If I'm not mistaken AOL purchased Compuserve and gained their network infrastructure. From what I remember it is a sizeable one. As for MS I have no idea.
Setting up two ethernet cards is as easy as the administrator is intelligent. My set up would have taken 5 minutes had I not switched the cables half way through the setup. That took FOREVER to realize and 2 seconds to fix.
I can't believe this hasn't been suggested
on
High Tech Junk
·
· Score: 1
Build a beowulf out of them. (I realize this is a basic Slashdot post cliche, but it actually applies)
Take a mess of old PC's and build a beowulf. Now true, it wouldn't be a great machine and I would be cautious to use anything older then a 486DX (need a math processor) but it would still function.
If this isn't adequate I would look into LAST(PDF)
The Greater Midwest Slashdot Festival Location: Chicago IL Why There: Probably less then 6 hours drive from most of the midwest Who: Everyone who wants to, especially those who cannot make it to the Bay for any of the shindigs so far Why This: Even us cowpushers enjoy fellow geeks company and beer Date: Aug 25 (In memory of the first official posting of Linux on the comp.os.minix newsgroup)
Now I don't expect it to happen, nor can I organize such an event but imagine renting a small convention hall, getting some linux boxes networked for some LAN Quake matches, GOOD beer on draught and maybe some contests or something. D&D or Magic for the fantasy geeks, Star Wars trivial Pursuit, etc...
If anyone is going to pull something like this out you could count on me being there, its only a 5 hour drive or so.
I see your point regarding RedHat's revenue, but when has that had any real influence on trendy stocks. I see Red Hat following the trend presented by Yahoo, EBay and Amazon - profits don't matter, its the trendiness that matters. Every IT anaylist on Wall Street may be watching Red Hat with the hopes of it being the next EBay/Amazon. Why? Beacause Linux is trendy. Not necessarily in a mainstream way, but every IT magazine has at least touched on the hype of Linux. Even my father, an old mainframer, is eyeing the Red Hat IPO.
Now I know hype isn't everything in the IPO game, but look at amazon. Their stock soared without the company making a profit. Why? Because the idea was cool. Red Hat may fall in just the same boat. If it can maintain financial stability, not necessarily success, then the hype factor may increase its value alone.
My personal prediction is this: opens at $12 peaks at $45-$60 and after a little while (3 months) drops to $20
Me, I have a couple other trendy stocks I'm watching out for.
The primary advantages of DVD is NOT the movies, and thats not why I own one. I own one because I honestly feel that it is the distribution media for games/software in the near future. Bundled with my DVD player were a couple of DVD games that I must say were an improvement to their CD counterparts. Mostly they involve cinematic sequences combined w/ the game itself. But since I'm not a gamer, that wasn't that big a deal. As the other individual stated, there is a big advantage for college students or people who live with other roomates. When there are three people in one house with different social circles, different viewing tastes and one television. Finding the time to play a DVD movie for you and your friends/[girl|boy]friend is not easy. It easy to sit on your bed and watch a DVD movie from your PC, since it is YOUR PC.
Movie distributers have been pushing the DVD format for quite a long time. They have been developing a trend of releasing the DVD copy of a film months before the VHS versions. I'm not a big DVD buyer but two movies spring to mind.. Austin Powers and Patch Adams. This is the next logical step, release only the DVD and watch for sales. If they are sub par, release the VHS tapes. I expect to see this strategy on many films to come.
Now I can't for myself see how Java could be used for low level OS stuff (rather redundant) but such an OS exists already. Remember that the Java classes are essentially executable code and chips do exist that use bytecode as the native language so it may not be that bad.
Despite all this, the notion seems like their playing king of the hill and not sleigh the dragon.
The point of the poll is to get an idea on what areas of game development have the largest need. If I was a decision maker at Sierra, and I saw how one single post on a web site can spawn thousands to jump to their site for a poll, I would not view the poll as tainted. I would see a market of computer users that WANT games, the type/style/manufacturer may not be the top concern to them, but they want quality games. With developers like Activision (C:CTP) and ID (Q3) jumping on the Linux bandwagon, they also will see that it is not uncharted waters and may start looking seriously at it.
At the worst case, this can't hurt so if want good games for Linux, vote.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the code is art. I do feel that there is an art to programming though, one I am only begining to appreciate.
The art in Linux is not necessarily an estheticly pleasing form of art but rather art in its rawist form. The core of art is not pretty pictures and soothing music, but freedom of thought. The ability to think out of the box (I hate that phrase) and to see things in ways that nobody else has ever perceived. This is more then obvious if you walk into the modern art section of a museum. I once saw a piece on display that was a large piece of graph paper called "The City" in a very respected art museum. The piece wasn't beautiful by any means, but I would have _never_ thought of it. And this is where the art lies.
Linux is a lot like this. One student saw the Internet as more then just a way to talk about computers but rather a way to work with others to build software. This was a different way to operate then what was the norm in 1991. Although he was not the first to do this, his idea appears to have awakened a large number of people to this alternate frame of mind. They are lifted out of their way of thinking and introduced to a new way to develop software. This new awareness to ones surroundings/environment is often the goal of great art.
Does Linus deserve all the credit, _of_course_not_. Richard Stallman and others had been operating like this for years by the time Linus got started and here is where the media hype enters the picture. The large wave of Linux newbies (of which I am guilty of belonging) have been first introdued to open source/free software development though their use of Linux so it has had the most direct impact on perceptions of software.
So too all the free software pioneers and developers, this award is as much yours as anyone elses. You're all artists, just don't get all pretentious now.
I have done a lot of work with VAJava for NT and AIX and find it to be a good IDE. Good is very relative, since I still prefer Emacs and an xterm. Anyway, back to the point.
The best part of the VAJava IDE is the High Performance Toolkit. This allows Java classes to be compiled into native code libraries that, like classes, are dynanmicly loaded. The performance is far beyond that of any JIT compilier and you don't have to lose the flexibility of java classes. There are some major complaints with the software (mostly lack of virtual machine control and release-to-release binary compatability) but its very promising. Personal experience places a JIT compiler at around 1/3 the speed of C in many applications (Networking, file seeking, data crunching, etc) The High Performance code runs around 1/2 the speed of C. This would be very helpful since I use Java on very CPU intensive personal projects. Hopefully they can work out the kinks if it is incorporated into VAJava for Linux
Let me guess, the plans for the frontage road were on display at the local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty years. Or were they actually in the cellar of a planning ofice, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"
I was thinking the same thing while reading the article when I remembered that IBM not only knows of Linux's capability in Beowulf clusters but has demonstrated it. Anyone remember the 17 Netfinity cluster IBM demonstrated at LinuxWorldExpo that matched a Cray on the PovRay benchmark.
I feel IBM will be fine for quite a while as far as their AIX systems are concerned. The beowulf project does great work on high computation problems but fall relatively short on applications require large and fast disk space. Mostly due to a lack of a fast distributed filesystem. At least this is my understanding. Down the road maybe IBM will go back to being a hardware manufacturer primarily.
Lets play the naming game
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 2
What do the following individuals have in common: -Robert B Laughlin -Horst L. Stormer -Daniel C. Tsui -Walter Kohn -John A Pople -Jose Saramago
Answer: Won 1998 Nobel prize
What do the following individuals have in common:(sp) -Tim McVeigh -Ted Bundy -John Wilkes Booth -Jeff Dahmer -Lizzie Borden -Lee Harvey Oswald
Answer: They KILLED people(or are known to)
For those of you who could more easily identify the second group, you're not alone. In fact I have never head of any of these Nobel Prize winners before writing this post which further illustrates my point. The quality of an individuals achievment has no definate relation to their name recognition. Now in these situations, name recognition was probably not a factor in the their achievments, nor in any worthwile task should it be (IMHO) It is a shame that most people don't view it this way. Success is often judged not on actions but recognition of your actions. Hence the timeless tradition of philanthopic practices in return for naming priviledges. (Best, and most ironic, example is the Gates building at MIT- a college building named after a college dropout which may house the HQ of GNU)
What does this roughly translate to:
Success == Fame == name recognition == getting credit for your actions which gain public attention.
Now how do you gain this public attention. You could cure cancer, be elected to public office, play pro basketball, write an excellent operating system. But each of these requires skill, patience, luck and/or time. There of course is the simple shortcut of trying to kill your entire school. This takes little planning, some supplies (guns, propane tanks and nails for shrapnel) and an extreme desire to be noticed. Within 48 hours of the killing, the entire world will know who you are, all about your life and (for people like me) have your face etched in the minds of thousands. For an individual desperate to be known, this is a pretty appealing notion. To hell with the consiquences, I want to be (in)famous.
The next question usually asks "where do they get the inspiration to do this?" The answers include movies, TV, video games, the Internet. My answer is who cares! As long as actions such as this are relentlessly covered by the media, the possibilty of instant fame will still inspire people to commit such attrocities.
What is the solution... there is none. The media will continue to add fuel to the fire as long as they cover the story, others will be inspired, more people will die. We will then try and point fingers at everything but our own hearts, because we can't accept that humans are capable of doing this alone. But we are...
I have a friend who is on the beta tester list, so I also have had the chance to play the game. I think it would be great to have a slashdot review of the game before it hits the stores. It would be a great showing of the viability of the Linux game interest if a huge number of people preordered the game. I however do not know the beta tester agreement and am woried about the ramifications of a review at this time. If there is interest in a review, and it does not violate the beta tester agreement, I would love to assist as a Linux user and a die-hard player of both Civ and Civ 2.
The trailer uses Quicktime 3 which uses the Sorenson Codec which is not supported by xanim. Nor will it be any time soon due to apple reluctance to release the source (even under NDA). Apple also will not allow Sorenson to release the codec to anyone else either.
For trailer two someone posted a decent quality mpeg of the trailer that I have mirrored. I plan on mirroring the quictime and would hope to mirror the mpeg if anyone makes one.
The article comments on Linux's superior ability to cluster servers compared to NT. Although this claim may be accurate (I have no idea whether it is or not) the example he uses to illustrate his point is poorly chosen in the context of the article.
The example was of IBM's demonstration of a 17 server Linux cluster running as fast as a Cray. This claim is based on the results of the Povray benchmark, which is in no way related to normal server operations. The Povray benchmark, for those who don't know, is a benchmark based on 3D scene rendering abilities of a machine. The program that was run has been designed using parrallel programming techniques which are necessary in a Beowulf cluster. This has very little to do with your run-of-the-mill server operations that the article seems to gear towards.
As of yet there do not appear to be any significant applications (databases, webservers, etc) that have been developed to harness the capabilities of a Beowulf cluster. From a recent mailing on the Beowulf mailing list, it appears that Oracle is working on making a Beowulf capable database, but that is purely rumor.
All the above is basede on my recent observation, feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
I wouldn't go out of my way to to do it, but besides that, why the hell not? I'm not about to bring down my router box to upgrade the kernel (it still runs 2.0.36) until I'm sure the upgrade would be without serious complications. (I've heard about troubles w/ ipchains and ipamasq) But for my personal box, I figure any update to the stable kernel, especially in the early stages is a pretty good idea
Barney is'nt the right embodiment for this.
on
Hacking Barney
·
· Score: 1
What we need now is for someone to strip the circutry out of a Barney doll, and refit it to a Tux doll. That would be a must buy toy
The windows application has only one noticeable advantage and that is out of the box graphical use without a technical manual. Linux users/programmers KNOW this. This isn't some magical wisdom that only windows users own, its common knowledge and its being addressed. And its not like Linux software programmers write software to be overtly complicated, they (for the most part) are from the same school of GUI appearance as Windows and, to a lesser extent, MacOS applications. When large companies start to develop for Linux, they will make an impact, however that will mostly be due to a larger concentration on certain projects not a discovery of new problems.
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm not mistaken AOL purchased Compuserve and gained their network infrastructure. From what I remember it is a sizeable one. As for MS I have no idea.
Setting up two ethernet cards is as easy as the administrator is intelligent. My set up would have taken 5 minutes had I not switched the cables half way through the setup. That took FOREVER to realize and 2 seconds to fix.
Build a beowulf out of them. (I realize this is a basic Slashdot post cliche, but it actually applies)
Take a mess of old PC's and build a beowulf. Now true, it wouldn't be a great machine and I would be cautious to use anything older then a 486DX (need a math processor) but it would still function.
If this isn't adequate I would look into LAST(PDF)
DISCLAIMER: This is only a suggestion!
The Greater Midwest Slashdot Festival
Location: Chicago IL
Why There: Probably less then 6 hours drive from most of the midwest
Who: Everyone who wants to, especially those who cannot make it to the Bay for any of the shindigs so far
Why This: Even us cowpushers enjoy fellow geeks company and beer
Date: Aug 25 (In memory of the first official posting of Linux on the comp.os.minix newsgroup)
Now I don't expect it to happen, nor can I organize such an event but imagine renting a small convention hall, getting some linux boxes networked for some LAN Quake matches, GOOD beer on draught and maybe some contests or something. D&D or Magic for the fantasy geeks, Star Wars trivial Pursuit, etc...
If anyone is going to pull something like this out you could count on me being there, its only a 5 hour drive or so.
I see your point regarding RedHat's revenue, but when has that had any real influence on trendy stocks. I see Red Hat following the trend presented by Yahoo, EBay and Amazon - profits don't matter, its the trendiness that matters. Every IT anaylist on Wall Street may be watching Red Hat with the hopes of it being the next EBay/Amazon. Why? Beacause Linux is trendy. Not necessarily in a mainstream way, but every IT magazine has at least touched on the hype of Linux. Even my father, an old mainframer, is eyeing the Red Hat IPO.
Now I know hype isn't everything in the IPO game, but look at amazon. Their stock soared without the company making a profit. Why? Because the idea was cool. Red Hat may fall in just the same boat. If it can maintain financial stability, not necessarily success, then the hype factor may increase its value alone.
My personal prediction is this: opens at $12 peaks at $45-$60 and after a little while (3 months) drops to $20
Me, I have a couple other trendy stocks I'm watching out for.
The primary advantages of DVD is NOT the movies, and thats not why I own one. I own one because I honestly feel that it is the distribution media for games/software in the near future. Bundled with my DVD player were a couple of DVD games that I must say were an improvement to their CD counterparts. Mostly they involve cinematic sequences combined w/ the game itself.
But since I'm not a gamer, that wasn't that big a deal. As the other individual stated, there is a big advantage for college students or people who live with other roomates. When there are three people in one house with different social circles, different viewing tastes and one television. Finding the time to play a DVD movie for you and your friends/[girl|boy]friend is not easy. It easy to sit on your bed and watch a DVD movie from your PC, since it is YOUR PC.
Movie distributers have been pushing the DVD format for quite a long time. They have been developing a trend of releasing the DVD copy of a film months before the VHS versions. I'm not a big DVD buyer but two movies spring to mind.. Austin Powers and Patch Adams. This is the next logical step, release only the DVD and watch for sales. If they are sub par, release the VHS tapes. I expect to see this strategy on many films to come.
Now I can't for myself see how Java could be used for low level OS stuff (rather redundant) but such an OS exists already.
Remember that the Java classes are essentially executable code and chips do exist that use bytecode as the native language so it may not be that bad.
Despite all this, the notion seems like their playing king of the hill and not sleigh the dragon.
The point of the poll is to get an idea on what areas of game development have the largest need. If I was a decision maker at Sierra, and I saw how one single post on a web site can spawn thousands to jump to their site for a poll, I would not view the poll as tainted. I would see a market of computer users that WANT games, the type/style/manufacturer may not be the top concern to them, but they want quality games. With developers like Activision (C:CTP) and ID (Q3) jumping on the Linux bandwagon, they also will see that it is not uncharted waters and may start looking seriously at it.
At the worst case, this can't hurt so if want good games for Linux, vote.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the code is art. I do feel that there is an art to programming though, one I am only begining to appreciate.
The art in Linux is not necessarily an estheticly pleasing form of art but rather art in its rawist form. The core of art is not pretty pictures and soothing music, but freedom of thought. The ability to think out of the box (I hate that phrase) and to see things in ways that nobody else has ever perceived. This is more then obvious if you walk into the modern art section of a museum. I once saw a piece on display that was a large piece of graph paper called "The City" in a very respected art museum. The piece wasn't beautiful by any means, but I would have _never_ thought of it. And this is where the art lies.
Linux is a lot like this. One student saw the Internet as more then just a way to talk about computers but rather a way to work with others to build software. This was a different way to operate then what was the norm in 1991. Although he was not the first to do this, his idea appears to have awakened a large number of people to this alternate frame of mind. They are lifted out of their way of thinking and introduced to a new way to develop software. This new awareness to ones surroundings/environment is often the goal of great art.
Does Linus deserve all the credit, _of_course_not_. Richard Stallman and others had been operating like this for years by the time Linus got started and here is where the media hype enters the picture. The large wave of Linux newbies (of which I am guilty of belonging) have been first introdued to open source/free software development though their use of Linux so it has had the most direct impact on perceptions of software.
So too all the free software pioneers and developers, this award is as much yours as anyone elses. You're all artists, just don't get all pretentious now.
I have done a lot of work with VAJava for NT and AIX and find it to be a good IDE. Good is very relative, since I still prefer Emacs and an xterm. Anyway, back to the point.
The best part of the VAJava IDE is the High Performance Toolkit. This allows Java classes to be compiled into native code libraries that, like classes, are dynanmicly loaded. The performance is far beyond that of any JIT compilier and you don't have to lose the flexibility of java classes. There are some major complaints with the software (mostly lack of virtual machine control and release-to-release binary compatability) but its very promising. Personal experience places a JIT compiler at around 1/3 the speed of C in many applications (Networking, file seeking, data crunching, etc) The High Performance code runs around 1/2 the speed of C. This would be very helpful since I use Java on very CPU intensive personal projects. Hopefully they can work out the kinks if it is incorporated into VAJava for Linux
Let me guess, the plans for the frontage road were on display at the local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty years. Or were they actually in the cellar of a planning ofice, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"
I was thinking the same thing while reading the article when I remembered that IBM not only knows of Linux's capability in Beowulf clusters but has demonstrated it. Anyone remember the 17 Netfinity cluster IBM demonstrated at LinuxWorldExpo that matched a Cray on the PovRay benchmark.
I feel IBM will be fine for quite a while as far as their AIX systems are concerned. The beowulf project does great work on high computation problems but fall relatively short on applications require large and fast disk space. Mostly due to a lack of a fast distributed filesystem. At least this is my understanding. Down the road maybe IBM will go back to being a hardware manufacturer primarily.
What do the following individuals have in common:
-Robert B Laughlin
-Horst L. Stormer
-Daniel C. Tsui
-Walter Kohn
-John A Pople
-Jose Saramago
Answer: Won 1998 Nobel prize
What do the following individuals have in common:(sp)
-Tim McVeigh
-Ted Bundy
-John Wilkes Booth
-Jeff Dahmer
-Lizzie Borden
-Lee Harvey Oswald
Answer: They KILLED people(or are known to)
For those of you who could more easily identify the second group, you're not alone. In fact I have never head of any of these Nobel Prize winners before writing this post which further illustrates my point. The quality of an individuals achievment has no definate relation to their name recognition. Now in these situations, name recognition was probably not a factor in the their achievments, nor in any worthwile task should it be (IMHO) It is a shame that most people don't view it this way. Success is often judged not on actions but recognition of your actions. Hence the timeless tradition of philanthopic practices in return for naming priviledges. (Best, and most ironic, example is the Gates building at MIT- a college building named after a college dropout which may house the HQ of GNU)
What does this roughly translate to:
Success == Fame == name recognition == getting credit for your actions which gain public attention.
Now how do you gain this public attention. You could cure cancer, be elected to public office, play pro basketball, write an excellent operating system. But each of these requires skill, patience, luck and/or time. There of course is the simple shortcut of trying to kill your entire school. This takes little planning, some supplies (guns, propane tanks and nails for shrapnel) and an extreme desire to be noticed. Within 48 hours of the killing, the entire world will know who you are, all about your life and (for people like me) have your face etched in the minds of thousands. For an individual desperate to be known, this is a pretty appealing notion. To hell with the consiquences, I want to be (in)famous.
The next question usually asks "where do they get the inspiration to do this?" The answers include movies, TV, video games, the Internet. My answer is who cares! As long as actions such as this are relentlessly covered by the media, the possibilty of instant fame will still inspire people to commit such attrocities.
What is the solution... there is none. The media will continue to add fuel to the fire as long as they cover the story, others will be inspired, more people will die. We will then try and point fingers at everything but our own hearts, because we can't accept that humans are capable of doing this alone. But we are...
I have a friend who is on the beta tester list, so I also have had the chance to play the game. I think it would be great to have a slashdot review of the game before it hits the stores. It would be a great showing of the viability of the Linux game interest if a huge number of people preordered the game. I however do not know the beta tester agreement and am woried about the ramifications of a review at this time. If there is interest in a review, and it does not violate the beta tester agreement, I would love to assist as a Linux user and a die-hard player of both Civ and Civ 2.
Trailer A:r ailer320.mpg
2 menaceB.mpg
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~mahrt/starwars/t
Trailer B:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~mahrt/starwars/C
Please let me know when an mpeg is available and I will mirror itF N_TrailerC.mov
v o v l erc60.mov . mov i lerC.mov i lerc.mov r C.mov r C.mov
mine:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~mahrt/starwars/T
others:
ftp://209.44.26.64/pub/starwars/TFN_TrailerC.mo
http://www.starnetc.com/starwars/index.html
http://empire.res.wabash.edu/TFN_TrailerC.mov
ftp://t3:t3@209.53.30.233/TFN_TrailerC.mov
http://ciateq.mx/~elwen/starwars/TFN_TrailerC.m
ftp://www.starwars.nu/trailer-c_tfn.mov
http://www.fh-sbg.ac.at/~tstadlau/starwars/trai
http://www.shatteredrose.com/TFN_TrailerC.mov
http://163.120.93.51/TFN_TrailerC.mov
http://www.landspeeder.com/TFN_TrailerC.mov
http://www.blackjedi.eu.org/movies/tfn_trailerc
http://www.elombligo.com/trailer_star_wars.htm
http://www.theed.net/TFN_TrailerC.mov
http://josh.rlc.net/trailers/trailerc.mov
ftp://phroputer.dhs.org/pub/FanTrailers/TFN_Tra
http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~brittin/images/tra
http://students.washington.edu/achen/TFN_Traile
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~achen/TFN_Traile
http://www.dianoga.com/movies/TFN_TrailerC.mov
ftp://ftp.reborn.net/TFN_TrailerC.mov
http://foobar.dhs.org/starwars/
http://bmetz.campus.vt.edu/tfn_trailerc.mov
The trailer uses Quicktime 3 which uses the Sorenson Codec which is not supported by xanim. Nor will it be any time soon due to apple reluctance to release the source (even under NDA). Apple also will not allow Sorenson to release the codec to anyone else either.
For trailer two someone posted a decent quality mpeg of the trailer that I have mirrored. I plan on mirroring the quictime and would hope to mirror the mpeg if anyone makes one.
The article comments on Linux's superior ability to cluster servers compared to NT. Although this claim may be accurate (I have no idea whether it is or not) the example he uses to illustrate his point is poorly chosen in the context of the article.
The example was of IBM's demonstration of a 17 server Linux cluster running as fast as a Cray. This claim is based on the results of the Povray benchmark, which is in no way related to normal server operations. The Povray benchmark, for those who don't know, is a benchmark based on 3D scene rendering abilities of a machine. The program that was run has been designed using parrallel programming techniques which are necessary in a Beowulf cluster. This has very little to do with your run-of-the-mill server operations that the article seems to gear towards.
As of yet there do not appear to be any significant applications (databases, webservers, etc) that have been developed to harness the capabilities of a Beowulf cluster. From a recent mailing on the Beowulf mailing list, it appears that Oracle is working on making a Beowulf capable database, but that is purely rumor.
All the above is basede on my recent observation, feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
Its a shame that I can't get real aiudio to work...
I wouldn't go out of my way to to do it, but besides that, why the hell not? I'm not about to bring down my router box to upgrade the kernel (it still runs 2.0.36) until I'm sure the upgrade would be without serious complications. (I've heard about troubles w/ ipchains and ipamasq) But for my personal box, I figure any update to the stable kernel, especially in the early stages is a pretty good idea
What we need now is for someone to strip the circutry out of a Barney doll, and refit it to a Tux doll. That would be a must buy toy
This is a table I got from a textbook
Computer Organization & Design,Hennessy & Patterson
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~mahrt/table.html
The windows application has only one noticeable advantage and that is out of the box graphical use without a technical manual. Linux users/programmers KNOW this. This isn't some magical wisdom that only windows users own, its common knowledge and its being addressed. And its not like Linux software programmers write software to be overtly complicated, they (for the most part) are from the same school of GUI appearance as Windows and, to a lesser extent, MacOS applications.
When large companies start to develop for Linux, they will make an impact, however that will mostly be due to a larger concentration on certain projects not a discovery of new problems.