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I actually tweeted it during the blip that was the #lameclaimtofame meme on Twitter. Of course, my lame claims to fame are legion. I put all those tweets into a single blog post if anyone's interested. They're all lame, and all true.

Forgive me, I'm Canadacally Impaired.

Wow, that makes me feel better about the batch of chocolate cheese I whipped up this weekend and the fact that later in the week, I'm going to experiment with substituting it for ganache in a chocolate truffle recipe.

Of course, the study took place in Canada. Skinny, underweight people dying faster in the cold of Canada just seems like a no brainer. I'd like to see the study replicated in the tropics to see if the numbers stand up somewhere that extra insulation doesn't help as much.

Based on the study, I need to lose 24 more pounds to get my BMI into the 25-29.9 range that had the highest longevity and I'm currently in the same longevity range as normal weight people. Woo hoo.

The company gets criticized for monitoring the blogosphere and responding to complaints in the comment right after its response.

"Why would a legitimate company providing quality service have concerns about the blogosphere great enough to monitor it?"

In fact come to think of it, most of those we have seen who practice this and post comments like this are scam artists slightly worse than used car dealers.

Actually, I've seen "respectable" companies do this. When I posted a rant about the stupid ways people bid on projects (or try to bid without bidding) on Rent-A-Coder, there was a response from Rent-A-Coder on my blog within a day.

Monitoring and responding to complaints is a positive, IMO.

Think of it this way... these OSes are so feature-rich that there are any number of axes on which to compare them. I recently wrote up a comparison between Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows XP, based on installing them into virtual machines on my Mac and then trying to get them to play a DVD.

To make any dent in the Windows dominance it doesn't only need to be better than Vista, it need to be significantly better.

It's not just being better, it's making the move more painless. Face it, even if your application is better, if there's a learning curve to do simple things, people won't switch. If your life revolves around ACT!, you'll be using the OS that supports ACT! (or more pointedly, the OS that ACT! supports).

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Most people don't learn to operate computers and software from a conceptual and fluid point of view that allows them to adapt easily. Then learn it by rote, step-by-step in a sequence of operations. They may not understand why they perform those operations. They just know if they follow the steps they've been taught, they'll get the result they want/expect.

Some people see life as an adventure of learning, but they're a minority. Having to learn new programs (via learning new steps) scares people. It makes them unhappy. And if they've been doing a set of steps for a few years, those steps have become habitual. So you not only have to teach them the new steps, you have to break them of the old ones. Breaking habits is unhappy work.

Furthermore, if you read TFA, look at the various driver problems she had. If the hardware and software don't play nicely "out of the box", the deal is off for most people. And you can angrily tell them to buy different hardware, but Joe Shmoe is going to buy what looks neat to him. If Linux won't run on it, Windows probably will, and since he knows Windows already, it's just the path of least resistance.

Being "better" is immaterial. Either sticking with Windows has to get so painful that people exceed their tolerance level and will switch to anything that promises (and delivers) less pain, or Linux has to make it SO easy and painless to switch over, that people will do it just to save a few bucks.

- Greg