Wintermute1974, Tessier-Ashpool would like to request your return from Alpha Centauri at your earliest convenience. There is much work left to be done!
Seriously though I tend to agree with you. That was always a spot that just seemed to jump out at me but I can think of one or two other oddities (the use of payphones, the fact that Pauley's module was stored "on a cassette," etc.) Other than that I think the tech that he described is still far enough in the future as to remain believable. A classic no matter how you look at it though, dated descriptions or no.
What else could have happened? Compuserve eat $400 on every customer who wanted a cheap computer?
No, they shouldn't've eaten the cost once the customer agreed to the terms but these rebates could've been handled much differently. For one thing they could've at least have pro-rated the rebate so if a customer cancelled say, halfway through the 2-year term they would only have to pay back half of the rebate. For another the way these rebates were marketed was fairly reprehensible; they were aimed at lower income families at a time when an average system could cost upwards of $1400. We're talking about the same market segment that makes large credit card purchases and doesn't think far enough ahead to manage their finances to pay the card off easily.
It may have been that some of the customers were foolhardy, but you shouldn't fault yourself for that, the terms were perfectly reasonable (for people who don't know how to simply finance expenses).
I didn't blame myself, but it didn't help me feel any better when I was assisting these customers. I knew what they had gotten themselves into even if they didn't, and trying to explain that to someone and then listening to all of the (often valid in my opinion) reasons they gave for wanting out of the agreement was painful. If you've never worked in customer service lucky for you, but don't ever let anyone fool you into thinking it is a cake job. That work makes one lose faith in humanity sometimes.
Now salespeople who sold to customers with no local access... that's kissing-close to fraud.
Essentially yes. This was going on when Circuit City and Radio Shack were paying their sales staff fairly decent commissions, and we all know how unscrupulous some sales folk can be. The problem was really that the sales folks didn't have a listing of what numbers were available in the area, and if the customer didn't consider this or the salesperson didn't make the effort and call to find out (And why would they? It would only hinder their ability to make the sale if they found out there was low/no availability in the area.) then the sale got pushed through and the rebate was established anyway.
For what it's worth, the CompuServe I (and many others here, obviously) remember was long before those types of deals came up.
And I don't begrudge anyone their (fonder) memories of a service that provided what was in many cases the first Internet experience for many individuals, however my own experience of them was (obviously) not quite the same.
If memory serves, the deals you're talking about were in the late-90s/early-2000s.
Yep, early 2000's was the timeframe in which I was doing cust. service for them. That was waaay after the AOL take over, which probably accounts for why my memories of them aren't nearly as rose-tinted as many of the other posters here. That and the nature of my work for them:-P Being the guy that takes the brunt of customer dissatisfaction for a company that obviously no longer cared about their customers has that effect.
I wish I had had the experience that so many others here have had though, maybe it would've made a difference in my opinion of CS. Personally I showed up late to the game for BBSs; I remember watching my friend connect on a 9600 baud connection and watching a lot of scrolling text without really knowing what was going on, though he obviously thought it was cool;-) I didn't have my first big Internet experience until the days of AOL and Earthlink if that tells you anything about how my first impressions of it were formed.
According Wikipedia's article on Prodigy they were bought out by SBC which in turn turned (back?) into AT&T. Prodigy.net actually redirects to my.att.net.
it was mostly full of middle-aged women having fantasies about Brent Spiner
Brent Spiner?! Everyone knows that Jonathan Frakes was the lady killer:-P
Compuserve might've been great at one time, but it hasn't been for a much longer period. I used to do customer service for them back when they were offering a $400 rebate on new computers... as long as people signed up for a 2 year service agreement with them. I felt dirty every time I had to take a call from someone that had one of those rebates. Half the time the callers wanted to cancel their service because of how piss poor their dial-up connection was and it was my job to "remind" them about the terms which stated that they had to pay back the rebate PLUS a cancellation fee. I put remind in quotes because it was often the customer's first time hearing about the terms in the first place (Admittedly this was usually the sales person's fault, and usually not Compuserve's.). I remember one call in particular when a customer in Pennsylvania had purchased a computer with the rebate only to find out that they only had TWO dial-up numbers in the whole state available to them, neither of which was a local call for them. I had to tell this poor soul that they had accepted the terms of the rebate, received the $400, and if they cancelled they would owe Compuserve all that back, etc even though they couldn't even use the service. Now Compuserve was obviously not the only ISP that played the rebate game, but their participation left a bad taste in mouth and lowered my opinion of them greatly.
I usually don't criticize on these kind of things but honestly, but would it take all that long to do just a little more digging before posting the story? (Yes, I realize it is easier to get readers to the rest of the work:-P).
There is no average efficiency, because unfortunately the bastard that designed this version of Earth didn't make solar radiation distribution gaussian.
Perhaps not, however the light that actually reaches the panels is in no way constant. Some days will be cloudier (or smoggier for that matter) than others, so it is great that we have really good peak efficiency with these new cells, but how often will that peak be reached and how well does it operate at less than optimal light conditions? I'm looking for practical, non-commercial applications.
For some reason, snow and solar panels get along like a big house on fire.
What about solar panels pointed at burning houses coated in magnesium? Maybe the peak efficiency will be useful there;-)
Yes, thank you, you've successfully tested my ability to read and recall memories. What I'd really like to know is how many of these cheap lenses and mirrors will now be necessary vs how many I was using before, and how much more efficient will the operation of storing energy be on days when the sky is not absolutely cloudless? I realize that the solar cell is more efficient at absorbing light, but how can this be applied to a "normal" usage pattern (when we're not talking about 500x the normal amount of light)? I don't mean for a satellite, or a solar farm, or anything like that. I'm talking about non-commercial usage, such as an individual home.
Not to belittle this accomplishment, but I'd prefer to see an increase in average efficiency. According to the article the peak efficiency is found when panels are exposed to light 500 times that of normal light. How does that translate to efficiency under normal operating conditions (such as a semi-cloudy day in the midwest)? The article is rather short on details concerning how well the solar cells operate when they are "tailored to their locations."
You're probably joking but I can think of a couple of inventive (and fun!) ways to abuse this. The first way to save yourself some money if this actually becomes a reality would be to simply remove the GPS device and leave it in your garage somewhere. Obviously it would have to still be functional for this to work, but I'm sure some hackerish type will figure that out.
The second (devious and more fun way) would be a great way to get revenge on someone. Remove their GPS device from their vehicle and attach it to a long-haul cross-country truck. "What do you mean I drove 50,000 miles this year!?"
It just means that you are not a coder. Real coders don't waste time thinking about the project, coming up with specs and test cases. They start coding right away. They could not wait to get started. In fact they will type # include stdio.h int main(int argc, char **argv){} even before coming to the first project meeting.
You're right, it does mean he's not a coder, he's a developer. Coder's don't take the time to do any of the things you just described, they're more interested in just rushing in and in all likelihood making a mess of things. Developers figure out what, when, where, how, and why before they do anything. Developer's can't wait to get start either, but they do because they want to do it right. I'll take a developer over a coder any day.
If you want standardization, you don't bitch about it - you make your platform of choice far superior to the other options.
Therein lies the problem. What defines a platform as "superior?" Does superiority simply mean that it does A, B, and C extremely well? If that is the case then you will ALWAYS have someone that says "Well yeah, it does A, B, and C, but what about D, E, and F?", and they'll go out and try to make their platform superior (Because, you know, D, E, and F are really important to them, and who gives a crap about making sure the two systems are compatible, because who actually cares about A, B, and C to begin with?). In fact this is exactly what is happening right now. There are so many distros in competition with each other right now and so many different ways of doing things that no can agree on what the standard should be, much less that there should even be a standard.
Furthermore, one entity cannot create a standard all on it's own (unless you're Microsoft and you managed to sucker everyone into using your OS which allows your methods to become the defacto standards), there has to be consensus from other parties. Even if your platform does everything under the sun it won't matter unless you've got support from the rest of the community.
I mean how would you like it if you were caught in a situation where you didn't have access to public information?;-)
VOGON CAPTAIN: [On Speakers] People of Earth your attention please. This is Prostectic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planet Council. As you no doubt will be aware, the plans for the development of the outlying regions of the western spiral arm of the galaxy require the building of a hyperspace express route through your star system and, regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes thank you very much.
MANKIND: [Yells of protest]
VOGON CAPTAIN: There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and its far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
MANKIND: [Louder yells of protest]
VOGON CAPTAIN: What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh for heaven sake mankind it's only four light years away you know! I'm sorry but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own regard. Energise the demolition beams! God I don't know...apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all...
Warning: This may turn into a "Get off my lawn!" post.
They weren't great, most of them. Anyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's videogame era, knows that at least 90% of those old 2d platformers... were truly, brokenly awful.
I grew up in the 80's and 90's and I don't remember a lot of platformers being awful, but I do remember a lot of them being extremely difficult. TMNT and Battletoads for the NES are two examples that come to mind. I don't know how many times I had to replay the underwater stage in Turtles before I got fast enough to beat it, or how many times I had to replay the racing stage in Battletoads before I didn't get creamed by an obstacle. Awful games for me were the ones that had confusing controls or puzzles that just did NOT want to be solved, but really there weren't a lot of those that I can recall. For the most part games had a good (read "simple") set of controls, straight-forward goals and were at least somewhat forgiving of mistakes (You died? Guess what, you have two more mans!)
I honestly think that games back then had better gameplay for the most part. They were less complicated and more focused on just having fun. Games today are all about shiny glitz and how many polygons are being handled at once. Games were also a lot cheaper back then, and there was a lot less marketing and hype involved, so even if a game wasn't all that great it's not like you were out $50-60 and crestfallen because it didn't live up to your hopes.
Well obviously we know this is not the case in the year 3000!
Hobo1: "Let's give a friendly welcome to this new robo."
Bender: "What did you call me?!"
Hobo2: "A Robo. You know... a robot hobo."
Bender: "Oh, ok, I thought you said romo."
I wonder what it's like inside Microsoft's little bubble world? It's as if they're oblivious to everyone and everything outside of it. A recession is on but hey!, lets go ahead and raise the price! I mean, after all everyone hates Vista so they should be kicking Microsoft's door in to have to opportunity to pay more for the next version, right?
Meanwhile I just upgraded my laptop to Jaunty and had it completely setup and configured to my needs in under a half hour. For free. It really makes me rethink the whole idea of upgrading my Vista machine.
Heh, as long as they're consistent with the cancellation and I know how much time I'll have to idle on slashdot... err I mean get my documentation done;-)
My problem with that approach is that once the deadline has been reached that is typically the code-freeze, so tweaking isn't even possible (even though I usually want to). I'd much rather have the boss that points at the calendar and says "have this much done by then" and actually sticks with that. The deadline helps me focus, but throwing the schedule into disarray totally negates any focus-based benefits.
The first is best in low to medium doses, anything more than that and I'm too wired to really focus. Best served green and carbonated or with equal amounts of milk and sugar. The second falls under the category of "repetitive music with few to no lyrics." The third can actually stand apart from the second because I've found that even if I'm not actually listening to anything at the time people see the headphones and (usually) give a second thought to bothering me, especially at work. Finally the deadline is a big factor because like many people I seem to produce my best code under pressure.
Of course it also helps to have tools that I don't have to fight against to get things done, time away from my coworkers (who are usually great fun, which is actually the problem), and no constant email interruptions.
I think we've all had times where we were "in the zone," though maybe not as extreme as your case. I know there have been several times that I suddenly became very productive after hours and didn't notice while time just flew past. Usually this happens after stepping away from a project at the end of the day to get a bite to eat and suddenly realizing a new possible fix to the problem. This happens to me less with work-related issues than it does for personal projects, and I've also noticed that it happens much less frequently now than it did say, 5-7 years ago.
I've also had the opposite experience in which I go to bed with the current project on my mind only to sit bolt upright in the middle of the night with the (complete/near complete) solution in my mind. Of course, I went back to sleep after some of these experiences thinking I would remember them when I woke up and it never failed that the solution had become hazy;-)
Sleep or the lack thereof can definitely have an interesting effect on your work performance.
Those Windows apps are out there because people need those applications.
No, people do not need those apps. They need the data generated/manipulated by those apps. If a different app will let them generate/manipulate the data in the way that they need and (here is the important part) still be able to share it with someone else using whatever app they want then there is no need to use a solution such as WINE. Now, this is not to say that a lot of people won't want to switch to a different app from what they are used to, just that eliminating the compatibility barrier is key to allowing the switch in the first place. I realize this is exactly the argument that the Wine camp is using, but the difference is that Wine is concerned with allowing the original app to work, whereas the ideal solution (IMO) would instead to ensure compatibility. Obviously Microsoft is not concerned one bit with compatibility in regards to Office, and that is what the real problem is.
What is the alternative?
Create new applications and ensure that they are compatible with existing apps. Is this not an acceptable soution? I don't see the problem.
Is he suggesting that everything that is on Windows should stay on Windows, and Linux needs to something else entirely?
And why not? There does not need to be a clone of every major app for Window in Linux. We simply need applications which can work on the same data consistently and interoperably.
Slashdot Mirror
Wintermute1974, Tessier-Ashpool would like to request your return from Alpha Centauri at your earliest convenience. There is much work left to be done!
Seriously though I tend to agree with you. That was always a spot that just seemed to jump out at me but I can think of one or two other oddities (the use of payphones, the fact that Pauley's module was stored "on a cassette," etc.) Other than that I think the tech that he described is still far enough in the future as to remain believable. A classic no matter how you look at it though, dated descriptions or no.
No, they shouldn't've eaten the cost once the customer agreed to the terms but these rebates could've been handled much differently. For one thing they could've at least have pro-rated the rebate so if a customer cancelled say, halfway through the 2-year term they would only have to pay back half of the rebate. For another the way these rebates were marketed was fairly reprehensible; they were aimed at lower income families at a time when an average system could cost upwards of $1400. We're talking about the same market segment that makes large credit card purchases and doesn't think far enough ahead to manage their finances to pay the card off easily.
I didn't blame myself, but it didn't help me feel any better when I was assisting these customers. I knew what they had gotten themselves into even if they didn't, and trying to explain that to someone and then listening to all of the (often valid in my opinion) reasons they gave for wanting out of the agreement was painful. If you've never worked in customer service lucky for you, but don't ever let anyone fool you into thinking it is a cake job. That work makes one lose faith in humanity sometimes.
Essentially yes. This was going on when Circuit City and Radio Shack were paying their sales staff fairly decent commissions, and we all know how unscrupulous some sales folk can be. The problem was really that the sales folks didn't have a listing of what numbers were available in the area, and if the customer didn't consider this or the salesperson didn't make the effort and call to find out (And why would they? It would only hinder their ability to make the sale if they found out there was low/no availability in the area.) then the sale got pushed through and the rebate was established anyway.
What, you're telling me I can't get rich from fencing 4MB of memory on the street? Way to shatter my dreams of being a hot interface cowboy!
And I don't begrudge anyone their (fonder) memories of a service that provided what was in many cases the first Internet experience for many individuals, however my own experience of them was (obviously) not quite the same.
Yep, early 2000's was the timeframe in which I was doing cust. service for them. That was waaay after the AOL take over, which probably accounts for why my memories of them aren't nearly as rose-tinted as many of the other posters here. That and the nature of my work for them :-P Being the guy that takes the brunt of customer dissatisfaction for a company that obviously no longer cared about their customers has that effect.
I wish I had had the experience that so many others here have had though, maybe it would've made a difference in my opinion of CS. Personally I showed up late to the game for BBSs; I remember watching my friend connect on a 9600 baud connection and watching a lot of scrolling text without really knowing what was going on, though he obviously thought it was cool ;-) I didn't have my first big Internet experience until the days of AOL and Earthlink if that tells you anything about how my first impressions of it were formed.
According Wikipedia's article on Prodigy they were bought out by SBC which in turn turned (back?) into AT&T. Prodigy.net actually redirects to my.att.net.
Brent Spiner?! Everyone knows that Jonathan Frakes was the lady killer :-P
Heh, then I feel your pain brother ;-)
Compuserve might've been great at one time, but it hasn't been for a much longer period. I used to do customer service for them back when they were offering a $400 rebate on new computers... as long as people signed up for a 2 year service agreement with them. I felt dirty every time I had to take a call from someone that had one of those rebates. Half the time the callers wanted to cancel their service because of how piss poor their dial-up connection was and it was my job to "remind" them about the terms which stated that they had to pay back the rebate PLUS a cancellation fee. I put remind in quotes because it was often the customer's first time hearing about the terms in the first place (Admittedly this was usually the sales person's fault, and usually not Compuserve's.). I remember one call in particular when a customer in Pennsylvania had purchased a computer with the rebate only to find out that they only had TWO dial-up numbers in the whole state available to them, neither of which was a local call for them. I had to tell this poor soul that they had accepted the terms of the rebate, received the $400, and if they cancelled they would owe Compuserve all that back, etc even though they couldn't even use the service. Now Compuserve was obviously not the only ISP that played the rebate game, but their participation left a bad taste in mouth and lowered my opinion of them greatly.
Ah, another individual who didn't think the summary told the whole story. Here are a couple more links:
The appellate court ruling
The case summary from Wikipedia: United States vs. Extreme Associates
I usually don't criticize on these kind of things but honestly, but would it take all that long to do just a little more digging before posting the story? (Yes, I realize it is easier to get readers to the rest of the work :-P).
Perhaps not, however the light that actually reaches the panels is in no way constant. Some days will be cloudier (or smoggier for that matter) than others, so it is great that we have really good peak efficiency with these new cells, but how often will that peak be reached and how well does it operate at less than optimal light conditions? I'm looking for practical, non-commercial applications.
What about solar panels pointed at burning houses coated in magnesium? Maybe the peak efficiency will be useful there ;-)
Yes, thank you, you've successfully tested my ability to read and recall memories. What I'd really like to know is how many of these cheap lenses and mirrors will now be necessary vs how many I was using before, and how much more efficient will the operation of storing energy be on days when the sky is not absolutely cloudless? I realize that the solar cell is more efficient at absorbing light, but how can this be applied to a "normal" usage pattern (when we're not talking about 500x the normal amount of light)? I don't mean for a satellite, or a solar farm, or anything like that. I'm talking about non-commercial usage, such as an individual home.
Not to belittle this accomplishment, but I'd prefer to see an increase in average efficiency. According to the article the peak efficiency is found when panels are exposed to light 500 times that of normal light. How does that translate to efficiency under normal operating conditions (such as a semi-cloudy day in the midwest)? The article is rather short on details concerning how well the solar cells operate when they are "tailored to their locations."
You're probably joking but I can think of a couple of inventive (and fun!) ways to abuse this. The first way to save yourself some money if this actually becomes a reality would be to simply remove the GPS device and leave it in your garage somewhere. Obviously it would have to still be functional for this to work, but I'm sure some hackerish type will figure that out.
The second (devious and more fun way) would be a great way to get revenge on someone. Remove their GPS device from their vehicle and attach it to a long-haul cross-country truck. "What do you mean I drove 50,000 miles this year!?"
You're right, it does mean he's not a coder, he's a developer. Coder's don't take the time to do any of the things you just described, they're more interested in just rushing in and in all likelihood making a mess of things. Developers figure out what, when, where, how, and why before they do anything. Developer's can't wait to get start either, but they do because they want to do it right. I'll take a developer over a coder any day.
Therein lies the problem. What defines a platform as "superior?" Does superiority simply mean that it does A, B, and C extremely well? If that is the case then you will ALWAYS have someone that says "Well yeah, it does A, B, and C, but what about D, E, and F?", and they'll go out and try to make their platform superior (Because, you know, D, E, and F are really important to them, and who gives a crap about making sure the two systems are compatible, because who actually cares about A, B, and C to begin with?). In fact this is exactly what is happening right now. There are so many distros in competition with each other right now and so many different ways of doing things that no can agree on what the standard should be, much less that there should even be a standard.
Furthermore, one entity cannot create a standard all on it's own (unless you're Microsoft and you managed to sucker everyone into using your OS which allows your methods to become the defacto standards), there has to be consensus from other parties. Even if your platform does everything under the sun it won't matter unless you've got support from the rest of the community.
Taking two seconds to skim the article you can find this link to the actual discussion board thread.
I mean how would you like it if you were caught in a situation where you didn't have access to public information? ;-)
I grew up in the 80's and 90's and I don't remember a lot of platformers being awful, but I do remember a lot of them being extremely difficult. TMNT and Battletoads for the NES are two examples that come to mind. I don't know how many times I had to replay the underwater stage in Turtles before I got fast enough to beat it, or how many times I had to replay the racing stage in Battletoads before I didn't get creamed by an obstacle. Awful games for me were the ones that had confusing controls or puzzles that just did NOT want to be solved, but really there weren't a lot of those that I can recall. For the most part games had a good (read "simple") set of controls, straight-forward goals and were at least somewhat forgiving of mistakes (You died? Guess what, you have two more mans!)
I honestly think that games back then had better gameplay for the most part. They were less complicated and more focused on just having fun. Games today are all about shiny glitz and how many polygons are being handled at once. Games were also a lot cheaper back then, and there was a lot less marketing and hype involved, so even if a game wasn't all that great it's not like you were out $50-60 and crestfallen because it didn't live up to your hopes.
the developers decide to write a "screenwiper" package that wipes the blood and guts off of the user's screen so they can see well enough to shoot?
Well obviously we know this is not the case in the year 3000!
Hobo1: "Let's give a friendly welcome to this new robo." ... a robot hobo."
Bender: "What did you call me?!"
Hobo2: "A Robo. You know
Bender: "Oh, ok, I thought you said romo."
I wonder what it's like inside Microsoft's little bubble world? It's as if they're oblivious to everyone and everything outside of it. A recession is on but hey!, lets go ahead and raise the price! I mean, after all everyone hates Vista so they should be kicking Microsoft's door in to have to opportunity to pay more for the next version, right?
Meanwhile I just upgraded my laptop to Jaunty and had it completely setup and configured to my needs in under a half hour. For free. It really makes me rethink the whole idea of upgrading my Vista machine.
Heh, as long as they're consistent with the cancellation and I know how much time I'll have to idle on slashdot... err I mean get my documentation done ;-)
My problem with that approach is that once the deadline has been reached that is typically the code-freeze, so tweaking isn't even possible (even though I usually want to). I'd much rather have the boss that points at the calendar and says "have this much done by then" and actually sticks with that. The deadline helps me focus, but throwing the schedule into disarray totally negates any focus-based benefits.
The first is best in low to medium doses, anything more than that and I'm too wired to really focus. Best served green and carbonated or with equal amounts of milk and sugar. The second falls under the category of "repetitive music with few to no lyrics." The third can actually stand apart from the second because I've found that even if I'm not actually listening to anything at the time people see the headphones and (usually) give a second thought to bothering me, especially at work. Finally the deadline is a big factor because like many people I seem to produce my best code under pressure.
Of course it also helps to have tools that I don't have to fight against to get things done, time away from my coworkers (who are usually great fun, which is actually the problem), and no constant email interruptions.
I think we've all had times where we were "in the zone," though maybe not as extreme as your case. I know there have been several times that I suddenly became very productive after hours and didn't notice while time just flew past. Usually this happens after stepping away from a project at the end of the day to get a bite to eat and suddenly realizing a new possible fix to the problem. This happens to me less with work-related issues than it does for personal projects, and I've also noticed that it happens much less frequently now than it did say, 5-7 years ago.
I've also had the opposite experience in which I go to bed with the current project on my mind only to sit bolt upright in the middle of the night with the (complete/near complete) solution in my mind. Of course, I went back to sleep after some of these experiences thinking I would remember them when I woke up and it never failed that the solution had become hazy ;-)
Sleep or the lack thereof can definitely have an interesting effect on your work performance.
Teachers may also make partial copies of a CD for education purposes by recording to a vinyl record and playing it back on a phonograph.
No, people do not need those apps. They need the data generated/manipulated by those apps. If a different app will let them generate/manipulate the data in the way that they need and (here is the important part) still be able to share it with someone else using whatever app they want then there is no need to use a solution such as WINE. Now, this is not to say that a lot of people won't want to switch to a different app from what they are used to, just that eliminating the compatibility barrier is key to allowing the switch in the first place. I realize this is exactly the argument that the Wine camp is using, but the difference is that Wine is concerned with allowing the original app to work, whereas the ideal solution (IMO) would instead to ensure compatibility. Obviously Microsoft is not concerned one bit with compatibility in regards to Office, and that is what the real problem is.
Create new applications and ensure that they are compatible with existing apps. Is this not an acceptable soution? I don't see the problem.
And why not? There does not need to be a clone of every major app for Window in Linux. We simply need applications which can work on the same data consistently and interoperably.