1) No, it's not "there". Ubuntu is the only popular distro that enables this stuff by default, and then only until they get sued by Apple and Microsoft. I want _legal_ support for this.
2) It's not a problem, if you're willing to license technologies. And paying $50 for the license is a heck of a lot cheaper than changing countries.
No, your only option is to either change your country's backward laws or change countries. Per-user licensing schemes (such as those for MPEG codecs) are inherently incompatible with the GPL so if you want a "legal" solution in a patent-filled country, your only option is to cough up the cash for a Windows license.
Fortunately, since I live in a country with sane patent laws, I can afford not to give a shit, and that has benefits that go way beyond Linux.
The linux kernel survived only because of one guy standing at the top and not afraid to tell others... "your idea is stupid, I'm not gonna use it." and stopping the flow of "ooh shiney" that seems that seems to infect most OSS devs.
Absolutely and utterly wrong. The Linux kernel survived because of one guy standing at the top and not afraid to tell others "if you code it, I'll put it in". In fact, because the Minix OS was managed in the manner you recommend is *precisely* why Linus started his own kernel instead of continuing to use it.
The number of DEs and window managers may be irrelevant to you, but what about a developer? Should he develop using QT or GTK or something else?
Depends on his focus, needs and expertise. Or what, is OSX flawed because it includes more than one programming language?
The Mac experience is better because of the reasons I posted. It is better because it is MORE consistent, uses few resources, etc.
So OSX can run reliably on a 1 Ghz computer with 256 MBs of RAM? because those are the specs of the laptop I'm typing this into, and Linux runs great on it. In fact, it also runs nicely on my old P1 166mhz Thinkpad with 80 MBs of RAM, something that I'm pretty sure OSX has never managed to do. So much for "uses few resources".
This is not about stopping you playing with an OS or even desktop environment. It is about what is holding Linux back from being a viable desktop operating system for the masses.
Wake me up when the masses are using OSX but until then, any and all arguments with regards to "the masses" should be done against what the masses are using: Windows.
I don't understand all this obsession with "cloud" computing, where the programs are run by some central server instead of at home. As someone who lived through the 70s and 80s, it sounds like the old "dumb terminal" and "smart central computer" model, and we abandoned that because it sucked. I can't envision a rebirth being any better.
To be fair, the "dumb terminal" model works quite well (better than the current one IMHO when implemented properly) as long as it's *your* smart central server and not someone else's.
Funny thing about Linux is that due to its UNIX roots and open licensing scheme, it's the perfect OS for that. Hopefully some Linux distros *cough*RedHat*cough* will realize that and adapt accordingly, it is currently a bit of a PITA to set it up.
So why didn't you install VirtualBox+WinXP on the Linux machines instead? if you're gonna use the OS as nothing more than a VM launcher, I can't see why you'd pay the extra price of a Mac in the first place. And I've yet to meet any dev that doesn't use XP on a VM to do their 'real work' so forgive me if I'm not convinced of OSX's benefits yet.
Is it different in this case because it's a small company doing it rather than a whole bunch of individuals? Does that mean it's okay if it's just me, but wrong if my company is doing it?
No, that means it's okay if it's just you, but you'd better worry about covering your own ass first if your company is doing it. Fighting insane copyright laws is no reason to take a bullet for either your boss or the previous admin.
First off, a few critiques (or "why would NASA have thought proper to ask on an online poll instead of continuing naming them themselves"):
Destiny: Pathetically predictable PR move. By that account, the next ones should've been "Freedom" and "Justice", Gundam pun not intended. Epic Fail. Columbus: Like Colbert, also a person who didn't contribute a thing to astronomy, physics, or anything remotely related to the matter at hand. Still, it would've been fitting on a satellite meant to explore new places of our solar system but alas, this is not. Fail. Hope: see "Destiny". Star: Dull. Awfully so. Fail. Dawn: See "Star".
As for your suggestions:
Snow: An epidemiologist, on a space station module? see "Columbus". The water kind? see "Star". Pneuma: Leaving aside its similarity to pneumonia, it's not a bad name. Would've been nice if the primary function of the module would've been heating but it isn't the case, to the best of my knowledge. Not Fail, but I still prefer the two that were picked. Loam: See "Star".
Personally I like both Serenity and Colbert. Colbert, because it displays a sense of humor which is in sore need these days, and Serenity for the same reason, except naming a space ship module after a fictional space ship isn't very creative. Still way, way better than "Destiny" or "Hope" though.
Years ago, I actually proved to management, that solar radiation made one server crash, and didn't touch the hundreds around it. That was regardless of the fact that there was a 10 story building above it, and it was 30 feet underground, in a hardened bunker, surrounded by well grounded metal. It was the end result of a micro solar flare. I think we were lucky no one was standing there when it happened.
People, the BOFH exists, and he's a Slashdotter!
Nice to meet you, sir, I'm a huge fan:) can I get your autograph?
- Cars don't improve the standards of living (in which case, WTF are you doing arguing about this?) - Worldwide supply of oil is perfectly stable (and I've got a bridge to sell you...) - Salaries in the US and other, car-dependant nations will rise at least as much as the price of oil does. (The bridge is still on sale...) - The US *will* have to reduce its standard of living.
You hear "they can live on a thousand dollars a year, why can't you?" like I heard from the idiot economists teaching that class, but they can't see that if prices were a 50th as high as ours, we could live on a 50th of the paycheck.
Y'know, maybe that was his point. That both prices and salaries should be lowered to "third world" standards, so that currency is a bit more standardized at a global level to diminish the inequalities you pointed out. I'm not an economist so dunno if that'd be a sustainable position, but in my experience 99% of the time when a student calls a professor an idiot, its because the student didn't even understand what the professor was saying, let alone his reasons to do so.
then correct your mistake. you can't make others learn without them making the same mistake themselves.
Sweet then. India shall throw a couple of nuclear bombs at the US just to see how does it feel to annihilate thousands of people with the press of a single button. Then China will nuke India, of course, and just to complete the circle, Japan will be nuking China shortly after that.
I agree that the US should correct their mistake and restructure their society so that cars aren't a necessity, specially since they're just setting themselves up for disaster once oil runs out, but that's no reason for other countries to do the same stupidity.
Ohh and if you care, I'm not a US citizen, I walk pretty much everywhere, and I'm certainly not an environazi left-wing nutjob. It's simply an obvious fact that relying on a non-renewable resource in short supply is idiotic at a personal, national or global scale.
Umm, which campaign have you played? because, from actual experience as well as reading the forums, it seems like most campaigns' levels of difficulty vary a lot from what they actually mean, and while for one "Easy" is "you only need a funcioning brain", for another its "We won't torture you *that* much". A good example of the latter, for instance, is "Under the Burning Suns", excellent storyline and very fun levels, but when they say its aimed at "Expert" players, they weren't kidding.
Good campaigns for newbies at the game, IMHO, are "A Tale of Two Brothers" and of course, the classic "Heir To The Throne". Or you could play skirmishes against a handicapped AI, which in case you didn't know (it did take me a while to find it) is under Multiplayer - Local Game, then switch "Local Player" to "Computer Player", at least on 1.4.5 (the version currently available on Ubuntu).
Three Cores for the Mozilla-kings under the GUI, Seven for the Gnome-lords in their halls of X, Nine for KDE Men doomed to be flamed, One for the Free Scheduler on his free kernel In the Land of Linux where the SMP lie. One Core to rule them all, One Core to find them, One Core to bring them all and in the scheduler bind them In the Land of Linux where the SMP lie.
Which is, of course, what will eventually happen if the number of cores keep increasing: we'll need one dedicated exclusively to manage what goes where and when. Which is pretty cool when you think about it;)
I gave some instances of how they sap rather than contribute to an economy
Some? I don't recall seeing the word "some". In fact, I clearly quoted you stating that it was for "anyone who makes this argument".
I do feel that there are more productive ways of using leisure time, but I don't begrudge anyone playing games. It's only when they interfere with other elements of someone's life that I feel they're a problem.
Again, the "only when they interfere..." part is missing from your original post.
Just as with games, listening to music can be a pure leisure activity, but with music, you can do other things at the same time. Have you ever planted a garden while pwning n00b5 in your favorite online game?
No, but I've listened to music and read books while "pwning n00b5" in my favorite online game, and I've also *applied* the knowledge gained from reading those books to my "pwning n00b5" activity, a... "synergy" between leisure activities sadly missing from music, with games or anything else really.
If you'd like me to respond to your next response, you may want to curb your use of insults peppered in among your rhetoric. They don't help anything and I won't respond again if you use them.
Considering your original post, and the plethora of insulting stereotypes you used in your second-to-last paragraph, it's funny you'd say that.
So, congratulations. You saved $100 for the privilege of spending $600 on games in the life of the OS installation, wasting 1000 hours in the interim, severely limiting your social life and development of your social skills, increasing your later-life health-care costs due to lack of exercise and poor nutrition, adding another $75 to your electric bill and 600 pounds of carbon emissions to the environment due to the energy usage while you're playing those games on your high-powered gaming system.
Read that again, please. In fact, I suspect that if you hadn't been modded up Funny for that, you would've been modded down Flamebait just for that little paragraph.
My original opinion was that the volume of games available for an OS is not the wisest metric to determine that OS's value. Again: opinion.
And a very personal one. But if your *opinion* is that *no one* should pick an OS based on the volume of games available for it (something strongly implied by your wording), then it's a very stupid and arrogant one.
...as a former math student now back in the gentle arms of programming;) I'd recommend learning math, or more specifically logic. Forget assembly, forget C, forget specific programming languages, making a computer do what you want isn't as important as knowing what you need done in the first place.
No, I won't suggest that picking up a new language is trivial, or even easy. They all have their own individual warts that are sometimes difficult to deal with, styles of programming they encourage and others they actively discourage. But a poorly-structured program is a poorly-structured program in any language, and learning to pre-visualize how it all comes together is a skill that transfers between all languages and programming styles, in my experience.
If the programmer really understands assembly, s/he should "intuitively" acquire a sound grasp of what makes an efficient program written in C, Fortran or whatever.
Fixed that for you. For 95% of cases, however, I'll take the simple, straightforward version rather than the assembly-like one, even if it's a couple orders of magnitude slower.
Many of the current commercial languages belong in toyland. They are designed for programmers who really don't have any idea about managing resources efficiently.
Do you? and I don't mean just computational resources, but also programmer time, budget, etc. All of which are usually affected negatively by 'old-school' languages such as Fortran, C, and *specially* assembly.
Most games sap significant time, which could have been used to earn money or add something productive to the world.
For that you were replied that so was music, to which you replied:
Music can be a distraction, but in many cases, it can be a great addition to any experience.
To which I replied that so could videogames, therefore if music is an acceptable use of leisure time, so are videogames, therefore your initial premise that:
Most games sap significant time, which could have been used to earn money or add something productive to the world.
Is invalid and therefore your assumption that
The comments are a broad-strokes response to anyone who makes this argument.
Such argument would be valid for 'anyone who makes this argument' is irresponsible and stupid.
Productive could be fostering a better relationship with your family, helping a friend move, reading a book, writing a poem, planting a garden, painting a picture. Sleeping, exercise, a walk in the park; all leisure activities which actually make the world a better place.
Prove that "reading a book" makes the world a better place *and* that "playing a videogame" does not.
I'm not saying that people should never play video games. I'm just saying that the fact that there are thousands of video games available on Windows vs. fewer on other platforms, and the fact that they typically come out first on Windows, is a dubious argument when there are so many other good things to do with your time, money and energy.
Of course there are better things to do with one's time. Such as doing a little introspection and providing a logically consistent arguments for one's opinions before blasting anyone else who believes differently. Do that.
So are videogames, unlike what your unintentionally-funny post may imply. And until you're mentally capable of recognizing that fact, you have no business telling anyone else what may or may not be a proper way of spending his leisure time.
One: Reading a book requires you to use your imagination to visualize what the author is writing. You interact with the book using all the facets of your mind, and the story becomes your own. In a game, all the visualization is given to you. While physical things like twitch reaction time are worked out, your imagination and intellect have very little to do.
On the other hand, my ability to control what happens in a book is exactly zero, whereas while playing Rome: Total War for instance, my knowledge of actual military tactics means the difference between a crushing defeat and an easy victory.
Two: Gardening takes patience and planning over a long period of time. It gives a sense of accomplishment far beyond "pwning noobs" in an FPS, or beating a variant of the same uber boss at the end of the game.
For you. For me, cooperating with actual human beings to fight *another* group of actual human beings is a much more enjoyable, and mentally stimulating, than simply following the instructions on a gardening book over two months.
If you think that playing a video game is just as good a leisure activity as that, do humanity a favor and don't breed.
Please don't breed, kind sir, humanity does not need your poor level of intelligence and excessively high level of arrogance to pass on.
None of your reasons is meaningful because you fail to consider the fact that Micrsoft used anticompetitive practices and developer lock-in to leverage an inferior product into the dominant consumer and enterprise OS.
Wrong. They've used that to *maintain* their dominant position, but they attained it by riding on IBM's name *and* recognizing that the PC market was in sore need of openness and competition, instead of every company building their own little island, as Apple et al had been doing until that point.
What Microsoft has failed to recognize for the past 8 years is that Steve Jobs' Apple Inc. isn't interested in playing that game any more.
Wrong. In fact, Ballmer here is *precisely* poking fun at the fact that Apple isn't interested in going after the mass market and instead has settled in the profitable niche of selling expensive fashion items.
And the rest of your post is just your typical Apple zealot foaming at the mouth for all those companies ripping off Apple's brilliant innovations. Please, stop drinking the kool-aid and see that companies have innovated long before Apple, still innovate with Apple, and shall continue to innovate long after Apple is gone, and it's laughable to imply otherwise. But I'm sure you'll get modded up, eventually, Apple zealots are plentiful around here, and they've got modpoints to spare.
It's called FreeDOS, but it's a product made by some commie bastards copying the work of honest American workers, the popular and much loved MS-DOS. It's also "Open Source" which is commie talk for "hacking tools", so don't allow your child to use it or he'll become a dirty, smelly commie hacker.
Just stay with the products of honest American companies like Windows Vista, you support our economy, you spit on the face of those commie bastards, and you get a solid, reliable product as only good ol' American craftmanship can produce.
I've also heard some rumors of a "Lenix" OS or something, made by some finnish commie but trust me, son, you don't wanna piss off the boys at the NSA by using that. I've even heard it includes some sort of "manifesto" with it, fucking commies, always trying to brainwash you with their commie crap.
Apple offers real value because OS X is a better operating system than Windows
Prove it. For me it may be since OSX is UNIX, but the way I see it, for most people one's a stupidly bloated system that runs all their apps, and the other's a stupidly bloated system that only runs special versions of some of their apps.
Apple has essentially taken away the high-end PC business away from Microsoft.
Prove it. I've yet to hear about a large business standardizing on Apple products, I've yet to hear about a serious gamer using Macs, so I'd like to know which definition of "high-end" are you using, and the stats backing up your claim.
Microsoft has repeatedly chosen to patch Windows instead of rebuilding it from the ground up as a modern operating system, the way Apple did with OS X. They should have known 8 years ago that this was the wrong strategy.
Interesting that they still maintain more than 90% marketshare worldwide with that "wrong strategy", though. Despite the horridness of Vista, people *still* appreciate being able to use their older apps on their newer PCs, who would've thought.
Go ahead, mod me down Troll or whatever, for defending Ballmer against a poor Apple apologist here on Slashdot. But facts are facts, and no matter how much you try to deny it, Apple isn't the dominant force in the industry today, Microsoft is so this isn't Ballmer trying to steal Apple's customers, it's simply Ballmer looking down on a competitor's tactics. And he's right.
Then vote with your wallet for something *worth* it, and buy laptops preloaded with either Linux or FreeDOS. Replacing Apple with Microsoft would get you exactly as we got when we replaced IBM with Microsoft: same thing as before, only worse.
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1) No, it's not "there". Ubuntu is the only popular distro that enables this stuff by default, and then only until they get sued by Apple and Microsoft. I want _legal_ support for this. 2) It's not a problem, if you're willing to license technologies. And paying $50 for the license is a heck of a lot cheaper than changing countries.
No, your only option is to either change your country's backward laws or change countries. Per-user licensing schemes (such as those for MPEG codecs) are inherently incompatible with the GPL so if you want a "legal" solution in a patent-filled country, your only option is to cough up the cash for a Windows license.
Fortunately, since I live in a country with sane patent laws, I can afford not to give a shit, and that has benefits that go way beyond Linux.
The linux kernel survived only because of one guy standing at the top and not afraid to tell others... "your idea is stupid, I'm not gonna use it." and stopping the flow of "ooh shiney" that seems that seems to infect most OSS devs.
Absolutely and utterly wrong. The Linux kernel survived because of one guy standing at the top and not afraid to tell others "if you code it, I'll put it in". In fact, because the Minix OS was managed in the manner you recommend is *precisely* why Linus started his own kernel instead of continuing to use it.
The number of DEs and window managers may be irrelevant to you, but what about a developer? Should he develop using QT or GTK or something else?
Depends on his focus, needs and expertise. Or what, is OSX flawed because it includes more than one programming language?
The Mac experience is better because of the reasons I posted. It is better because it is MORE consistent, uses few resources, etc.
So OSX can run reliably on a 1 Ghz computer with 256 MBs of RAM? because those are the specs of the laptop I'm typing this into, and Linux runs great on it. In fact, it also runs nicely on my old P1 166mhz Thinkpad with 80 MBs of RAM, something that I'm pretty sure OSX has never managed to do. So much for "uses few resources".
This is not about stopping you playing with an OS or even desktop environment. It is about what is holding Linux back from being a viable desktop operating system for the masses.
Wake me up when the masses are using OSX but until then, any and all arguments with regards to "the masses" should be done against what the masses are using: Windows.
I don't understand all this obsession with "cloud" computing, where the programs are run by some central server instead of at home. As someone who lived through the 70s and 80s, it sounds like the old "dumb terminal" and "smart central computer" model, and we abandoned that because it sucked. I can't envision a rebirth being any better.
To be fair, the "dumb terminal" model works quite well (better than the current one IMHO when implemented properly) as long as it's *your* smart central server and not someone else's.
Funny thing about Linux is that due to its UNIX roots and open licensing scheme, it's the perfect OS for that. Hopefully some Linux distros *cough*RedHat*cough* will realize that and adapt accordingly, it is currently a bit of a PITA to set it up.
So why didn't you install VirtualBox+WinXP on the Linux machines instead? if you're gonna use the OS as nothing more than a VM launcher, I can't see why you'd pay the extra price of a Mac in the first place. And I've yet to meet any dev that doesn't use XP on a VM to do their 'real work' so forgive me if I'm not convinced of OSX's benefits yet.
Is it different in this case because it's a small company doing it rather than a whole bunch of individuals? Does that mean it's okay if it's just me, but wrong if my company is doing it?
No, that means it's okay if it's just you, but you'd better worry about covering your own ass first if your company is doing it. Fighting insane copyright laws is no reason to take a bullet for either your boss or the previous admin.
First off, a few critiques (or "why would NASA have thought proper to ask on an online poll instead of continuing naming them themselves"):
Destiny: Pathetically predictable PR move. By that account, the next ones should've been "Freedom" and "Justice", Gundam pun not intended. Epic Fail.
Columbus: Like Colbert, also a person who didn't contribute a thing to astronomy, physics, or anything remotely related to the matter at hand. Still, it would've been fitting on a satellite meant to explore new places of our solar system but alas, this is not. Fail.
Hope: see "Destiny".
Star: Dull. Awfully so. Fail.
Dawn: See "Star".
As for your suggestions:
Snow: An epidemiologist, on a space station module? see "Columbus". The water kind? see "Star".
Pneuma: Leaving aside its similarity to pneumonia, it's not a bad name. Would've been nice if the primary function of the module would've been heating but it isn't the case, to the best of my knowledge. Not Fail, but I still prefer the two that were picked.
Loam: See "Star".
Personally I like both Serenity and Colbert. Colbert, because it displays a sense of humor which is in sore need these days, and Serenity for the same reason, except naming a space ship module after a fictional space ship isn't very creative. Still way, way better than "Destiny" or "Hope" though.
Tell us what name *you* would've picked, then.
Years ago, I actually proved to management, that solar radiation made one server crash, and didn't touch the hundreds around it. That was regardless of the fact that there was a 10 story building above it, and it was 30 feet underground, in a hardened bunker, surrounded by well grounded metal. It was the end result of a micro solar flare. I think we were lucky no one was standing there when it happened.
People, the BOFH exists, and he's a Slashdotter!
Nice to meet you, sir, I'm a huge fan :) can I get your autograph?
The thing is, it has to be one of the following:
- Cars don't improve the standards of living (in which case, WTF are you doing arguing about this?)
- Worldwide supply of oil is perfectly stable (and I've got a bridge to sell you...)
- Salaries in the US and other, car-dependant nations will rise at least as much as the price of oil does. (The bridge is still on sale...)
- The US *will* have to reduce its standard of living.
You hear "they can live on a thousand dollars a year, why can't you?" like I heard from the idiot economists teaching that class, but they can't see that if prices were a 50th as high as ours, we could live on a 50th of the paycheck.
Y'know, maybe that was his point. That both prices and salaries should be lowered to "third world" standards, so that currency is a bit more standardized at a global level to diminish the inequalities you pointed out. I'm not an economist so dunno if that'd be a sustainable position, but in my experience 99% of the time when a student calls a professor an idiot, its because the student didn't even understand what the professor was saying, let alone his reasons to do so.
then correct your mistake. you can't make others learn without them making the same mistake themselves.
Sweet then. India shall throw a couple of nuclear bombs at the US just to see how does it feel to annihilate thousands of people with the press of a single button. Then China will nuke India, of course, and just to complete the circle, Japan will be nuking China shortly after that.
I agree that the US should correct their mistake and restructure their society so that cars aren't a necessity, specially since they're just setting themselves up for disaster once oil runs out, but that's no reason for other countries to do the same stupidity.
Ohh and if you care, I'm not a US citizen, I walk pretty much everywhere, and I'm certainly not an environazi left-wing nutjob. It's simply an obvious fact that relying on a non-renewable resource in short supply is idiotic at a personal, national or global scale.
Umm, which campaign have you played? because, from actual experience as well as reading the forums, it seems like most campaigns' levels of difficulty vary a lot from what they actually mean, and while for one "Easy" is "you only need a funcioning brain", for another its "We won't torture you *that* much". A good example of the latter, for instance, is "Under the Burning Suns", excellent storyline and very fun levels, but when they say its aimed at "Expert" players, they weren't kidding.
Good campaigns for newbies at the game, IMHO, are "A Tale of Two Brothers" and of course, the classic "Heir To The Throne". Or you could play skirmishes against a handicapped AI, which in case you didn't know (it did take me a while to find it) is under Multiplayer - Local Game, then switch "Local Player" to "Computer Player", at least on 1.4.5 (the version currently available on Ubuntu).
Three Cores for the Mozilla-kings under the GUI,
Seven for the Gnome-lords in their halls of X,
Nine for KDE Men doomed to be flamed,
One for the Free Scheduler on his free kernel
In the Land of Linux where the SMP lie.
One Core to rule them all, One Core to find them,
One Core to bring them all and in the scheduler bind them
In the Land of Linux where the SMP lie.
Which is, of course, what will eventually happen if the number of cores keep increasing: we'll need one dedicated exclusively to manage what goes where and when. Which is pretty cool when you think about it ;)
I gave some instances of how they sap rather than contribute to an economy
Some? I don't recall seeing the word "some". In fact, I clearly quoted you stating that it was for "anyone who makes this argument".
I do feel that there are more productive ways of using leisure time, but I don't begrudge anyone playing games. It's only when they interfere with other elements of someone's life that I feel they're a problem.
Again, the "only when they interfere..." part is missing from your original post.
Just as with games, listening to music can be a pure leisure activity, but with music, you can do other things at the same time. Have you ever planted a garden while pwning n00b5 in your favorite online game?
No, but I've listened to music and read books while "pwning n00b5" in my favorite online game, and I've also *applied* the knowledge gained from reading those books to my "pwning n00b5" activity, a... "synergy" between leisure activities sadly missing from music, with games or anything else really.
If you'd like me to respond to your next response, you may want to curb your use of insults peppered in among your rhetoric. They don't help anything and I won't respond again if you use them.
Considering your original post, and the plethora of insulting stereotypes you used in your second-to-last paragraph, it's funny you'd say that.
I didn't blast anyone, my friend.
So, congratulations. You saved $100 for the privilege of spending $600 on games in the life of the OS installation, wasting 1000 hours in the interim, severely limiting your social life and development of your social skills, increasing your later-life health-care costs due to lack of exercise and poor nutrition, adding another $75 to your electric bill and 600 pounds of carbon emissions to the environment due to the energy usage while you're playing those games on your high-powered gaming system.
Read that again, please. In fact, I suspect that if you hadn't been modded up Funny for that, you would've been modded down Flamebait just for that little paragraph.
My original opinion was that the volume of games available for an OS is not the wisest metric to determine that OS's value. Again: opinion.
And a very personal one. But if your *opinion* is that *no one* should pick an OS based on the volume of games available for it (something strongly implied by your wording), then it's a very stupid and arrogant one.
...as a former math student now back in the gentle arms of programming ;) I'd recommend learning math, or more specifically logic. Forget assembly, forget C, forget specific programming languages, making a computer do what you want isn't as important as knowing what you need done in the first place.
No, I won't suggest that picking up a new language is trivial, or even easy. They all have their own individual warts that are sometimes difficult to deal with, styles of programming they encourage and others they actively discourage. But a poorly-structured program is a poorly-structured program in any language, and learning to pre-visualize how it all comes together is a skill that transfers between all languages and programming styles, in my experience.
If the programmer really understands assembly, s/he should "intuitively" acquire a sound grasp of what makes an efficient program written in C, Fortran or whatever.
Fixed that for you. For 95% of cases, however, I'll take the simple, straightforward version rather than the assembly-like one, even if it's a couple orders of magnitude slower.
Many of the current commercial languages belong in toyland. They are designed for programmers who really don't have any idea about managing resources efficiently.
Do you? and I don't mean just computational resources, but also programmer time, budget, etc. All of which are usually affected negatively by 'old-school' languages such as Fortran, C, and *specially* assembly.
I clearly did.
Most games sap significant time, which could have been used to earn money or add something productive to the world.
For that you were replied that so was music, to which you replied:
Music can be a distraction, but in many cases, it can be a great addition to any experience.
To which I replied that so could videogames, therefore if music is an acceptable use of leisure time, so are videogames, therefore your initial premise that:
Most games sap significant time, which could have been used to earn money or add something productive to the world.
Is invalid and therefore your assumption that
The comments are a broad-strokes response to anyone who makes this argument.
Such argument would be valid for 'anyone who makes this argument' is irresponsible and stupid.
Productive could be fostering a better relationship with your family, helping a friend move, reading a book, writing a poem, planting a garden, painting a picture. Sleeping, exercise, a walk in the park; all leisure activities which actually make the world a better place.
Prove that "reading a book" makes the world a better place *and* that "playing a videogame" does not.
I'm not saying that people should never play video games. I'm just saying that the fact that there are thousands of video games available on Windows vs. fewer on other platforms, and the fact that they typically come out first on Windows, is a dubious argument when there are so many other good things to do with your time, money and energy.
Of course there are better things to do with one's time. Such as doing a little introspection and providing a logically consistent arguments for one's opinions before blasting anyone else who believes differently. Do that.
So are videogames, unlike what your unintentionally-funny post may imply. And until you're mentally capable of recognizing that fact, you have no business telling anyone else what may or may not be a proper way of spending his leisure time.
One: Reading a book requires you to use your imagination to visualize what the author is writing. You interact with the book using all the facets of your mind, and the story becomes your own. In a game, all the visualization is given to you. While physical things like twitch reaction time are worked out, your imagination and intellect have very little to do.
On the other hand, my ability to control what happens in a book is exactly zero, whereas while playing Rome: Total War for instance, my knowledge of actual military tactics means the difference between a crushing defeat and an easy victory.
Two: Gardening takes patience and planning over a long period of time. It gives a sense of accomplishment far beyond "pwning noobs" in an FPS, or beating a variant of the same uber boss at the end of the game.
For you. For me, cooperating with actual human beings to fight *another* group of actual human beings is a much more enjoyable, and mentally stimulating, than simply following the instructions on a gardening book over two months.
If you think that playing a video game is just as good a leisure activity as that, do humanity a favor and don't breed.
Please don't breed, kind sir, humanity does not need your poor level of intelligence and excessively high level of arrogance to pass on.
None of your reasons is meaningful because you fail to consider the fact that Micrsoft used anticompetitive practices and developer lock-in to leverage an inferior product into the dominant consumer and enterprise OS.
Wrong. They've used that to *maintain* their dominant position, but they attained it by riding on IBM's name *and* recognizing that the PC market was in sore need of openness and competition, instead of every company building their own little island, as Apple et al had been doing until that point.
What Microsoft has failed to recognize for the past 8 years is that Steve Jobs' Apple Inc. isn't interested in playing that game any more.
Wrong. In fact, Ballmer here is *precisely* poking fun at the fact that Apple isn't interested in going after the mass market and instead has settled in the profitable niche of selling expensive fashion items.
And the rest of your post is just your typical Apple zealot foaming at the mouth for all those companies ripping off Apple's brilliant innovations. Please, stop drinking the kool-aid and see that companies have innovated long before Apple, still innovate with Apple, and shall continue to innovate long after Apple is gone, and it's laughable to imply otherwise. But I'm sure you'll get modded up, eventually, Apple zealots are plentiful around here, and they've got modpoints to spare.
It's called FreeDOS, but it's a product made by some commie bastards copying the work of honest American workers, the popular and much loved MS-DOS. It's also "Open Source" which is commie talk for "hacking tools", so don't allow your child to use it or he'll become a dirty, smelly commie hacker.
Just stay with the products of honest American companies like Windows Vista, you support our economy, you spit on the face of those commie bastards, and you get a solid, reliable product as only good ol' American craftmanship can produce.
I've also heard some rumors of a "Lenix" OS or something, made by some finnish commie but trust me, son, you don't wanna piss off the boys at the NSA by using that. I've even heard it includes some sort of "manifesto" with it, fucking commies, always trying to brainwash you with their commie crap.
Apple offers real value because OS X is a better operating system than Windows
Prove it. For me it may be since OSX is UNIX, but the way I see it, for most people one's a stupidly bloated system that runs all their apps, and the other's a stupidly bloated system that only runs special versions of some of their apps.
Apple has essentially taken away the high-end PC business away from Microsoft.
Prove it. I've yet to hear about a large business standardizing on Apple products, I've yet to hear about a serious gamer using Macs, so I'd like to know which definition of "high-end" are you using, and the stats backing up your claim.
Microsoft has repeatedly chosen to patch Windows instead of rebuilding it from the ground up as a modern operating system, the way Apple did with OS X. They should have known 8 years ago that this was the wrong strategy.
Interesting that they still maintain more than 90% marketshare worldwide with that "wrong strategy", though. Despite the horridness of Vista, people *still* appreciate being able to use their older apps on their newer PCs, who would've thought.
Go ahead, mod me down Troll or whatever, for defending Ballmer against a poor Apple apologist here on Slashdot. But facts are facts, and no matter how much you try to deny it, Apple isn't the dominant force in the industry today, Microsoft is so this isn't Ballmer trying to steal Apple's customers, it's simply Ballmer looking down on a competitor's tactics. And he's right.
Then vote with your wallet for something *worth* it, and buy laptops preloaded with either Linux or FreeDOS. Replacing Apple with Microsoft would get you exactly as we got when we replaced IBM with Microsoft: same thing as before, only worse.