On Nov 14, 4:01 pm, Hamilcar Barca <Hamilcar.barca1...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> because all I see in this pathetic group is messages about Microsoft.
There's a fair number of issues here; of course one would expect
to see messages relating to Microsoft Windows in a newsgroup
dedicated to a competitor thereof.
As it is, your statement also works in alt.os.windows-xp, which
leads to some interesting questions as to the validity of your
argument.
> Advocating Linux by tearing down Microsoft is a sure sign
> that Linux has nothing to offer.
Depends on the teardown. Constructive criticism is
presumably to be encouraged here (as opposed to comments
such as "Linux sucks and you're all a bunch of useless
bloody loonies"); there are a number of problems with Linux
(a few of them simply because it's Not Like Windows(tm),
but that might be an educational issue only), but it
does work reasonably well, within its general sphere
of competence.
(I'm not quite as fond of KDE, but that's not Linux's problem,
really; that's KDE's. However, it also works well enough.)
> How could it? Linux is free.
Evaluate which is healthier: a caged tiger or a free-running one,
generally speaking.
> Nobody really seems to care except geeks and
> those interested in running a server or using Linux as an embedded OS.
Not sure if this is a problem with Linux, with advertising
for Linux, or with people in general. Obviously, an
ignorant person is going to go with the solutions he
knows; the solutions in that case include education and
experience.
> Linux is decent for that.
Pedant Point(tm): Linux cannot do any of that by itself;
one has to install software such as Apache, JBoss, and
the usual GNU utility libraries. These libraries by and
large can run on a number of other foundations -- FreeBSD
and Windows being two obvious ones, though the former is
even less well-known amongst the general public, and the
latter is probably not the most reliable of foundations.
> Linux is a crock when it comes to a desktop system
> though. Microsoft is crushing Linux and that's a fact.
This is unfortunately true, for a variety of reasons (many
of them having more to do with market dominance and/or
advertising budget and less to do with technical issues).
> I find it humerous
You do realize MS Office has a spellchecker, I hope.
The humerous is a bone in one's upper arm from the
shoulder ball-and-socket joint to the ulna and radius
via the elbow; the actual bone looks a bit like a shovel
with a rounded handle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humerus
Thus endeth the lesson.
> that something free has such a difficult time developing a user base.
Nothing free develops a user base. The user base (or
a subset thereof) has to develop *it*, or at least an
awareness thereof. You are anthropomorphizing Linux.
Even Windows has this problem, which is why Microsoft does
interesting things like dress a poor guy in a moth suit,
buy strange songs "Start me Up", and generally try to
inveigle the notion into as many susceptible minds as possible
via the Magic Of Advertising(tm).
> Something is wrong with Linux and it's serious when people seemingly run
> from it and pay a lot of money to run a shit OS like Vista rather than free
> Linux. Like I said, Linux must really suck.
Perhaps it does. Of course, you'll probably want to
be a little more specific as to precisely why; stating
"something sucks" without providing details isn't exactly
the most informative of missives.
After all, a lot of things suck. Herewith some examples.
- Vacuum cleaners. One *hopes* that they suck! The
air goes through a porous bag; the dirt doesn't.
- Leafblowers. In order to blow leaves around, they must suck --
in most cases, air comes in around the handle area, which has
a circular impeller, from the few I've seen, pushing air around.
- FTP clients and Web browsers. These suck data from a server.
Occasionally they push responses back.
- Dumb trolls.
- Even dumber trolls.
- Absolutely braindead trolls.
- Have I mentioned dumb trolls yet?
- Idiotic trolls.
- Morons.
- More dumb trolls.
- Whores and prostitutes, under certain conditions. I'll refer
to alt.sex and other such for the details thereon, thank you.
- Quicksand -- well, maybe. In actual fact apparently
quicksand is vaguely solid but easily turns liquid
under stress -- such as someone stepping on it.
After one steps thereonto, things can get sucky
rather quickly, if not because something's actually
pulling, but only because things get unpleasant.
(Apparently salt is an important requirement, according
to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksand .)
- Laptops. (In my laptop's case, the air is sucked up from
underneath and blown out the left side.)
- Cars. The actual intake is usually through the air
filter, under the hood. Many modified variants place the
intake through a hole in the hood -- the bottom picture
in http://www.madmaxmovies.com/cars/madmax/index.html
shows a rather nice picture of the supercharger
added on as part of preproduction, or one can see
additional pictures of the car and its supercharger at
http://www.madmaxmovies.com/cars/mad-max-interceptor/index.html
Even after filming, the car was still used, with
the highly visible blower removed, as a promotional
gimmick; the dual air intakes on the hood, however,
are still visible. After that promo, it was reclaimed
for the sequel, almost got scrapped, then got restored
and is now in a British museum -- a happy ending for
a famous car.
- Planes. The piston-driven variants have an intake somewhere;
the jets of course have the turbine compressor in front.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent_900 is
the A380's engine of choice; the turbine blades are clearly
visible.
- Bicycles. In this case, the human's the one sucking.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature (or evolution or God or our
distant ancestors or what not) did not provide us with
flow-through lungs -- and that, unfortunately, sucks as
far as efficiency is concerned. But the birds do not do
it the simple way, with an intake and exhaust; instead,
the air, after passing through the lung, gets stuck in
air sacs. I'm not entirely certain where it goes after
that but the diagram suggests a "pneumatic humerus".
http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/birdrespiration.html
In fact, about the only propulsion-based thing that does
*not* suck is a rocket, and that's because space has
nothing to suck into an intake. Ergo, rockets such
as the famous Saturn V had to bring their own propellant
to throw away.
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