Maybe because systemd is fucking good? And all the whiners about it are just retards. Seriosly, I did not came acros one legit critique of systemd.

For example with the file, the application could ask for an alternative file location.
Or if the socket can't disconnect, the app can ask the user to connect to the internet again.

A file should be flush()ed so that changed are written out. That can cause I/O errors. If you disconnect your computer from the Internet, that can cause an I/O error on close(). There are sure more valid scenarious, when close() or flush() can cause I/O errors. There are also more subtle ways, like if you write a log message to a file in your dtor. That log message can cause I/O error.

And how do you handle exceptions? For example, if you close a file it's a good idea to flush() changes. flush() can throw I/O exceptions.
Or if you close a socket. Or anything else that handles external resources.

You know that you can do that with the PhantomReference, SoftReference, WeakReference classes?
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/...
clear() Clears this reference object.

With the limitation that C++ destructors cannot throw exceptions, why would you need them in Java? a close() method is just fine in Java, because you don't need to deallocate any memory. So what would you do in Java with destructors?

You should not free up resources in a c++ destructor. I guess that is exactly what Linus meant with his quote.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BewareO...
http://www.codingstandard.com/...
C++ destructors can be used to deallocate any memory, or do other stuff that cannot go wrong. But they cannot be used to release any resources, like sockets, streams, files, connections, etc.

Why are people taking C.S. Lewis so seriosly? I was reading quotes and texts from Lewis and it's full of holes and jumping to conclusions that only show his presupposed world view. I view C.S. Lewis as just another Christian apologetic, more like Willeam Lane Craig.

In religion, the ultimate cause of things is always god or gods. The conclusion is already set in stone, and theists are trying to find ways to validate the conclusion.
"by definition, science cannot tell you about them", yes it can, and does. The ultimate cause of things are interactions of matter with the four forces of nature, gravitation, electromagnetism, weak and strong force. I'm sorry if that answer is not satisfying to some, because it does not make you a special created purposeful snowflake. Or, in the words of Fight Club, "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all a part of the same compost pile.—Tyler Durden"

What is the cause of matter and those four forces of nature? We don't know yet, but that does not mean we will never know. But we have the best method to discover it, and that best method is so far the scientific method. The scientific method is observation, testing and creating of models with explanatory and predictive powers.

"philistines like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne thinking science has made God irrelevant" - way to go with ad-hominim attacks.
God is an idea to explain natural penomena, because God is postulated by religion as the ultimate cause of things. Science explains things better and more accurate, and hence it does make God obsolete.

"You might think of science advocate, cultural illiterate, mendacious anti-Catholic propagandist, and possible serial fabulist Neil DeGrasse Tyson" - more with the ad-hominim attacks.
"Actually, he doesn't just dismiss it. He goes much further — to argue that undergraduates should actively avoid studying philosophy at all. Because, apparently, asking too many questions "can really mess you up.""

That makes Tyson a pragmatist and not a philistine. And I agree with Tyson. Philosophie is ultimatelly useless, and it's just a waste of time. In science the ultimate arbiter of what is true and what is false is nature, and not philosophical arguments.

The only trouble I had was with Debian Sid, because of the rolling-release updates. The updates were broken some of the time. But the system was still running fine, it just meant that I had to wait a few weeks so that the updates were fixed.
Compare that with Windows updates, and the news that update X broke the system.

http://www.howtogeek.com/17962...
http://threatpost.com/microsof...
http://www.sevenforums.com/win...

I used Linux now for over 6 years. Ubuntu, Debian, Suse. On at least 6 different laptops. Just install it, finish, and it works.
Sure, sometimes you have problems with drivers because the hardware vendor does not support Linux. But that have nothing to do with Linux itself.

I don't think you "get Linux". Linux you just install once and then it runs and runs, regardless of any updates. Case in example, I installed Fedora 19 for my mother. After a few months I make an update, that was over 300 packages. Download in the background, updates in 20 minutes, restart, finish. No problems. New Fedora 20 comes out, I just make a distribution update. That was over 1000 packages. Download in the background, updates in 40 to 60 minutes, restart, finish. No problems. And Fedora 20 is a so called "bleeding-edge" distribution. If you use Ubuntu LTS or Debian Stable you have even less of a hastle.

I used Linux now for over 6 years. Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Fedora. And I never "tinker around and do all kinds of clever things with it to hone it to be the ultimate OS for me". Just install it, finish, and it works.

What I want for Windows:
- the possibility to delete files even if they are in use
- Unix tools available (find, grep, ssh, rsync, gpg, git) out of the box
- support for Linux file systems (ext2, ext3, ext4, brtfs)
- support for Lvm and dm-raid and cryp LUKS
- sshfs to mount file systems over ssh
- get rid of device letters
- CUPS
- virtual desktops
- software updates that do not take 2 hours and require x restarts
- repository for hardware drivers, so I don't have to hunt down drivers from vendors
- a terminal emulator that does not was ported from 1991 DOS
- dialogs that can be resized, all the time
- boot manager that supports alternative systems (GRUP can start Windows and Linux, and have auto-setup)
- possibility to re-assign keyboard keys without registry hacks
- get rid of the registry
- possibility to just copy Windows to a different computer
- recognition of my second hard disk in Windows Install (seriously, I cannot install Windows 7 to my second hard disk)
- get rid of the System-Partition

That is no reason to misrepresent the cited paper. The correct presentation should be "Paper found three alleles and four genes that are linked to cognetive abilities". The rest about the IQ and which factors contribute to intelligence is not the subject of the study in the paper.

From the original paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

How the hell does the article now writes that "The scientists first looked for differences in the genome that correlated with academic achievement"? No, they looked for "educational attainment". Then the abstract goes on "Three SNPs (rs1487441, rs7923609, and rs2721173) are significantly associated with cognitive performance after correction for multiple hypothesis testing." SNPs are different alleles of the same gene.

Then, "Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved in synaptic plasticity, the main cellular mechanism for learning and memory." But the article states that " On top of that, the three gene locations that did seem to have a stronger correlation weren't involved in development of the nervous system."

What the hell??