Analogies are necessary when talking about economics because the average person is woefully miseducated in the subject. My intent wasn't to prove or disprove anything, but to merely explain basic economics.
You would never edit the raw XML of your source code...
Call me an old fart, but why couldn't I edit the raw source code? My PHB can't understand why I don't use MSWord to write C++ code. He can't grok the concept of plain text. "Puh-lane tekst" I keep telling me, but he keeps complaining that he wants my local variables in a different font. Now you come along validating his insanity!
The days of 4-space vs 8-space tab debates are over.
Here's a clue: those days were over decades ago. Some people still argue over it, but they're the type of people who argue over nothing. Just ignore them and move on. If you cater to their quirks and foibles you only encourage them. Here's the answer to that debate: it doesn't matter because it's too trivial to bother with.
Suddenly, parsing all that code becomes much easier, because we have a well-established XML validation mechanism.
Thank goodness! I don't know how many more years I could have put up with stupid compilers not being able to validate my code.
Drag an if-then block into your source code. Drag a for loop block into your source code. Your editor can collapse or expand blocks.
Since when did you need XML for this? Correct me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't Kate/Kdevelop do this already? I understand that many of you use that leprous shit of an editor that comes with Visual Studio. But that's no excuse to eliminate plain text source code. Get a real editor and stop dragging the rest of us down to your level.
that alone is not enough to be able to tell the difference, you have to read the entire sentence to see what was meant.
Which was my entire point. Most of us CAN read all the way to the end of that ten word sentence. In fact, most of us go through life reading every sentence all the way to the end to see what was meant. It's a normal way we read. We don't stop to ponder what the author meant until we hit the period.
...but I DO like having as similar an environment as possible from Desktop to Server, thus this is an issue.
While this sounds fine on the surface, on closer inspection you'll find that the needs of the server and desktop are so different, that they might as well be different. My desktop is going to have a full blown desktop, but my server won't even have a video card installed (let along Xorg).
I can either do XYZ and make paying customers happy, or take a performance hit while I get used to a new environment.
While you certainly don't want to switch systems every other week, that's no reason to lock yourself into a single vendor for your entire lifetime. Elsewhere you talked about evaluating OpenBSD. Why the heck did you even bother when you knew in advance you were going to keep the old vendor? In my experience, people who abhor change don't evaluate new products.
And to many of us, "damned fine and strutting like she knows it" IS "good enough".
To many people, "good enough" is synonymous with mediocrity. Windows is good enough. Really it is! The whole secret to Windows' success is that it's just good enough that the average consumer won't flush it down the toilet in disgust.
Some of us don't want "good enough", we want "better", or if we can manage it, "best."
Who mentioned telnet?
You did in your grandparent post. I'm quoting you directly. Unfortunately Slashdot mangled my post by dropping a <p> tag.
In my experience, Linux has excellent hardware compatability, and BSD is so-so.
And in my experience it's just the opposite. I've already mentioned my SATA experiences. I've heard similar experiences with USB and several audio cards. I have a laptop where I had to go through several Linux distros before I finally found one that would install on it. It was Gentoo that finally worked, with all the others I tried (Slack, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake) hanging while booting from the install media. But FreeBSD installed the very first time.
Grandparent was/NOT/ intended to be a troll
Bullshit. You didn't post to Whitebox Linux story, or even a generic Linux story. You posted to a FreeBSD story. Your very first statement was "BSD makes a lousy desktop". And you say you weren't trolling? Hah! If I posted to a Linux story claiming that Linux made a lousy desktop, I would be modded down so fast my eardrums would rupture.
A Ponzi scheme is a pyramid scheme. It demands a constant and growing influx of late investors (young workers) to pay off the promises to the early investors (retirees). I didn't use the former term, however, because a) most people don't know what a Ponzi scheme is, and b) the term has been used to death in the SS debate to the point that it's become meaningless.
Deficits are a completely distinct from taxes. And not just in theory. If a congressmen tells you "but deficits would soar!" you must translate that to mean "I don't understand money at all which is why I still have my mother balance my checkbook."
Everyone in your office heard you read that as "used to"...
That's "used to" as in "you-zd two" (present tense), and not "you-st two" (past tense). See the difference? Taken in context it's clear that the present tense is meant.
Only if you don't raise them too much. And only on a temporary basis. After all, FICA has been raised before, but we STILL have a problem. You can't keep raising the taxes a little bit every four or eight years, because those taxes add up (it's called arithmetic) and eventually become too large of a tax.
Too large of a tax and you reduce employment, reducing the total revenues. Why? Because FICA is a tax on employment. Most people have to work, but that still leaves a lot of people who don't have to. Maybe they will retire a couple of years early. Maybe they'll leach off their parent's for a few more years.
No, the best solution is to solve the core problem, and not put bandaids on the symptoms. The core problem is that social security is a giant pyramid scheme. The concept itself is broken and needs to be discarded.
Government affects the economy like a brake affects an automobile: it can slow it down but it can never speed it up. Fortunately, the economy has a separate accelerator pedal known as "human action". Government by itself can't grow the economy, but if it cuts taxes it can allow the economy to grow itself.
Thus, moderate tax cuts can increase total tax revenues if such revenues derive from economic activity (income, capital gains, sales, etc).
It's running on my work and home desktop and my laptop. It runs KDE and GNOME, with all the bells and whistles, with absolutely no problems.
2) BSD doesn't do SMP gracefully.
First, it does do SMP just fine. Second, you probably don't even have an SMP machine on your desktop anyway. People don't need SMP on their destkop. And yes, you're talking about the desktop, because that's what your very first question was about. For some servers SMP is important. Good news is that FreeBSD supports it just fine.
3) BSD doesn't have the mindshare of Linux
So what? Linux doesn't have the mindshare of Windows, so why aren't you using Windows? All the popular stylish people are using Windows, why don't you to?
4) Getting to know BSD would require getting comfortable with a new administration system for startup, shutdown, and package management.
This is a stupid argument. Replace "BSD" with the name of any Linux distribution. "Oh poor me! I can't use [Debian|Slackware|SuSE|Mandrake] because I would have to learn a new adminstration system. Oh boo hoo!"
5) As of Redhat 7.x, Linux is "good enough"(tm) and getting better fast.
Some of us don't want "good enough." Some of us prefer "damned fine and strutting like she knows it!" Far be it for me to stick up for Linux, but she deserves a lot more respect from you than merely "good enough". Sheesh....apply some sane policies to configuration, (disable telnet, etc) and it's quite secure.
Side note: telnet is disabled by default in FreeBSD. It comes secure out of the box. It's not perfect, but for a tenth the work you would have to do on a telnet-by-default distro you could have FreeBSD locked down as tight as anything.
6) BSD has much more limited hardware compatability, and drivers for "cool stuff" can be hard to find.
If you want "cool stuff", then stick with Windows. I understand it has drivers for ALL the "cool stuff". On the other hand, if you want drivers for all the boring stuff you use every day, then FreeBSD will have them.
In fact, I was not initially able to install Linux on my current home system, because at the time I built it (18 months ago) there were no Linux distros that supported SATA out of the box. But FreeBSD did. It wasn't until about six months ago that some Linux distros started shipping with SATA on by default. Many still don't.
That doesn't address the problem of 0 day exploits.
No it doesn't, but ordinary common sense does prevent it. Just grab the patches from a different system. Don't have another Solaris system that's been patched? Use *anything* else to download it. Hell, burn yourself a copy of Knoppix. Or if even that is too much for you, plug in a damned $50 consumer grade firewall router for the twenty minutes it takes to download the patches.
Really, sometimes I think you guys whine just to hear yourselves whine.
On the other hand, Solaris 8 is considerably older than many of known exploits. Most of the Linux boxes tested were much newer. To make another stupid analogy, it's like comparing old and new bread to see which is moldier.
Why do you have to view everything in a negative way?
Because until this thread I have never received any complaints about the Mac version of my software. Quite the opposite, I've received dozens of letters of gratitude. But then there's this thread.
Apparently my widgets are layed out randomly. I've been called incompetent. My application doesn't cut it. And of course, it "looks like ass."
How about just putting in that extra bit of effort necessary to be a first class citizen on a desktop platform that's more popular than your primary development platform?
First of all, my primary platform is NOT Windows. It's FreeBSD. Last I heard it wasn't more popular than OSX, but I guess I'm behind the times.
Second, I've put in a LOT of extra bits of effort. But apparently I haven't put in enough extra bits of effort. Excuse me for not owning a Mac, okay? This is why I'm so pissed! I put in that "extra bit of effort" and it's not good enough! The lesson is that it's better to never have tried then to try and come in second place.
I'm not claiming that my software is finished. There are a lot of "extra bits" needing to be done, on *ALL* platforms. But I don't have to time to devote myself 100% to creating the epitome of the perfect Mac application.
All I said in my original post was that Qt/Aqua made my application appear to be native. I still stand by that statement, because "native" isn't synonymous with "perfect".
Why even bother testing unpatched Solaris when Sun specifically tells you to patch your boxes? It's like never changing your car's oil and then complaining that it breaks down too often. It's almost, but not quite, as stupid as complaining your burrito is frozen because you didn't read the microwave directions.
There's this myth out there that OpenOffice is a GNOME app. I have no idea why. Maybe some GNOME developer submitted a bug fix to it once upon a time...
With the exception of the pretentious Mac twits, what the user wants more than anything is software with *functionality*. All the slick user interfaces in the world don't mean shit if they don't do anything. You certainly want a good user interface, but it's priority number two. Substance over style. Features over flair.
The HIG everyone gives me a link to was written in 1997, doesn't cover Aqua, and doesn't say one damned word about toolbars.
So tell me, is my app to fscking embarassing to you Mac purists that I should completely cease all Mac development efforts? That's sort of the impression I'm getting. It's no skin off my back, because it would leave me more time to develop actual features instead of worrying about offending someone's aesthetic sensibilities.
I am reminded of a time years ago when I was in France. A certain wineseller refused to sell to me because my French was good enough for him. Somehow it seems that you're embarassed that I don't speak perfect Mac. I get the sense that you wish I had never ported my software to the Mac at all. But I have lots of letters of gratitude from Mac users that assure me I made the right decision.
Maybe my application isn't a native Mac app, so what? At least I speak Mac well enough to be understood. Maybe I've got a slight accent, so what? I'm covering a market niche that no one else in Mac-land has bothered to cover. Before my Qt/Aqua port all my Mac users had to perform painful contortions with Fink and XFree86. If you think my Qt/Aqua port has an unacceptable accent, you should have seen it when it had a Motif accent!
No, I didn't use XCode. That's because I use Emacs and GCC. Heck, I didn't even know XCode ran under FreeBSD. In any case, I could have redone my interface to make it adhere better to your sensibilities. And I could have done it in Qt/Aqua. But that interface would have been so different from the X11 and Windows interfaces that I would have had to either fork the code, or befoul it with scores of additional #ifdefs (and the resulting illegibility and unmaintainability they cause). I could have done this. But Mac users would have had to wait a lot longer to see the finished product.
I'm not claiming that my application is a perfect example of Mac ideals. I merely claimed that you couldn't tell it wasn't developed natively. Your initial impession that it was a Carbon app validates my point. If I would have spent the extra time to fix some niggling minor "foreign accents" in the interface, I could definitely have made it look as if Steve Jobs himself has written it. And it still would have been written in Qt/Aqua.
But I don't even own a Mac. Which is why I think my porting attempt is pretty damned good. Even if it pisses off elitist French winesellers.
My point was that my application was a native application, *NOT* that it had Apple's imprimatur upon it. As such, I have plenty of company with other native Mac applications.
With regards to my application, the Mac user has two choices. The first choice is to use my Qt/Aqua application as-is. The second choice is to wait until I aquire a Mac of my own and spend several months rewriting my application from the ground up specifically for the Mac. If yours is the second choice, be aware that you might be waiting a very long long time.
I can set my entire Unix filesystem to 777, and still browse the web with no fear. I would of course be stupid to do, but not because of the web. The article's point is that you can get roasted alive merely by visting a webpage.
Slashdot Mirror
Analogies are necessary when talking about economics because the average person is woefully miseducated in the subject. My intent wasn't to prove or disprove anything, but to merely explain basic economics.
I must not be human, because I can do it. Then again, I'm an English major, so I have an unfair advantage...
You would never edit the raw XML of your source code...
Call me an old fart, but why couldn't I edit the raw source code? My PHB can't understand why I don't use MSWord to write C++ code. He can't grok the concept of plain text. "Puh-lane tekst" I keep telling me, but he keeps complaining that he wants my local variables in a different font. Now you come along validating his insanity!
The days of 4-space vs 8-space tab debates are over.
Here's a clue: those days were over decades ago. Some people still argue over it, but they're the type of people who argue over nothing. Just ignore them and move on. If you cater to their quirks and foibles you only encourage them. Here's the answer to that debate: it doesn't matter because it's too trivial to bother with.
Suddenly, parsing all that code becomes much easier, because we have a well-established XML validation mechanism.
Thank goodness! I don't know how many more years I could have put up with stupid compilers not being able to validate my code.
Drag an if-then block into your source code. Drag a for loop block into your source code. Your editor can collapse or expand blocks.
Since when did you need XML for this? Correct me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't Kate/Kdevelop do this already? I understand that many of you use that leprous shit of an editor that comes with Visual Studio. But that's no excuse to eliminate plain text source code. Get a real editor and stop dragging the rest of us down to your level.
that alone is not enough to be able to tell the difference, you have to read the entire sentence to see what was meant.
Which was my entire point. Most of us CAN read all the way to the end of that ten word sentence. In fact, most of us go through life reading every sentence all the way to the end to see what was meant. It's a normal way we read. We don't stop to ponder what the author meant until we hit the period.
...but I DO like having as similar an environment as possible from Desktop to Server, thus this is an issue.
/NOT/ intended to be a troll
While this sounds fine on the surface, on closer inspection you'll find that the needs of the server and desktop are so different, that they might as well be different. My desktop is going to have a full blown desktop, but my server won't even have a video card installed (let along Xorg).
I can either do XYZ and make paying customers happy, or take a performance hit while I get used to a new environment.
While you certainly don't want to switch systems every other week, that's no reason to lock yourself into a single vendor for your entire lifetime. Elsewhere you talked about evaluating OpenBSD. Why the heck did you even bother when you knew in advance you were going to keep the old vendor? In my experience, people who abhor change don't evaluate new products.
And to many of us, "damned fine and strutting like she knows it" IS "good enough".
To many people, "good enough" is synonymous with mediocrity. Windows is good enough. Really it is! The whole secret to Windows' success is that it's just good enough that the average consumer won't flush it down the toilet in disgust.
Some of us don't want "good enough", we want "better", or if we can manage it, "best."
Who mentioned telnet?
You did in your grandparent post. I'm quoting you directly. Unfortunately Slashdot mangled my post by dropping a <p> tag.
In my experience, Linux has excellent hardware compatability, and BSD is so-so.
And in my experience it's just the opposite. I've already mentioned my SATA experiences. I've heard similar experiences with USB and several audio cards. I have a laptop where I had to go through several Linux distros before I finally found one that would install on it. It was Gentoo that finally worked, with all the others I tried (Slack, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake) hanging while booting from the install media. But FreeBSD installed the very first time.
Grandparent was
Bullshit. You didn't post to Whitebox Linux story, or even a generic Linux story. You posted to a FreeBSD story. Your very first statement was "BSD makes a lousy desktop". And you say you weren't trolling? Hah! If I posted to a Linux story claiming that Linux made a lousy desktop, I would be modded down so fast my eardrums would rupture.
A Ponzi scheme is a pyramid scheme. It demands a constant and growing influx of late investors (young workers) to pay off the promises to the early investors (retirees). I didn't use the former term, however, because a) most people don't know what a Ponzi scheme is, and b) the term has been used to death in the SS debate to the point that it's become meaningless.
Deficits are a completely distinct from taxes. And not just in theory. If a congressmen tells you "but deficits would soar!" you must translate that to mean "I don't understand money at all which is why I still have my mother balance my checkbook."
Everyone in your office heard you read that as "used to"...
That's "used to" as in "you-zd two" (present tense), and not "you-st two" (past tense). See the difference? Taken in context it's clear that the present tense is meant.
Only if you don't raise them too much. And only on a temporary basis. After all, FICA has been raised before, but we STILL have a problem. You can't keep raising the taxes a little bit every four or eight years, because those taxes add up (it's called arithmetic) and eventually become too large of a tax.
Too large of a tax and you reduce employment, reducing the total revenues. Why? Because FICA is a tax on employment. Most people have to work, but that still leaves a lot of people who don't have to. Maybe they will retire a couple of years early. Maybe they'll leach off their parent's for a few more years.
No, the best solution is to solve the core problem, and not put bandaids on the symptoms. The core problem is that social security is a giant pyramid scheme. The concept itself is broken and needs to be discarded.
Government affects the economy like a brake affects an automobile: it can slow it down but it can never speed it up. Fortunately, the economy has a separate accelerator pedal known as "human action". Government by itself can't grow the economy, but if it cuts taxes it can allow the economy to grow itself.
Thus, moderate tax cuts can increase total tax revenues if such revenues derive from economic activity (income, capital gains, sales, etc).
1) BSD makes a lousy desktop.
...apply some sane policies to configuration, (disable telnet, etc) and it's quite secure.
It's running on my work and home desktop and my laptop. It runs KDE and GNOME, with all the bells and whistles, with absolutely no problems.
2) BSD doesn't do SMP gracefully.
First, it does do SMP just fine. Second, you probably don't even have an SMP machine on your desktop anyway. People don't need SMP on their destkop. And yes, you're talking about the desktop, because that's what your very first question was about. For some servers SMP is important. Good news is that FreeBSD supports it just fine.
3) BSD doesn't have the mindshare of Linux
So what? Linux doesn't have the mindshare of Windows, so why aren't you using Windows? All the popular stylish people are using Windows, why don't you to?
4) Getting to know BSD would require getting comfortable with a new administration system for startup, shutdown, and package management.
This is a stupid argument. Replace "BSD" with the name of any Linux distribution. "Oh poor me! I can't use [Debian|Slackware|SuSE|Mandrake] because I would have to learn a new adminstration system. Oh boo hoo!"
5) As of Redhat 7.x, Linux is "good enough"(tm) and getting better fast.
Some of us don't want "good enough." Some of us prefer "damned fine and strutting like she knows it!" Far be it for me to stick up for Linux, but she deserves a lot more respect from you than merely "good enough". Sheesh.
Side note: telnet is disabled by default in FreeBSD. It comes secure out of the box. It's not perfect, but for a tenth the work you would have to do on a telnet-by-default distro you could have FreeBSD locked down as tight as anything.
6) BSD has much more limited hardware compatability, and drivers for "cool stuff" can be hard to find.
If you want "cool stuff", then stick with Windows. I understand it has drivers for ALL the "cool stuff". On the other hand, if you want drivers for all the boring stuff you use every day, then FreeBSD will have them.
In fact, I was not initially able to install Linux on my current home system, because at the time I built it (18 months ago) there were no Linux distros that supported SATA out of the box. But FreeBSD did. It wasn't until about six months ago that some Linux distros started shipping with SATA on by default. Many still don't.
Those of us who can actually read to the end of a sentence without having to stop to take a breath had no problem with it at all.
That doesn't address the problem of 0 day exploits.
No it doesn't, but ordinary common sense does prevent it. Just grab the patches from a different system. Don't have another Solaris system that's been patched? Use *anything* else to download it. Hell, burn yourself a copy of Knoppix. Or if even that is too much for you, plug in a damned $50 consumer grade firewall router for the twenty minutes it takes to download the patches.
Really, sometimes I think you guys whine just to hear yourselves whine.
On the other hand, Solaris 8 is considerably older than many of known exploits. Most of the Linux boxes tested were much newer. To make another stupid analogy, it's like comparing old and new bread to see which is moldier.
Why do you have to view everything in a negative way?
Because until this thread I have never received any complaints about the Mac version of my software. Quite the opposite, I've received dozens of letters of gratitude. But then there's this thread.
Apparently my widgets are layed out randomly. I've been called incompetent. My application doesn't cut it. And of course, it "looks like ass."
How about just putting in that extra bit of effort necessary to be a first class citizen on a desktop platform that's more popular than your primary development platform?
First of all, my primary platform is NOT Windows. It's FreeBSD. Last I heard it wasn't more popular than OSX, but I guess I'm behind the times.
Second, I've put in a LOT of extra bits of effort. But apparently I haven't put in enough extra bits of effort. Excuse me for not owning a Mac, okay? This is why I'm so pissed! I put in that "extra bit of effort" and it's not good enough! The lesson is that it's better to never have tried then to try and come in second place.
I'm not claiming that my software is finished. There are a lot of "extra bits" needing to be done, on *ALL* platforms. But I don't have to time to devote myself 100% to creating the epitome of the perfect Mac application.
All I said in my original post was that Qt/Aqua made my application appear to be native. I still stand by that statement, because "native" isn't synonymous with "perfect".
Silly me. I checked on the OpenOffice page to see if it was a GNOME application or not. Stupid me. I should have checked the Ximian page. Duh!
Why even bother testing unpatched Solaris when Sun specifically tells you to patch your boxes? It's like never changing your car's oil and then complaining that it breaks down too often. It's almost, but not quite, as stupid as complaining your burrito is frozen because you didn't read the microwave directions.
So you're saying GNOME is as stupid as Windows? Is this really the GNOME policy that as long as Microsoft does it then it must be okay?
There's this myth out there that OpenOffice is a GNOME app. I have no idea why. Maybe some GNOME developer submitted a bug fix to it once upon a time...
How about Pravda?
No, more like "CBS"...
With the exception of the pretentious Mac twits, what the user wants more than anything is software with *functionality*. All the slick user interfaces in the world don't mean shit if they don't do anything. You certainly want a good user interface, but it's priority number two. Substance over style. Features over flair.
The HIG everyone gives me a link to was written in 1997, doesn't cover Aqua, and doesn't say one damned word about toolbars.
So tell me, is my app to fscking embarassing to you Mac purists that I should completely cease all Mac development efforts? That's sort of the impression I'm getting. It's no skin off my back, because it would leave me more time to develop actual features instead of worrying about offending someone's aesthetic sensibilities.
I am reminded of a time years ago when I was in France. A certain wineseller refused to sell to me because my French was good enough for him. Somehow it seems that you're embarassed that I don't speak perfect Mac. I get the sense that you wish I had never ported my software to the Mac at all. But I have lots of letters of gratitude from Mac users that assure me I made the right decision.
Maybe my application isn't a native Mac app, so what? At least I speak Mac well enough to be understood. Maybe I've got a slight accent, so what? I'm covering a market niche that no one else in Mac-land has bothered to cover. Before my Qt/Aqua port all my Mac users had to perform painful contortions with Fink and XFree86. If you think my Qt/Aqua port has an unacceptable accent, you should have seen it when it had a Motif accent!
No, I didn't use XCode. That's because I use Emacs and GCC. Heck, I didn't even know XCode ran under FreeBSD. In any case, I could have redone my interface to make it adhere better to your sensibilities. And I could have done it in Qt/Aqua. But that interface would have been so different from the X11 and Windows interfaces that I would have had to either fork the code, or befoul it with scores of additional #ifdefs (and the resulting illegibility and unmaintainability they cause). I could have done this. But Mac users would have had to wait a lot longer to see the finished product.
I'm not claiming that my application is a perfect example of Mac ideals. I merely claimed that you couldn't tell it wasn't developed natively. Your initial impession that it was a Carbon app validates my point. If I would have spent the extra time to fix some niggling minor "foreign accents" in the interface, I could definitely have made it look as if Steve Jobs himself has written it. And it still would have been written in Qt/Aqua.
But I don't even own a Mac. Which is why I think my porting attempt is pretty damned good. Even if it pisses off elitist French winesellers.
My point was that my application was a native application, *NOT* that it had Apple's imprimatur upon it. As such, I have plenty of company with other native Mac applications.
With regards to my application, the Mac user has two choices. The first choice is to use my Qt/Aqua application as-is. The second choice is to wait until I aquire a Mac of my own and spend several months rewriting my application from the ground up specifically for the Mac. If yours is the second choice, be aware that you might be waiting a very long long time.
I can set my entire Unix filesystem to 777, and still browse the web with no fear. I would of course be stupid to do, but not because of the web. The article's point is that you can get roasted alive merely by visting a webpage.