Unless you have thought about it fairly thoroughly don't even consider getting a dog. If you want a good dog it takes a lot of time, and a fair bit of money (want a well built healthy dog? better be prepared to pay for decent food), that a lot of people have not taken into consideration when buying the dog. If you want a nice family pet it needs to be socialised and at least have some training, add in vet bills and food and suddenly this brilliant idea doesnt become so brilliant after all. If you want a good family pet who is also protection trained (yes you CAN have both) you are looking at many many hours of training over months and months - I generally train my dog at LEAST half an hour every day plus walks plus formal training on weekends. Yes he is a wonderful family pet and also turning into a great protection dog, but I have put an enormous amount of time and energy into turning him into that as well as careful selection when he was a puppy. It doesnt just happen overnight and it wont happen ever unless you are prepared to put the time and effort in.
Suggesting to people to buy a dog without taking their circumstances or personality into consideration just leads to more unwanted dogs in the pounds as the idiots dont think it through before getting one.
"If you intend to have a list of strings you should be able to say so, and the compiler should be able to check all references to the list and ensure the type is correct, rather than leaving it to the run-time library."
This is a troll? Just because it doesnt say "Google is teh r0x0r! M$ is teh suxor!"?
Just because Google is "cool" doesnt mean that it is a great place to invest your money. Seems to be way too many people on here who talk aobut how great a buy Google is, without backing up that claim with fact.
The Google market share is not going to grow much further, and with Microsoft about to launch a big search engine of its own to try to take on Google, Google's market share can only really go downhill from here. Unless they start coming out with some very innovative ideas, I cant see how the stock prices will increase much further.
And here I thought we had all learned our lesson about buying over-hyped tech stocks with cool sounding names.
I am genuinely curious, why would any of you buy GOOG shares at their current prices? Besides day trading I wouldnt touch GOOG.
"Think about mobile devices, macs, hell even old audreys, but don't just pin your customers into active x."
If the customer asks for their site to be compatible with internet explorer, then unless you want to take up the slack and pay for testing that the client is not paying for, the developer will not test things for free. A developer will not spend several days testing a site with every configuration known to man for free - how do you expect them to pay their bills?
"Really they just want text, links that work, lots of pictures, availability to their customers and security"
I take it you have never done web development for customers? Availability, security and links that work are assumed. What they ask for is a site that stands out from their competitors, usually they have a very large idea and have to cut it down somewhat when you quote them. If all you offer is a site with links and pictures then they will go elsewhere. You would be surprised what they ask for, (I have had a client insist that I use frames, even after I had developed a perfectly good non-frames site that worked very well). This of course brings up the problem - the flashier the site, the harder it is to make cross-platform. If the contract states for the site to work in IE only, and making some flashy shiny thing work in Mozilla is going to be a pain, then the developer will make the thing work in IE only, as that is what they are paid to do.
You seem to forget that a lot of these developers are paid on a per job basis, not wage or salary. If you were developing a site for your boss, and he only asked for it to work in IE, would you volunteer to work for half a week without pay just so it would also work in Mozilla, on mobile devices etc? I think not.
No it is not a positive. You don't buy Windows but buy beer instead plus save some money. How has the economy grown? YOU are better off, the economy as a whole is no different. Instead of your money going to Microsoft who would then spend it, it either stays in a bank account or you spend it yourself. Either way, the economy has neither shrunk nor grown. If you save the money rather than spending it, you reduce the ability of the economy to grow.
I would much rather the money be in my pocket than someone elses, but it is incorrect so assert that somehow the economy is better off with your money going to Budweiser than to Microsoft.
"What would have been Microsoft's gain is now Budweiser's"
Hey, I'm onto something here. Linux is the cause of alcohol abuse!
"I suppose, if you were a desperate dying company like M$, you would spin things that way"
MSFT is desperate and dying? Their server market share is not dropping, their desktop market share is not dropping (at 95% market share they own the desktop), MS Office is the current standard in office suites - so please enlighten us all how you could possibly come to the conclusion that MSFT is desperate and dying?!?
"The next day, hand him a piece of paper, listing every password he entered and every username he used. Tell him he should probably change them--and if he doesn't, well, the next time the keylogger might not be an employee pointing out a security hole."
You are the uber-1337 security consultant! Run the keylogger, then every time he changes his password walk over to him, show him his new username / password combination and tell him he better change it because if it was someone else running the keylogger then they would know his login details. Has it crossed your mind the slight problem with this approach?
If the policies were set up and implemented properly, then it should not be possible for someone else to install a keylogger on his PC - which is the fault of the sysadmin. And what right has a sysadmin got to spy on what other workers are doing. His job is to keep the IT systems up and running - that is all, not to promote himself to workforce management consultant.
Why in the email client is select all 'Alt-A'? In most other apps select all is 'Ctrl-A' yet for some strange reason it is 'Alt-A' in Mozilla.
Is there any reason for this that I am not aware of? Or is it just some strange way of doing things?
I am referring to Mozilla 1.4 under Linux, so for all I know it is different now and Im rambling on about nothing. But if not, is there a logical reason for this?
Do you have any idea how government / business works when implementing / changing new technology? 4 years is actually a remarkably quick time to change ALL software over to Linux.
So they have decided to do this. Firstly, they have to determine what problems they will encounter. What apps might they need that they may have difficulties finding under Linux? Code may have to be migrated from ASP / whatever. Excel / word macros rewritten. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Implementing a radical change in a very large organisation goes beyond just deciding "hey, Ive got this really cool idea, lets just format all the hard drives and install Linux".
Even training, each hour the employees are in training is not only costing for the training, but also for lost productivity. The IT support has to be re-trained in the new software.
And on the server side, any code / app migration is no "simple" task.
"It's easy to dismiss that argument as "well they don't have a monopoly there", but the truth is MS just plain cannot go make a monopoly somewhere unless they make a product the market agrees with"
Hmm...this may be why the zealots are flaming you. You had the gall to suggest that MS may actually be a monopoly on the desktop because it offers people what they want. You are not saying it directly, but this implies that desktop Linux does NOT offer what the majority of people want.
This borders on blasphemy you realise!
Sometimes its just better to let the zealots froth at the mouth, keep patting each other on the back that Linux is ready for the desktop (it is, really, honestly, "have you installed the latest Xandros?" "havent you heard of freedesktop.org?") and flame anyone who dares suggest that Windows has changed since they last used it back in 98. Heck, Outlook hasnt run attachments automatically for the past 2 years, yet they still climb out of the woodwork talking about Outlook automatically running attachments.
Maybe if people with experience extending beyond "I am a l337 h4x0r" are not wanted, the title should be changed from "Slashdot: news for nerds" to "Slashdot: news for rabid uninformed Linux zealots"
In response to one of your detractors, neither Red Hat nor Debian has ever done anything for me personally so why should I want to support them either? This attitude that you have to hate a company just because it makes money is just childish in the extreme. Should I also hate myself because I charge for consulting?
"If I go to your website which requires the non-standards-compliant IE browser, I don't change browsers, I just google up one of your ompetitors"
Thats fine and dandy, but for every 1 of you, there are 9 others who come to my site and will leave if it does not display properly in IE. So, big decision for me, which group is more important to support? The whinging Mozilla user or the whinging IE users?
The main reason I have always hesitated switching is the blasted refresh rate. Under Win I can get my monitor running nicely at 1024 x 768 @ 85Hz. No flicker. Under X I get 1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz no matter what I have tried. And 60Hz is very annoying! I am running Red Hat 9 atm and I am very happy with everything, but that 60Hz is just driving me insane!
"but aren't there already several dozen similar sites and services like this?"
What?? 1 single project for a single task in FOSS? It feels somehow unclean and unwholesome just contemplating the thought! You need at the very least 3 projects - 1 prefixed with G and written in C, 1 prefixed with K and written in C++ and another recursively named one that runs on the command line written in Perl. All 3 projects should have fan clubs that always flame the users of the other for not being as l337 as they are. All 3 projects should do exactly the same thing but be implemented in totally different ways, and any talk of standardisation should be flamed into oblivion.
Now THAT is far more in the spirit of free / open source software!
I see what you are getting at now, and probably read a bit too much into your previous response.
To look at it a different way, both a human child and a canine child (puppy) when they are young learn what will keep them alive. A human child is far more curious than a human adult, but this does not mean that it is more intelligent. I am not in the slightest claiming that dogs are more intelligent than humans, I am just saying that they generally are a lot more intelligent than what people give them credit for and I am not surprised in the slightest if a full grown dog has similar intelligence to a 3 year old child.
When both are young, a human child is genetically programmed to learn to listen to its parents very quickly as that is what will keep it alive. As a dog will mature much faster, what will keep it alive is to learn to respond in an accurate way to movement and sound. They both learn at a very fast rate what they are genetically programmed to learn. I would even go as far as saying a young dog for instance is more likely to survive by itself in the wild than a fully grown human. This also requires responding to an infinite number of scenarios in different ways. Does this mean the dog is more intelligent than a human? No.
My point is that to judge intelligence purely on the basis of how an animal performs in the human society is just as flawed as basing intelligence on how a human performs in a wolf pack.
Im puzzled by your logic. So a 3 year old would fail at leading a blind person, so that proves that in fact they are more intelligent? That is just like saying that performing miserably in an IQ test proves that the person is in fact a genius because the test bored them.
I take it you have had little to no exposure to dogs, because it is quite absurd to claim that a dog is not curious. Why do puppies have such short attention spans? For exactly the same reason little children do - they want to explore evey sound and movement they hear and see.
It is interesting that if a child wanders off it is considered curiosity and a sign of intelligence, if a dog wanders off it is considered a sign of stupidity and lack of intelligence. Very reverse logic - if a dog passes a test it is stupid because it is not exploring its surroundings, if a child fails a test it is extremely intelligent because the test bored it.
If I say "we are going home" to my dog when out the back he heads home, if I say "we are going home" to him while out somewhere he heads for the car. So he comprehends what "home" means - he heads for the means to get him there. And yes they most certainly do know what a ball is. Say "get the ball" and whether it is a tennis ball, golf ball or whatever, they will get the ball. They wont for instance pick up a stick. Say "we are going for a drive" and they head for the car, no matter which car is parked out the front.
So you mean to say that my dog does not associate the word "home" with going to the place he lives? he just associates it with a single object?
When you get a computer to lead a blind person around, then I might accept your comparison. Mind you, when you get a 3 year old to lead a blind person around Ill be rather impressed too.
It is also possible that the dogs you have come across are stupid (yes, it may come as a shock to you but animals intelligence varies too).
OK, lets look at it another way. How many 3 year olds would you trust to lead a blind person around safely and successfully, day after day? And that is not something that is based on instinct either. Personally if I was blind I would chose the dog any day.
I would talk to my last dog in basic natural speech when I wanted him to do something and the vast majority of the time he would understand. Now if I said something like "We are going home" in the back paddock he would start heading home, if I said the same while out somewhere he would head for the car. Are you saying that is not reasoning? If I said "go to the car" he would head to the car irrespective of where he was.
Generally you will find the dog will be as intelligent as you treat it (sort of like people really). If you treat your dog as a "dumb dog" then all he will do is bark all day and dig up the yard. If you talk to him in natural language, and treat him as if he has some intelligence, the vast majority of the time he will respond by acting more intelligent.
Too much effort spent on writing yet another text editor, not enough on making Linux a good desktop alternative for the masses. What do the masses want? A CONSISTENT and FAST GUI. Both very key words.
Linux will never ever beat Win on the desktop while it avoids usability tests. Whenever a usability issue is brought up, the reply is either "why dont YOU code that part?" or "youre stupid just look at freedesktop.org". Never addressing the fact that the usability issue still remains and goes uncorrected.
If the community resources were pooled and worked towards a common goal, the commercial OS'es would only be able to gape in awe at what was produced. Instead they laugh as academics run around shouting "Linux is the roxor!!! M$ is the suxor!!!" Why? "Because Linux is not M$ crap" or "Linux is not evil proprietary software".
I think Ill leave it at that - its just good to see that there are others out there with the same opinions on the matter who receive the same treatment from the zealots.
Oh come on...this is really clutching at straws. A Win install takes up a lot of room and runs slowly = bad because it is bloated. A Linux desktop install takes up a lot of room and runs slowly = good because of the choice it gives you, even though the Win install is actually faster.
Lets look at MS Office v OpenOffice. By your definition you cannot consider MS Office bloat as you have the choice not to use it. But it loads and runs considerably faster than OpenOffice, even though it offers more. So from a technical perspective, which is the better product?
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you have thought about it fairly thoroughly don't even consider getting a dog. If you want a good dog it takes a lot of time, and a fair bit of money (want a well built healthy dog? better be prepared to pay for decent food), that a lot of people have not taken into consideration when buying the dog. If you want a nice family pet it needs to be socialised and at least have some training, add in vet bills and food and suddenly this brilliant idea doesnt become so brilliant after all. If you want a good family pet who is also protection trained (yes you CAN have both) you are looking at many many hours of training over months and months - I generally train my dog at LEAST half an hour every day plus walks plus formal training on weekends. Yes he is a wonderful family pet and also turning into a great protection dog, but I have put an enormous amount of time and energy into turning him into that as well as careful selection when he was a puppy. It doesnt just happen overnight and it wont happen ever unless you are prepared to put the time and effort in.
Suggesting to people to buy a dog without taking their circumstances or personality into consideration just leads to more unwanted dogs in the pounds as the idiots dont think it through before getting one.
"If you intend to have a list of strings you should be able to say so, and the compiler should be able to check all references to the list and ensure the type is correct, rather than leaving it to the run-time library."
Which you can do as of Java 1.5
This is a troll? Just because it doesnt say "Google is teh r0x0r! M$ is teh suxor!"?
Just because Google is "cool" doesnt mean that it is a great place to invest your money. Seems to be way too many people on here who talk aobut how great a buy Google is, without backing up that claim with fact.
The Google market share is not going to grow much further, and with Microsoft about to launch a big search engine of its own to try to take on Google, Google's market share can only really go downhill from here. Unless they start coming out with some very innovative ideas, I cant see how the stock prices will increase much further.
And here I thought we had all learned our lesson about buying over-hyped tech stocks with cool sounding names.
I am genuinely curious, why would any of you buy GOOG shares at their current prices? Besides day trading I wouldnt touch GOOG.
"How did this thing get moderated to +5 insightful?"
Because most mods here dont have a clue how the financial markets work.
How about a new acronym IANAS (I am not a stockbroker) for opinions re finance from those who know nothing about it?
Come to think of it I ANAS compliments I ANAL rather nicely.
"Think about mobile devices, macs, hell even old audreys, but don't just pin your customers into active x."
If the customer asks for their site to be compatible with internet explorer, then unless you want to take up the slack and pay for testing that the client is not paying for, the developer will not test things for free. A developer will not spend several days testing a site with every configuration known to man for free - how do you expect them to pay their bills?
"Really they just want text, links that work, lots of pictures, availability to their customers and security"
I take it you have never done web development for customers? Availability, security and links that work are assumed. What they ask for is a site that stands out from their competitors, usually they have a very large idea and have to cut it down somewhat when you quote them. If all you offer is a site with links and pictures then they will go elsewhere. You would be surprised what they ask for, (I have had a client insist that I use frames, even after I had developed a perfectly good non-frames site that worked very well). This of course brings up the problem - the flashier the site, the harder it is to make cross-platform. If the contract states for the site to work in IE only, and making some flashy shiny thing work in Mozilla is going to be a pain, then the developer will make the thing work in IE only, as that is what they are paid to do.
You seem to forget that a lot of these developers are paid on a per job basis, not wage or salary. If you were developing a site for your boss, and he only asked for it to work in IE, would you volunteer to work for half a week without pay just so it would also work in Mozilla, on mobile devices etc? I think not.
"Actually, it's positive"
No it is not a positive. You don't buy Windows but buy beer instead plus save some money. How has the economy grown? YOU are better off, the economy as a whole is no different. Instead of your money going to Microsoft who would then spend it, it either stays in a bank account or you spend it yourself. Either way, the economy has neither shrunk nor grown. If you save the money rather than spending it, you reduce the ability of the economy to grow.
I would much rather the money be in my pocket than someone elses, but it is incorrect so assert that somehow the economy is better off with your money going to Budweiser than to Microsoft.
"What would have been Microsoft's gain is now Budweiser's"
Hey, I'm onto something here. Linux is the cause of alcohol abuse!
"I get to visit webpages that do not format correctly in Firefox (at least not without some discomfort)"
"Really? I don't. Can you name any offhand?"
How about Slashdot?
"I suppose, if you were a desperate dying company like M$, you would spin things that way"
MSFT is desperate and dying? Their server market share is not dropping, their desktop market share is not dropping (at 95% market share they own the desktop), MS Office is the current standard in office suites - so please enlighten us all how you could possibly come to the conclusion that MSFT is desperate and dying?!?
And you claim that others are spreading FUD?!?
"The next day, hand him a piece of paper, listing every password he entered and every username he used. Tell him he should probably change them--and if he doesn't, well, the next time the keylogger might not be an employee pointing out a security hole."
You are the uber-1337 security consultant! Run the keylogger, then every time he changes his password walk over to him, show him his new username / password combination and tell him he better change it because if it was someone else running the keylogger then they would know his login details. Has it crossed your mind the slight problem with this approach?
If the policies were set up and implemented properly, then it should not be possible for someone else to install a keylogger on his PC - which is the fault of the sysadmin. And what right has a sysadmin got to spy on what other workers are doing. His job is to keep the IT systems up and running - that is all, not to promote himself to workforce management consultant.
You are not the only one!
So what exactly would artificial pron be? The mind boggles!
I believe 4 degrees C was chosen as that is the temperature at which water is most dense. Not a number picked out of nowhere.
Why in the email client is select all 'Alt-A'? In most other apps select all is 'Ctrl-A' yet for some strange reason it is 'Alt-A' in Mozilla.
Is there any reason for this that I am not aware of? Or is it just some strange way of doing things?
I am referring to Mozilla 1.4 under Linux, so for all I know it is different now and Im rambling on about nothing. But if not, is there a logical reason for this?
I run Mozilla 1.4 on Red Hat 9 and yes, the text does leak into the left column.
Whoever modded this troll doesnt know wtf they are on about.
Do you have any idea how government / business works when implementing / changing new technology? 4 years is actually a remarkably quick time to change ALL software over to Linux.
So they have decided to do this. Firstly, they have to determine what problems they will encounter. What apps might they need that they may have difficulties finding under Linux? Code may have to be migrated from ASP / whatever. Excel / word macros rewritten. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Implementing a radical change in a very large organisation goes beyond just deciding "hey, Ive got this really cool idea, lets just format all the hard drives and install Linux".
Even training, each hour the employees are in training is not only costing for the training, but also for lost productivity. The IT support has to be re-trained in the new software.
And on the server side, any code / app migration is no "simple" task.
So no, it is not "extremely simple".
"It's easy to dismiss that argument as "well they don't have a monopoly there", but the truth is MS just plain cannot go make a monopoly somewhere unless they make a product the market agrees with"
Hmm...this may be why the zealots are flaming you. You had the gall to suggest that MS may actually be a monopoly on the desktop because it offers people what they want. You are not saying it directly, but this implies that desktop Linux does NOT offer what the majority of people want.
This borders on blasphemy you realise!
Sometimes its just better to let the zealots froth at the mouth, keep patting each other on the back that Linux is ready for the desktop (it is, really, honestly, "have you installed the latest Xandros?" "havent you heard of freedesktop.org?") and flame anyone who dares suggest that Windows has changed since they last used it back in 98. Heck, Outlook hasnt run attachments automatically for the past 2 years, yet they still climb out of the woodwork talking about Outlook automatically running attachments.
Maybe if people with experience extending beyond "I am a l337 h4x0r" are not wanted, the title should be changed from "Slashdot: news for nerds" to "Slashdot: news for rabid uninformed Linux zealots"
In response to one of your detractors, neither Red Hat nor Debian has ever done anything for me personally so why should I want to support them either? This attitude that you have to hate a company just because it makes money is just childish in the extreme. Should I also hate myself because I charge for consulting?
"If I go to your website which requires the non-standards-compliant IE browser, I don't change browsers, I just google up one of your ompetitors"
Thats fine and dandy, but for every 1 of you, there are 9 others who come to my site and will leave if it does not display properly in IE. So, big decision for me, which group is more important to support? The whinging Mozilla user or the whinging IE users?
Anyone transitioning from OS X to Linux needs a LOT more help than a documentation project! ;-)
The main reason I have always hesitated switching is the blasted refresh rate. Under Win I can get my monitor running nicely at 1024 x 768 @ 85Hz. No flicker. Under X I get 1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz no matter what I have tried. And 60Hz is very annoying! I am running Red Hat 9 atm and I am very happy with everything, but that 60Hz is just driving me insane!
"but aren't there already several dozen similar sites and services like this?"
What?? 1 single project for a single task in FOSS? It feels somehow unclean and unwholesome just contemplating the thought! You need at the very least 3 projects - 1 prefixed with G and written in C, 1 prefixed with K and written in C++ and another recursively named one that runs on the command line written in Perl. All 3 projects should have fan clubs that always flame the users of the other for not being as l337 as they are. All 3 projects should do exactly the same thing but be implemented in totally different ways, and any talk of standardisation should be flamed into oblivion.
Now THAT is far more in the spirit of free / open source software!
I see what you are getting at now, and probably read a bit too much into your previous response.
To look at it a different way, both a human child and a canine child (puppy) when they are young learn what will keep them alive. A human child is far more curious than a human adult, but this does not mean that it is more intelligent. I am not in the slightest claiming that dogs are more intelligent than humans, I am just saying that they generally are a lot more intelligent than what people give them credit for and I am not surprised in the slightest if a full grown dog has similar intelligence to a 3 year old child.
When both are young, a human child is genetically programmed to learn to listen to its parents very quickly as that is what will keep it alive. As a dog will mature much faster, what will keep it alive is to learn to respond in an accurate way to movement and sound. They both learn at a very fast rate what they are genetically programmed to learn. I would even go as far as saying a young dog for instance is more likely to survive by itself in the wild than a fully grown human. This also requires responding to an infinite number of scenarios in different ways. Does this mean the dog is more intelligent than a human? No.
My point is that to judge intelligence purely on the basis of how an animal performs in the human society is just as flawed as basing intelligence on how a human performs in a wolf pack.
Im puzzled by your logic. So a 3 year old would fail at leading a blind person, so that proves that in fact they are more intelligent? That is just like saying that performing miserably in an IQ test proves that the person is in fact a genius because the test bored them.
I take it you have had little to no exposure to dogs, because it is quite absurd to claim that a dog is not curious. Why do puppies have such short attention spans? For exactly the same reason little children do - they want to explore evey sound and movement they hear and see.
It is interesting that if a child wanders off it is considered curiosity and a sign of intelligence, if a dog wanders off it is considered a sign of stupidity and lack of intelligence. Very reverse logic - if a dog passes a test it is stupid because it is not exploring its surroundings, if a child fails a test it is extremely intelligent because the test bored it.
You have no idea about dogs do you?
If I say "we are going home" to my dog when out the back he heads home, if I say "we are going home" to him while out somewhere he heads for the car. So he comprehends what "home" means - he heads for the means to get him there. And yes they most certainly do know what a ball is. Say "get the ball" and whether it is a tennis ball, golf ball or whatever, they will get the ball. They wont for instance pick up a stick. Say "we are going for a drive" and they head for the car, no matter which car is parked out the front.
So you mean to say that my dog does not associate the word "home" with going to the place he lives? he just associates it with a single object?
When you get a computer to lead a blind person around, then I might accept your comparison. Mind you, when you get a 3 year old to lead a blind person around Ill be rather impressed too.
My, arent we feeling superior today?
It is also possible that the dogs you have come across are stupid (yes, it may come as a shock to you but animals intelligence varies too).
OK, lets look at it another way. How many 3 year olds would you trust to lead a blind person around safely and successfully, day after day? And that is not something that is based on instinct either. Personally if I was blind I would chose the dog any day.
I would talk to my last dog in basic natural speech when I wanted him to do something and the vast majority of the time he would understand. Now if I said something like "We are going home" in the back paddock he would start heading home, if I said the same while out somewhere he would head for the car. Are you saying that is not reasoning? If I said "go to the car" he would head to the car irrespective of where he was.
Generally you will find the dog will be as intelligent as you treat it (sort of like people really). If you treat your dog as a "dumb dog" then all he will do is bark all day and dig up the yard. If you talk to him in natural language, and treat him as if he has some intelligence, the vast majority of the time he will respond by acting more intelligent.
I agree with you.
Too much effort spent on writing yet another text editor, not enough on making Linux a good desktop alternative for the masses. What do the masses want? A CONSISTENT and FAST GUI. Both very key words.
Linux will never ever beat Win on the desktop while it avoids usability tests. Whenever a usability issue is brought up, the reply is either "why dont YOU code that part?" or "youre stupid just look at freedesktop.org". Never addressing the fact that the usability issue still remains and goes uncorrected.
If the community resources were pooled and worked towards a common goal, the commercial OS'es would only be able to gape in awe at what was produced. Instead they laugh as academics run around shouting "Linux is the roxor!!! M$ is the suxor!!!" Why? "Because Linux is not M$ crap" or "Linux is not evil proprietary software".
I think Ill leave it at that - its just good to see that there are others out there with the same opinions on the matter who receive the same treatment from the zealots.
Oh come on...this is really clutching at straws. A Win install takes up a lot of room and runs slowly = bad because it is bloated. A Linux desktop install takes up a lot of room and runs slowly = good because of the choice it gives you, even though the Win install is actually faster.
Lets look at MS Office v OpenOffice. By your definition you cannot consider MS Office bloat as you have the choice not to use it. But it loads and runs considerably faster than OpenOffice, even though it offers more. So from a technical perspective, which is the better product?