wasn't there a similar article a while ago? Is my memory playing tricks on me?

I really enjoyed using XML with Actionscript. It's just more natural that Javascript's dreaded DOM API. CSS3 selectors are OK, but I think they're implemented in Javascript, not native code.

I would love to see some benchmarks.

Before I start ranting (though I'm just stating my opinions, really), I want you to keep in mind that I have built my own FreeBSD distribution, I release most of my work under the BSD or GPL licenses and I frequently make use of Ubuntu/CentOS for servers. However, the following biased rant is about Linux on the desktop, so just keep that in the back of your head, while reading.

• Drivers: My colleague and I have the same laptops. He runs Ubuntu, I run Windows 7. We both ssh into Ubuntu workstations to do our work, but at the end of the day, he can't put his laptop to sleep and I can. He has to double check that when he plugs in his headphones, the speakers are automatically turned off. He has to spend 5 minutes every morning to reconfigure his monitors, because GNOME is not auto configuring them correctly. Again, I can see someone saying: "big deal", but it's the little things that make a difference for me. You can tell me KIA and BMW are both cars, but choosing BMW is a no-brainer. I bet you 100$ Steve Jobs would go nuts if he couldn't put his laptop to sleep. QA-ing the hell out of their hardware/software is essentially why Macs "just work". The user experience is better.
• UI:I just don't like the way Gnome looks (I prefer KDE when I'm using Linux). Most of you would say: "what's the big deal?", yet probably everyone will nod when I'll say that the OS X UI is just superior to both Windows and GNOME/KDE UIs in terms of visual quality (maybe in usability too, but not in my case). So if you can accept that, by applying the same criteria for determining the quality of a UI, you must agree GTK UIs are inferior to Windows Aero (even if it's stolen/copied/inspired from Aqua)?
• Bugs: Bugs in the driver. Bugs in the UI. Bugs in the software. Perpetual alphas. The truth is, I don't want to tinker with _everything_. I want to tinker with some specific software I'm into, and it happens that fixing bugs in Compiz is just not my thing. And the desktop is not only about individual tools, it's also about these tools working together to accomplish a certain task (you know, the "unix philosophy"). It works great for CLI tools, but on the UI side.. god forbid Firefox didn't crash as often.
• Free as in beer: No it's not. It's not free. My time is not free. I'm paying in tiny pieces of my life - that's the currency. And those tiny pieces of my life should not go to waste because Ubuntu happens to have libcairo v.x.y.z which has a bug on 64bit machines which causes a segfault. What do I care? I want the end product to work because my life is important to me, I don't want excuses. If libcairo is crashing, find something else that doesn't (good luck) or write your own, Mozilla. "Ask for your money back" I hear some of you say. Well, SCREW YOU is what I'll reply to your arrogant, condescending statement. Don't tell me "Linux is so great" and then "ask for your money back" when it doesn't work. Guess what? If it doesn't work, it's not as great as you claim it is and you shouldn't be surprised when people tell you what you're advertising is junk.
  
  I have two comparisons to support that claim:
  1. 1. Religious people telling you their denomination's God is so great (rings a bell?). Please, go away. I have an innate ability to assess the value of an entity myself (i.e. 'logic') and I'm also allergic to bullshit.
  2. 2. Imagine Coca-Cola advertising Coke that's good for your heart and giving it away for free. Then, when people have heart-attacks they'd say: "don't complain, it was free".
     
     So, why don't you try to sell you're awesome piece of software? Ah, that's right, because nobody will pay a dime for such _greatness_.

  The ugly truth is you can't sell it. Now, don't get me wrong, I'll be the first in line to buy a [GNU/]Linux distribution that did not have most issues I'm mentioning here. I'd pay more than for a Windows license. But right now, my choice is either free Windows (because it's on the company laptop which was given to me) or free GNU/Linux. Sorry, I'll take the _free_ OS that runs Starcraft and most virii (take the good with the bad). And yes, I know RedHat is selling support for Linux and we, at this company, have a subscription too. But the problem is: people get RedHat support for servers and _workstations_. i.e. computers who's purpose is to do basic multimedia, basic office, just coding and the Internets. No _individual_ is paying money for the "Linux desktop experience". Also, if they took this laptop away, I'd buy a Mac (I kept asking for a Macbook, but they gave me one with Windows).

• Games: I haven't played a game in half a year, but, this means that when I will want to play a game for a few hours, I will want to get the best damn game available. I don't want to spend a few hours configuring bottles in Wine and hoping the game will install and run. I want it to RUN, so that I can make the most out of my free time. At home, I'm a user using the entire software stack and I don't have the time to debug Wine in gdb. Sorry, maybe in some other lifetime.
• Office stuff:

• I can right click on any file, and choose "Combine files into single PDF". Please, do measure the time it takes you to do that. Also, as much as I dislike Microsoft (and I do, despite things I've written above), I think the MS Office suite is good. It crashes once in a while, but it doesn't look as ugly as OpenOffice and it's definitely not as slow. I'm trying to use Google Docs as much as possible, but, I'm sorry, the default document template (Calibri and blue headings) look good. It's important that the defaults be great - this allows me to concentrate on the actual task. Those of you who work for a boss who wants things done yesterday, will understand the importance of stable tools that output visually pleasing files.

In conclusion, I just want to say that emacs sucks and vim rules. Thank you.

And what are your qualifications to judge the design of a programming language exactly?

Before the PHP haters start posting comments, I would just like to say: haters gonna hate.

Since Halloween was yesterday:

Kriston, if there are no candies at the store, the store has no candies for sale. That's not to say there couldn't be any candies left in a drawer by accident, but, no one knows if they exist, hence the above still holds true: the store has no candies for sale. There is no need for an external audit, because, even if you found some candies in a drawer as a result of the audit, the store still had no candies for sale at the time when they claimed they didn't have candies for sale (unless the audit finds tons of candies not disclosed to the public, which is not the case here).

Your argument about the community doesn't hold either. Here's a counter-example: I'm part of an extremely small group of people dealing with a specialized web application. There are only about 20 people in the world using it. I've found at least 10 critical security holes in the default install, just by using it. I've patched about 20 minor bugs, and I'm just a user, I'm not on the developer/QA team. When a product has issues, the community (regardless of size) will still find a percentage of the total issues available. The fact that OpenBSD had 3 issues found in the default install in a decade is impressive, especially since they have _way more_ than 20 users in the entire world AND OpenBSD, as a package, is enormous, with hundreds of utilities and dozens of services waiting to be exploited. But, where are the exploits? That's right.

So, in that context, it's a hell of a lot more secure than other OSes. q.e.d.

"falling satellites from the sky" is the new thing to be afraid of. So long, "terrorism".

"not that great"? speak for yourself. I've been traveling, and I've hit their recognition software with different accents, high winds, loud intersections, you name it. It got 90% right, mostly. If that's not great, I don't know what is.

Generic statements are going to be generic. I've read a few in the past few days:

"it's a nation state, we're not going to tell you which" (or you're just bullshitting)
"the public is going to be amazed when they find out the secret interpretation of the amendment. It's so horrible. I know what the secret interpretation is, but when you'll find out, you will be in awe." (FUD)
"we killed Osama, but didn't take any pictures and dumped the body in the ocean" (ORLY?)

I shouldn't be surprised though, given the number of people that believe there's an invisible man in the sky. Compared to that, the statements above seem like facts.

the patent laws. If "storing a calendar on a PDA device" is patentable, then I don't care what Good Things (tm) patents bring to the table, the current patent system has to be sent to /dev/null.

No wonder. Want low-power? Look at ARM. CISC devices cannot consume as little power as RISC - they have to pay for the extra features.

"couch"