I understand what you're saying, and I do agree that Windows is just as stable as Linux and can be just as secure when properly configured and running proper software. Mind you, few operating systems are secure of the box, and Linux needs be to secured as well.
The main reason why GNU/Linux appeals to me is it's philosophy. It's an open-sourced OS and it's a programmer's OS.
Being open-sourced means that nothing is really hidden from you. You're only limited by your imagination (and how smart you are) in moulding the system into whatever you want it to be. And it is quite a cool feeling that the software you're using is yours, and not owned by some Big Corporation. It's nice to be free and not be locked into an upgrade cycle, as you often are with Windows. And the best thing is, of course, you can be cutting-edge (software-wise) without having deep pockets.
The other reason why I like Linux is that it's an OS made by programmers for programmers. This really shows in the abundance of development tools. I don't wonna fork out half a grand on Visual Studio to get the same functionality that comes as standard with Linux. Again, Linux is a Unix flavour, despite what some people say, and Windows is Not Unix. Most people to get any real productivity out of Windows install Cygwin, which is still very slow. I don't see a point in running Cygwin on top of Windows when you can just use the Real Thing.
I mean, I'm not saying that Windows is crap, Windows is now a decent OS, but it's still not the same for me.
Are you suggesting that doing anything artistic is waste of time? Millions of people waste their money on pointless things that they consider to be important, such as buying the latest this or that or whatever. The consumerism in our society is a far greater "evil", as you put it, than artistic expression.
It's true that there are other, perhaps more worthy causes, which could hardly be solved by a few hundred dollars. It's upto the government to address the issues of third world poverty. And it's really upto the people to put preassure on the government to do so.
In any case, how do you know that the guy(?) who built the thing doesn't do his bit for charity?
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
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· Score: 0
I could never type on other people's machines anyway. I get used to one keyboard (two including my home machine). Whenever I type on my colleagues' machines I hit the wrong keys, cause the dimentions are that little bit different.
Besides my employer is windows-centric, so my machine has, probably, the only copy of vim in the whole company.
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
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· Score: 0
Shouldn't that be ctrl+c?
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
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· Score: 0
A useful thing to do is to map the Esc key to , but _also_ to map Caps Lock to . This way when I'm on a windows machine at work, I could hit and still get Caps Lock.
Re:No! I use CapsLock as my "ESC" key
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but I've got about 20 other LEDs, so one LED isn't gonna make a difference. Besides I use the number pad from time to time.
Plus ca change
In a recent post I reminisced about the early days of CSS, and a few of the people I recall as influential and important in the development of a standards based web.
But usually I am the kind of person who looks to the future. In the last few months Microsoft made a couple of very significant announcements with possibly quite negative implications for the future of a standards based web. Which has me thinking about that future, and wondering whether there even is such future.
Since the release of Netscape and Internet Explorer 4, there has been a steady movement toward the idea of standards based web development. In some respects the innovation both in the underlying standards and their implementation has been quite extraordinary. But as the kids in the back seat are always asking "Are we there yet"?
In a sense, there is no "there". Perhaps plateaus or way stations along the way, but no final destination. Right now it may seem like we are at one of those way stations. A reasonably large subset of CSS2 (soon to become CSS2.1) is quite well supported by most browsers.
CSS and xhtml support are markedly improved since the early parts of this decade.
But is it a way station, or are we just stalled?
Microsoft has in the last few months both discontinued IE for the Macintosh altogether, and let it be known there will be no new IE for today's generation of Windows based computers. The next iteration of IE will be solely for "longhorn" based systems (longhorn being the code name for the successor to Windows XP). Any such systems are unlikely before 2006, leaving a several year hiatus between major upgrades for IE, the single most pervasive web platform by a long way. And at present the platform with the most web standards "issues".
Which makes wonder - will we see standards based innovation in future?
Who cares about standards?
When it comes to commercial competition, standards are the friend of those without market dominance. The dominant player sets the "industry standard", as companies who dominate their niche tend to describe their software.
I believe that during the second half of the 1990s, during the most innovative time of the development CSS, commercial considerations did not play a significant part either in the development of CSS or in its implementation in browsers. CSS flew below the radar at Microsoft and Netscape/AOL/Time Warner. That won't happen again.
So what might the future hold? Let's turn the browsers for a moment. What happens here will determine what happens with CSS and standards more generally.
Where are we now?
Internet Explorer 6
When Microsoft did not dominate the browser market, open standards leveled the paying field for them. But now with IE dominant, will Microsoft be so supportive of standards?
Internet Explorer 6 is for Windows only. It supports much of CSS 2.1 though support for attribute based selectors, and more sophisticated selectors in general, such as the child selector is limited. It has some serious issues with the box model and positioning which cause many developers considerable frustration.
As noted before, IE 6 is the last version of IE which will be available until probably mid 2006, perhaps later, and the next version will never work on today's computers, not even on XP.
It's the end of the road for IE as we know it.
So, if things stay as they are, with Internet Explorer the benchmark, then say goodbye to CSS innovation for a long long time.
There are number of things which may affect this. First, CSS's design to allow forward compatibility means the user experience for more advanced browsers can be enhanced without compromising the experience of IE users. And there is even a simple way of hiding things from IE, using the child selector, which no version of IE on windows supports.
If not IE, who will innovate?
Opera? Mozilla? Anyone?
The more important question is who will innovate on the web? Not Microsoft, not at least until 2006 or whenever "longhorn" is released, with its new browser, possibly no longer called Internet Explorer.
Maybe then we'll
Slashdot Mirror
The main reason why GNU/Linux appeals to me is it's philosophy. It's an open-sourced OS and it's a programmer's OS.
Being open-sourced means that nothing is really hidden from you. You're only limited by your imagination (and how smart you are) in moulding the system into whatever you want it to be. And it is quite a cool feeling that the software you're using is yours, and not owned by some Big Corporation. It's nice to be free and not be locked into an upgrade cycle, as you often are with Windows. And the best thing is, of course, you can be cutting-edge (software-wise) without having deep pockets.
The other reason why I like Linux is that it's an OS made by programmers for programmers. This really shows in the abundance of development tools. I don't wonna fork out half a grand on Visual Studio to get the same functionality that comes as standard with Linux. Again, Linux is a Unix flavour, despite what some people say, and Windows is Not Unix. Most people to get any real productivity out of Windows install Cygwin, which is still very slow. I don't see a point in running Cygwin on top of Windows when you can just use the Real Thing.
I mean, I'm not saying that Windows is crap, Windows is now a decent OS, but it's still not the same for me.
</rant>
Are you suggesting that doing anything artistic is waste of time? Millions of people waste their money on pointless things that they consider to be important, such as buying the latest this or that or whatever. The consumerism in our society is a far greater "evil", as you put it, than artistic expression. It's true that there are other, perhaps more worthy causes, which could hardly be solved by a few hundred dollars. It's upto the government to address the issues of third world poverty. And it's really upto the people to put preassure on the government to do so. In any case, how do you know that the guy(?) who built the thing doesn't do his bit for charity?
I could never type on other people's machines anyway. I get used to one keyboard (two including my home machine). Whenever I type on my colleagues' machines I hit the wrong keys, cause the dimentions are that little bit different. Besides my employer is windows-centric, so my machine has, probably, the only copy of vim in the whole company.
Shouldn't that be ctrl+c?
A useful thing to do is to map the Esc key to , but _also_ to map Caps Lock to . This way when I'm on a windows machine at work, I could hit and still get Caps Lock.
Yeah, but I've got about 20 other LEDs, so one LED isn't gonna make a difference. Besides I use the number pad from time to time.
What's with the troll moderation?
Plus ca change In a recent post I reminisced about the early days of CSS, and a few of the people I recall as influential and important in the development of a standards based web. But usually I am the kind of person who looks to the future. In the last few months Microsoft made a couple of very significant announcements with possibly quite negative implications for the future of a standards based web. Which has me thinking about that future, and wondering whether there even is such future. Since the release of Netscape and Internet Explorer 4, there has been a steady movement toward the idea of standards based web development. In some respects the innovation both in the underlying standards and their implementation has been quite extraordinary. But as the kids in the back seat are always asking "Are we there yet"? In a sense, there is no "there". Perhaps plateaus or way stations along the way, but no final destination. Right now it may seem like we are at one of those way stations. A reasonably large subset of CSS2 (soon to become CSS2.1) is quite well supported by most browsers. CSS and xhtml support are markedly improved since the early parts of this decade. But is it a way station, or are we just stalled? Microsoft has in the last few months both discontinued IE for the Macintosh altogether, and let it be known there will be no new IE for today's generation of Windows based computers. The next iteration of IE will be solely for "longhorn" based systems (longhorn being the code name for the successor to Windows XP). Any such systems are unlikely before 2006, leaving a several year hiatus between major upgrades for IE, the single most pervasive web platform by a long way. And at present the platform with the most web standards "issues". Which makes wonder - will we see standards based innovation in future? Who cares about standards? When it comes to commercial competition, standards are the friend of those without market dominance. The dominant player sets the "industry standard", as companies who dominate their niche tend to describe their software. I believe that during the second half of the 1990s, during the most innovative time of the development CSS, commercial considerations did not play a significant part either in the development of CSS or in its implementation in browsers. CSS flew below the radar at Microsoft and Netscape/AOL/Time Warner. That won't happen again. So what might the future hold? Let's turn the browsers for a moment. What happens here will determine what happens with CSS and standards more generally. Where are we now? Internet Explorer 6 When Microsoft did not dominate the browser market, open standards leveled the paying field for them. But now with IE dominant, will Microsoft be so supportive of standards? Internet Explorer 6 is for Windows only. It supports much of CSS 2.1 though support for attribute based selectors, and more sophisticated selectors in general, such as the child selector is limited. It has some serious issues with the box model and positioning which cause many developers considerable frustration. As noted before, IE 6 is the last version of IE which will be available until probably mid 2006, perhaps later, and the next version will never work on today's computers, not even on XP. It's the end of the road for IE as we know it. So, if things stay as they are, with Internet Explorer the benchmark, then say goodbye to CSS innovation for a long long time. There are number of things which may affect this. First, CSS's design to allow forward compatibility means the user experience for more advanced browsers can be enhanced without compromising the experience of IE users. And there is even a simple way of hiding things from IE, using the child selector, which no version of IE on windows supports. If not IE, who will innovate? Opera? Mozilla? Anyone? The more important question is who will innovate on the web? Not Microsoft, not at least until 2006 or whenever "longhorn" is released, with its new browser, possibly no longer called Internet Explorer. Maybe then we'll