pz

I think I'm experiencing irony overload.

Vanderzyden, you are the snottiest, most pompous person I've encountered on iidb. Face it: there are quite a few people here who are better qualified and better informed than you are, and your pretense of authority is not going to hold up very well.

Doubting Didymus

Funny thing is, If someone went through this entire thread and edited out everything that was irrelevant or inflammatory on both sides (including myself, of course) and condensed the remainders, the conversation would come out extremely interesting and enlightening, not to mention short.

Strange that underneath the piles of dung that we are all enjoying heaping on one another, a little gem of an actual constructive conversation is being carried on.

S2Focus

I suspect that all the doctors that you have encountered were in a bad mood because they were having to deal with one particular snotty, snobby, demi-god patient at the time...

[ October 20, 2002: Message edited by: S2Focus ]</p>

MrDarwin

Note that in his lengthy diatribe against Rick, Vanderzyen has still failed to answer my questions.

Edited to note that Vanderzyden is making yet another unsubstantiated claim (emphasis mine):

Note that the linked website says nothing about these three things being "advantages". In fact, the first two would not even be necessary, were it not for the poor design in the first place. (And the third is simply a description of resistance and flow, again nothing whatsoever about it being an advantage.)

Oh, and scroll to the bottom of that page, for a detailed description of some of the problems arising from this system.

But I suppose I'll let that go, and let Vanderzyden address my earlier questions.

[ October 20, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

lpetrich

However, Jesus Christ is celebrated for having allegedly performed miraculous cures -- is that "achievement" really insignificant?

Except that making oneself live forever would be a MAJOR feat. I fail to understand why VZ thinks that it's so trivial.

Also, the purpose of much of our technology is to improve on human-body features. Vanderzyden ought to look at his car some times (if he has one). It can travel faster than he can, it has more endurance than he has, it can carry more than he can, it has essentially zero basal metabolism, etc. And computers are much better at rote memorization and dull bookkeeping than VZ is ever likely to be.

I don't care about your supposed Creator, O VZ. If there is one, this entity could just well be a "she" or an "it" or even a whole community. What kind of being would make a skull and a pelvis out of fused bones? And create early-embryonic blood circulation that resembles fish circulation, down to its multiple aortas and aortic arches? And make us have a close physical and genetic resemblance to chimps?

(VZ on the tools necessary for major thoracic surgery...)

Traversing that bone could be avoided by having the umbilical cord connect to just above the top of the breastbone.

Absurd Panglossianism. What makes VZ so certain of this?

Camaban

Actually, I think the analogy would be like this.

Ok, Windows is designed.

Now, if it was perfect, it wouldn't crash.

But it does.

Now, I'm no programmer (despise it with a passion), but I know that whoever made this isn't perfect, like God is supposed to be. and I can also see its flaws.

You don't need to be the creator, or whatever to see the flaws in something. You just need to know what a flaw is.

Now, I'm mainly a computer technician. I fix computers, and I can see where something's flawed (everytime I have to do some work on someone's comp, it's one flaw or another)

Basically, those that repair it are in the best position to see the flaws.

Now, Rbochnermd may not be the creator, but as the fixer, he's certainly qualified to see the flaws.

On an individual per individual basis, they're far more valuable (It would cost us less to lose one farmer than to lose one good surgeon)

Why?

YOu don't need to be nearly as skilled or intelligent to be a good farmer as to be a good surgeon.

Camaban

For instance:

In Windows, I can see that having Multiple desktops/screens (and being able to switch between them easily) would be a great boon and make using windows much tidier (one desktop for chat, another desktop for word processing, another desktop to manage downloads on, etc)

Now, I didn't create windows, or anything bar the most basic program, but I can see how that would be a better way of doing things. (ever have an incrddibly cluttered taskbar? There you go. One taskbar per set of programs)

lpetrich

I agree with those assessments. There are much more crash-resistant operating systems, like Linux and MacOS X. I am old enough to remember working on IBM mainframes (Intimidating Big Machines?) and VAXes and Sun workstations, and they would hardly ever crash.

So Camaban's intuitions are correct.

As to his idea of multiple virtual screens, X-windows implements that -- and that's the usual GUI system for Unix-like OSes like Linux. MacOS X has its own GUI system that doesn't support that, however.

And taskbar clutter might be reduced by implementing a subcategory feature.

Camaban

XP has the category thing (windows are sorted by program in the taskbar)

Which, in all honesty, goes a long way towards clearing up the clutter

but there's also the having to minimise windows to get to where I want. some programs spit if I have any other windows open (well, not so much spit, as make themselves extremely inconvenient)

etc.

Whereas being able to create a second desktop would clear up most of those problems.

then there's also the webcam chat in XP Messenger.

Makes the self-view of you take up the bottom left corner of a rather small screen (instead of being able to put it to a new window as you could with Netmeeting)

[ October 20, 2002: Message edited by: Camaban ]</p>

bluefugue

Well, FWIW, Win XP crashes far less than Win 98 in my experience. (Although, when it does crash, it tends to crash big.)