I like all of them. Seriously. Each of the has distinct advantages that put it ahead of the others and basically 99% of all Foss projects in the field have good reasons for their existance.
I'd add Enlightenment, Windowmaker and Fluxbox to that list, and maybe awesome wm aswell.
I also like OS Xs GUi, especially the new maverics one. Notifications, taken from the mobile world and mission control (vrtual desktops and expose combined - very cool) are both very nice features..... Automatic rearangemnent of virtual desktops based on usage activated as default was dreamed up by some apple guy on crack though. Luckyly it's easy to turn off. And every desktop has that sort of crap defaults. KDE is great, but uses Windows defaults, f. i.

My 2 cents.

See the double post? You can thank beta for that. Mod this one down or turn it off if you are an editor, the one below is the final version.
No more beta for me.

Despite all hatred - and let's face it, PHP is a really strange phenomenon - this is why PHP continues to thrive. The PHP community gets from A to B by the most bizar reroutes across Z, Mary Poppins and f(x)=x^2e^x-2. PHP is a fractal of bad design, but they always seem to focus on the next issue that's simply in the way of getting the next real world job done. I've written a post on that a few weeks ago.

Them checking the performance of Wordpress (one of the large popular CMSes out there, with a really shitty architecture ... like most of its kind) as a benchmark for the foundation of a VM show how 'fast result' oriented the PHP community is. The idea itself of testing like this would seem insane to any serious developer, AFAICT.

Point in case for PHPs insanity that always seems to work out in a strange way:
I've fought it for over 12 years, but now I've finally given in and am working myself into Typo3, a big-league player in the world of PHP Web CMSes. Let me tell you: If you think Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla have an architecture that was designed by chimpansees (I should now, I've deployed Drupal and Joomla professionally and was on the Joomla Bugsquad), Typo3s has one that was designed by amobeas. With TypoScript - the T3 template and config language - they've got the textbook example of an inner platform (think PHP but non-turing complete for configuration and with magic numbers ... sort of like line-numbers, but not quite ... its really crazy ...). If PHP is a fractal of bad design, Typo3 classic is that ^2. It's very difficult to describe, you have to experience it for yourself to fully understand. It's like taking the red and the blue pill at the same time. Seriously.

Anyway, I'm veering off. The point is:
Knowing Typo3 is basically job security galore for any web developer in Germany. Period. I've agreed to dive into T3 and am right now scoring more than 60 Euros an hour. Being able to edit templates in the CMS Admin area isn't bad either. ... Although TypoScript is one of the strangest things I've seen in my 28 years of computing, I have to admit. Think of Typo3 as the Vi and Emacs of CMSes, all rolled into one. Yet there are over 2000 official Typo3 agencies here in Germany. Being an online agency basically means being a Typo3 agency over here. What do you say, it's what people want. T3 is a household brand, it has an official association, a neat website and the vibe of "big, complicated and professional" all over it. The customers want it, and they're willing to pay for deployment in T3. Who am I to complain?

Bottom line:
PHP is bad, and nobody cares. Its barrier of entry is basically non-existant, security issues be damned, and they have a slew of pointy-clicky stuff for the peddlers to sell to end-customers. All for free. The most succesful FOSS projects are written in it and if the PHP crew are going to stick to their crazy "make it work, then make it beautiful" approach, it's probably going to stay that way for a long time.

My 2 cents.

Despite all hatred - and let's face it, PHP is a really strange phenomenon - this is why PHP continues to thrive. The PHP community gets from A to B by the most bizar reroutes across Z, Mary Poppins and f(x)=x^2e^x-2. PHP is a fractal of bad design, but they always seem to focus on the next issue that's simply in the way of getting the next real world job done. I've written a post on that a few weeks ago.

Them checking the performance of Wordpress (one of the large popular CMSes out there, with a really shitty architecture ... like most of its kind) as a benchmark for the foundation of a VM show how 'fast result' oriented the PHP community is. The idea itself of testing like this would seem insane to any serious developer, AFAICT.

Point in case for PHPs insanity that always seems to work out in a strange way:
I've fought it for over 12 years, but now I've finally given in and am working myself into Typo3, a big-league player in the world of PHP Web CMSes. Let me tell you: If you think Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla have an architecture that was designed by chimpansees (I should now, I've deployed Drupal and Joomla professionally and was on the Joomla Bugsquad), Typo3s has one that was designed by amobeas. With TypoScript - the T3 template and config language - they've got the textbook example of an inner platform (think PHP but non-turing complete for configuration and with magic numbers ... sort of like line-numbers, but not quite ... its really crazy ...). If PHP is a fractal of bad design, Typo3 classic is that ^2. It's very difficult to describe, you have to experience it for yourself to fully understand. It's like taking the red and the blue pill at the same time. Seriously.

Anyway, I'm veering off. The point is:
Knowing Typo3 is basically job security galore for any web developer in Germany. Period. I've agreed to dive into T3 and am right now scoring more than 60Ã an hour. Being able to edit templates in the CMS Admin area isn't bad either. ... Although TypoScript is one of the strangest things I've seen in my 28 years of computing, I have to admit. Think of Typo3 as the Vi and Emacs of CMSes, all rolled into one. Yet there are over 2000 official Typo3 agencies here in Germany. Being an online agency basically means being a Typo3 agency over here. What do you say, it's what people want. T3 is a household brand, it has an official association, a neat website and the vibe of "big, complicated and professional" all over it. The customers want it, and they're willing to pay for deployment in T3. Who am I to complain?

PHP is bad, and nobody cares. Its barrier of entry is basically non-existant, security issues be damned, and they have a slew of pointy-clicky stuff for the peddlers to sell to end-customers. All for free. The most succesful FOSS projects are written in it and if the PHP crew are going to stick to their crazy "make it work, then make it beautiful" approach, it's probably going to stay that way for a long time.

My 2 cents.

The human brain is a neural network. The human body and nervous system, even sans brain, is an incredibly complex system which, in parallel, processes insane amounts of data in an instant. Lot's of what we percieve as emotion stems from complex interactions of various subsystems in it and how our consciousness reacts to them and percieves them and goes far beyond what a simple abstact logic-engine can process. The sensory input that our nervous provides for our consciousness is by orders of magnitude larger of what we today can feed into a computer with modern technical sensors, let alone process and interpret in a meaningful time. The way our neural network reacts to that is - if at all - very difficult to copy with todays processor technology.

I think it will still be quite long before humans are able to build any meaningful intelligence that equals their own. We're even having difficulties building robot vaccuumcleaners that are feasible without measurable extra programming and prepping work done by humans. And once they are, they will still suck at making coffee, raking the garden or giving an interview.

My 2 cents.

'It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.'

Amen, brother, Amen!

PHP/MySQL is to CS what McD's is to french cuisine. Usually that is. Of course you can do proper development in PHP and proper DB design with MySQL, but you'll get queer looks from 99% of your collegues in the field and a rundown from your boss on why that internet thingummy isn't finished yet. Last winter I met a guy doing MySQL for a decade who didn't know foreign key constraints or their concept or what they were. He was my senior. He was the leaddev on a large data-driven project which was the core businessmodel of the company. Not joking. My braincells are dying as I type, just thinking back about it. This stuff is the norm in this field.

In a nutshell: If generic "pimp this crappy hack Wordpress (bizarely shitty base-architecture initiated by non-developers in the hayday, just like every other PHP/MySQL CMS out there) with this other crappy hack [generic shitty architecture webshop] with a crappy hack you piece together by yesterday" PHP/MySql Webwork is what you want to do, then more power to you. But then you should *not* waste your time in CS.

The list of WebDev requirements for a given job is long because it's idiots compiling the requirements for devs. If the list of technologies is enough to fill 3 expert positions, you do not want to work for the company in question, unless it is by carefully consulting the boss into a development and technology strategy that isn't complete bullshit. The latter you can only do after you've gained serious experience doing real world work.

Bottom line: If you are spending huge bucks getting a CS degree, you do *not* want to waste your time doing generic webdev in PHP and MySQL - unless as a college job to pay your bills that is.

Pray they don't find us before we find them.

Given todays state of humanity they'd turn us into Zoo spectacles. Or wipe us out entirely, for the planet to florish again.

Seriously, any race far advanced enough to feasibly travel the vastness of space is likely to be orders of magnitude more advanced, both technologically and intellectually. We'd be to them what apes are to us, more or less. And given the current state of affairs anybody would consider taking this planet away from us the right thing to do. And I certainly couldn't blame them for that notion.

My 2 cents.

... this is what I would do:

- completely independant Federal Bank & Mint (think Bundesbank or ECB) ... this alone would solve a large chunk of all of todays problems in the US

- redesign, reprint and reissue of the dollar (forge-proof like the Euro or better)

- healthcare system, dutch refund-model (maybe some good parts of the German model, ... maybe, really not sure about that ... not sure if there are any good parts of the German model you could salvage in a meaningful way ...)

- "Loser pays all" for civil lawsuits, nationwide (this is a total no-brainer ... one of the reasons many people consider the US a tad wacko ... it boggles my mind how anyone can think of their nation as a land of the free where this rule isn't in place ... ), audited lawsuit cost support for the poor (German model with independant lawsuit feasibility evaluation along with it)

- NRA becomes official authority (Goat becomes gardener), mandatory 80 hour training, education and licencing required for any semi-automatic gun or more powerfull ones (nationwide)

- communities may create firearm ban zones where concealed non-single-action firearms are not permitted, these zone are then enforced by a nationwide law / ruleset

- ban of death penalty (nationwide)

- transform of anglo-saxon precedent law system to a more continental-european rules-based law system with revision opportunities (no more locking away of people for 25 years for stealing a slice of pizza or any of that sort of bullshit possible with todays state of affairs in the US ... land of the free bladiblah ... my ass)

- mandatory civil or military (personal choice) service of 15 months for all full-aged that have finished highschool (think the former German Zivildienst doing health-care support, community service or military service, all would be gouverned by a military type system, civil service would get same pay and follow the same disciplinary rules and order of rank)

- 5 years tution free college after completed civil-service + optional 3 vacation semesters or, as alternative, 4-5 years of regulated and guilded "Apprentice of Crafts" / "Master of Crafts" education, training and diploma (think German "Master of Crafts" model ("Handwerksmeister")) ... interest free gouvernment loans for the time of enrollment in college or "Master of Crafts" training (German model, time/amount of loan limited, repayment of loan takes precedance over any other private loan by law)

- change of the electorial system to a more direct democracy, German 5% rule for new parties in federal congress, implementation of 'election zones' based on fixed amount of citizens (nationwide) ...
That's all I can come up with now, but it would probably solve 90% of the problems in the US today.

My 2 cents.

PAC: Political action committee, an organization formed to contribute funds to influence the outcome of political elections in the United States

For those non-US citizen among us.

Quick! Where's the German version? I need to boost my sociology grades!

Seriously, the first thing you have to thouroughly disable when doing sociology is your brain and any sense of logic or common sense in it. The bizar bullshit that is put out in this field even at academic level is mindboggling. The blatant non-sense that's in the books and readers of this subject is unbelievable. ... I need that generator to keep my braincells from killing themselves to end the agony.

It's not only the Software people that suffer. The guy who built the Golden Gate Bridge got sick over it and was depressed for the rest of his life and died early. I probably would've shot myself half way into the project.

So "Mostly functional programming is unfeasable"? Oh, really? No shit.

There's a name for 'mostly funcitonal programming' - it's called 'I-just-started-with-programming-and-Basic imperative spagetti code'.

There is one situation were functional programming makes sense, and that is when you're not sure which segment of which procedure will come first, either because you can't wrap your head around it due to the complexity of the domain you're just programming your way into or because you really can't know. UI state and workflow procedure is one of those things. It's basically information hiding when building and tying up complex interdependant procedures, and functional programming is the intelligent hack to deal with that. Well-built Spreadsheets of course being *the* classic example of that sort of thing.

Doing functional programming outside of its domain, like, for instance, modelling a business process or a gameworld, is not only counter-productive, it's flat out stupid/bad software development.

So, yeah, doing everything functional is unfeasable. Thanks for the news pal.

That being said, every programmer should look into functional programming and know when to apply it. Switching your mind to functional mode at the right time is a skill that can save a programmer lots of headaches. Quite litteraly actually.

My 2 cents.

Right now, the big scare is that we're running into a deflation. No, really. DEflation. Not INflation. Now, considering how bad inflation is (allegedly), deflation must be good, right? Wrong! It's even more feared than inflation.

Inflation and deflation are orthogonal to each other. Inflation is a devaluation/flat tax on money while deflation is a devaluation of goods & services that can be bought with money. You can have both at the same time, they are not opposites, but two entirely seperate matrixes which are, at most and only under certain circumstances and certain moments, indirectly linked to each other. Right now we're observing a bit of a mixture of both.