It seems to me there is an awful lot of presumption in that statement about the needs, wants, and capabilities of the "end user". In the end, the arguments over GUI versus CLI boil down to "what they *think* you want to do" versus "what you yourself wants to do." GUI interfaces restrict ultimately restrict the user to allow only those actions for which a button/box/slider/etc... has been created to manipulate. CLI with pipes and redirects and loops and a thousand small utilities (ps, sed, wc, et al) allow near infinite permutations of operations and power.

The reason that there is a choice is because *both* have their place and they need not be mutually exclusive. It is my personal conviction, moreso, that when computing devices lose the CLI they will cease to be computing devices in the utilitarian sense of the word and be little more than fancy appliances, like a toaster that can tell you the weather. CLI is control. Control is power. Power is utility.

Exactly! Sadly, I'm old enough to see code performance improved more often by the application of better hardware than by better coding practices and smarter software designs. A poor coder will code poorly regardless of the language and C can be just as safe as the next language in the right hands, or as dangerous. C is nice to have around in many circumstances where resources are few (the embedded world, for example) or when you really need to get down to business with minimum overhead and fuss (like the realtime simulation world).

C holds your hand less. C let's you excel when you need to. C reveals your incompetence when you're lazy. If your application doesn't need it or you don't know how to use it, go write an Excel macro instead. :)

FactCheck and Snopes are just blogs with no authority of credibility. As for the claims that Hawaiian officials inspected the long form to their satisfaction I'm not really sure if even that bears any credibility or authority (who are "they" and what jurisdiction do "they" have with respect to the nation?). Like it or not, Obama does have a moral, ethical, and legal obligation to verify his eligibility to the nation. Presenting these documents to a bipartisan, objective Congressional panel would be a good start. I have to go through a more thorough background check to volunteer at my child's school events than has had the man holding the office as effective leader of the free world. Obama either is a fraud with something to hide or a fool for wasting time and money (now well over $1M) in legal battles to hide nothing. Neither well suits the Office of the President.

sorry to bother you. I must have wasted valuable warez download time for a l33t pundit such as yourself.

Yeah, no intelligent response. That's what I thought. "Anonymous Coward" has never been more apt a name.

Pay attention you stupid fuck, or perhaps "willfully ignorant fool" would be a more politically correct phrasing. Yes, there are officially-released images of an Obama birth certificate. However, there are also both valid criticisms of its legitimacy in and unto itself (e.g., is it really what it purports to be or has it been altered), and there remains the indisputable point that there exists a separate, longer-form, alternative birth certificate which, for inexplicable reasons, Obama refuses to allow to be reviewed. The point of the so-called "birthers" is that Obama refuses to allow inspection of the alternate, more informative, document which no one at all denys does exist and answer the simple question of whether or not that alternate document corroborates the previously-release shorter version. The only thing worse than a fool is a willfully ignorant fool who chooses to refuse to think for fear that thinking would unavoidably lead to questioning issues that bring discomfort. I assume you are a technical professional and in being so you are entrusted to make intelligent, informed decisions, even when doing so may take you out of your comfort zone. What's more important -- deciding whether to implement a customer solution in Qt or .Net or the world you leave to your children? Bush was an asshat but remember, not all change is for the better. Now stand up and grow a pair or get what you deserve.

OK, I will admit I cannot stand Obama, but neither am I an extreme right-winger. I'd like to consider myself a thoughtful centralist that considers the issues individually on merit rather than official party stance. But I am stunned and saddened by the mad rush this country is showing to stick its head in the sand and ignore this lingering issue of eligibility for office and to brand those who dare question Jesus Hussein Obama, our Great Messiah, as crazy zealots. Gaddamn, I bet the Shroud of Turin can't hold a candle to his Charmin.

The simple, undeniable fact is that there does exists two variations of birth certificates issued by the State of Hawaii which differ in which information is shown. No one disputes that. But Obama's adamant refusal to allow the public to see both is illogical and indefensible if there is nothing to hide. Citizens of both parties deserve to see both Birth Certificates simply to put an end to any lingering doubts of eligibility -- the Republicans will either see the proof of what they suspect or the Democrats will see Obama vindicated and an end conclusively put to this mess once and for all.

I hate seeing politics dragged onto Slashdot but here, if anywhere, the logic of engineers should prevail (okay, maybe that's a *bit* of optimism). Face it -- this site removed a great number of posts and votes of individuals simply expressing valid concerns over that other birth certificate. Given that, it's clear that this poll of "what the public wants" has been edited and everything therein should be taken with a whole bag of salt.

Personally I'm not a smoker of anything but I think legalizing pot would solve a lot of problems. However, highlighting these discussions as "topping" public responses is really nothing more than a diversionary tactic deflecting attention away from other important issues -- a tried and true tool of propagandists for centuries. Don't be fools, don't be so easily side-tracked. Yeah, let's legalize pot but let's also demand to know why "inconvenient" public inputs are being discarded. And while we're at it, what exactly is on that other Birth Certificate that's so damned inconvenient?

If you can't ask logical questions you might as well go back to writing Excel macros and stop calling yourselves programmers

"Shutting down every 2 hours"?

I didn't realize Windows 7 offered such a significant increase in uptime.

Some days it's brown, some days it's green. Obama is no different. He's still shit of a different color but shit nonetheless with his own agenda which is by no means aligned with the best interest of the nation. Face it, so long as we have a two-party system we will only swing from one form of one-sided extremism to the other. It can never be any different. I despised "W" for his erosion of Constitutional liberties but if all of you idiots who voted this looser in think it's going to get better *think again*. We haven't seen the brunt of what this socialistic, lying motherfucker has in store for us. Sad thing is I have zero confidence remaining that there will exist a better alternative if we make it to the end of his four or eight years. We are fucked on levels we cannot even begin to imagine.

I'll be the first to say that I regret daily the transition I made a couple of months ago from Fedora 7 to Kubuntu 8.04. Before anyone mistakenly assumes I'm attacking Kubuntu let me say this -- the problem is not necessarily Kubuntu but rather that Linux in general is undergoing transitions all around and problems abound.

I have been using Linux at home since 1997 and running my business with it (simulation-oriented software engineering) for the past 6 years. My needs largely distill down to: 1) web browsing, 2) e-mail, 3) wordprocessing/spreadsheet, and 4) development (Qt mostly). Excluding the development tools (fortunately) most every other application I depend on is in some way broken. Where the HELL is the notion of regression testing these days?? Let's take a brief tour of my gripes....

First, Fedora

In a production environment I can't afford to chase the bleeding edge. My Dell D800 notebook ran Fedora 1, Fedora 3, and Fedora 7 before Hardy. My home system ran Fedora 1, 5, and 6. I have always hated RPM dependency hell and Red Hat / Fedora for sticking with that format. Yumex made it tolerable (for purely superficial reasons) but it is still a bandaid on oozing puss. When Fedora 6 broke Firewire and hosed my external drives and DVD mastering I vowed to give it up. Not wanting to run two disparate distros I rode it out, though, until my work project schedule allowed enough slack to handle the switch. I thought I'd try Kubuntu 8.04 as I've grown to like KDE and Konqueror. Mistake

Timing sucked

The state of KDE is horribly broken right now and I just don't like Gnome. First, I had a hell of a time getting my D800's wireless working under Hardy. The KDE 3.5.9/3.5.10 tools to manage the connection absolutely SUCK. They're broken. Don't work. Complete crap. Things were so bad I ditched Hardy and installed 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. WiFi was fine but a) getting KDE 4.1 to support my (required) TwinView dual-monitor work environment was impossible, b) Dolphin is not ready for prime time, and, c) Konqueror under KDE 4.1 is a shell of a joke. Make up your mind KDE -- Konqueror or Dolphin. Make one that is great, not two that suck.

So I reformat and revert back to Hardy. After loading the Ubuntu Desktop package just to get some WiFi support that worked, and a workable TwinView environment again, I found a litany of other little bugs -- they're everywhere. It's like no one bothers to test KDE 3.5.x changes anymore now that 4.x is "out" (not that it is production-ready). So I check my Fedora options and find I'm no better. If I want to dodge KDE 4.x beta-quality I've got to revert all the way back to Fedora 8. For now I am really hoping that Fedora 11 in May will fix the crap I'm seeing in Hardy/Intrepid (again, not necessarily Kubuntu's fault -- I am really impressed with Adept, which is part of the reason I left Fedora in the first place).

Apps that Suck

Here's a list of regression bitches: Firefox 3.0 sucks -- I loved Firefox 2.0. The current dog often crashes when I attempt to load some pages (taking all of my tabs with it). Pages load slowwwww, I've seen Javascript & bits of CSS even hang page loads right here on Slashdot. Add to that half of the YouTube videos I try to view won't play. Open Office 2.4 has new quirks. In 2.0.x I liked the fact that the little "save" icon was only enabled when actual changes had been made. Now it's enabled all the time just like in Word. Stupid change in my opinion. Next, when I go to output a PDF, Oo 2.4 no longer bothers to prompt if it's about to overwrite an existing file of the same name -- sloppy programming to change for no good reason. Lastly, inserting graphics from files on disk provides a "Preview" button that doesn't do a damned thing any more.

It doesn't seem like there is a single blame point for all of the crap that has crept in lately. However, I'm really regretting disturbing the stable nest I had with Fedora 7. Dated-but-working is way better than the jumble of quirks I've got now. Even though I've been a Linux evangelist for more than a decade I'm now advising friends to hold off and ride it out a bit longer until whatever is happening stops. We're seeing a big loss in quality control lately and it really reminds me of Linux from a decade ago.

WTF is going on?

Astute insights all

I genuinely question the future of Open Office, Netbeans, Java, et al if IBM acquires Sun. I'm not implying there will be a malicious or concerted effort to kill any particular product or anything, it's just IBM. Long before there was a Linux community I was a die-hard OS/2 user (the best single-user OS there ever was) and before that worked years for an IBM dealer. IBM was, is, and always will be a company of brilliant engineers that can't market water in a desert. Continually-shifting reprioritizations, undercutting of third-party support, you name it -- they kill their own products by their own sheer idiocy.

I can see how a flippy -- a SS disk modified to be recordable on both sides via a second sleeve notch ( made many of these myself) -- could support both formats but I doubt a single side could. IIRC, Commodore 1541 diskettes used an electromagnetic encoding technique called GCR while IBM diskettes used MFM. The two were mutually incompatible. Later Commodore drives like the 1571 (for the C128) were programmable on-on-the-fly to be able to read IBM disks (anyone remember "Big Blue Reader"?).

I can't see how a single disk could support BOTH encoding techniques on a single side.