I've found over the years that a great many skeptics have some area in their life, where their personal beliefs come at odds with scientific consensus or their skepticism. These would include a great many things you/others write against as bunk: chi, anti-vaccination views, global warming "debate", acupuncture, raw diets, chiropractic, good luck charms, or personal rituals.
What beliefs (if any) do you hold or practice that might not be well based in science (good luck charm, personal ritual, unproved frontiers of "science" such as singularity theory)?
How do we reconcile psychological tools (chi in martial arts, good luck charms, placebos for psychosomatic illnesses / pain management, etc...) with the need to inform the public of their basis (or complete lack thereof) in reality?
It's amazing to watch people perpetuate both Linux and Windows myths fixed a while back.
Vista (and I believe XP) doesn't require Ctrl-Alt-Del to Login. That's old news.
I haven't seen a zombie process in linux in a long time. Processes without UI elements exist in both Windows and Linux. And both run crazy at times. That has very little to do with the operating and a lot to do about those programs.
Maybe I should step out of the room so the respective fanboys can continue their pissing contest.
I think it's just part of the slashdot demographic.
Let me illustrate an average slashdot poster. I met a friend of a friend. The conversation went like this.
"So, where do you work?"
"I'm actually not right now"
"Oh, so what school are you going to?"
"I'm not going to college, the school messed me up"
"Oh, ok"
This person lives w/ their parents, and claims to enjoy "intelligent conversation". When you consider the number of self-styled experts that know everything on a subject, I'd say you have a large number of people like this here. They are too smart for school, too good for a job, and thus live at home w/ their parents. They explain this meaningless existance by posting on slashdot and talking about why these things don't matter.
In short, the reason why that is often posted: Virgins.
When Corel gave up on Linux, it wasn't just a matter of no longer selling the Linux versions of their software, they dropped support as well.
This means that people who paid for a well-supported linux office suite, ended up with it breaking and them holding both pieces. Trying to get WP9 or WP8 working on a current day distribution is like pulling teeth. Corel released a buggy product, then dropped any support for things like software updates. In fact, the most you can find on their ftp server is a simple 'install' script.
So, when asked why the animosity? I'd have to say it might have something to do with being dropped like a bad habit, after having paid through the nose for their software. There is no reason why the community should trust Corel not to do the same thing all over again.
I'd have to argue that GNOME/GTK has some of the more major applications:
Mozilla
Gaim
Evolution
XChat2
Gimp
GnuCash
XMMS
There are of course some other major Linux applications out there, but most, from what I can tell, are GTK apps. The other major apps either use their own toolkits(OpenOffice), or don't use a toolkit at all. Before I hear the flames, I know there are KDE replacements for all of those applications, but the GTK versions are arguably the more popular.
Infringing a patent requires that only 1 claim be implemented. You can't simply ignore a claim because it is broad, they all matter. True, in patents, usually the first claim covers the gist what is being patented, and the rest of the claims add specific features to the base invention.
Now, of course you can defend against an overbroad claim in court, and even stand a chance of getting it struck down, but you will still end up spending thousands upon thousands. perhaps more. Friends, this is why taking legal advice on slashdot is bad idea.
Note: my knowledge of python is somewhat limited as I just started using it, so if there are errors here, I apologize.
1. Python as a scripting language has several features seen in Objective C(and other similar languages) not found in C++. Class members can be detected and bound at runtime, further it's possible to search a classes members for information.
2. Pydoc and documentation strings. Python has built in support for documentation strings, and a great utility for automatically generating documentation. Documentation is actually a part of the programming language, and not an after-market add-on.
3. Dictionary objects, tuples, lists - are all part of the basic language. Dictionary objects allow interesting hash tables to be created without much effort at all. This feature is seen in Perl.
4. Maybe a miss feature, but enforced indentation creates much easier to read code.
5a. The shelf object. This essentially allows any object to have it's runtime information stored in an easy and effecient matter. It can then be reloaded after a run.
5b. The pickle object again allows objects to easily be stored in files.
6. Python is _EXTREMELY_ easy to extend using the Python C API.
7. Python includes functional programming aspects such as mapping and lambda forms.
8. Python includes an extremely complete library that does just about everything one would desire to be able to do. Using the python runtime library allows your code to be easily portable without the headaches involved in C/C++ porting.
9. Using psyco, it's possible to have Python code JIT on i386 processors. This gives a significant performace boost.
10. A development community and support community second to none.
There are other aspects that I haven't touched on here, but these are the major things I've found helpful so far.
Slashdot Mirror
I've found over the years that a great many skeptics have some area in their life, where their personal beliefs come at odds with scientific consensus or their skepticism. These would include a great many things you/others write against as bunk: chi, anti-vaccination views, global warming "debate", acupuncture, raw diets, chiropractic, good luck charms, or personal rituals.
What beliefs (if any) do you hold or practice that might not be well based in science (good luck charm, personal ritual, unproved frontiers of "science" such as singularity theory)?
How do we reconcile psychological tools (chi in martial arts, good luck charms, placebos for psychosomatic illnesses / pain management, etc...) with the need to inform the public of their basis (or complete lack thereof) in reality?
It's amazing to watch people perpetuate both Linux and Windows myths fixed a while back.
Vista (and I believe XP) doesn't require Ctrl-Alt-Del to Login. That's old news.
I haven't seen a zombie process in linux in a long time. Processes without UI elements exist in both Windows and Linux. And both run crazy at times. That has very little to do with the operating and a lot to do about those programs.
Maybe I should step out of the room so the respective fanboys can continue their pissing contest.
I think it's just part of the slashdot demographic.
Let me illustrate an average slashdot poster. I met a friend of a friend. The conversation went like this.
"So, where do you work?"
"I'm actually not right now"
"Oh, so what school are you going to?"
"I'm not going to college, the school messed me up"
"Oh, ok"
This person lives w/ their parents, and claims to enjoy "intelligent conversation". When you consider the number of self-styled experts that know everything on a subject, I'd say you have a large number of people like this here. They are too smart for school, too good for a job, and thus live at home w/ their parents. They explain this meaningless existance by posting on slashdot and talking about why these things don't matter.
In short, the reason why that is often posted: Virgins.
This means that people who paid for a well-supported linux office suite, ended up with it breaking and them holding both pieces. Trying to get WP9 or WP8 working on a current day distribution is like pulling teeth. Corel released a buggy product, then dropped any support for things like software updates. In fact, the most you can find on their ftp server is a simple 'install' script.
So, when asked why the animosity? I'd have to say it might have something to do with being dropped like a bad habit, after having paid through the nose for their software. There is no reason why the community should trust Corel not to do the same thing all over again.
Mozilla
Gaim
Evolution
XChat2
Gimp
GnuCash
XMMS
There are of course some other major Linux applications out there, but most, from what I can tell, are GTK apps. The other major apps either use their own toolkits(OpenOffice), or don't use a toolkit at all. Before I hear the flames, I know there are KDE replacements for all of those applications, but the GTK versions are arguably the more popular.
Infringing a patent requires that only 1 claim be implemented. You can't simply ignore a claim because it is broad, they all matter. True, in patents, usually the first claim covers the gist what is being patented, and the rest of the claims add specific features to the base invention.
Now, of course you can defend against an overbroad claim in court, and even stand a chance of getting it struck down, but you will still end up spending thousands upon thousands. perhaps more. Friends, this is why taking legal advice on slashdot is bad idea.
Note: my knowledge of python is somewhat limited as I just started using it, so if there are errors here, I apologize.
1. Python as a scripting language has several features seen in Objective C(and other similar languages) not found in C++. Class members can be detected and bound at runtime, further it's possible to search a classes members for information.
2. Pydoc and documentation strings. Python has built in support for documentation strings, and a great utility for automatically generating documentation. Documentation is actually a part of the programming language, and not an after-market add-on.
3. Dictionary objects, tuples, lists - are all part of the basic language. Dictionary objects allow interesting hash tables to be created without much effort at all. This feature is seen in Perl.
4. Maybe a miss feature, but enforced indentation creates much easier to read code.
5a. The shelf object. This essentially allows any object to have it's runtime information stored in an easy and effecient matter. It can then be reloaded after a run.
5b. The pickle object again allows objects to easily be stored in files.
6. Python is _EXTREMELY_ easy to extend using the Python C API.
7. Python includes functional programming aspects such as mapping and lambda forms.
8. Python includes an extremely complete library that does just about everything one would desire to be able to do. Using the python runtime library allows your code to be easily portable without the headaches involved in C/C++ porting.
9. Using psyco, it's possible to have Python code JIT on i386 processors. This gives a significant performace boost.
10. A development community and support community second to none.
There are other aspects that I haven't touched on here, but these are the major things I've found helpful so far.