I wasn't talking about the weight of the car so much as the design of the car.
A bike may have power steering, but the way a bike's steering works (the way I understand it) is that the wheels are tilted a little bit so they're not actually perfectly flat on the ground when you're turning (and that's what I'm assuming you mean when you say that the rider just has to make the front wheel so it's at an angle to the road).
A car really can't lean like a bike can - it'll tip over unless you're good enough to do that stunt where you get your car to balance on its two side wheels. Sure, it'd be possible to have the chassis work like two bikes strapped together and have the car make them lean, but it'd be hard to make this design very sturdy - unless you're talking about just the front wheels tilting like this, which I believe some cars actually do. Many of them can't, though, since they're front-wheel drive (it would probably make them pretty hard to drive in poor road/weather conditions since they wouldn't have as much contact with the ground - that could be a real killer in snow and ice.) And rear-wheel drive just doesn't work well in snow and ice.
But you said "a steering wheel on a bike is exactly what the original author raised as the issue with the Save command - it's an ugly and inefficient way of doing things" - was that a typo?
And a bike's controls wouldn't work on a car - a car is simply too heavy to be able to steer it well without either power steering or some of the clunky gears you were talking about earlier.
Plus, I was really trying to hint more at the fact that the "Save" button - while it may be old - really is, in many ways, better than just having the program autosave.
Well it sounded to me like you were suggesting that the steering on the bike was a bad way to go and that a bike's steering was like the "save" button and was an "ugly and inefficient way of doing things". I was making the point that auto-saving to a default location and doing everything automatically for the user - and having the user not read the manual or learn how to use the program - isn't any better and in some cases is worse.
I can't remember how often I've been typing something for a while and I've made so many changes that I can't undo all of them, and then I have to revert back to the saved copy.
Let me ask you this, though - would it be better if the bike or car drove itself? Sure, it'd be easier - just get on and go - but would it be any better? How do you know it's going to take you? How do you know it knows enough to avoid a head-on collision [how do you know it will be backed up] (and don't say "they could put a foot pedal" because the previous poster already said that such things were a pain to learn about)?
What if it drives too fast for your liking (or not fast enough) [what if you don't like the program defaults or other settings] - you didn't read the manual, so how do you know how to change its speed-limiting preferences?
And how would you know where to find it after it parked itself [if the program always auto-saved, how would you know where it saved your files if you wanted to copy them]?
Many of the problems we have today with computers come from people's unwillingness to learn to use them. There'd be fewer problems if people knew at least the basics about things like security (such as installing a simple firewall helps a lot), the OS and programs themselves (such as here's how you do a mail merge, and here's how you set up a spam filter), and other things. I'm the "computer guy" of my household, and I get asked about so many little things that I don't even know (I use Linux and everyone else uses Windows, so I'm not as familiar with Office, Outlook, etc.) and it takes me all of two minutes to click around and figure it out.
"The "all files should be known to the OS" thing is BS, that's what plugins, kparts/automation-servers are for. MP3 never meant jacksh*t to linux; but inside KDE, you click on one of those, and voila, noatun is loaded with it."
If KDE doesn't know what an MP3 file is, then how does it know to launch Noatun, or amaroK, or any other MP3 player? If your browser doesn't know what a JPG file is, then how does it know it's a picture? If Konqueror doesn't know what a.swf file is, then how does it know to use the Shockwave plug-in to view it?
Okay, so maybe the OS doesn't have to know how to differentiate between different files, but something - be it the GUI or whatever - does. And before you criticize about technicalities like this, don't forget that the GUI is built into Windows so in Linux it may be the GUI that does this, but in Windows it's the OS.
Try this because it's the proper way to test his argument: 1. Take one of your MP3 files. Copy it to somewhere else and get rid of its file extension.
2. Double-click it and see what happens. Does KDE still know what to do with the file? No.
Without different file extensions, the OS/GUI has no way of determining what sort of file it is or what application should be used to view it.
Let's not forget that not all computers have 100+ GB hard drives, and that some people would like all their files to fit on a 256MB flash USB drive.
Not only that, but most people wouldn't know where to find the file after it's been auto-saved -- what if you wanted to copy it to another computer? Or if you just got a new computer and wanted to transfer files, and the old PC wasn't working - if you knew where the files were saved you could put the old hard drive in your new PC and copy them over. You can't do that if you can't find the files.
The reason Google is so well-liked is because what they do directly affects us ("us" being both normal Web-surfers and business owners with a Web presence). Google makes a normal user's life easier by allowing them to search for a Web address they forgot, helping them get driving directions, allowing them to have enormous amounts of e-mail that is automatically scanned for spam and viruses, allowing them to look through some books online (someday maybe students won't have to carry their books home! That'd certainly be better for our backs), allowing us to post our journals online, its "Did you mean" spelling suggestions for those of us who can't spell (seems to be lot of them here on/.) and many other things.
Business owners like them because of AdWords, which helps businesses to get more visitors visiting their website and perhaps buying their products/services. Many businesses (as well as non-business websites) also use Google to allow users to search their website for specific information. And because Google didn't become successful by screwing other businesses over, they became successful because people preferred them to other search engines.
Not that these other companies you mentioned don't affect us or are unimportant, but many people don't know that they're doing this research. Google has a direct link to the public - they can just advertise a feature on google.com at the bottom of the search results, and some people will try it. Other companies need to hire advertisers and stuff.
Also, I'm sure a lot of people like the "rags-to-riches" story of how Google got started by two guys in their dorm room.
"The issue is to let people take the decision for their own life. Even if one guy is 99.99% healthy if the guy wants to die I think you have no right to oppose it, it's he's decision to make. You can tell him to think over, you can give him advice, you can tell him nice stories about God and angels and how he's going to get to Hell if he commits suicide, but you have no right to force him to live. Now, how he ends his life, with or without help, or the title of the person who helps him, is a technicality."
So you're saying if this guy were in a car accident and wanted to die you should let him, even with his high chance of recovery and even though he will probably be happy to be alive later?
I'm not saying you should force anyone to live. I'm just saying that you shouldn't kill him if you think things will get better for him.
I guess maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
"People express their wishes before they die. Only if they are in a comma they cannot but even then in some cases they have a will for that kind of situation."
That doesn't help me any. I wasn't there for the "suicide" - I don't know if these people really wanted to die or not. And if they had no idea they were going to die (ie, if Dr. Kevorkian killed them and they thought he was going to heal them), they wouldn't have expressed their death wishes.
"So you take the liberty to torture somebody in the hope they would get better? You might be wrong too. Yes, it's sad if people are wrong in this kind of cases (btw, in case you did't know, we all die eventually) but it's THEIR responsibility it's not my, your or state's responsibility."
No. I don't want people to suffer in the hope that they get better, but I don't think it's right to kill people when there's a good chance that they will get better.
If a man is severely injured in a car accident and wants to die because he is in so much pain but has a 75% chance of making a full recovery, should you kill him? I'm sure he's in an immense amount of pain and will be for a while, and it will probably take him years to recover. But if odds are that he will live, I say we shouldn't kill him.
"It's very easy to know what people want, just ask them."
But they're dead - I can't ask them.
"Wouldn't you? What kind of friend would you be if you could not help a friend in need? If he wasn't even able to pull a trigger I'd imagine that he would be in terrible shape. If he could pull the trigger I imagine that he would not ask you to do it for him."
Maybe you didn't read the whole thing. The whole quote was "If your friend wanted to die, would you hand him a 12-gauge? Would you pull the trigger for him? Or would you try to get him some help through his rough times?
""killing" is a loaded word -- if you say that someone killed another person you immediately think that that person didn't want to die."
... "for example solders are not called "killers" (only by peace activist) although they do kill"
Are you suggesting that people killed by American soldiers wanted to die?
By the way, even though soldiers are trained on how to kill, many of them never kill anyone. They're there to fight, not necessarily to kill. The Army is one of the largest employers in the US - if every soldier killed someone (or even if most of them did) there'd be a lot more people dying in Iraq.
"I happen to believe that people should be free to pursue their happiness and be free to act, even hire help to end their life no matter what is the reason for their wish, you happen to believe that people should not be allowed freedoms and to have limited freedom when it comes to such a basic private decision: to live or die."
Not true. I believe that people have the right to die if they want to, but I also believe that executioners should be properly labeled. Dr. Kevorkian really wasn't a doctor at all - doctors try to heal their patients. I'd have no problem if he called himself a "suicide expert" or something - if he weren't in the news, how would I know that he kills his patients? What if I were in town and got in a bad car accident?
Doctors make mistakes. Sometimes surgeries have gone bad, and I'm sure doctors with lots of patients have gotten things mixed up. You can sue a doctor who cuts off your leg mistaking you for the patient with the bad leg; not so when he mistakes you for the guy who was suicidal.
I have no problem with others wishing to die. I have a problem with a doctor killing people because as far as we know, some of these people might not have wanted to die and thought they were going to see a normal doctor.
"Why would I trust a doctor that doesn't want to help people in need? Why would I trust a doctor that would let other people suffer phisically or mentally without helping them when they asked him for help?"
You wouldn't. People with mental problems should see a psychiatrist, and people with physical problems should see a doctor. Dr. Kevorkian didn't help anyone, he just killed them. Helping to ease the pain of someone who is going to die is called hospice. What Kevorkian did is called assisted suicide.
"It's written even in American Constitution although people don't want or don't know to interpret it: "right to pursue happiness": people in pain have the right to pursue happiness even if that means that they want to end their phisical or mental pain by suicide."
Yes, they do. Obviously. There's no way they could enforce otherwise - what do you do to punish someone who commits suicide - they're dead already.
Does that mean the doctor has the right to kill them? If people want to die, they should be calling an executioner, not a doctor. How will we ever know if these people actually wanted to commit suicide - or that they wouldn't have changed their minds later? They're dead, it's not like we can ask them if they wanted to die.
If your friend wanted to die, would you hand him a 12-gauge? Would you pull the trigger for him? Or would you try to get him some help through his rough times?
Helping people to die is called hospice. Assisted suicide is not helping people to die, it's killing them/letting them kill themselves. Dr. Kevorkian didn't help people to have an easier death, he killed them.
"But of course in this country with so many loony religious people anybody that doesn't have their principles is deranged."
Then perhaps you're not aware that one of the things a doctor has to do before he can get his license and be called a doctor is to promise that he will do whatever he can to save his patient and that he will not kill his patients.
This isn't just an American thing. This promise has been around since the days of Aristotle.
And would you trust a doctor to heal you who just killed nine or ten other patients - on purpose? What's to stop him from killing you and then saying that you wanted to die?
"So... do you need a doctor to tell you are sick?"
Dr. Kevorkian never took himself to a mental hospital. Not to say that he wasn't pretty messed up, though. And I'm sure the average person doesn't know the symptoms of HIV well enough to know whether or not he/she has it.
Just because your computer isn't slowing down or anything doesn't mean you don't have a virus. I had a computer once with a boot-sector virus, and I ran it for a year or so without knowing until one day I tried to transfer some files on a floppy disk from that PC to another, and the other PC said the floppy had the virus on it.
Funny thing is that the infected PC had an antivirus program made by - guess who! - Microsoft, called MS Anti-Virus for Windows.
"we'd still have to deal with this virus shit for years because mom and pop don't like to update their system. You can't really blame MS for this."
Actually, I think that MS does have something to do with it. Of course there are plenty of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kinds of people, but there's also plenty of people like myself who do frequent updates - I've had MS updates cause problems before, and it pisses me off when a product that I paid good money for breaks with a patch while the OS I got free off the Internet keeps on ticking - even when it breaks with a patch it still works (updating some Linux stuff broke certain things once but I was still able to login, get online, and find out how to fix the problem). So I think that it's probably part human nature, and part MS' fault.
"Ignore the slashbots dogging on Windows. We don't have the stats, but from what I understand, over 80% of Slashdot hits are from MSIE."
Hit percentages mean nothing. Where are they connecting from - are they at home? Or are they at work, at the library, at a terminal at the airport. ..?
In fact, how do you even know what browser they're using? Yes, most browsers send an ID to the server, but these IDs can be spoofed - and it's not that uncommon for non-MS browsers to need to do this for some websites. My bank's website checks to make sure that you're running either MSIE or Netscape/Mozilla, but I'm using Konqueror so it gives me an error page with links to places to download IE and Netscape.
Also, how many of those hits are from people who were scouring the web for info on Linux? There was a period of time when I was still using Windows but checked the Linux sites because I wanted to switch. Slashdot seems to be mentioned/linked to quite a bit on Linux sites (as well as non-Linux tech sites).
"So yeah, lots of posers around. Having a Gentoo box in your basement that you use from time to time to uhh, compile things doesn't make you a Linux user, if you do all your real work on Windows."
I wouldn't be too quick to criticize. Maybe they're trying to ease themselves into using Linux without using a Live CD and without the hassle of repartitioning to dual-boot. And I know one of the big show-stoppers for myself for just switching cold-turkey was games - I was dual-booting, and for most things I just used Linux, but the lack of games kept me using Windows.
I think a lot of people don't understand the implications of "unprotected, unpatched" Windows. They think that means if you buy a PC from the store and hook it up without installing patches. But often prebuilt PCs come with a lot of preinstalled patches, anti-spyware and antivirus programs, and the firewall already set up.
An unprotected and unpatched Windows PC means just straight Windows from the MS install CD - no antivirus, no anti-spyware, no patches, nothing.
Correct me if I'm wrong. . . but I don't think "all versions of XP" had a built-in firewall - I thought the original XP had it, but didn't install it by default and you had to find the installer on the CD to get it.
Well because they don't "have" to switch to Linux. And even if it is more stable, there's plenty of reason for them not to switch if their current infrastructure is working well for them. The cost to switch to any operating system - or even to upgrade - can be quite high.
Until these companies absolutely must switch, they will probably stick with their current infrastructure.
Also, notice that they have hired a single part-time pro to handle their 3 Linux servers. . . yet it takes them a whole team of full-time, certified MS pros, and the service still isn't very good. The Linux guy might only have 3 servers to take care of, but they only need him part-time. I'm sure most of the time he's there he isn't anywhere near as busy as any of the MS team employees - from my experience, Linux has problems once, and that's when you first get it set up. From then on it stays running fine. I'm sure he's mostly just there a) to install updates and b) to make the company feel better just in case something does happen - a database server would be a bad thing for a company to lose.
Which further emphasizes Linux's stability/security - if the company needs these database servers, why does it hire a single part-time employee to keep them up? Makes me think that maybe he doesn't need to be there most of the time - maybe he was full-time at first (or they had another person there working full-time) and they found that he really didn't need to be there most of the time.
Funny, I thought Al Gore invented the Internet. And that it was OK to let bin Laden off with a warning. And that Clinton didn't have sex with Monica Lewinski.
And that Howard Dean was going to North Dakota! And California! And Washington! Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaagh!
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't talking about the weight of the car so much as the design of the car.
A bike may have power steering, but the way a bike's steering works (the way I understand it) is that the wheels are tilted a little bit so they're not actually perfectly flat on the ground when you're turning (and that's what I'm assuming you mean when you say that the rider just has to make the front wheel so it's at an angle to the road).
A car really can't lean like a bike can - it'll tip over unless you're good enough to do that stunt where you get your car to balance on its two side wheels. Sure, it'd be possible to have the chassis work like two bikes strapped together and have the car make them lean, but it'd be hard to make this design very sturdy - unless you're talking about just the front wheels tilting like this, which I believe some cars actually do. Many of them can't, though, since they're front-wheel drive (it would probably make them pretty hard to drive in poor road/weather conditions since they wouldn't have as much contact with the ground - that could be a real killer in snow and ice.) And rear-wheel drive just doesn't work well in snow and ice.
And a bike's controls wouldn't work on a car - a car is simply too heavy to be able to steer it well without either power steering or some of the clunky gears you were talking about earlier.
Plus, I was really trying to hint more at the fact that the "Save" button - while it may be old - really is, in many ways, better than just having the program autosave.
Well it sounded to me like you were suggesting that the steering on the bike was a bad way to go and that a bike's steering was like the "save" button and was an "ugly and inefficient way of doing things". I was making the point that auto-saving to a default location and doing everything automatically for the user - and having the user not read the manual or learn how to use the program - isn't any better and in some cases is worse.
I can't remember how often I've been typing something for a while and I've made so many changes that I can't undo all of them, and then I have to revert back to the saved copy.
What if it drives too fast for your liking (or not fast enough) [what if you don't like the program defaults or other settings] - you didn't read the manual, so how do you know how to change its speed-limiting preferences?
And how would you know where to find it after it parked itself [if the program always auto-saved, how would you know where it saved your files if you wanted to copy them]?
Many of the problems we have today with computers come from people's unwillingness to learn to use them. There'd be fewer problems if people knew at least the basics about things like security (such as installing a simple firewall helps a lot), the OS and programs themselves (such as here's how you do a mail merge, and here's how you set up a spam filter), and other things. I'm the "computer guy" of my household, and I get asked about so many little things that I don't even know (I use Linux and everyone else uses Windows, so I'm not as familiar with Office, Outlook, etc.) and it takes me all of two minutes to click around and figure it out.
If KDE doesn't know what an MP3 file is, then how does it know to launch Noatun, or amaroK, or any other MP3 player? If your browser doesn't know what a JPG file is, then how does it know it's a picture? If Konqueror doesn't know what a .swf file is, then how does it know to use the Shockwave plug-in to view it?
Okay, so maybe the OS doesn't have to know how to differentiate between different files, but something - be it the GUI or whatever - does. And before you criticize about technicalities like this, don't forget that the GUI is built into Windows so in Linux it may be the GUI that does this, but in Windows it's the OS.
Try this because it's the proper way to test his argument:
1. Take one of your MP3 files. Copy it to somewhere else and get rid of its file extension.
2. Double-click it and see what happens. Does KDE still know what to do with the file? No.
Without different file extensions, the OS/GUI has no way of determining what sort of file it is or what application should be used to view it.
Not only that, but most people wouldn't know where to find the file after it's been auto-saved -- what if you wanted to copy it to another computer? Or if you just got a new computer and wanted to transfer files, and the old PC wasn't working - if you knew where the files were saved you could put the old hard drive in your new PC and copy them over. You can't do that if you can't find the files.
Business owners like them because of AdWords, which helps businesses to get more visitors visiting their website and perhaps buying their products/services. Many businesses (as well as non-business websites) also use Google to allow users to search their website for specific information. And because Google didn't become successful by screwing other businesses over, they became successful because people preferred them to other search engines.
Not that these other companies you mentioned don't affect us or are unimportant, but many people don't know that they're doing this research. Google has a direct link to the public - they can just advertise a feature on google.com at the bottom of the search results, and some people will try it. Other companies need to hire advertisers and stuff.
Also, I'm sure a lot of people like the "rags-to-riches" story of how Google got started by two guys in their dorm room.
So you're saying if this guy were in a car accident and wanted to die you should let him, even with his high chance of recovery and even though he will probably be happy to be alive later?
I'm not saying you should force anyone to live. I'm just saying that you shouldn't kill him if you think things will get better for him.
I guess maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
That doesn't help me any. I wasn't there for the "suicide" - I don't know if these people really wanted to die or not. And if they had no idea they were going to die (ie, if Dr. Kevorkian killed them and they thought he was going to heal them), they wouldn't have expressed their death wishes.
"So you take the liberty to torture somebody in the hope they would get better? You might be wrong too. Yes, it's sad if people are wrong in this kind of cases (btw, in case you did't know, we all die eventually) but it's THEIR responsibility it's not my, your or state's responsibility."
No. I don't want people to suffer in the hope that they get better, but I don't think it's right to kill people when there's a good chance that they will get better.
If a man is severely injured in a car accident and wants to die because he is in so much pain but has a 75% chance of making a full recovery, should you kill him? I'm sure he's in an immense amount of pain and will be for a while, and it will probably take him years to recover. But if odds are that he will live, I say we shouldn't kill him.
But they're dead - I can't ask them.
"Wouldn't you? What kind of friend would you be if you could not help a friend in need? If he wasn't even able to pull a trigger I'd imagine that he would be in terrible shape. If he could pull the trigger I imagine that he would not ask you to do it for him."
Maybe you didn't read the whole thing. The whole quote was "If your friend wanted to die, would you hand him a 12-gauge? Would you pull the trigger for him? Or would you try to get him some help through his rough times?
The last line suggests that he will get better.
Are you suggesting that people killed by American soldiers wanted to die?
By the way, even though soldiers are trained on how to kill, many of them never kill anyone. They're there to fight, not necessarily to kill. The Army is one of the largest employers in the US - if every soldier killed someone (or even if most of them did) there'd be a lot more people dying in Iraq.
"I happen to believe that people should be free to pursue their happiness and be free to act, even hire help to end their life no matter what is the reason for their wish, you happen to believe that people should not be allowed freedoms and to have limited freedom when it comes to such a basic private decision: to live or die."
Not true. I believe that people have the right to die if they want to, but I also believe that executioners should be properly labeled. Dr. Kevorkian really wasn't a doctor at all - doctors try to heal their patients. I'd have no problem if he called himself a "suicide expert" or something - if he weren't in the news, how would I know that he kills his patients? What if I were in town and got in a bad car accident?
Doctors make mistakes. Sometimes surgeries have gone bad, and I'm sure doctors with lots of patients have gotten things mixed up. You can sue a doctor who cuts off your leg mistaking you for the patient with the bad leg; not so when he mistakes you for the guy who was suicidal.
I have no problem with others wishing to die. I have a problem with a doctor killing people because as far as we know, some of these people might not have wanted to die and thought they were going to see a normal doctor.
You wouldn't. People with mental problems should see a psychiatrist, and people with physical problems should see a doctor. Dr. Kevorkian didn't help anyone, he just killed them. Helping to ease the pain of someone who is going to die is called hospice. What Kevorkian did is called assisted suicide.
"It's written even in American Constitution although people don't want or don't know to interpret it: "right to pursue happiness": people in pain have the right to pursue happiness even if that means that they want to end their phisical or mental pain by suicide."
Yes, they do. Obviously. There's no way they could enforce otherwise - what do you do to punish someone who commits suicide - they're dead already.
Does that mean the doctor has the right to kill them? If people want to die, they should be calling an executioner, not a doctor. How will we ever know if these people actually wanted to commit suicide - or that they wouldn't have changed their minds later? They're dead, it's not like we can ask them if they wanted to die.
If your friend wanted to die, would you hand him a 12-gauge? Would you pull the trigger for him? Or would you try to get him some help through his rough times?
Helping people to die is called hospice. Assisted suicide is not helping people to die, it's killing them/letting them kill themselves. Dr. Kevorkian didn't help people to have an easier death, he killed them.
Then perhaps you're not aware that one of the things a doctor has to do before he can get his license and be called a doctor is to promise that he will do whatever he can to save his patient and that he will not kill his patients.
This isn't just an American thing. This promise has been around since the days of Aristotle.
And would you trust a doctor to heal you who just killed nine or ten other patients - on purpose? What's to stop him from killing you and then saying that you wanted to die?
Reminds me of that skit on "Chappelle's Show" - "Spam busters, bitch!"
Dr. Kevorkian never took himself to a mental hospital. Not to say that he wasn't pretty messed up, though. And I'm sure the average person doesn't know the symptoms of HIV well enough to know whether or not he/she has it.
Just because your computer isn't slowing down or anything doesn't mean you don't have a virus. I had a computer once with a boot-sector virus, and I ran it for a year or so without knowing until one day I tried to transfer some files on a floppy disk from that PC to another, and the other PC said the floppy had the virus on it.
Funny thing is that the infected PC had an antivirus program made by - guess who! - Microsoft, called MS Anti-Virus for Windows.
Actually, I think that MS does have something to do with it. Of course there are plenty of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kinds of people, but there's also plenty of people like myself who do frequent updates - I've had MS updates cause problems before, and it pisses me off when a product that I paid good money for breaks with a patch while the OS I got free off the Internet keeps on ticking - even when it breaks with a patch it still works (updating some Linux stuff broke certain things once but I was still able to login, get online, and find out how to fix the problem). So I think that it's probably part human nature, and part MS' fault.
"Ignore the slashbots dogging on Windows. We don't have the stats, but from what I understand, over 80% of Slashdot hits are from MSIE."
Hit percentages mean nothing. Where are they connecting from - are they at home? Or are they at work, at the library, at a terminal at the airport. . .?
In fact, how do you even know what browser they're using? Yes, most browsers send an ID to the server, but these IDs can be spoofed - and it's not that uncommon for non-MS browsers to need to do this for some websites. My bank's website checks to make sure that you're running either MSIE or Netscape/Mozilla, but I'm using Konqueror so it gives me an error page with links to places to download IE and Netscape.
Also, how many of those hits are from people who were scouring the web for info on Linux? There was a period of time when I was still using Windows but checked the Linux sites because I wanted to switch. Slashdot seems to be mentioned/linked to quite a bit on Linux sites (as well as non-Linux tech sites).
"So yeah, lots of posers around. Having a Gentoo box in your basement that you use from time to time to uhh, compile things doesn't make you a Linux user, if you do all your real work on Windows."
I wouldn't be too quick to criticize. Maybe they're trying to ease themselves into using Linux without using a Live CD and without the hassle of repartitioning to dual-boot. And I know one of the big show-stoppers for myself for just switching cold-turkey was games - I was dual-booting, and for most things I just used Linux, but the lack of games kept me using Windows.
I think a lot of people don't understand the implications of "unprotected, unpatched" Windows. They think that means if you buy a PC from the store and hook it up without installing patches. But often prebuilt PCs come with a lot of preinstalled patches, anti-spyware and antivirus programs, and the firewall already set up. An unprotected and unpatched Windows PC means just straight Windows from the MS install CD - no antivirus, no anti-spyware, no patches, nothing.
I think that's what he was saying.
How is what you said any different from the original comment?
Correct me if I'm wrong. . . but I don't think "all versions of XP" had a built-in firewall - I thought the original XP had it, but didn't install it by default and you had to find the installer on the CD to get it.
Until these companies absolutely must switch, they will probably stick with their current infrastructure.
Also, notice that they have hired a single part-time pro to handle their 3 Linux servers. . . yet it takes them a whole team of full-time, certified MS pros, and the service still isn't very good. The Linux guy might only have 3 servers to take care of, but they only need him part-time. I'm sure most of the time he's there he isn't anywhere near as busy as any of the MS team employees - from my experience, Linux has problems once, and that's when you first get it set up. From then on it stays running fine. I'm sure he's mostly just there a) to install updates and b) to make the company feel better just in case something does happen - a database server would be a bad thing for a company to lose.
Which further emphasizes Linux's stability/security - if the company needs these database servers, why does it hire a single part-time employee to keep them up? Makes me think that maybe he doesn't need to be there most of the time - maybe he was full-time at first (or they had another person there working full-time) and they found that he really didn't need to be there most of the time.
The bed's understandable - it has enough insulation that it keeps you warm at night. The floor, well. . . not so much.
And that Howard Dean was going to North Dakota! And California! And Washington! Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaagh!