Your claim on scalability is laughable (look at Google's cluster)
Laughable eh? Have you ever run Linux on an 8 core opteron? Have you ever used Solaris 10? There's a difference between scaling up and scaling out. In a real world practical situation, I ran MySQL 5.0.x on an 8 core Opteron, 4 cpu, 32GB system, testing both the Linux 2.6 kernel and Solaris 10. With our benchmarking simulating loads on our real-time IVR system, we found that Solaris was able to achieve greater utilization of multiple processors (there was a lower load on more cpus, instead of a higher load on cpu 0, 1, and 2) and that under Solaris the response times were consistant rather than being spread from very low to ridiculously high. Offical MySQL benchmarks confirm on multi-cpu systems greater than 2 core, there is a noticable gain running Solaris 10 over Linux. Considering Solaris's fine grained locking is terribly mature and that they've been doing 32 core (logical and physical) for years longer than anyone else has, it shouldn't be suprising that on systems >2 core, Solaris out scales Linux.
Solaris 10 x86 and x64 are free (as in beer), give it at try yourself instead of trying to appeal to the authority of Google.
I can't stand a lot of their stuff because it assumes you're an idiot. I'm sorry, but I don't want to click next a thousand times when I install software. Much of their stuff is easy to use for a new user, but much more difficult for a person that knows what he/she is doing. To contrast, in Linux most things have a graphical configuration wizard that I could use if I wanted, but also a freely editable config file. This is rarely the case in Windows.
These are legitimate answers to the original poster's question, answers which I can even understand and respect. I see the issues you raise, they just don't bother me as much. But that's fair.
See, the difference is, real IT professionals and engineers aren't fanbois of either system. Real IT professionals look at each offering, assess its value, and make a choice. Mr. Hypochrite, we finally agree.
What we finally agree on is that part of your post actually contained legitimate answer to the question raised, rather than trying to turn the question around and demand that people should explain why you *shouldn't* hate Windows/Microsoft. My problem with the parent post was the attempt to reverse the onus of explaination from "tell us why you hate it" to "tell me why I shouldn't hate it." That dumps the responsibility I believe IT professionals have to do their own research and to consider products on their merits, and not on outdated opinions based on software from years past.
See, my problem with Linux fanbois is, Microsoft comes out with something new, they assume it sucks ass, and that's that. Zero research on the possibility that maybe they came out with something really nice. My problem with Microsoft apologists is that if it wasn't for Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior, computing in general (be it web server software, OS's, anything) would have progressed server. They could cure cancer at this point and still have a net negative impact. Supporting anything they do is allowing them to keep holding back progress.
So you're admitting that you are incapable of giving new Microsoft products unbiased considerations on their merits, because their business practices have somehow retarded the mainstream of computing. I disagree with your statement that they have somehow retarded the science and/or industry computing of computing as a whole, and I prefer to examine their new products from as unbiased of a perspective as possible and see what roles they can fill in the building of hybrid IT systems and deployments.
I agree with most of what you say, but the point I was trying get across was that the article is specifically asking why we hate Microsoft. I just pointed out that I shouldn't have to explain why I prefer a free OS to Windows. It should be the reverse. The Windows fans should explain really why I should fork over money to use their OS. Microsoft should be running the sales pitch instead of us.
I'm kinda confused as to how you went from the original question "why do people hate microsoft" to why you shouldn't have to explain why you prefer a free OS to Windows to how Windows fans should explain why you should fork over money to use their OS.
Nobody thinks you should fork over money to use Windows. Nobody is trying to push you to switch to Windows. The question "why do people hate microsoft" is being asked because you can easily scan through Slashdot and see a thousand posts of Linux fanbois telling us how bad Windows sucks. The truth is, Windows kicks the crap out of Linux in some ways, Linux in others, but it seems like Linux people have to go out of their way to try to slam Windows based on stereotypes from the Windows 95/98 era.
In asking this question, nobody is telling you to switch to Windows and fork out the money.
In asking this question, nobody is telling you to explain why you prefer a FLOSS operating system over Windows or any other proprietary operating system.
In asking this question, the poster is simply trying to figure out why Linux fanbois feel the need to attack Microsoft and Windows every time either is the topic of conversation. It gets old, it gets sad, and as I said in my previous post, real IT people who don't hump Windows' or Linux's legs just don't get why people who at times appear to be IT professionals, suddenly lash out in a huge wave of fanboi-ism and flame any time Microsoft products are brought up.
The reason the fanboi-ism matters and why someone would bother to ask about this is that for all of the accusations against Microsoft regarding the spread of FUD (which I'll agree they are certainly guilty of 99% of the time), these Linux fanbois are spreading just as much FUD at the grassroots level, essentially taking away the idea that there is more out there than Linux and that there are pros and cons for ALL operating systems and all software. Sometimes, the FLOSS solution is not up to par with the commercial offering. Admitting that isn't dogging FLOSS projects, or the hard work of open source programmers. It isn't bashing the cause or failing to support Linux. Open source shouldn't be a cult, it should be a way for open source developers and volunteers to contribute to the multitude of operating system and software offerings so that IT professionals and users have a *choice*. The minute you damn one of the major choices as satanic, wrong, evil, always bad, never works, always fails, etc, you are detracting from those choices based on something other than actual experience with using that choice for what it is good for.
Wow, this is the biggest piece of shit ad hominem attack I've seen in the Microsoft versus FOSS debate in a long time.
Here's what I have to say about it:
Many of those people you call "Microsoft fanbois" are also Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris users as well. They are really not MS fanbois, they're just not Linux fanbois, which from a Linux fanboi perspective means that they must want to have sex with Bill Gates.
"I can see why Linux and BSD people can be proud of their OS." Why? How many USERS of Linux or FreeBSD have ever contributed one line of source code such that it is "their" OS and they should somehow be "proud" of it? What is there to be proud of? Take Linux for example. FreeBSD is freer, Solaris scales better, Windows has wider application support, a broader user base for interoperability, and full hardware support, and both Windows and MacOS X make Linux desktops look like the shit that clings to my dogs ass when I don't get him a hair cut often enough. So what's there to be so "proud" of in Linux? Wow, you have a UNIX/POSIX-like kernel, wow. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Linux, but what the fuck is so special about Linux that gives you the right to be "proud" of it in a way that a Windows user can't be proud of Windows?
I like your complete assult on non-console gaming. You're basically taking one of the reasonable arguments for Windows and trying to make it a non-issue. What's stupid about that is you state "[justify] to us why we should spend 150 bucks on an OS", but then if I use Linux I need a console for gaming, which even if I go for the reasonably priced Nintendo Wii that's an extra $249 plus I get to play video games on a low-res television instead of my high res computer monitor, a quality difference of like 10x. I also get TV audio instead of Sound Blaster Audigy 2 audio through my speakers. I do have a nice home theatre system with a big Sony Grand Wega that I could play on, if I wanted to force my wife to watch me play Nintendo Wii instead of watching TV. Your gaming argument is hollow and weak.
There is a kernel of truth in some of what you say. Part of the reason *some* people run Windows is commitment and consistency. They bought it, so they have to believe it is good. But that is also the reason some Linux users (and apologists) completely blind themselves to the areas where Linux lacks compared to commercial operating systems. They've invested their time in becoming Linux savvy, so to admit that their time was only worth the $150 bucks that Windows XP costs just isn't mentally acceptable.
But here's the real issue that's not going to sit well with the Linux community. You talk about using a console for gaming, you talk about Windows Vista being "sluggish", and this reveals one of the true reasons I've seen that many Linux fanbois don't see the differences between Windows and Linux that favor Windows: your computers suck. You run low end fucking hardware, and then when you dual boot XP and Linux you decide that XP is slow as shit and bloated to all hell. You don't have a fucking Raedon or Geforce because your OS doesn't support it worth a damn, so you're telling people to buy a fucking console and play on a TV instead of a computer monitor. You haven't enjoyed a high end Windows XP Pro based gaming machine enough to understand the fact that if you run Windows on high end hardware, what you get is a high speed system with a cohesive interface, with video and audio drivers that actually fucking work that aren't based on chipsets from 8 years ago. What you get is a REAL desktop.
I am a C/C++ developer, and I really enjoy using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for non-visual library, component, and systems programming, regardless of what platform the final product is for. While it has its flaws and bugs, Visual Studio destroys other IDEs people have tried to introduce me to.
I love C#.NET, it's a great language on a great platform, and while I could write it in vi, use Mono as the platform (incomplete), and Gtk#
Personally, I would consider 3.6% a rarity. It's certainly not common. 10,800,000 crazies, 289,200,000 "normal" people. Somehow I think the two hundred ninety million of us can "ward off" the eleven million of them. Especially since if you look at history, if such a group went beyond the tolerances of the masses, either individually or as a group, the masses would eliminate them in some fashion, be it a bloody slaughter, increased enforcement / new legistation / harsher penalties for anti-social behavior, or something in between.
There's a difference between immigration and vacationing. Without vacationing Americans, many tourism based economies would fail. If you want to keep Americans from immigrating in exchange for keeping reactionaries from immigrating here, I'm not sure what that would accomplish, but that would be more fair than your broad statement of "all Americans stay in theirs".
I agree whole heartedly. This guy is obviously just another Java apologist. C programming is so classic anymore, that to write anything new and exciting, you have to take an anti-C position and try to prove that Java is some how "just as good" as C development.
His first point basically tries to blur the lines between high, mid, and low level languages. This point is debatable, but more importantly, irrelevant.
His second point is basically that the major architectures have changed so much that C no longer allows low level access to all their features and functionality. The sole example he brings out is, of course, vector instructions. That's handled in one of a couple ways currently. Applications can use the non-standard asm {} extension or link to object code written in assembler. Application can use a vectorizing compiler. His argument against using a vectorizing compiler is that you're converting vector operations into scalar operations and then hoping that the compiler figures that out. That's basically how low level languages work on architectures that have higher level assembly operations. Look at Itanium for an example of "compiler should be able to figure out what I'm doing" in action. It's a hollow argument because he says it like it doesn't make sense and implies that it doesn't work, when in fact, it has been shown to work.
His third point is where he really starts into his Java apologism. He starts out describing high level versus low level languages, as if this were some kind of abstract discussion. By the third page, he reveals that this is a Java versus C rant, explaining why people's arguments against Java aren't fair, and that C isn't that much faster than Java, blah blah blah. Insert silly assertations about how expensive function calls are on most architectures and how functions aren't inlined between source files, and how VM based languages (LIKE JAVA) don't have these kinds of limitations. This implies that Java has some kind of advantage over C when it comes to highly procedural code, which simply isn't true. Most benchmarks I've seen that "show" that Java is faster than C (as explained by these silly "advantages"), involve poorly written C or C++ code because Java-heads don't always write the best C. On top of that, they're comparing an open source C compiler (gcc), to Sun's Java VM. Next time one of you Java apologists wants to benchmark C and Java, maybe have someone with a little more C programming skills than yourself write the C, and consider compiling it on Intel C Compiler or Microsoft's C compiler, rather than using gcc and Borland. Then you can do your benchmark and show that Java is capable of some kind of relevant inlining optimization that C is not, and therefore actually has some kind of performance benefit.
His fourth point seems to be that Java array access could be better in theory, which is fine but irrelevant to the fact that doing things like image conversions in Java where numerous accesses to byte arrays are useful is dog slow (same with C#.NET). If Java does what he damns C for doing, giving you a vector class that generates SIMD instructions, that would be news to me. Most of his other argument here is that the fact that Java has a foundation class library means that it can provide "transparent" logical switching between classes, like dictionaries and associative arrays. In C, you'd have to find or write a class that did the same thing, OR do what most developers do and look at your usage and decide which one fits better. I don't need foundation classes figuring out which data structure is best for me, I went to college, I can figure it out for myself.
His last point is part of the more standard Java apologist dogma, which states that "the process of programming" supports Java, because you can more easily explain to the compiler what you're trying to do. Somehow, C developers are able to get into the right mindset to explain to the compiler what they're trying to do. That's part of being a developer and a computer s
And this is why we'll never have Linux on the desktop for the common user. Because no value added reseller can take Linux and build it into something that "just works" using binary drivers, so Linux will constantly be behind the driver curve, which means you'll never be able to use newer hardware with it. And the onus is always put on someone besides the Linux people. They won't relax their GPL restrictions so instead driver manufacturers have to GPL their code, and/or common users will have to learn how to add the binary drivers in after the fact.
You keep undercutting the companies who are trying to actually get Linux on the desktop for people in a state that will actually work for them, you're never going to get anywhere. You're not forcing Nvidia to open source their driver, you're forcing a Linux distro to not have good Nvidia support. Total impact on Nvidia's sales: 0.
I don't think that these claims have been made. I've seen publishers encourage it but I haven't seen a marketing push to claim anyone can do it.
HOLY FUCKING SPIN. When the post is about how leet Linux kiddie #5,326 built his grandma a Linux box and now she uses it with Mozilla to go on the web, Linux users are all hard core about how this proves that Linux is ready for the desktop. But when you take a guy who DOESN'T have a Linux expert relative to (a) setup the Linux box for him, (b) train him on how to use it for the most simple tasks, and then (c) to come rescue him when the Linux box has a minor issue, or he hits the wrong key. Drop a book on the keyboard, somehow it hits CTRL-ALT-F1, he's dropped out of X and completely helpless at the text login prompt. This article is right. If you don't have a Linux expert to walk you through setting it up, learning how to use it, and helping you maintain it, COMMON PEOPLE CANNOT USE LINUX AS THEIR DESKTOP. GET OVER IT.
This idiocy about "he chose the wrong distribution, why didn't he try Manchicken Linux"?? And clearly he should "have the patience to go out and find multimedia programs." Except that to a common Windows user, that would be a nearly impossible task. What is he going to search the web, find the package he wants to install, and then (rpm -i ||./configure && make && make install || whatever)????? Are you fucking high? Linux people, STOP THINKING THAT THESE COMMON USERS YOU'RE TRYING TO CAPTURE CAN ACCOMPLISH SUCH "EASY" TASKS.
This is the idiocy of the Linux-on-the-Desktop stance. Linux users can already use Linux on the desktop. Common Windows non-power users cannot. So the goal seems to be able to make the system such that a common user can use it as their desktop also, thus ending Microsoft's reign and bringing freedom to the land. But the problem is, any time a common user tries to do it unassisted, they get completely left in the dark, and you're sitting there going "What an idiot, if he'd just found GNU/dvdplayer1234 and installed it on his system, he would have seen that Linux can do everything. All he would have had to do is search on sourceforge, find the package that matches his distribution and architecture, or download the source and compile!!!" Clearly this man is a retard for not getting it.
How exactly publishers can "encourage" something without implying that it is possible, I do not know. When Microsoft encourages me to switch my development platform to.NET, I assume what they're saying is, it's possible. When Linux vendors "encourage" people to try Linux on the desktop, that implies that such a thing is possible (true or not). Ease off on the spin there buddy. The worst kind of person who defends a cause is the kind that defend it, right or wrong. This guy is some kind of non-power user who has heard claims that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows. Have you read all of the marketing material from all of the Linux vendors? How do you know that no Linux vendor has ever made that claim, explicitly?
Don't blindly defend the cause in ways that don't make sense, you just make everyone look stupid.
Amen brother. I clicked into this article to post exactly what you've posted, and was pleased to find your post the first one, representing the fact that those of us who aren't participating in TopCoder (but could in fact compete quite well with them) are busy being gainfully employed. I tried out TopCoder when it first started, and it interested me. Some of their little programming contests are quite fun and definately help improve your speed of development. However, I found that I had too much work and not enough time to spend to make any progress up their ladder.
Cool site, not for people already employed full time.
This is a troll. "Background FSCK" isn't BSD's answer to journaling. Soft updates is Dr. McKusick's implementation to maintain filesystem integrity in the event of a system failure. BSD doesn't need journaling, it has soft udpates. You need to read:
People had been recommending that for years so why should he be able to "discover" a problem and get credit for recommending a solution that everyone knew about.
That's like me saying everyone should upgrade to 64bit and install at least 8GB of ram so that your system has enough disk cache to keep up with very large hard drives that will be coming out. And in 5 years when everyone is running 64bit with at least 8GB of ram, some retard like you can defend me on Slashdot. "Maybe the reason everyone doesn't have terrible I/O load in accessing their 4TB hard drives is because everyone took his advice and upgraded to 64bit and 8GB."
I also think we should stop cutting down the rain forest and stop polluting the earth. Lemme know when I'm proven right on those too plzkthx.
Yes, but there's a difference between attacking the code and attacking the FreeBSD and Mach developers personally. He's not just saying their implementation is shitty, but attacking their intelligence for not agreeing with him.
This is truly the stupidest post I've ever seen on Slashdot. Are you high? Almost every business, big or small, has a public fax line you retard. And they print that number on business cards, email signatures, the contact page of their website, and everywhere else they put their contact information.
Obviously, the "Fortune 100" companies you've worked for were much bigger than these petty little corporations who have publicly available fax numbers. Since I work for a company that sells fax service among other things, I can tell you there are actually just a few (hundred thousand) more businesses out there who publicly publish a fax number.
Feel free to actually go to the websites of a few of the 99 or 100 Fortune 100 companies that you have never and will never work for and see if they have a fax number available online. Ass.
The feds are trying to defend their Internet child-protection law. They wanted to know how much porn is searched for on the major search engines. They asked for random search data that doesn't identify users in any way.
So because the information is anonymous, they have a right to mine corporate owned information to attempt to resurrect a series of laws that have been repeatedly found unconsitutional? You describe porn as if it were something illegal, a problem that they are reasonably working to eliminate. And the government shares your position I'm sure. But somehow the "they're just attacking pornography" argument doesn't sway me much. Pornography involves peoples' right to explore their sexuality as they see fit, including selling video or photographs of said sexuality for the means of making money and helping other people enjoy their sexuality. The government disagrees with this protected practice (shielded by case law), and is looking for a way to implement their standard wedge method to make it impractical since they can't make it illegal. They are doing so under the guise of protecting children. This demand for "random search data" whether it is anonymous or not, is entirely inappropriate and private corporations which have rights of their own, should not be at the disposal of the government to provide them with commercial information in order to further their attempts to override peoples' rights through misrepresented over-restrictive impracticality.
That would be like the government demanding that the credit card agencies turn over all of the charge records of a random sampling of 50,000 Americans so the government could better understand peoples' spending habits. What you've done by condoning such government abuses of power is essentially hand the government the right to "explore" all private information for the purpose of "research" so they can advance their legal agenda of chipping away at peoples' rights using the wedge method and by over-regulating businesses they don't like.
I guess my philosophy, is treat people like adults, if someone blows it, can them, but, don't penalize everyone just 'in case' someone might do something wrong or naughty.
Here's where I respectfully disagree with your position, which I hear quite often. Don't punish (or penalize if you prefer) people before they do anything wrong.
(1) I don't agree that not being able to do non-work related tasks on your work computer is a punishment or penalty.
(2) If we wait for you to fuck up your computer by downloading viruses, pirating MP3s, or otherwise make a huge mess then we have to:
(a) Spend countless hours on cleaning up your workstation, probably your fellow employees' workstations, and possibly certain critical servers essential for doing business depending on how well you can wall off your users from your internal servers. This can result in a huge loss for the company, so we're basically being asked to wager money on you not misusing your privileges.
(b) If you broke the employee agreement or the law in abusing your privileges, we have to terminate you, which incurs administrative costs. Then we have to deal with potential labor board disputes (which we've had employees file simply out of spite). We also have to perform security procedures to change passwords you were exposed to and ensure that you do not continue to have access to systems. We have to deal with replacing you, and making sure that you didn't have any solitary or essential knowledge that one of your coworkers had. We have to reallocate your tasks to other employees while we train your replacement.
Now obviously once you are terminated, none of this is your problem. But that's the point now isn't it. The point is, we wagered a hell of a lot of time and resources, plus the time we invested in training you on our products, on whether or not you'd make a mistake or do something stupid AND WE LOST THE WAGER.
The only benefit we get for making that wager and giving you those privileges is that your sense of entitlement to do anything on the net that you want no matter who is paying you for your time and no matter whose computer you're using.
Now I agree that some people use the internet wisely, and it sucks ass that we have to restrict everything because of a few people. But that is exactly why we have to restrict it. We can't ask the oracle to predict which employees should be restricted and which shouldn't (and being discriminatory like that without sufficient evidence can be illegal in certain states).
At both my current and my previous employers' offices, we tried the "be responsible adults" theory. For about 3 years. Employees came and went, but the problems remained the same. The temptation to play on the net was irresistable to too many people, and they ended up downloading stupid shit and skunking their computer with crap. I had admins spending their time reinstalling Windows all too often. We are now moving towards a non-administrator setup under Windows XP SP2.
The funniest part about this whole thing is, when I started using our spyware firewall to block out games sites and other crap, the hard working employees didn't even notice. The only people who started bitching were the people who play on the net half the work day while other people pick up their slack. These idiots didn't realize that through their complaints about how our company had become "too corporate" and "a bunch of nazis", they were revealing their lack of work ethic. And after consulting with their managers, they were identified as the less productive of their respective groups. News flash, kids. This is a business. I own stock in it. The goal is to make money. If you work hard, we pay well. If you complain about not being able to access fucking Yahoo Games, we don't need you. If you have a problem with our net admin policies, please quit and save us the trouble of firing you.
First post from a laptop running XP SP2 with a USB 2.0 device connected with the asynchronous scheduler component running preventing my CPU from entering one of the ACPI sleep states and thus draining my battery life.
As for having unprotected sex being idiotic, if that were true we're all idiots. Well, probably not you. I'll let you in on a little secret, though -- condomless feels better. In the moment, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that you can beat the odds.
And in a few sentences, you're entire seemingly intelligent attack on his statement falls by the wayside.
I'll agree that it's easy for people who aren't getting laid to talk shit on people with AIDS, talking about they would supposedly do in that situation when they have no idea. But the simple fact is, somehow some of us are able to overcome the "it feels better" issue before making a decision to enter into a completely monogamous long term relationship. Those who don't can fairly be labelled idiots, if you're defining an idiot in this instance by someone who is unable to control their sexual desires to the point that they can't even force themselves to use a condom. And really, it's not THAT bad using a condom, if you're not using some generic 7-11 piece of shit. Before my fiance and I were exclusive, I used Trojan UltraThins. They work great, they don't block you from so much senstation that you feel like you're about to lose your wood, and they can actually help you put a few more minutes on the clock so your woman "feels better" too.
Although I think his perspective may be a little harsh (and his statement rather unnecessary), I think the original poster who labelled the people contracting such diseases through sexual or drug contact idiots wasn't entirely out of line. That's how life works, you make stupid tradeoffs, take stupid risks, like more sensation in your penis during sex, and you die. And yes, that makes you an idiot. The fact that there are sexual urges driving you at that moment should not supercede your desire to live. That's the difference between humans and animals.
Arbitrary factors like number of people? Not a big fan of democracy are we?
As for the security council, maybe a few countries should get to effectively control everything because they're the military superpowers of the world and they supply the troops that make the security council capable of doing anything. You think we're going to let Belgium and the Republic of Congo vote where to direct what are mostly American or NATO troops?
Try to be realistic. There's no reason that a bunch of tiny countries should get to have the same vote as bigger countries. If that's the case, I want to start my own country so that I can have the same vote as the hundreds of millions of people in the US or the billions of people in China. Yeah, that's fair.
Slashdot Mirror
Your claim on scalability is laughable (look at Google's cluster)
Laughable eh? Have you ever run Linux on an 8 core opteron? Have you ever used Solaris 10? There's a difference between scaling up and scaling out. In a real world practical situation, I ran MySQL 5.0.x on an 8 core Opteron, 4 cpu, 32GB system, testing both the Linux 2.6 kernel and Solaris 10. With our benchmarking simulating loads on our real-time IVR system, we found that Solaris was able to achieve greater utilization of multiple processors (there was a lower load on more cpus, instead of a higher load on cpu 0, 1, and 2) and that under Solaris the response times were consistant rather than being spread from very low to ridiculously high. Offical MySQL benchmarks confirm on multi-cpu systems greater than 2 core, there is a noticable gain running Solaris 10 over Linux. Considering Solaris's fine grained locking is terribly mature and that they've been doing 32 core (logical and physical) for years longer than anyone else has, it shouldn't be suprising that on systems >2 core, Solaris out scales Linux.
Solaris 10 x86 and x64 are free (as in beer), give it at try yourself instead of trying to appeal to the authority of Google.
I can't stand a lot of their stuff because it assumes you're an idiot. I'm sorry, but I don't want to click next a thousand times when I install software. Much of their stuff is easy to use for a new user, but much more difficult for a person that knows what he/she is doing. To contrast, in Linux most things have a graphical configuration wizard that I could use if I wanted, but also a freely editable config file. This is rarely the case in Windows.
These are legitimate answers to the original poster's question, answers which I can even understand and respect. I see the issues you raise, they just don't bother me as much. But that's fair.
See, the difference is, real IT professionals and engineers aren't fanbois of either system. Real IT professionals look at each offering, assess its value, and make a choice.
Mr. Hypochrite, we finally agree.
What we finally agree on is that part of your post actually contained legitimate answer to the question raised, rather than trying to turn the question around and demand that people should explain why you *shouldn't* hate Windows/Microsoft. My problem with the parent post was the attempt to reverse the onus of explaination from "tell us why you hate it" to "tell me why I shouldn't hate it." That dumps the responsibility I believe IT professionals have to do their own research and to consider products on their merits, and not on outdated opinions based on software from years past.
See, my problem with Linux fanbois is, Microsoft comes out with something new, they assume it sucks ass, and that's that. Zero research on the possibility that maybe they came out with something really nice.
My problem with Microsoft apologists is that if it wasn't for Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior, computing in general (be it web server software, OS's, anything) would have progressed server. They could cure cancer at this point and still have a net negative impact. Supporting anything they do is allowing them to keep holding back progress.
So you're admitting that you are incapable of giving new Microsoft products unbiased considerations on their merits, because their business practices have somehow retarded the mainstream of computing. I disagree with your statement that they have somehow retarded the science and/or industry computing of computing as a whole, and I prefer to examine their new products from as unbiased of a perspective as possible and see what roles they can fill in the building of hybrid IT systems and deployments.
I'm going to forgive you for this post. I'd be in a bad mood if I had to explain consumer electronics to non-technical people at Best Buy all day too.
Just after you finished posting, your mom got on your case for all that dirty laundry huh? Sucks, I feel for you.
I agree with most of what you say, but the point I was trying get across was that the article is specifically asking why we hate Microsoft. I just pointed out that I shouldn't have to explain why I prefer a free OS to Windows. It should be the reverse. The Windows fans should explain really why I should fork over money to use their OS. Microsoft should be running the sales pitch instead of us.
I'm kinda confused as to how you went from the original question "why do people hate microsoft" to why you shouldn't have to explain why you prefer a free OS to Windows to how Windows fans should explain why you should fork over money to use their OS.
Nobody thinks you should fork over money to use Windows. Nobody is trying to push you to switch to Windows. The question "why do people hate microsoft" is being asked because you can easily scan through Slashdot and see a thousand posts of Linux fanbois telling us how bad Windows sucks. The truth is, Windows kicks the crap out of Linux in some ways, Linux in others, but it seems like Linux people have to go out of their way to try to slam Windows based on stereotypes from the Windows 95/98 era.
In asking this question, nobody is telling you to switch to Windows and fork out the money.
In asking this question, nobody is telling you to explain why you prefer a FLOSS operating system over Windows or any other proprietary operating system.
In asking this question, the poster is simply trying to figure out why Linux fanbois feel the need to attack Microsoft and Windows every time either is the topic of conversation. It gets old, it gets sad, and as I said in my previous post, real IT people who don't hump Windows' or Linux's legs just don't get why people who at times appear to be IT professionals, suddenly lash out in a huge wave of fanboi-ism and flame any time Microsoft products are brought up.
The reason the fanboi-ism matters and why someone would bother to ask about this is that for all of the accusations against Microsoft regarding the spread of FUD (which I'll agree they are certainly guilty of 99% of the time), these Linux fanbois are spreading just as much FUD at the grassroots level, essentially taking away the idea that there is more out there than Linux and that there are pros and cons for ALL operating systems and all software. Sometimes, the FLOSS solution is not up to par with the commercial offering. Admitting that isn't dogging FLOSS projects, or the hard work of open source programmers. It isn't bashing the cause or failing to support Linux. Open source shouldn't be a cult, it should be a way for open source developers and volunteers to contribute to the multitude of operating system and software offerings so that IT professionals and users have a *choice*. The minute you damn one of the major choices as satanic, wrong, evil, always bad, never works, always fails, etc, you are detracting from those choices based on something other than actual experience with using that choice for what it is good for.
Wow, this is the biggest piece of shit ad hominem attack I've seen in the Microsoft versus FOSS debate in a long time.
Here's what I have to say about it:
Many of those people you call "Microsoft fanbois" are also Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris users as well. They are really not MS fanbois, they're just not Linux fanbois, which from a Linux fanboi perspective means that they must want to have sex with Bill Gates.
"I can see why Linux and BSD people can be proud of their OS." Why? How many USERS of Linux or FreeBSD have ever contributed one line of source code such that it is "their" OS and they should somehow be "proud" of it? What is there to be proud of? Take Linux for example. FreeBSD is freer, Solaris scales better, Windows has wider application support, a broader user base for interoperability, and full hardware support, and both Windows and MacOS X make Linux desktops look like the shit that clings to my dogs ass when I don't get him a hair cut often enough. So what's there to be so "proud" of in Linux? Wow, you have a UNIX/POSIX-like kernel, wow. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Linux, but what the fuck is so special about Linux that gives you the right to be "proud" of it in a way that a Windows user can't be proud of Windows?
I like your complete assult on non-console gaming. You're basically taking one of the reasonable arguments for Windows and trying to make it a non-issue. What's stupid about that is you state "[justify] to us why we should spend 150 bucks on an OS", but then if I use Linux I need a console for gaming, which even if I go for the reasonably priced Nintendo Wii that's an extra $249 plus I get to play video games on a low-res television instead of my high res computer monitor, a quality difference of like 10x. I also get TV audio instead of Sound Blaster Audigy 2 audio through my speakers. I do have a nice home theatre system with a big Sony Grand Wega that I could play on, if I wanted to force my wife to watch me play Nintendo Wii instead of watching TV. Your gaming argument is hollow and weak.
There is a kernel of truth in some of what you say. Part of the reason *some* people run Windows is commitment and consistency. They bought it, so they have to believe it is good. But that is also the reason some Linux users (and apologists) completely blind themselves to the areas where Linux lacks compared to commercial operating systems. They've invested their time in becoming Linux savvy, so to admit that their time was only worth the $150 bucks that Windows XP costs just isn't mentally acceptable.
But here's the real issue that's not going to sit well with the Linux community. You talk about using a console for gaming, you talk about Windows Vista being "sluggish", and this reveals one of the true reasons I've seen that many Linux fanbois don't see the differences between Windows and Linux that favor Windows: your computers suck. You run low end fucking hardware, and then when you dual boot XP and Linux you decide that XP is slow as shit and bloated to all hell. You don't have a fucking Raedon or Geforce because your OS doesn't support it worth a damn, so you're telling people to buy a fucking console and play on a TV instead of a computer monitor. You haven't enjoyed a high end Windows XP Pro based gaming machine enough to understand the fact that if you run Windows on high end hardware, what you get is a high speed system with a cohesive interface, with video and audio drivers that actually fucking work that aren't based on chipsets from 8 years ago. What you get is a REAL desktop.
I am a C/C++ developer, and I really enjoy using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for non-visual library, component, and systems programming, regardless of what platform the final product is for. While it has its flaws and bugs, Visual Studio destroys other IDEs people have tried to introduce me to.
I love C#.NET, it's a great language on a great platform, and while I could write it in vi, use Mono as the platform (incomplete), and Gtk#
Personally, I would consider 3.6% a rarity. It's certainly not common. 10,800,000 crazies, 289,200,000 "normal" people. Somehow I think the two hundred ninety million of us can "ward off" the eleven million of them. Especially since if you look at history, if such a group went beyond the tolerances of the masses, either individually or as a group, the masses would eliminate them in some fashion, be it a bloody slaughter, increased enforcement / new legistation / harsher penalties for anti-social behavior, or something in between.
Viva la resistance!
Except the Dragon. Everyone knows the Dragon pwned Chuck.
There's a difference between immigration and vacationing. Without vacationing Americans, many tourism based economies would fail. If you want to keep Americans from immigrating in exchange for keeping reactionaries from immigrating here, I'm not sure what that would accomplish, but that would be more fair than your broad statement of "all Americans stay in theirs".
I agree whole heartedly. This guy is obviously just another Java apologist. C programming is so classic anymore, that to write anything new and exciting, you have to take an anti-C position and try to prove that Java is some how "just as good" as C development.
His first point basically tries to blur the lines between high, mid, and low level languages. This point is debatable, but more importantly, irrelevant.
His second point is basically that the major architectures have changed so much that C no longer allows low level access to all their features and functionality. The sole example he brings out is, of course, vector instructions. That's handled in one of a couple ways currently. Applications can use the non-standard asm {} extension or link to object code written in assembler. Application can use a vectorizing compiler. His argument against using a vectorizing compiler is that you're converting vector operations into scalar operations and then hoping that the compiler figures that out. That's basically how low level languages work on architectures that have higher level assembly operations. Look at Itanium for an example of "compiler should be able to figure out what I'm doing" in action. It's a hollow argument because he says it like it doesn't make sense and implies that it doesn't work, when in fact, it has been shown to work.
His third point is where he really starts into his Java apologism. He starts out describing high level versus low level languages, as if this were some kind of abstract discussion. By the third page, he reveals that this is a Java versus C rant, explaining why people's arguments against Java aren't fair, and that C isn't that much faster than Java, blah blah blah. Insert silly assertations about how expensive function calls are on most architectures and how functions aren't inlined between source files, and how VM based languages (LIKE JAVA) don't have these kinds of limitations. This implies that Java has some kind of advantage over C when it comes to highly procedural code, which simply isn't true. Most benchmarks I've seen that "show" that Java is faster than C (as explained by these silly "advantages"), involve poorly written C or C++ code because Java-heads don't always write the best C. On top of that, they're comparing an open source C compiler (gcc), to Sun's Java VM. Next time one of you Java apologists wants to benchmark C and Java, maybe have someone with a little more C programming skills than yourself write the C, and consider compiling it on Intel C Compiler or Microsoft's C compiler, rather than using gcc and Borland. Then you can do your benchmark and show that Java is capable of some kind of relevant inlining optimization that C is not, and therefore actually has some kind of performance benefit.
His fourth point seems to be that Java array access could be better in theory, which is fine but irrelevant to the fact that doing things like image conversions in Java where numerous accesses to byte arrays are useful is dog slow (same with C#.NET). If Java does what he damns C for doing, giving you a vector class that generates SIMD instructions, that would be news to me. Most of his other argument here is that the fact that Java has a foundation class library means that it can provide "transparent" logical switching between classes, like dictionaries and associative arrays. In C, you'd have to find or write a class that did the same thing, OR do what most developers do and look at your usage and decide which one fits better. I don't need foundation classes figuring out which data structure is best for me, I went to college, I can figure it out for myself.
His last point is part of the more standard Java apologist dogma, which states that "the process of programming" supports Java, because you can more easily explain to the compiler what you're trying to do. Somehow, C developers are able to get into the right mindset to explain to the compiler what they're trying to do. That's part of being a developer and a computer s
And this is why we'll never have Linux on the desktop for the common user. Because no value added reseller can take Linux and build it into something that "just works" using binary drivers, so Linux will constantly be behind the driver curve, which means you'll never be able to use newer hardware with it. And the onus is always put on someone besides the Linux people. They won't relax their GPL restrictions so instead driver manufacturers have to GPL their code, and/or common users will have to learn how to add the binary drivers in after the fact.
You keep undercutting the companies who are trying to actually get Linux on the desktop for people in a state that will actually work for them, you're never going to get anywhere. You're not forcing Nvidia to open source their driver, you're forcing a Linux distro to not have good Nvidia support. Total impact on Nvidia's sales: 0.
I don't think that these claims have been made. I've seen publishers encourage it but I haven't seen a marketing push to claim anyone can do it.
./configure && make && make install || whatever)????? Are you fucking high? Linux people, STOP THINKING THAT THESE COMMON USERS YOU'RE TRYING TO CAPTURE CAN ACCOMPLISH SUCH "EASY" TASKS.
.NET, I assume what they're saying is, it's possible. When Linux vendors "encourage" people to try Linux on the desktop, that implies that such a thing is possible (true or not). Ease off on the spin there buddy. The worst kind of person who defends a cause is the kind that defend it, right or wrong. This guy is some kind of non-power user who has heard claims that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows. Have you read all of the marketing material from all of the Linux vendors? How do you know that no Linux vendor has ever made that claim, explicitly?
HOLY FUCKING SPIN. When the post is about how leet Linux kiddie #5,326 built his grandma a Linux box and now she uses it with Mozilla to go on the web, Linux users are all hard core about how this proves that Linux is ready for the desktop. But when you take a guy who DOESN'T have a Linux expert relative to (a) setup the Linux box for him, (b) train him on how to use it for the most simple tasks, and then (c) to come rescue him when the Linux box has a minor issue, or he hits the wrong key. Drop a book on the keyboard, somehow it hits CTRL-ALT-F1, he's dropped out of X and completely helpless at the text login prompt. This article is right. If you don't have a Linux expert to walk you through setting it up, learning how to use it, and helping you maintain it, COMMON PEOPLE CANNOT USE LINUX AS THEIR DESKTOP. GET OVER IT.
This idiocy about "he chose the wrong distribution, why didn't he try Manchicken Linux"?? And clearly he should "have the patience to go out and find multimedia programs." Except that to a common Windows user, that would be a nearly impossible task. What is he going to search the web, find the package he wants to install, and then (rpm -i ||
This is the idiocy of the Linux-on-the-Desktop stance. Linux users can already use Linux on the desktop. Common Windows non-power users cannot. So the goal seems to be able to make the system such that a common user can use it as their desktop also, thus ending Microsoft's reign and bringing freedom to the land. But the problem is, any time a common user tries to do it unassisted, they get completely left in the dark, and you're sitting there going "What an idiot, if he'd just found GNU/dvdplayer1234 and installed it on his system, he would have seen that Linux can do everything. All he would have had to do is search on sourceforge, find the package that matches his distribution and architecture, or download the source and compile!!!" Clearly this man is a retard for not getting it.
How exactly publishers can "encourage" something without implying that it is possible, I do not know. When Microsoft encourages me to switch my development platform to
Don't blindly defend the cause in ways that don't make sense, you just make everyone look stupid.
Amen brother. I clicked into this article to post exactly what you've posted, and was pleased to find your post the first one, representing the fact that those of us who aren't participating in TopCoder (but could in fact compete quite well with them) are busy being gainfully employed. I tried out TopCoder when it first started, and it interested me. Some of their little programming contests are quite fun and definately help improve your speed of development. However, I found that I had too much work and not enough time to spend to make any progress up their ladder.
Cool site, not for people already employed full time.
This is a troll. "Background FSCK" isn't BSD's answer to journaling. Soft updates is Dr. McKusick's implementation to maintain filesystem integrity in the event of a system failure. BSD doesn't need journaling, it has soft udpates. You need to read:
d ings/usenix2000/general/seltzer.html
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/procee
http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/
Can you point me to any links, papers, whatnot on why GCC is, or can sometimes be, so bad?
d =15251380
Yes. http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=184674&ci
People had been recommending that for years so why should he be able to "discover" a problem and get credit for recommending a solution that everyone knew about.
That's like me saying everyone should upgrade to 64bit and install at least 8GB of ram so that your system has enough disk cache to keep up with very large hard drives that will be coming out. And in 5 years when everyone is running 64bit with at least 8GB of ram, some retard like you can defend me on Slashdot. "Maybe the reason everyone doesn't have terrible I/O load in accessing their 4TB hard drives is because everyone took his advice and upgraded to 64bit and 8GB."
I also think we should stop cutting down the rain forest and stop polluting the earth. Lemme know when I'm proven right on those too plzkthx.
In recognition of the contribution immigrants make in our country, please limit yourself to masturbating to latina porn today.
Yes, but there's a difference between attacking the code and attacking the FreeBSD and Mach developers personally. He's not just saying their implementation is shitty, but attacking their intelligence for not agreeing with him.
Hey Linus, you can make your point without http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
This is truly the stupidest post I've ever seen on Slashdot. Are you high? Almost every business, big or small, has a public fax line you retard. And they print that number on business cards, email signatures, the contact page of their website, and everywhere else they put their contact information.
_ 52_3592_712,00.html
Here are some fax numbers for you:
http://www.ibm.com/contact/us/
http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=mscom
http://www.intel.com/intel/location/USA.htm
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/AboutAMD/0,,51
Obviously, the "Fortune 100" companies you've worked for were much bigger than these petty little corporations who have publicly available fax numbers. Since I work for a company that sells fax service among other things, I can tell you there are actually just a few (hundred thousand) more businesses out there who publicly publish a fax number.
Feel free to actually go to the websites of a few of the 99 or 100 Fortune 100 companies that you have never and will never work for and see if they have a fax number available online. Ass.
The feds are trying to defend their Internet child-protection law. They wanted to know how much porn is searched for on the major search engines. They asked for random search data that doesn't identify users in any way.
So because the information is anonymous, they have a right to mine corporate owned information to attempt to resurrect a series of laws that have been repeatedly found unconsitutional? You describe porn as if it were something illegal, a problem that they are reasonably working to eliminate. And the government shares your position I'm sure. But somehow the "they're just attacking pornography" argument doesn't sway me much. Pornography involves peoples' right to explore their sexuality as they see fit, including selling video or photographs of said sexuality for the means of making money and helping other people enjoy their sexuality. The government disagrees with this protected practice (shielded by case law), and is looking for a way to implement their standard wedge method to make it impractical since they can't make it illegal. They are doing so under the guise of protecting children. This demand for "random search data" whether it is anonymous or not, is entirely inappropriate and private corporations which have rights of their own, should not be at the disposal of the government to provide them with commercial information in order to further their attempts to override peoples' rights through misrepresented over-restrictive impracticality.
That would be like the government demanding that the credit card agencies turn over all of the charge records of a random sampling of 50,000 Americans so the government could better understand peoples' spending habits. What you've done by condoning such government abuses of power is essentially hand the government the right to "explore" all private information for the purpose of "research" so they can advance their legal agenda of chipping away at peoples' rights using the wedge method and by over-regulating businesses they don't like.
Have you seen the cities Verizon is rolling out FTTH? Out in the fuckin boonies here in California.
I guess my philosophy, is treat people like adults, if someone blows it, can them, but, don't penalize everyone just 'in case' someone might do something wrong or naughty.
Here's where I respectfully disagree with your position, which I hear quite often. Don't punish (or penalize if you prefer) people before they do anything wrong.
(1) I don't agree that not being able to do non-work related tasks on your work computer is a punishment or penalty.
(2) If we wait for you to fuck up your computer by downloading viruses, pirating MP3s, or otherwise make a huge mess then we have to:
(a) Spend countless hours on cleaning up your workstation, probably your fellow employees' workstations, and possibly certain critical servers essential for doing business depending on how well you can wall off your users from your internal servers. This can result in a huge loss for the company, so we're basically being asked to wager money on you not misusing your privileges.
(b) If you broke the employee agreement or the law in abusing your privileges, we have to terminate you, which incurs administrative costs. Then we have to deal with potential labor board disputes (which we've had employees file simply out of spite). We also have to perform security procedures to change passwords you were exposed to and ensure that you do not continue to have access to systems. We have to deal with replacing you, and making sure that you didn't have any solitary or essential knowledge that one of your coworkers had. We have to reallocate your tasks to other employees while we train your replacement.
Now obviously once you are terminated, none of this is your problem. But that's the point now isn't it. The point is, we wagered a hell of a lot of time and resources, plus the time we invested in training you on our products, on whether or not you'd make a mistake or do something stupid AND WE LOST THE WAGER.
The only benefit we get for making that wager and giving you those privileges is that your sense of entitlement to do anything on the net that you want no matter who is paying you for your time and no matter whose computer you're using.
Now I agree that some people use the internet wisely, and it sucks ass that we have to restrict everything because of a few people. But that is exactly why we have to restrict it. We can't ask the oracle to predict which employees should be restricted and which shouldn't (and being discriminatory like that without sufficient evidence can be illegal in certain states).
At both my current and my previous employers' offices, we tried the "be responsible adults" theory. For about 3 years. Employees came and went, but the problems remained the same. The temptation to play on the net was irresistable to too many people, and they ended up downloading stupid shit and skunking their computer with crap. I had admins spending their time reinstalling Windows all too often. We are now moving towards a non-administrator setup under Windows XP SP2.
The funniest part about this whole thing is, when I started using our spyware firewall to block out games sites and other crap, the hard working employees didn't even notice. The only people who started bitching were the people who play on the net half the work day while other people pick up their slack. These idiots didn't realize that through their complaints about how our company had become "too corporate" and "a bunch of nazis", they were revealing their lack of work ethic. And after consulting with their managers, they were identified as the less productive of their respective groups.
News flash, kids. This is a business. I own stock in it. The goal is to make money. If you work hard, we pay well. If you complain about not being able to access fucking Yahoo Games, we don't need you. If you have a problem with our net admin policies, please quit and save us the trouble of firing you.
Beats this common implementation:
while(1) {
PlayMMO(time, money);
}
time++;
money++;
First post from a laptop running XP SP2 with a USB 2.0 device connected with the asynchronous scheduler component running preventing my CPU from entering one of the ACPI sleep states and thus draining my battery life.
As for having unprotected sex being idiotic, if that were true we're all idiots. Well, probably not you. I'll let you in on a little secret, though -- condomless feels better. In the moment, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that you can beat the odds.
And in a few sentences, you're entire seemingly intelligent attack on his statement falls by the wayside.
I'll agree that it's easy for people who aren't getting laid to talk shit on people with AIDS, talking about they would supposedly do in that situation when they have no idea. But the simple fact is, somehow some of us are able to overcome the "it feels better" issue before making a decision to enter into a completely monogamous long term relationship. Those who don't can fairly be labelled idiots, if you're defining an idiot in this instance by someone who is unable to control their sexual desires to the point that they can't even force themselves to use a condom. And really, it's not THAT bad using a condom, if you're not using some generic 7-11 piece of shit. Before my fiance and I were exclusive, I used Trojan UltraThins. They work great, they don't block you from so much senstation that you feel like you're about to lose your wood, and they can actually help you put a few more minutes on the clock so your woman "feels better" too.
Although I think his perspective may be a little harsh (and his statement rather unnecessary), I think the original poster who labelled the people contracting such diseases through sexual or drug contact idiots wasn't entirely out of line. That's how life works, you make stupid tradeoffs, take stupid risks, like more sensation in your penis during sex, and you die. And yes, that makes you an idiot. The fact that there are sexual urges driving you at that moment should not supercede your desire to live. That's the difference between humans and animals.
Arbitrary factors like number of people? Not a big fan of democracy are we?
As for the security council, maybe a few countries should get to effectively control everything because they're the military superpowers of the world and they supply the troops that make the security council capable of doing anything. You think we're going to let Belgium and the Republic of Congo vote where to direct what are mostly American or NATO troops?
Try to be realistic. There's no reason that a bunch of tiny countries should get to have the same vote as bigger countries. If that's the case, I want to start my own country so that I can have the same vote as the hundreds of millions of people in the US or the billions of people in China. Yeah, that's fair.