and.... that pretty much exactly sums up my attitude on the matter.

I substitute "robust audio editing" instead of "robust video editing"

Task dependent tools. A hammer when nailing in a nail, and a saw for cutting apart wood. Nailing a nail with a saw is no fun, neither is video/audio editing under Linux.

When suggesting a computer or an OS thens listen to what the person wants to do and suggest a system that supports that.

Liking a certain ideology is fine, but that can't blind us to the real world. If I can't complete the task I want/need to complete then that system is useless.
That means that Linux is useless for gaming, has limited CAD capabilities (the main programs are not available), lacks good audio recording/mixing options (lacks the professional applications, although Reaper has fixed this somewhat), and doesn't have many big games. Linux is insanely flexible, but needs technical know-how if any real changes are to be made.
Mac lacks games (those that are released are always behind the Win versions), costs more to begin with, and has lacked CAD software (that is improving right now), but is easier to use and comes with a good default setup.
Windows has an amazing selection of software in almost all classes, but has usability issues, needs more maintenance than a Mac or a well set up Linux machine, malware issues etc. and a worse setup out of the box (and I can back that up with empirical data)

So, for the engineer or CAD student, gamer, or business software user, suggest Windows.
For the casual gamer who needs to work with graphics, text, or sound, then Mac is easiest
And for anyone who is willing to put in time to learn their tools, or wants to play around with systems, Linux. Cheap home media centre? Linux FTW!

All have their pros and cons. Select (and suggest) what fits the user, not yourself..(of course, if you have to provide support then factor in your ease with whatever OS it is. But if you're comfortable with Linux then you can figure the others out...)

Not disagreeing here, just trying to add to what you are saying.

Programmers aren't horrible people or anything, they've just spent a lot of time at becoming quite good at a specific skill. Artists and designers spend an equal amount of time becoming good at another skillset, and usability specialists spend the same time becoming good at understanding other stuff that faces the user.

I don't really think that the problem is the fault of the programmers, but rather management. See, management seems to understand the process of creating something as only the mechanical part of the creation (hammering in the nails, writing the code, making the pictures) and completely miss the complexity of coming up with a good design to begin with, as well as the iterative nature of most good design (usually only partly successful on the first try). This is just the mentality of managers, mostly old-school managers who still think that all problems can be solved by engineering and manufacture (or the equivalent).

Most programmers that I know are fully aware of the fact that their skills at making usable interfaces are very limited, as is their knowledge of colour theory and such (the domain of the graphic designer). I am painfully aware that although I can perform a mean usability analysis, my skill at programming is limited to "hello world" levels. Okay, some graphic designers think that usability is simple and they can do it based on artistic insight (they usually state this just before creating some usability nightmare).
Management then stops the programmer from implementing the solutions proposed by the usability experts as that takes resources away from making the nuts and bolts and says something like "we will fix that at the end of the project", resulting in a really clever but unusable product that requires a few months of fixing all the little details at the end...which is too much work, so it just gets shipped like that. Surprise, surprise, nobody wants to pay for it.

Editors for text, artists for art, usability experts for usability, programmers for programming, and managers who have a clue about this all. Please?

Okay... so, a version released on 09.05.2011, when was that released?
Well, depends on whether the maker is U.S. based or somewhere else in the world.
(there are two logical ways of ordering dates, detail->less detail->least detail, or least detail->more detail->most detail. That translates to day-month-year, or year-month-day. Then there is the U.S. way, which would be stuck on quite a few bits of software.)

So we would have numbers going both ways, sometimes within the same company (with offices in multiple countries). That really doesn't sound like such a good plan.

Software version numbers may be annoying in some respects, but they are generally consistent.

I thought the DISAPPEARING part of the global menu was way more disconcerting and annoying. I got used to the global menu on the Mac within days of starting to use it, but in Unity the menu options disappear. That's not very usable ("royally stupid" would be another way of putting it)

Thank you.

The problem as I see it is that the Linux GUIs are all trying to copy someone else's old stuff, without taking into consideration the flaws in those older systems (and indeed sometimes apparently without understanding the design rationale behind those systems/behaviours).
Gnome copies Windows, and Unity copies MacOS X. Both currently have problems because they copy the look, without understanding the feel. Unity, in particular, makes the user click way too often to access programs or files (the lens system needs serious fixing, and no user should need to understand the term "lens"), and the icon design.....not obvious, to say the least, and the dock has very strange behaviours re: installing and removing programs.
But at least Canonical is trying to do something, and fix things that really were broken. I hope they succeed.

And then MS (often accused of copying) makes a phone UI that clearly shows that copying others ideas and layout is not necessary, and that things can be done well in more than one way.

You've seen non-IT users who are used to Windows have a problem with Unity which does not try to emulate Windows95/XP, and be more comfortable with the "old" way which tries to emulate Windows95/XP.

What a shocker!

People SAY they don't care about the look, but tests have shown that if we test the exact same interface uglified (made to look old and ugly) vs the same interface beautified, then the beautified interface scores higher for usability. People say that it worked better, even if it didn't.
It turns out that you have more than one component to "usability". We can call it "user experience" as a whole (which then includes the technical aspect, the usability, the looks, the feel including response times and physical feel of the hardware)

Now, I love my CLI (having a terminal available is great) and think that scripting can't be beat for some tasks. I also think that having a good and sturdy shortcut and text interface IN the GUI is a good thing (being able to start programs through quick commands such as a good search feature that can be invoked from the keyboard). Yet working graphically is still what our brain does best. Moving text blocks, selecting seen objects instead of remembering commands, etc. A very big part of our brain is dedicated to visual processing, which results in us being pretty good at it. Our tools, including computers, should work with that in mind.

yes, and most people are fed up with writhing females being used to market things that have nothing to do with writhing females. If you have a strip club then use writhing females to advertise (which shows me or insinuates what pleasure I can expect to derive from your venue), but if you're selling an electronics device it might work better to show me how it will affect my life. And please don't show me another car advert with a nondescript silver family car zooming at incredible speeds through a cityscape, I want to see what the product is actually like in real life. THAT is one place where Apple went right in their advertising. Very little exaggeration, mostly just time compression and scripting for dramatic effect. Showing people video chatting with distant loved ones, showing different people (children, grandmothers, adults) using an iPad easily to access stuff or play around, showing a feeling of well being when using the product. THAT is quality marketing. IF the product can deliver on those promises. Apple can, and Android is soooo close.

110V 40 or 50 Amp = 240 v 18 or 22 Amp

So, no, the original poster was quite right. The voltage is quite important there as the total energy transported is a function of the current (amperes) and the voltage.

A 2kw kettle in the US draws around 16Amperes, while a 2kw kettle in europe draws around 9Amperes. This is due to the difference in Volts.

To charge the Tesla in 3 hours requires ~17kW, which is 70A at 240V OR around 150A at 110V. Do you have a 150Amp circuit in your house?

Stallman's comments remind me of fundamentalist religious zealots' view on other people's beliefs, i.e. that people with other views than themselves are evil.

Seriously, is there not a chance that computing has room for OpenSource AND proprietary, and that both a buttoned down approach and an open approach have their merits?
I don't see open source tools as being particularly nice to use in general, and I don't see Apple products as being a hacker's paradise. Apple and Microsoft products generally tend to support my work and play much better, yet I also use open source stuff

Jobs could get away with being a bit of an asshole sometimes because he was really good at his job. Stallman seems just to be an asshole who used to do pretty clever and good stuff but has become embittered that his work hasn't taken off in the way that Jobs' work did. Stallman, just put your money where your mouth is and make open source stuff that can compete on quality, because it is obvious that only competing on price (even at a zero price point) isn't enough. And please don't do any more to mark the open source community as a bunch of religious zealots who believe that open=good and proprietary=evil. That only makes open source into a cult which gets shunned by the rest of the computing world.

Science: it works, bitches!

http://xkcd.com/54/

Not really. The trim knob/indicator and the trim tab are two separate things. The only way to get a perfectly neutral setting of the elevator itself is to set the angle of incidence of the horizontal stabiliser itself for a certain speed. Otherwise you will always need to deflect the elevator itself, which you do using the trim tab. The trim knob/indicator may be set to represent neutral on the long, fast straight, but at the area of the highest speed the aircraft will fairly probably have a strong pitch up tendency. If not, then it will have an EXTREME pitch down tendency at low speeds. Sadly I cannot base this on experience in a real P-51, only on general piloting experience and playing around in a pretend P-51 in a flight sim, which certainly isn't the real thing :/ (and right about now my head is full of wishful thinking..)

They probably just trim the plane for the speed, way simplest and safest. It's not that extreme a setting as the plane is designed for high speed to begin with (they went faster on these planes in dives during WWII, even into the transonic range).

But yes,there are clear indicators that high g-forces were encountered, and I am quite certain that they were unintentional. That seems to favour a strong, unexpected pitch up.

Should be possible. You just have to be able to run the Mac/Windows utility, which then communicates with the base station over wifi or ethernet.

I have an older AP extreme and am very pleased with it. I did have one firmware version go somewhat unstable on me, but it is REALLY simple to upgrade or downgrade firmware versions, and it is extremely easy to set up and change most settings. Also more flexible than I expected, but not as flexible as some of the more geeky units out there.

errr.... *I* have that rating. And I'm just a regular shmoe.

But he did have type specific training on those high performance planes. THAT is cool :D