I've worked with the Doom source code recently, and can confirm that there was no motion blur at all. In fact, blur of any kind couldn't really be implemented, because Doom's graphics were 8-bit indexed colour.
Also, there were no engine changes at all between Doom 1 and 2.
Perhaps the GP is referring to the bobbing effect that occurs when the Doom guy runs. That moves the camera nearer to and away from the ground, changing the appearance of the texture.
Like a Mandelbrot fractal, or the number e, Pi has the interesting property that it's full of detail, but derived from a simple rule. So yes, it is interesting.
What I find most interesting about such things is their universality. If one was to suggest the existence of some God, then go on to say that this God created the universe where we live, one could still never claim that Pi had been created or assigned a value at that time. No, Pi was never created, it simply is, and it is everywhere always the same. A universe with a different value of Pi would be impossible.
Ironically, the "thumbprint of God" is exactly what these things are not.
I didn't look at the high-end of the market, just the things that were affordable for home use. IE6 + ActiveX was still state of the art for commercial systems when I looked at this last summer. This was surprising and therefore I thought it was worth giving a heads-up here.
If you buy a security DVR system that is not based on free software, be very careful to check what you are buying. Check the software requirements very carefully. If it "requires Internet Explorer", find out why this is.
Many (most?) of the proprietary DVRs use ActiveX controls for remote access. These typically work only with IE6, so not only do you have to use Windows, but an old version at that. And no, this won't ever be fixed. You'll have to carry on using Windows 2000/XP for the lifetime of your DVR. Don't upgrade to IE7, because that will lock you out of the system.
I know of at least one person who was burned by this, and last year I spent some weeks trying to find a commercial DVR solution that didn't require ActiveX, without success. Zoneminder is miles ahead of the commercial systems in this regard.
When I write an abstract I normally try to summarise my paper, which includes the results and conclusion. Generally the abstract is the last part of the paper to be written. I know that many people will only read the abstract, so I want to make sure it accurately represents the contents of the paper. The way to do this is not to write it like an advert or teaser for the paper, but rather as a "spoiler" that tells you the ending.
You'll be able to get Linux distributions on them, of course. Side 1: Kernel. Side 2: Root file system. The system takes 45 minutes to boot, but the quality of the operating system and associated tools is much, much better than what you get on CD or via download. Don't ask me for evidence, because the improved quality is imperceptible unless your computer is connected up with gold Ethernet cables and your PSU is a vacuum-tube model.
Yet, there are some scientists who end up seeing things that aren't there.
An example from recent times is Benveniste and his "memory of water" results. Benveniste had become convinced that he and his team had discovered compelling evidence for a real, measurable mechanism behind homeopathy (other than the placebo effect). He had gathered plenty of data to support his hypothesis that water had "memory", and Nature agreed to publish his paper if the science could be verified independently. Benveniste was forced to open his lab and his methods to investigation, and eventually James Randi (for it was he) discovered that bias was being introduced into the experiments because the researchers knew which water samples were supposed to have "memory". With double-blind testing, the evidence for "memory" vanished into the statistical noise.
This is firstly an example of the scientific method working correctly. An extraordinary claim is made, independently tested, and found to be either true or (in this case) false. But, more importantly, it is an example of the scientific method failing spectacularly for Benveniste: a scientist who managed to fool himself. Pons and Fleischmann, the "inventors of cold fusion", are also good examples. Robert Park, author of "Voodoo Science", has filled an entire book with examples like this.
Generally, these people did not intend to mislead. Instead, they fooled themselves. No conspiracy, just humanity.
When I say I am skeptical about AGW, it is because I suspect that climate scientists may also have been fooling themselves. The evidence they present seems (to me) to be very noisy, and I think there may be some degree of "seeing what you expect to see" in the data. Because they have deliberately sought to shut out independent investigators who might have identified problems in the experiments and models, this problem has not been addressed. They may be right about AGW, they may not, but in either case they have not given the impression of sticking to the proper scientific process. Given the massive importance of this issue, and the extraordinary claims that have been made, I feel that extraordinary evidence is warranted. I do not think this makes me a "denialist". I think this makes me a skeptic: someone unwilling to assume that things are true, just because an authority figure says they are.
It makes me very sad to see that Nature is not raising these points and instead brushing them aside.
It's also been argued that AGW laws will help to suppress development of industry in the third world through increased regulation and taxation, which will apply globally if all the AGW deals go through.
This would ensure that major Western corporations remain dominant, and would also explain why the major energy corporations all support "climate science" instead of funding the "denialists".
"Follow the money" is one of the worst arguments you can ever use against a "denialist", because the big money is backing "climate science".
Agreed. We do not know exactly what has been going on there, we have only a glimpse into their world. However I think I am right to be suspicious based on the apparently poor organisation of their source data, their attempts to obstruct the scientific process, and the apparent attempts to fudge experiments to match expectations.
It is up to them to come out of the shadows and "show the working", proving that everything is above board and that any errors were accidental and published in good faith. Until they do that - and this is pretty basic stuff for a scientist - I'll continue to be skeptical about everything the CRU might publish.
How can you be a good scientist without being able to trace your data all the way from its source? How can your results be valid if they are not reproducible?
There is more information that you should be aware of. Read about the attempts of one man to independently verify the CRU findings. They consistently obstruct him, even after he resorts to the FOIA. And now we know why. It's not just because they thought he was just making trouble for them: it's because the raw data is an impossible mess. The CRU staff knew that and it didn't bother them in the slightest because they were getting the results they expected.
Bad, bad science. Pons and Fleischmann. Condemn the bad science. I agree with George Monbiot: credibility is lost and resignations are needed.
Reading the comments, I see a programmer struggling with a chaotic data set, trying his best to figure out how to run sensible experiments on disorganised raw data. Data which is stored in various inconsistent formats and accessed by ancient unmaintained software. I sympathise with the poor guy, I know how frustrating such tasks can be.
Based on this I say it is no surprise that the CRU were completely unwilling to provide information about where their raw data came from, when Steve McIntyre and the others asked for it. The CRU did not know, because their databases were a total mess.
That's what really damages them. The programs were producing the "right" answers so the CRU management did not care where the numbers were coming from. The CRU staff already knew what the right answers were before they even got started, and when they got those answers, they asked no questions about them. This is not science.
It is fortunate that the CRU is not the only organisation involved with AGW, and that the some of the other organisations (e.g. NASA) are publishing raw data and experimental models.
Stalin also hated Jews, although there were several of them in the upper echelons of the Communist Party, which would have been unthinkable in Nazi Germany. As ever, Wikipedia is the starting point for research into this.
Also, I am chilled by the very thought that anyone might feel that Stalin was in any way "better" than Hitler. Their politics weren't even that different: (1) many former Communists joined the NSDAP, attracted by Hitler's populist blend of Communism and racism, (2) both parties promised to dismantle the systems of "unproductive capitalism" that "oppressed" the working man, and (3) they were close enough to make the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact before WW2.
And finally, as has already been pointed out, Stalin killed more people than Hitler.
I think GP is complaining about the grammar of the sentence, "Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet?"
This is a badly-worded sentence, probably included in the summary specifically in order that several people would post to say "But you can't be abused BY the Internet".
I believe that Slashdot's editors may introduce mistakes like this deliberately in order to keep people on the site. They look like lousy editing, but actually they are invitations for corrections and counter-corrections. It works, especially if the mistake is subtle.
The sentence should of course read "abused using the Internet" or similar, and that's exactly what a normal person would assume it meant. Just as, if we heard that "Mr John Doe was killed by a gun", we would assume that somebody else fired the gun and thus was responsible for the murder, rather than assuming that the gun had somehow become sentient and decided to murder Mr Doe.
You are right, I am forgetting about the Altair and the machines that followed it. These, too, demonstrate the point that open hardware standards are a good thing. I think the open standards used within the PC are of enormous importance as an explanation of the PC's success and its market dominance over technically superior but proprietary machines.
It is certainly true that science is about evidence for and against something.
You rightly say that evidence that prayers are answered, if any existed, would not be evidence of the existence of God, just evidence that something answers prayers.
I think this is my point: God is always outside the realm of science, by definition. This is exactly why we can never expect science to provide any evidence about his (non-)existence.
No, this is still wrong. If Christianity were true, that would imply that God exists. But if Christianity isn't true, then that doesn't imply anything about God. Same for all other religions: they might all be completely made up, but that still wouldn't tell us anything about God.
You're confusing "X implies Y" with "Y implies X".
I disagree. I think the PC revolution started when Compaq made the first clones of the IBM PC. Before then, there were home computers, but all of them had proprietary designs and clones were effectively illegal. After Compaq, the door was open to a huge number of manufacturers, all making "100% IBM Compatible" computers that would run the same software. This - the competition and evolution that it created - propelled the PC to worldwide success. The revolution could not have happened without an open platform. The PC crushed proprietary competitors like the Amiga and Archimedes even though those machines were technically superior at the time because the economics of the open market were overwhelming.
Apple is the only survivor from this time, but it, too, was very nearly destroyed by the juggernaut.
It's not that I don't think Apple is successful. I can't deny that what they are doing works well. It's just that I don't approve of it, in the same way that others might not approve of Shell or Sony BMG or Nestle or News International or Monsanto. Because of my disapproval, I do two things: (1) telling people about it, and (2) not buying Apple products. Everyone else is free to do whatever they want; but should bear in mind that it's objectively better to support Microsoft by buying Windows because Windows is a more open system that gives more freedom to the user. And of course if you really want Unix and free software on your laptop (which I do), there is Linux and (non-proprietary) BSD.
And... they're not quite using the 1960s business model pioneered by IBM. If they were, they would rent a computer to you, not sell it, because this would eliminate the secondary market and give them a way to impose additional contractual limitations on what you could use it for.
Apple's not at the Microsoft level. Remember that hundreds of PC manufacturers are legally selling computers with Windows with and without Microsoft's blessing. There is an open and competitive market for PCs and PC components, keeping prices low and pushing innovation forward. Even though Windows is non-free and closed-source software, it has still created a vast hardware ecosystem with low barriers to entry.
Nobody can say this about Apple, who are still working to the 1960s proprietary hardware business model, and still behaving as if the PC revolution never happened.
No. There can be no scientific disproof of the existence of God because, by definition, science is constrained to natural phenomena: theories that can be falsified using evidence. As God is said to be a supernatural and transcendent being, it follows that no science can ever tell us anything about either his existence or non-existence.
To look at it another way, do you imagine that future mathematicians will find a natural number X such that X = sqrt(-1)? Or that future computer scientists will discover a way to solve the halting problem? Surely not... because either of these things would be logically impossible according to the problem definition. Similarly, by definition, there is no scientific proof nor disproof of God's existence, and there never can be.
Please do not feel I am trolling or flaming you here. I am posting because your post is +5 Insightful, even though it is wrong. It is really important that non-religious people understand and acknowledge the limitations of science, because ultimately, what else do we have? To ascribe gnostic powers to science is to turn it into a religious faith.
This is surely the best reason to encourage people to buy Macs.
"Sorry, I have no idea how to use your computer. Maybe you should call Apple?"
It wouldn't even be a lie. I have great difficulty with Macs; to me, basic tasks are totally unintuitive because everything is different from the Unix and Windows systems that I am used to. And, for some reason (*cough* fanboys) I have no desire to expand my knowledge in this area.
In a sense, the BBC controls the Government(!), because it has a major influence on how the Government's activities are reported to the people. If you want to stay in power, it's important to appease big media, and in Britain that's Rupert Murdoch and the BBC. We are fortunate that Murdoch and the BBC have little in common.
Uh huh. But you spoke as if you thought Linux should be user-friendly for everyone
If I gave this impression, it was not my intention. The point of that part of what I wrote was: the "user-friendliness" of Macs is not a selling point for me, because my idea of what makes a machine user-friendly is different to that of Apple (and also Microsoft).
My little get-out clause is "at least according to my definition of "user friendly"". It's user friendly for absolutely everything I need to do with it. For any system, it is possible to think of things it does not easily do, perhaps because of not being designed to do them, and then complain that it is not user friendly on that basis. User friendliness is in the eye of beholder.
Incidentally, when I need to, I change the screen resolution using "xrandr". I've only needed to do this when attaching a projector.
Finally I stand by all of the grant parent post even though it is apparently now "trolling" to advocate Linux and free software on Slashdot if your basis for comparison is Apple.
Exactly. One thing I love about my Debian laptop is: it just works.
It's really user friendly, at least according to my definition of "user friendly". You can see that thousands of man-years have gone into the development of the software that it runs. Decades of evolution have brought the shell, the GUI and the productivity apps close to the point of perfection.
It's based on a Unix-compatible kernel, so I get all the power of Unix in a portable machine.
It came loaded with hundreds of free, open source utilities. The great thing about Debian is, whatever you need to do, there's an app for that. There's this network of software repositories, like an "app store", all ready to download and seamlessly install. Tens of thousands of apps! All free!
The laptop is a Thinkpad; quite an expensive brand, but the costs are kept down by two things. Firstly, there are hundreds of competing manufacturers, thanks to the open market for PC compatible hardware. Secondly, all of the software is free as in beer as well as speech, so there is no "tax" to pay to Microsoft or any other monopolistic manufacturer of proprietary operating systems.
Slashdot Mirror
I've worked with the Doom source code recently, and can confirm that there was no motion blur at all. In fact, blur of any kind couldn't really be implemented, because Doom's graphics were 8-bit indexed colour.
Also, there were no engine changes at all between Doom 1 and 2.
Perhaps the GP is referring to the bobbing effect that occurs when the Doom guy runs. That moves the camera nearer to and away from the ground, changing the appearance of the texture.
Like a Mandelbrot fractal, or the number e, Pi has the interesting property that it's full of detail, but derived from a simple rule. So yes, it is interesting.
What I find most interesting about such things is their universality. If one was to suggest the existence of some God, then go on to say that this God created the universe where we live, one could still never claim that Pi had been created or assigned a value at that time. No, Pi was never created, it simply is, and it is everywhere always the same. A universe with a different value of Pi would be impossible.
Ironically, the "thumbprint of God" is exactly what these things are not.
I didn't look at the high-end of the market, just the things that were affordable for home use. IE6 + ActiveX was still state of the art for commercial systems when I looked at this last summer. This was surprising and therefore I thought it was worth giving a heads-up here.
If you buy a security DVR system that is not based on free software, be very careful to check what you are buying. Check the software requirements very carefully. If it "requires Internet Explorer", find out why this is.
Many (most?) of the proprietary DVRs use ActiveX controls for remote access. These typically work only with IE6, so not only do you have to use Windows, but an old version at that. And no, this won't ever be fixed. You'll have to carry on using Windows 2000/XP for the lifetime of your DVR. Don't upgrade to IE7, because that will lock you out of the system.
I know of at least one person who was burned by this, and last year I spent some weeks trying to find a commercial DVR solution that didn't require ActiveX, without success. Zoneminder is miles ahead of the commercial systems in this regard.
When I write an abstract I normally try to summarise my paper, which includes the results and conclusion. Generally the abstract is the last part of the paper to be written. I know that many people will only read the abstract, so I want to make sure it accurately represents the contents of the paper. The way to do this is not to write it like an advert or teaser for the paper, but rather as a "spoiler" that tells you the ending.
The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions.
Not until we have Vinyl ROMs.
You'll be able to get Linux distributions on them, of course. Side 1: Kernel. Side 2: Root file system. The system takes 45 minutes to boot, but the quality of the operating system and associated tools is much, much better than what you get on CD or via download. Don't ask me for evidence, because the improved quality is imperceptible unless your computer is connected up with gold Ethernet cables and your PSU is a vacuum-tube model.
Yet, there are some scientists who end up seeing things that aren't there.
An example from recent times is Benveniste and his "memory of water" results. Benveniste had become convinced that he and his team had discovered compelling evidence for a real, measurable mechanism behind homeopathy (other than the placebo effect). He had gathered plenty of data to support his hypothesis that water had "memory", and Nature agreed to publish his paper if the science could be verified independently. Benveniste was forced to open his lab and his methods to investigation, and eventually James Randi (for it was he) discovered that bias was being introduced into the experiments because the researchers knew which water samples were supposed to have "memory". With double-blind testing, the evidence for "memory" vanished into the statistical noise.
This is firstly an example of the scientific method working correctly. An extraordinary claim is made, independently tested, and found to be either true or (in this case) false. But, more importantly, it is an example of the scientific method failing spectacularly for Benveniste: a scientist who managed to fool himself. Pons and Fleischmann, the "inventors of cold fusion", are also good examples. Robert Park, author of "Voodoo Science", has filled an entire book with examples like this.
Generally, these people did not intend to mislead. Instead, they fooled themselves. No conspiracy, just humanity.
When I say I am skeptical about AGW, it is because I suspect that climate scientists may also have been fooling themselves. The evidence they present seems (to me) to be very noisy, and I think there may be some degree of "seeing what you expect to see" in the data. Because they have deliberately sought to shut out independent investigators who might have identified problems in the experiments and models, this problem has not been addressed. They may be right about AGW, they may not, but in either case they have not given the impression of sticking to the proper scientific process. Given the massive importance of this issue, and the extraordinary claims that have been made, I feel that extraordinary evidence is warranted. I do not think this makes me a "denialist". I think this makes me a skeptic: someone unwilling to assume that things are true, just because an authority figure says they are.
It makes me very sad to see that Nature is not raising these points and instead brushing them aside.
It's also been argued that AGW laws will help to suppress development of industry in the third world through increased regulation and taxation, which will apply globally if all the AGW deals go through.
This would ensure that major Western corporations remain dominant, and would also explain why the major energy corporations all support "climate science" instead of funding the "denialists".
"Follow the money" is one of the worst arguments you can ever use against a "denialist", because the big money is backing "climate science".
Agreed. We do not know exactly what has been going on there, we have only a glimpse into their world. However I think I am right to be suspicious based on the apparently poor organisation of their source data, their attempts to obstruct the scientific process, and the apparent attempts to fudge experiments to match expectations.
It is up to them to come out of the shadows and "show the working", proving that everything is above board and that any errors were accidental and published in good faith. Until they do that - and this is pretty basic stuff for a scientist - I'll continue to be skeptical about everything the CRU might publish.
How can you be a good scientist without being able to trace your data all the way from its source? How can your results be valid if they are not reproducible?
There is more information that you should be aware of. Read about the attempts of one man to independently verify the CRU findings. They consistently obstruct him, even after he resorts to the FOIA. And now we know why. It's not just because they thought he was just making trouble for them: it's because the raw data is an impossible mess. The CRU staff knew that and it didn't bother them in the slightest because they were getting the results they expected.
Bad, bad science. Pons and Fleischmann. Condemn the bad science. I agree with George Monbiot: credibility is lost and resignations are needed.
Reading the comments, I see a programmer struggling with a chaotic data set, trying his best to figure out how to run sensible experiments on disorganised raw data. Data which is stored in various inconsistent formats and accessed by ancient unmaintained software. I sympathise with the poor guy, I know how frustrating such tasks can be.
Based on this I say it is no surprise that the CRU were completely unwilling to provide information about where their raw data came from, when Steve McIntyre and the others asked for it. The CRU did not know, because their databases were a total mess.
That's what really damages them. The programs were producing the "right" answers so the CRU management did not care where the numbers were coming from. The CRU staff already knew what the right answers were before they even got started, and when they got those answers, they asked no questions about them. This is not science.
It is fortunate that the CRU is not the only organisation involved with AGW, and that the some of the other organisations (e.g. NASA) are publishing raw data and experimental models.
Stalin also hated Jews, although there were several of them in the upper echelons of the Communist Party, which would have been unthinkable in Nazi Germany. As ever, Wikipedia is the starting point for research into this.
Also, I am chilled by the very thought that anyone might feel that Stalin was in any way "better" than Hitler. Their politics weren't even that different: (1) many former Communists joined the NSDAP, attracted by Hitler's populist blend of Communism and racism, (2) both parties promised to dismantle the systems of "unproductive capitalism" that "oppressed" the working man, and (3) they were close enough to make the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact before WW2.
And finally, as has already been pointed out, Stalin killed more people than Hitler.
I think GP is complaining about the grammar of the sentence, "Are 1 in 4 children really sexually abused by the Internet?"
This is a badly-worded sentence, probably included in the summary specifically in order that several people would post to say "But you can't be abused BY the Internet".
I believe that Slashdot's editors may introduce mistakes like this deliberately in order to keep people on the site. They look like lousy editing, but actually they are invitations for corrections and counter-corrections. It works, especially if the mistake is subtle.
The sentence should of course read "abused using the Internet" or similar, and that's exactly what a normal person would assume it meant. Just as, if we heard that "Mr John Doe was killed by a gun", we would assume that somebody else fired the gun and thus was responsible for the murder, rather than assuming that the gun had somehow become sentient and decided to murder Mr Doe.
You are right, I am forgetting about the Altair and the machines that followed it. These, too, demonstrate the point that open hardware standards are a good thing. I think the open standards used within the PC are of enormous importance as an explanation of the PC's success and its market dominance over technically superior but proprietary machines.
It is certainly true that science is about evidence for and against something.
You rightly say that evidence that prayers are answered, if any existed, would not be evidence of the existence of God, just evidence that something answers prayers.
I think this is my point: God is always outside the realm of science, by definition. This is exactly why we can never expect science to provide any evidence about his (non-)existence.
No, this is still wrong. If Christianity were true, that would imply that God exists. But if Christianity isn't true, then that doesn't imply anything about God. Same for all other religions: they might all be completely made up, but that still wouldn't tell us anything about God.
You're confusing "X implies Y" with "Y implies X".
I disagree. I think the PC revolution started when Compaq made the first clones of the IBM PC. Before then, there were home computers, but all of them had proprietary designs and clones were effectively illegal. After Compaq, the door was open to a huge number of manufacturers, all making "100% IBM Compatible" computers that would run the same software. This - the competition and evolution that it created - propelled the PC to worldwide success. The revolution could not have happened without an open platform. The PC crushed proprietary competitors like the Amiga and Archimedes even though those machines were technically superior at the time because the economics of the open market were overwhelming.
Apple is the only survivor from this time, but it, too, was very nearly destroyed by the juggernaut.
It's not that I don't think Apple is successful. I can't deny that what they are doing works well. It's just that I don't approve of it, in the same way that others might not approve of Shell or Sony BMG or Nestle or News International or Monsanto. Because of my disapproval, I do two things: (1) telling people about it, and (2) not buying Apple products. Everyone else is free to do whatever they want; but should bear in mind that it's objectively better to support Microsoft by buying Windows because Windows is a more open system that gives more freedom to the user. And of course if you really want Unix and free software on your laptop (which I do), there is Linux and (non-proprietary) BSD.
And... they're not quite using the 1960s business model pioneered by IBM. If they were, they would rent a computer to you, not sell it, because this would eliminate the secondary market and give them a way to impose additional contractual limitations on what you could use it for.
Apple's not at the Microsoft level. Remember that hundreds of PC manufacturers are legally selling computers with Windows with and without Microsoft's blessing. There is an open and competitive market for PCs and PC components, keeping prices low and pushing innovation forward. Even though Windows is non-free and closed-source software, it has still created a vast hardware ecosystem with low barriers to entry.
Nobody can say this about Apple, who are still working to the 1960s proprietary hardware business model, and still behaving as if the PC revolution never happened.
No. There can be no scientific disproof of the existence of God because, by definition, science is constrained to natural phenomena: theories that can be falsified using evidence. As God is said to be a supernatural and transcendent being, it follows that no science can ever tell us anything about either his existence or non-existence.
To look at it another way, do you imagine that future mathematicians will find a natural number X such that X = sqrt(-1)? Or that future computer scientists will discover a way to solve the halting problem? Surely not... because either of these things would be logically impossible according to the problem definition. Similarly, by definition, there is no scientific proof nor disproof of God's existence, and there never can be.
Please do not feel I am trolling or flaming you here. I am posting because your post is +5 Insightful, even though it is wrong. It is really important that non-religious people understand and acknowledge the limitations of science, because ultimately, what else do we have? To ascribe gnostic powers to science is to turn it into a religious faith.
This is surely the best reason to encourage people to buy Macs.
"Sorry, I have no idea how to use your computer. Maybe you should call Apple?"
It wouldn't even be a lie. I have great difficulty with Macs; to me, basic tasks are totally unintuitive because everything is different from the Unix and Windows systems that I am used to. And, for some reason (*cough* fanboys) I have no desire to expand my knowledge in this area.
In a sense, the BBC controls the Government(!), because it has a major influence on how the Government's activities are reported to the people. If you want to stay in power, it's important to appease big media, and in Britain that's Rupert Murdoch and the BBC. We are fortunate that Murdoch and the BBC have little in common.
Uh huh. But you spoke as if you thought Linux should be user-friendly for everyone
If I gave this impression, it was not my intention. The point of that part of what I wrote was: the "user-friendliness" of Macs is not a selling point for me, because my idea of what makes a machine user-friendly is different to that of Apple (and also Microsoft).
My little get-out clause is "at least according to my definition of "user friendly"". It's user friendly for absolutely everything I need to do with it. For any system, it is possible to think of things it does not easily do, perhaps because of not being designed to do them, and then complain that it is not user friendly on that basis. User friendliness is in the eye of beholder.
Incidentally, when I need to, I change the screen resolution using "xrandr". I've only needed to do this when attaching a projector.
Finally I stand by all of the grant parent post even though it is apparently now "trolling" to advocate Linux and free software on Slashdot if your basis for comparison is Apple.
Exactly. One thing I love about my Debian laptop is: it just works.
It's really user friendly, at least according to my definition of "user friendly". You can see that thousands of man-years have gone into the development of the software that it runs. Decades of evolution have brought the shell, the GUI and the productivity apps close to the point of perfection.
It's based on a Unix-compatible kernel, so I get all the power of Unix in a portable machine.
It came loaded with hundreds of free, open source utilities. The great thing about Debian is, whatever you need to do, there's an app for that. There's this network of software repositories, like an "app store", all ready to download and seamlessly install. Tens of thousands of apps! All free!
The laptop is a Thinkpad; quite an expensive brand, but the costs are kept down by two things. Firstly, there are hundreds of competing manufacturers, thanks to the open market for PC compatible hardware. Secondly, all of the software is free as in beer as well as speech, so there is no "tax" to pay to Microsoft or any other monopolistic manufacturer of proprietary operating systems.