The Platform Wars - or not!

I think for most of us its more:

- We use windows out of pragmatism and economics.
- We dream about affording a sleak Mac running OS/X, and look with envy and jealousy on those who somehow avoided the darkside.[1]
- We deal with linux out of pragmatism, but wish we could do the same things as cheaply some other way that didn't rely on understanding something more like a Tolkienesque arcane mystical language rather than a few points and clicks for a modern accessible and user friendly application.

[1] Roll on OS/X for x86.

Actually it's not just Platforms - as long as a reasoned argument is given then people (particularly regulars) are fairly respectful of others opinions (recent float thread is a case in point).

This is very unusual. On most of the forums I inhabit people circle each other warily just waiting for the "trigger" subject to come up be it accessibility, tables, CSS whatever. Then follows a flame war until the thread is locked.

This may be because this forum, whilst not limited in it's outlook is likely to attract people of a vaguely similar mindset who generally want to achieve the same sort of thing.

That said, this forum can be intimidating for newbies and occasionally not-so-newbies and we would do well not to forget that.

I dissagree so strongly with you all that i think I'm about to burst - your opinions are frankly farsical and I demand you hand in your login details forthwith... Oh hang on a moment, I appear to be talking nonsense...

It is refreshing and nice that on the whole we all get on - not agree all the time, but remail civil and polite in our dissagreement when they do happen. It really is something to marvel at and i'm sure is a contributing factor to peoples continued stay here

I think that's a large part of it. Then there's the part that we all realize that we have to make our stuff work for everybody.

twit

...who is? :?

...who is? :?Anyone that uses {insert browser/platform here}.

Oh; right; sorry!

You don't want to be reading Asa Dotzler's blog then More or less every blog post turns into a flamewar between FF and Opera, and against IE.

Is that the blog where the guy gets hate mail from Opera fans?

I think Roy that it is also partly that were not of that division of the geeky computer world, I have long since lost my fondness for tinkering with operating systems and espousing ones virtue over another, for me they fulfil a necessary function, and I need them to do that fairly transparently in order to work productively, that said some systems are definitely more productive than others.

I, like most here, run multiple systems from Win 98 to XP to Linux I find that I work mostly in windows not because I think it's a great OS as I know that that is far from the truth but I have used MS from the days of Dos 4.00 through Windows 3.1. 95, 98, and XP and as we all do I need to run IE frequently, I have always believed in Open Source and although I use Linux all too little I recognize it's superiority over Windows, yet Linux has failed to become that OS that will appeal to the ordinary person who requires a working system with the minimum user intervention which is why windows tends to win out I have not got time to to spend on installing Gentoo at some 5 hours for basic setup and two days of tweaking before it's usable. I am not yet fortunate to have an OSX box but shortly when I do I think from what I've now experienced of OSX it will become my main workhorse.

All of that is why to argue defensively about the merits of one over the other and to get truly heated over it is just banal, and I have never understood that mentality, I think the majority of us are reasonably mature enough to discuss things in a civilised manner.

Chris summed it quite well at the top and I glad someone else finds Linux somewhat too arcane for it's own good sometimes, as for the dark side, well I'm the first to rant about Windows and bore people to tears trying to convince them of why MS systems are so appallingly unsecure, I'm ok though I know how to lock down the OS and why exactly it fails on so many issues so I tend to avoid these problems XP doesn't play up with me but that's because I know how to keep it running and when it is running at it's best and you have disabled 20 needless running services disabled and unbound netbios etc from tcp/ip it functions and doesn't get in the way too much.

I've just noticed a notable absence from this thread though, one who loves to espouse his love of some editor called Emu or something running on that arcane platform so just maybe we can get a flame war started I'll start it off by saying that I downloaded the X version of the editor for Windows and what a load of uncomprehensible gibberish, talk about an unproductive piece of software, where every menu command or function is written in a totaly alien language :roll:

Hugo.

It looks like I'm going to be taking back the sentiments of my original post then :roll:

c'mon Roy it's the sort of opening post that's bound to cause disaster .

Emu, indeed, Sirrah! Emu was an emulation program for the TRS-80 and Zilog Z-80 that simulated the M-6800 and allowed one to run programs written for the Apple.

As for Emacs, it is clearly the most powerful text editor extant. I don't doubt you had trouble with it. As with any non-trivial application, there is a learning curve; the more features, the more extensible and the more configurable, the steeper the curve. It is clearly beyond your meager talents.

It is no wonder you found the language of eLisp alien, English is apparently alien, too. One must have command of some language to provide the base for comprehending others.

You bring the match, I'll bring the tinder,

gary

tehe that was fun

Surely, that is elithp.

Only orally, not written.

cheers,

gary

Yes. Well, I call it hate mail, all they ever blab about is Firefox's memory leaks. Even in an offtopic post, about his holiday, you're bound to get a "that's great, but what I really wanna know is when you're gonna patch the memory leaks".

Did you see this about that?

D'ya know the really good thing about windows?

Memory leaks aren't a problem. You have to reboot so often for other reasons that they are never going be an issue. Its not like some other cruddy operating systems (Linux) that keep working for ever!

Can you do alt + tab on a Mac now and switch between programs like you can on a PC? Last time I used Macs regularly was on 8.1 and you couldn't do it back then.

Tyssen - it's cmd+tab on a Mac, but the 'shortcut' is quite slick and sophisticated on OSX

Yes