It's interesting how the word "deniers" is used almost like the Catholic Church used "heretics" in the middle ages. Here's a clue: unlike the absolutism so rampant in politics these days (pro life! pro choice! bah!) it is possible to be concerned about climate change without buying into the "OMG the North Atlantic Drift is shifting; Europe will fr33ze" bullshit peddled by scaremongerers in the media.
This article by the Tyndall Centre's Mike Hulme might give you some food for thought. Check out his credentials, he's one of the stalwarts among climate change scientists. He might help you realize that idiots exist on all sides, and the environmentalist movement is not without its fair share. But then, I'm not especially hopeful since you seem to have already made up your mind about "deniers".
I think the point O'Reilly's trying to make is that the problem with unrestricted speech is that the noise can drown out the signal. Think of Monty Python's "spam" skit. If there were greater civility more ideas would be exchanged, and online exchanges would be more productive. Imagine how much/. would suck if each message had 40 goatse/troll replies.
That said, while I do agree with him about civility, I think he's worrying about unrestricted speech when the real problem on blogs is speech without a feedback loop. People who yell and drown out others in real life are dealt with quite effectively. Slashdot uses moderation to achieve the same effect. Moderation is a restriction, no two ways about it. It keeps a lot of junk out, but also keeps a lot of alternate opinion from being seen by the vast majority of/.-ers who don't browse at 0 or -1. But we accept it because it allows us the freedom to carry out a workable conversation without worrying too much about trolls.
Some of the bigger blogs use moderation, but for personal blogs, there really is no substitute for good sense and policing. If someone were making offensive remarks on a blog I ran, it'd be deleted as quickly as I found out about it. What's "offensive"? Whatever I deem it to be. My house, my rules.
> we MIGHT affect ecology on a larger, perhaps even global scale.
Actually, we affect ecology simply by existing. Fishing changes fish population patterns, man's spread to every corner of the Earth has caused a decline in certain species and a (relative) increase in others (check out the pigeon population of NYC, for instance). In that sense, environmentalists who say the only way to 'reverse the damage' is to 'remove man' are right, and in fact intellectually honest -- although their PR skills are questionable.
However, most environmentalists grandly over-estimate our ability to cause global-scale disasters. Re your local disasters, disaster size does not scale linearly with technological growth, and ecosystems have a way of correcting themselves -- deforestation in England was a 'hot topic' in 16th and 17th centuries, with people complaining as England's forests were denuded for wood for stoves and ships. In time, the ecosystem bounced back (helped by the shift to steel for ships and gas for stoves) -- there are fewer trees in England now than c.10th century, but more than the 16th and 17th!
One of the best known debunked examples was Sagan's rapid-cooling scenarios ("nuclear winter"). The other problem is environmentalists refusal to see Earth's ecosystem as a evolving system, instead harking back to the past as a ideal that the future should aspire to. Ecosystems don't work that way! Millenia ago, most of Europe was an icy wasteland and the Sahara was an oasis. An observer then might decry the loss of the Sahara, but would they have predicted the advantages a temperate Europe would have brought?
Bottom line: there's nothing more arrogant than the assumption that a given region has the right to enjoy a static, unchanging climate for all of time.
I should probably add that this does not mean that polluters are let off the hook. On health grounds alone, we already regulate most pollutants. As for CO2 emissions (which is what most global warming campaigners campaign for), I would suggest that the "the end is nigh" scenarios many campaigners paint is both scientifically inaccurate as well as damaging to their cause. Rather, they should encourage (through various methods like research grants and tax breaks) use of a basket of energy sources, including solar, wind and nuclear. Nuclear is crucial -- solar and wind are nice but large markets need reliable electricity sources.
> I found OpenOffice to be much easier to use because Word always tries to anticipate what you are doing and "help" you
Frankly, if you found that excruciating, it's easy enough to turn off. Tools | Options | AutoCorrect. Many people like the defaults, which is why they're there. I for one like that asterisks at the beginning of a line are converted to bullets, and '->'s to arrows. And that straight quotes are converted to curly ones. If you don't, well -- Tools | Options to the rescue.
And obviously you've never used OpenOffice 2.2's "AutoComplete". It has a nasty habit of doing an inline-autocomplete so if you type "po" you're likely to get (say) "Poland", which can be distracting if you were typing about poorhouses.
> First, mp3s cost the online music stores money per song download, whereas AAC does not.
MP3s cost the online music stores money per song downloaded? Are you refering to the Fraunhofer license fee? I'm not sure that's the way it works -- most large stores are likely to license MP3 encoders for a flat (and negligible in the bigger scheme of things) fee. Don't forget MP3 has HUGE installed base. Saying "Nobody cares about your [old hardware]" is a surefire way to the tank whenever you're targetting the consumer electronics market, which is where the vast majority of music is actually played -- this reporter seems to think portable music players are the biggest market, when MP3-ready mobile phones hugely outnumber them. In fact, the *point* of DRM-less music is that you can play them in all sorts of odd places. And the MPEG standard (including MP3) is supported in a LOT of odd places.
And since EMI leaves the choice of DRM-less format to the store vendor (something this reporter seems to have totally missed out), I dare say most stores will start selling MP3s as soon as they can their hands on EMI's catalog.
Of course, folk who get a hard-on from anything Apple has blessed are free to feel different. But that (or indeed that one of them got his crap published on Business Week) does not make it true. And this reporter's bias shows:
All of this will of course, be lost on my annoying relative. But then, just as some people deserve Windows, they also deserve to remain oblivious.
Easy to see where the condescending Mac fanboy image comes from.
Google, HP, Oracle, Sun, IBM -- all use Linux desktops at work.
I did not mean exclusively use Linux desktops. Hell, I've seen Sun employees run Windows, and I guess marketing in all these companies runs Windows. But that doesn't mean Linux isn't supported in some form at all these places.
In May, go buy some of EMI's DRM-free catalog. Even better, when the indies get on board, go buy some of their stuff on MP3 as well. Encourage others to ask other labels for DRM-free music. With any luck the RIAA will realize that DRM != Sky falling over their heads.
Also, thanks to all the people and organisations who've worked tirelessly against DRM so far. DRM isn't just bad for customers (cf Stallman's Right-to-read), it's also bad for business. The software companies figured this out in the 1980s, lets hope RIAA (and then the MPAA) do too.
Actually, there's very little need for the "WTF" (in bold, too, oooh).
When I say "trust the Unix admin to take care of things", I mean take care of his workstation. Which is not okay, because I trust him to administer the servers (which he presumably takes good care of), but NOT a workstation on which he by the parent poster's own admission he might have to do a lot of 'experimentation'. Frankly, I don't want a 'experimentation' machine on my production network, still less a machine on which the the Unix admin has unlimited access. If he's really fooling around with killall or dhcpd (or for all I know trying out various experimental packages that could be malware for all I know), let him do it on a test/staging machine, on a cordoned-off network. Let him do his primary email/reports etc on a standard, IT supported system (or a thin client if that's feasible). *That* is what I meant. I'm sorry I can't make this any clearer.
> And have fun being out of a job when your language of choice falls out of favor.
Oh he doesn't even have to wait until it falls out of favor. If the language becomes really popular (e.g. Java), there'll be hundreds of drones in Bangalore or Saigon who'll do the job for a tenth of his asking rate. He'll then spend all his time unemployed and bitching about f*king Indians on Slashdot.
Get as much math as you can. The analytical skills you pick up will stand you in good stead throughout your career. If math isn't your thing, try to get as many courses that are important to businesses, like systems analysis, the practice of software engineering, control systems -- it'll help you work effectively in the wider world beyond programmers. And if you actually like CS, do look at (my biases) distributed virtual worlds, robotics and pattern recognition... lots and lots to do in those areas. However (as I mentioned) a basic grounding in math, logic and the usual basic engineering subjects will stand you in good stead in all these areas.
I totally agree that admins need test and staging systems that are essentially identical to the servers they're maintaining (how else would they test patches, for instance?) but why does a primary workstation have to be a staging/test/experimentation system? There are lots of reasons why this is an extremely bad idea, not least of which is that you have just allowed a machine that your IT staff cannot manage into your production network (so you have to trust the Unix admin to take care of things). Give admins test/staging systems on a cordoned-off network.
And if your org runs a thin-client setup, you could probably investigate if admins can do without a primary workstation and access their thin-client's server via their cordoned-off test machines. This isn't very popular but I've seen it done.
> I think the vast majority of Putty users belong the Don't Know Any Different category
I'd love to know what Putty doesn't do that makes it impractical for system administrative jobs (especially for Linux, which is what I usually connect it to). For bog-standard command line work it's perfectly adequate (hell, telnet.exe would probably be adequate for that), it deals with keyboard mappings (^?/^H), it even deals with screen, curses apps like top, and even (not that I would want to) allows me to use mc with color and mouse support (and allows mouse-based web-surfing on links). It also has the Unix-style select-to-copy mechanism. So, again, how is it inferior to a Linux VT or xterm?
Well, yes -- it does depend on which department you work in (I'm pretty sure all of the companies I mentioned use Windows too - hell last I heard even Red Hat marketing used Windows). But the number of teams supporting Linux desktops in IBM is growing not shrinking.
Google, HP, Oracle, Sun, IBM -- all use Linux desktops at work. But if IT is unwilling to make a special case and allow you a Linux desktop, just get PuTTY, run it full-screen, you won't even know you're on Windows. There are even some X emulators for Windows (Hummingbird?) but it's been a while since I used any and the command line is all you need anyway.
And which DLLs are these? User32.dll and friends? Sorry, but those DLLs are available to every Win32 app, including OpenOffice, should it choose to use them. So, unless you are regurgitating something you've heard on the intarwebs, I'd ask that you be more specific.
Office does not run in the background when you don't run it. Scanning the process list on any Windows machine will tell you that. (Unless you have Office's 'binder' installed, which hasn't been in the default install for years)
How this tripe gets modded Informative is beyond me.
> I get SMS spam from Sprint just about every other day
SMS ads are untargeted and largely provoke negative reactions. Sounds familiar to banner ads? Google's business model is all about creating advertising models that don't piss users off, and they've succeeded on the web. I'm not a huge Google fan (I don't buy their "don't be evil" kool-aid) but I'd put money that if anyone makes mobile advertising work, it'd be Google.
Great points. Although about Half-Life 2, the online delivery and updates is pretty convenient for paying users and, imho, better than shipping copy-protected CDs that can't be backed up and get scratched (I'm looking at you, Doom 3). I'd say Steam is less about being SaaS and more about a really streamlined sales+delivery channel.
> But there's nothing in the nature of a word processor that requires it to be delivered as a service.
That's something I hope the SaaS kool-aid drinkers will keep in mind. To be fair, the the folk who push web apps as *the* way to do SaaS have a point when they say the cost of developing web software is much lesser than developing rich clients, and gradually browsers will gain capabilities, especially in relatively static areas like word processing, and even in areas like offline use -- thus making it even more compelling to develop more apps as web apps. However they totally ignore the fact that rich clients exist already and users are familiar with them, and the marginal cost of web-enabling them is often much lower than developing a web office suite with similar features.
> Now implement a high-end game on the "software as a service" model.
Like World of Warcraft? I'm as sceptical of Software-as-a-Service as the next man, but that was a pretty poor example. Just because SaaS gives Salesforce and Google a hard-on doesn't mean that local storage and local processing power will disappear in the future.
> Why do right-to-lifer's support the death penalty?
>> Because they believe in moral absolutism, which always breeds hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is the gap between normative and practised behavior. It might reduce ones credibility in some cases (e.g. Gore's jet-setting and his carbon-reduction message, or the Republican party's gay bashing and their own members' gay peccadillos), but in itself hypocrisy it's not a crime. You might find Neal Stephenson's thoughts on this illuminating.
As for right-to-lifers and the death penalty, there really is no dichotomy in arguing for the rights of the unborn on the one hand and arguing for stringent punishments for those convicted of heinous crimes. Anyone who says otherwise is playing with words (as are, to be fair, all those who reduce an abortion -- an emotionally scarring experience any way you look at it -- to glib phrases like "pro-life" and "pro-choice").
Except the small fact that Windows (and to a lesser extent OSX) customers make up a large enough fraction of the market that manufacturers actually take the incompatibility seriously.
Dude, you do realize every time you say that, people hear "...or use Windows or OSX." Your enthusiasm for Linux is great, but honestly -- this sort of fanboyishness is exactly what Linux does NOT need.
> And if you just need to browse web and read e-mail, you could be served by a super-lean OS on solar-powered hardware with e-paper display.
I actually do those a lot, and even considered getting a Nokia tablet. The reason I didn't is that the web+email 'lean' OSes forget that occasionally I need to do other things. Which is why Windows and Linux are popular on mobile devices (notebooks and PDAs/smartphones). Hardware is cheap. Making software 'lean' serves no business purpose (but it is technically satisfying, I know). Creating a capable OS means your users can do more complex thing *should they choose to do so*.
In short, lean OSes are a niche thing. OS manufacturers are forced to keep up with everybody else and add features appropriate to their market.
> Would you use a realtime OS to run your J2EE server?
We're comparing apples to apples here. The key is 'features appropriate to market'. I also wouldn't run my webserver on DOS, or Photoshop on VMS, etc.
> Would you use Trusted Solaris on a notebook with data that you need secured.
Heh heh. I wouldn't, because a notebook can't be secured (physical access to data implies control of data). But if had to run a "security-hardened" notebook, I'd just use Linux or Windows, both of which have ACLs, encrypting file systems and pretty good power mgmt and lots of apps for what I need to do (primarily IDEs, productivity and internal business apps, a good web browser and a VoIP client).
If my organization needed MACs (mandatory access controls), I'd use Linux because of SELinux (but then I'd be a niche because most orgs don't require mandatory access controls). But if Windows had MACs, the playing field would levelled from a features-checklist point of view and I'd choose my OS based on what apps I prefer to run.
The point is, only a small niche choose an OS for its random_killer_feature. Most people look at the alternatives and choose the one with the best app support.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting how the word "deniers" is used almost like the Catholic Church used "heretics" in the middle ages. Here's a clue: unlike the absolutism so rampant in politics these days (pro life! pro choice! bah!) it is possible to be concerned about climate change without buying into the "OMG the North Atlantic Drift is shifting; Europe will fr33ze" bullshit peddled by scaremongerers in the media.
This article by the Tyndall Centre's Mike Hulme might give you some food for thought. Check out his credentials, he's one of the stalwarts among climate change scientists. He might help you realize that idiots exist on all sides, and the environmentalist movement is not without its fair share. But then, I'm not especially hopeful since you seem to have already made up your mind about "deniers".
>how does restriction produce greater freedom?
/. would suck if each message had 40 goatse/troll replies.
/.-ers who don't browse at 0 or -1. But we accept it because it allows us the freedom to carry out a workable conversation without worrying too much about trolls.
I think the point O'Reilly's trying to make is that the problem with unrestricted speech is that the noise can drown out the signal. Think of Monty Python's "spam" skit. If there were greater civility more ideas would be exchanged, and online exchanges would be more productive. Imagine how much
That said, while I do agree with him about civility, I think he's worrying about unrestricted speech when the real problem on blogs is speech without a feedback loop. People who yell and drown out others in real life are dealt with quite effectively. Slashdot uses moderation to achieve the same effect. Moderation is a restriction, no two ways about it. It keeps a lot of junk out, but also keeps a lot of alternate opinion from being seen by the vast majority of
Some of the bigger blogs use moderation, but for personal blogs, there really is no substitute for good sense and policing. If someone were making offensive remarks on a blog I ran, it'd be deleted as quickly as I found out about it. What's "offensive"? Whatever I deem it to be. My house, my rules.
> we MIGHT affect ecology on a larger, perhaps even global scale.
Actually, we affect ecology simply by existing. Fishing changes fish population patterns, man's spread to every corner of the Earth has caused a decline in certain species and a (relative) increase in others (check out the pigeon population of NYC, for instance). In that sense, environmentalists who say the only way to 'reverse the damage' is to 'remove man' are right, and in fact intellectually honest -- although their PR skills are questionable.
However, most environmentalists grandly over-estimate our ability to cause global-scale disasters. Re your local disasters, disaster size does not scale linearly with technological growth, and ecosystems have a way of correcting themselves -- deforestation in England was a 'hot topic' in 16th and 17th centuries, with people complaining as England's forests were denuded for wood for stoves and ships. In time, the ecosystem bounced back (helped by the shift to steel for ships and gas for stoves) -- there are fewer trees in England now than c.10th century, but more than the 16th and 17th!
One of the best known debunked examples was Sagan's rapid-cooling scenarios ("nuclear winter"). The other problem is environmentalists refusal to see Earth's ecosystem as a evolving system, instead harking back to the past as a ideal that the future should aspire to. Ecosystems don't work that way! Millenia ago, most of Europe was an icy wasteland and the Sahara was an oasis. An observer then might decry the loss of the Sahara, but would they have predicted the advantages a temperate Europe would have brought?
Bottom line: there's nothing more arrogant than the assumption that a given region has the right to enjoy a static, unchanging climate for all of time.
I should probably add that this does not mean that polluters are let off the hook. On health grounds alone, we already regulate most pollutants. As for CO2 emissions (which is what most global warming campaigners campaign for), I would suggest that the "the end is nigh" scenarios many campaigners paint is both scientifically inaccurate as well as damaging to their cause. Rather, they should encourage (through various methods like research grants and tax breaks) use of a basket of energy sources, including solar, wind and nuclear. Nuclear is crucial -- solar and wind are nice but large markets need reliable electricity sources.
> I found OpenOffice to be much easier to use because Word always tries to anticipate what you are doing and "help" you
Frankly, if you found that excruciating, it's easy enough to turn off. Tools | Options | AutoCorrect. Many people like the defaults, which is why they're there. I for one like that asterisks at the beginning of a line are converted to bullets, and '->'s to arrows. And that straight quotes are converted to curly ones. If you don't, well -- Tools | Options to the rescue.
And obviously you've never used OpenOffice 2.2's "AutoComplete". It has a nasty habit of doing an inline-autocomplete so if you type "po" you're likely to get (say) "Poland", which can be distracting if you were typing about poorhouses.
MP3s cost the online music stores money per song downloaded? Are you refering to the Fraunhofer license fee? I'm not sure that's the way it works -- most large stores are likely to license MP3 encoders for a flat (and negligible in the bigger scheme of things) fee. Don't forget MP3 has HUGE installed base. Saying "Nobody cares about your [old hardware]" is a surefire way to the tank whenever you're targetting the consumer electronics market, which is where the vast majority of music is actually played -- this reporter seems to think portable music players are the biggest market, when MP3-ready mobile phones hugely outnumber them. In fact, the *point* of DRM-less music is that you can play them in all sorts of odd places. And the MPEG standard (including MP3) is supported in a LOT of odd places.
And since EMI leaves the choice of DRM-less format to the store vendor (something this reporter seems to have totally missed out), I dare say most stores will start selling MP3s as soon as they can their hands on EMI's catalog.
Of course, folk who get a hard-on from anything Apple has blessed are free to feel different. But that (or indeed that one of them got his crap published on Business Week) does not make it true. And this reporter's bias shows:Easy to see where the condescending Mac fanboy image comes from.
In May, go buy some of EMI's DRM-free catalog. Even better, when the indies get on board, go buy some of their stuff on MP3 as well. Encourage others to ask other labels for DRM-free music. With any luck the RIAA will realize that DRM != Sky falling over their heads.
Also, thanks to all the people and organisations who've worked tirelessly against DRM so far. DRM isn't just bad for customers (cf Stallman's Right-to-read), it's also bad for business. The software companies figured this out in the 1980s, lets hope RIAA (and then the MPAA) do too.
Actually, there's very little need for the "WTF" (in bold, too, oooh).
When I say "trust the Unix admin to take care of things", I mean take care of his workstation. Which is not okay, because I trust him to administer the servers (which he presumably takes good care of), but NOT a workstation on which he by the parent poster's own admission he might have to do a lot of 'experimentation'. Frankly, I don't want a 'experimentation' machine on my production network, still less a machine on which the the Unix admin has unlimited access. If he's really fooling around with killall or dhcpd (or for all I know trying out various experimental packages that could be malware for all I know), let him do it on a test/staging machine, on a cordoned-off network. Let him do his primary email/reports etc on a standard, IT supported system (or a thin client if that's feasible). *That* is what I meant. I'm sorry I can't make this any clearer.
> And have fun being out of a job when your language of choice falls out of favor.
Oh he doesn't even have to wait until it falls out of favor. If the language becomes really popular (e.g. Java), there'll be hundreds of drones in Bangalore or Saigon who'll do the job for a tenth of his asking rate. He'll then spend all his time unemployed and bitching about f*king Indians on Slashdot.
Get as much math as you can. The analytical skills you pick up will stand you in good stead throughout your career. If math isn't your thing, try to get as many courses that are important to businesses, like systems analysis, the practice of software engineering, control systems -- it'll help you work effectively in the wider world beyond programmers. And if you actually like CS, do look at (my biases) distributed virtual worlds, robotics and pattern recognition ... lots and lots to do in those areas. However (as I mentioned) a basic grounding in math, logic and the usual basic engineering subjects will stand you in good stead in all these areas.
I totally agree that admins need test and staging systems that are essentially identical to the servers they're maintaining (how else would they test patches, for instance?) but why does a primary workstation have to be a staging/test/experimentation system? There are lots of reasons why this is an extremely bad idea, not least of which is that you have just allowed a machine that your IT staff cannot manage into your production network (so you have to trust the Unix admin to take care of things). Give admins test/staging systems on a cordoned-off network.
And if your org runs a thin-client setup, you could probably investigate if admins can do without a primary workstation and access their thin-client's server via their cordoned-off test machines. This isn't very popular but I've seen it done.
> I think the vast majority of Putty users belong the Don't Know Any Different category
I'd love to know what Putty doesn't do that makes it impractical for system administrative jobs (especially for Linux, which is what I usually connect it to). For bog-standard command line work it's perfectly adequate (hell, telnet.exe would probably be adequate for that), it deals with keyboard mappings (^?/^H), it even deals with screen, curses apps like top, and even (not that I would want to) allows me to use mc with color and mouse support (and allows mouse-based web-surfing on links). It also has the Unix-style select-to-copy mechanism. So, again, how is it inferior to a Linux VT or xterm?
Well, yes -- it does depend on which department you work in (I'm pretty sure all of the companies I mentioned use Windows too - hell last I heard even Red Hat marketing used Windows). But the number of teams supporting Linux desktops in IBM is growing not shrinking.
Google, HP, Oracle, Sun, IBM -- all use Linux desktops at work. But if IT is unwilling to make a special case and allow you a Linux desktop, just get PuTTY, run it full-screen, you won't even know you're on Windows. There are even some X emulators for Windows (Hummingbird?) but it's been a while since I used any and the command line is all you need anyway.
> FSF is redefining its own concept of free to match whatever behaviour it currently perceives to be in conflict with the ethics of those driving it.
Well put. I think I'm going to use that as my sig.
And which DLLs are these? User32.dll and friends? Sorry, but those DLLs are available to every Win32 app, including OpenOffice, should it choose to use them. So, unless you are regurgitating something you've heard on the intarwebs, I'd ask that you be more specific.
Office does not run in the background when you don't run it. Scanning the process list on any Windows machine will tell you that. (Unless you have Office's 'binder' installed, which hasn't been in the default install for years)
How this tripe gets modded Informative is beyond me.
> I get SMS spam from Sprint just about every other day
SMS ads are untargeted and largely provoke negative reactions. Sounds familiar to banner ads? Google's business model is all about creating advertising models that don't piss users off, and they've succeeded on the web. I'm not a huge Google fan (I don't buy their "don't be evil" kool-aid) but I'd put money that if anyone makes mobile advertising work, it'd be Google.
Great points. Although about Half-Life 2, the online delivery and updates is pretty convenient for paying users and, imho, better than shipping copy-protected CDs that can't be backed up and get scratched (I'm looking at you, Doom 3). I'd say Steam is less about being SaaS and more about a really streamlined sales+delivery channel.
> But there's nothing in the nature of a word processor that requires it to be delivered as a service.
That's something I hope the SaaS kool-aid drinkers will keep in mind. To be fair, the the folk who push web apps as *the* way to do SaaS have a point when they say the cost of developing web software is much lesser than developing rich clients, and gradually browsers will gain capabilities, especially in relatively static areas like word processing, and even in areas like offline use -- thus making it even more compelling to develop more apps as web apps. However they totally ignore the fact that rich clients exist already and users are familiar with them, and the marginal cost of web-enabling them is often much lower than developing a web office suite with similar features.
> Now implement a high-end game on the "software as a service" model.
Like World of Warcraft? I'm as sceptical of Software-as-a-Service as the next man, but that was a pretty poor example. Just because SaaS gives Salesforce and Google a hard-on doesn't mean that local storage and local processing power will disappear in the future.
I agree with you, drink slimeball marketing tactics only piss of consumers.
There are many more enviga honest ways to sell wares.
> Why do right-to-lifer's support the death penalty?
>> Because they believe in moral absolutism, which always breeds hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is the gap between normative and practised behavior. It might reduce ones credibility in some cases (e.g. Gore's jet-setting and his carbon-reduction message, or the Republican party's gay bashing and their own members' gay peccadillos), but in itself hypocrisy it's not a crime. You might find Neal Stephenson's thoughts on this illuminating.
As for right-to-lifers and the death penalty, there really is no dichotomy in arguing for the rights of the unborn on the one hand and arguing for stringent punishments for those convicted of heinous crimes. Anyone who says otherwise is playing with words (as are, to be fair, all those who reduce an abortion -- an emotionally scarring experience any way you look at it -- to glib phrases like "pro-life" and "pro-choice").
Except the small fact that Windows (and to a lesser extent OSX) customers make up a large enough fraction of the market that manufacturers actually take the incompatibility seriously.
> Again, please bitch to the manufacturers.
Dude, you do realize every time you say that, people hear "...or use Windows or OSX." Your enthusiasm for Linux is great, but honestly -- this sort of fanboyishness is exactly what Linux does NOT need.
> And if you just need to browse web and read e-mail, you could be served by a super-lean OS on solar-powered hardware with e-paper display.
I actually do those a lot, and even considered getting a Nokia tablet. The reason I didn't is that the web+email 'lean' OSes forget that occasionally I need to do other things. Which is why Windows and Linux are popular on mobile devices (notebooks and PDAs/smartphones). Hardware is cheap. Making software 'lean' serves no business purpose (but it is technically satisfying, I know). Creating a capable OS means your users can do more complex thing *should they choose to do so*.
In short, lean OSes are a niche thing. OS manufacturers are forced to keep up with everybody else and add features appropriate to their market.
> Would you use a realtime OS to run your J2EE server?
We're comparing apples to apples here. The key is 'features appropriate to market'. I also wouldn't run my webserver on DOS, or Photoshop on VMS, etc.
> Would you use Trusted Solaris on a notebook with data that you need secured.
Heh heh. I wouldn't, because a notebook can't be secured (physical access to data implies control of data). But if had to run a "security-hardened" notebook, I'd just use Linux or Windows, both of which have ACLs, encrypting file systems and pretty good power mgmt and lots of apps for what I need to do (primarily IDEs, productivity and internal business apps, a good web browser and a VoIP client).
If my organization needed MACs (mandatory access controls), I'd use Linux because of SELinux (but then I'd be a niche because most orgs don't require mandatory access controls). But if Windows had MACs, the playing field would levelled from a features-checklist point of view and I'd choose my OS based on what apps I prefer to run.
The point is, only a small niche choose an OS for its random_killer_feature. Most people look at the alternatives and choose the one with the best app support.