions. That's great and all, but I've never read a valid explanation as to why this is a better way to do things than the way VSS and CVS work. VSS and I think CVS also use file revisions which makes it super easy to look at one file's revision history. With Subversion, how is it beneficial to have a file that hasn't changed have its revision number incremented on every check-in? Doesn't that make it very difficult to track changes to one source file? Does the Pragmatic Programmer book delve into source control theory at all?
Exactly! The big part that I think everyone's missing is that the languages themselves don't have to change, but potentially their storage does. Or, instead of changes to the storage, perhaps the IDE or a 3rd party tool just knows how to convert it to common XML code. Remember, code is just data after all. It has structure too.
So where's the advantage in this? I think it lies in 2 places:
1.) Having code be self documenting become so much easier. Think JavaDoc, only for any language.
2.) Language conversion. Say you find some open source Perl code that does exactly what you want, but you are a Java shop. So, just run the XML version of the code through an XSLT and voila!
#1 is probably more likely to happen sooner than #2 given that code conversion will be held back by different languages having different styles and ways of accomplishing tasks, but code conversion would really be the major benefit of this.
Why is this modded insightful? It's a complete misinterpretation of the Establisment Clause. There is no "prohibitions against teachign{sic} religion in public schools". The only thing the Establisment Clause prohibits is a state sponsored religion.
Red Hat was mentioned 110 times and SuSE was only mentioned 15 times
I'm currently working with IBM consultants on a POC and they mentioned to me (unofficially) that they use SuSE for their development and once their code is working there they port to RedHat. This of course does not mean anything more significant than the number of references to RedHat over SuSE in the article.
So, I wonder if PeopleSoft customers can take advantage of the full refunds on their software licenses that were being offered if Oracle succeeded. The article's a little short on details.
Never fear. As of this afternoon I was running 1.6.2 too and tonight I'm on 2.0 with minimal effort.
I used bittorrent to download the new 2.0 ISO image, I checked the MD5 sig, I burned a CD, I booted the CD, I choose "upgrade existing install", and I hit the enter key through a few minor dialogs... and voila! With less than an hour total effort (I didn't stay to watch the install) I'm back up and running with no noticeable glitches (YMMV). And, all that with absolutely no reading of any documentation whatsoever on my part. Amazing. Simply simple. Gotta love NetBSD.
I have always wondered what would happen if one of our representatives hosted a web site that allowed people in his/her district to know what votes were coming up in Congress, how he/she is planning to vote and why, and allowed some informal polling and commentary on the issues. I know this isn't what this guy is doing, but I wonder if it isn't the logical next step. You'd have to think that that sort of system would be the ideal of a representative democracy, but alas I don't expect any career politician to actually document their position on everything and set themselves up to be held accountable to their constituency. Especially since if they ever run for higher office that sort of thing gets used against them.
Though my position on this issue probably doesn't sync with the norm, I've found the problem with PG-13 to be the exact opposite of yours. Sometimes I'd just like to see a good movie without any of the questionable junk. (I know, I know - lots of people seem to prefer to see the stuff I just called junk in their moves - I'd rather that stuff be in movies rated R though.) Movies which for the most part probably could be rated PG throw some gratuitous scene or language in just to get the coveted PG-13 rating so that the teenage crowd won't dismiss it. So, what you end up with are movies which are mostly pretty good, but have some questionable content which may or may not fit with the rest of the story or the intended audience in one small scene just to get the more mature rating. So, from my perspective, the PG-13 rating has actually worsened my movie going experience. But, I recognize I'll be hard pressed to have very many other people on Slashdot agree. Let the puritanical accusations commence!
The marketing department at Unisys has a lot to learn. Last October, they ran an ad that said:
We helped JetBlue Airways do something unique with their data: treat customers like people.
Unisys
Imagine it. Done.
This wasn't a terrible ad, except that they ran it right after the JetBlue scandal. It was like they were completely out of touch with what was going on in the industry. I couldn't help but send them a little message asking if I could work for their marketing department, since there was no possible way I could do any worse than the one they presently have.
It's absolutely amazing to me that we seem to think that we can homogenize boys and girls into one common sex. It's even more amazing to me that anyone actually thinks this is even a good idea! As this article claims, boys and girls are DIFFERENT! They play different, they have different interests, and they have different skills. I'm not saying that girls can't do what boys do and boys can't do what girls do! But I am saying that this feminist agenda myth that we should all be bucking nature is crazy. If you give a typical boy dolls, he'll engage them in war games or dissect them or perform some other manner of harsh play with them. Likewise, if you give a little girl toys which are traditionally "boy" toys, she will not engage in play with them the same way a little boy would. And the argument that this is social conditioning doesn't hold any water; my son is less than 18 months old and he already exhibitsthis behavior. The differences between men and women are natural - we're wired to be different, and contrary to the recent trends, those differences are actually GOOD. I think it's great that there is an attempt to show women that they are capable of doing jobs traditionally performed by men, but I think it's wrong to make those fields artificially attractive. Women can be doctors, lawyers, construction workers, and IT professionals, but if the woman isn't naturally interested in what it means to be those things, them it does those women a disservice to artificially make those fields more appealing to them just to push an agenda.
Your? Dontcha mean "you're"?
:)
Sorry, I couldn't resist
Try this: create a page with a hidden layer
Um... layer tags aren't standard HTML. It is a Netscape invention. So, this is one place where IE does the right thing. See here
I agree with you that 99% of the time you would never want NULL to equal NULL. "BatMan" shouldn't ever equal "555-5555" the same way an unknown Name (NULL) is not the same as an unknown PhoneNumber (NULL). And my phone number, though you don't know what it is (NULL), is not the same as your phone number thought I don't know what it is (NULL).
However, since you asked, I can give you an example of when it would be nice to have NULL = NULL. In data warehousing, you have two types of tables - dimension tables and fact tables. There is always a 1-to-many relationship from dimensions to a fact table. Dimensions ALWAYS have a surrogate key (if your data modeler knows anything at all about dimensional modeling) and should only receive an insert if that record in its entirety (except for the surrogate key) does not already exist in the table. In order to check if a new dimensional record needs inserted or not, you have to do something like this:
insert into dimGeography
(
-- ALL COLUMNS FROM dimGeography EXCEPT FOR THE SURROGATE KEY
-- GeographyId (autonumber surrogate key)
Country,
State,
City
)
select distinct
(
Country,
State,
City
)
from
dimGeography_Stage a left join
dimGeography b on
a.Country = b.Country and
a.State = b.State and
a.City = b.City
where
b.GeographyId is null
Now where you run into problems is when a field in your join allows NULLs. For example, Mexico does not have states, so when adding a record for Mexico, you may have NULL as your State. So... no matter how many times ('Mexico', NULL, 'Mexico City') shows up in dimGeography_Stage, it will always be inserted into dimGeography as a new record. This is where NULL = NULL would be handy. However, there are some easy workarounds such as saying COALESCE(a.State, 'SOME DISTINCT VALUE') = COALESCE(b.State, 'SOME DISTINCT VALUE') in your join. Or, you could always disallow NULLs in the State column and use the Country as the State when inserting values from Mexico.
The interesting thing about infinity is (as ridiculous as this sounds) that it goes on forever. So, I could conclude that if I took the number "1" and tacked every combination of zeros on the end of it, then every word in every language - every sound possible - would not be enough to name every single number. So, all I'd have to do to sue would be to take 10^x where x is sufficiently large enough that no one has named it yet and name it, oh, say slashdot.org. Let the lawsuits commence!
it's clear the author hasn't looked at Java since 1.4
Well, since 1.5 is still in beta , I don't see how this is an invalid comparison.
The other problem with some of the early macs that you forgot to mention was the multitasking was subpar. I remember that if you held the mouse button down to drag something or kept it down during a moment of indecision on a menu, the entire system would wait to process anything else until you to released it. Man, have Macs come a long way!
Personally, I find apps that have options not available in the GUI to be personally offensive. Text files are not intuitive, they are generally poorly documented, and are a poor way to configure a program.
Wait a minute... do you run a *nix operating system or not then? Let me be the first to apologize on behalf of rc.conf for offending you.
This I don't understand. I mean, one of the most common complaints about KDE is "it has too many options!". Well, how is GNOME better? It has less options, fine. But you could achieve that in KDE as well: just don't change the options!
From a newbie perspective (which is what I am - honest) this actually is a problem for me. The "too many options" thing is difficult not because fewer options is necessarily better, but because it's extremely difficult to find the specific options I'm looking for with all the extra clutter! I actually switched from Knoppix to PCLinuxOS (Gnoppix is still beta and it shows) because I just like the lack of clutter that GNOME provides and I wanted that choice. I'm not saying that gearing a desktop towards a newbie is better. Actually, as potentially an eventual power user I want to have the... well, the power. But, there's nothing I despise more than clutter when I'm just trying to get things done. Each person will have their own preferences, and I'm not arguing that your preference for KDE is wrong - for me it was just things like Konq's vertical sidebar with zillions of unnecessary buttons and the control panel without an easily navigable organization that lead me to just like the simplicity and the look of GNOME better.
The problem with using a fake name on a card ends up being that they ultimately know who you are (at least your name) if you pay by credit card. You'd have to pay for everything in cash to be really safe. And though I use a fake name too, I just don't carry enough cash around to handle all my purchases.
I'm a Linux user, but I do consider trying FreeBSD. The only thing that turns me off is people like you.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but what do "people like [him]" have anything to do with you trying an operating system? Either try it because you're curious, or geeky, or bored, or interested in expanding your horizons. Or... don't try it because you're happy with what you have, or because you aren't interested, or because you don't have the time. Geez... do crappy drivers keep you from owning a car?