Vodka and martinis are a good metaphor. Whatever "brand" of Windows you're taking about, it just isn't relevant to anyone who's gone on the wagon and left it behind for OS X and/or Linux.
If it's self-referential, it's branding. If it refers to other products, it's advertising.
While it is possible for branding to be just as obnoxious as advertising (e.g. a logo on the shirt bigger than the wearer's head), they are different beasts.
The self-described libertarians who oppose free software and other radically egalitarian concepts aren't really libertarians in the sense of Ron Paul or the Libertarian Party. They're Capitalists or Plutocratics who simply want to be free of external restrictions on their ability to make money. But in our society's not-terribly-nuanced way of speaking about politics, anybody who is opposed to the State but isn't trying to replace it with the Church, gets labeled "libertarian".
Mindlessly addictive games seem like exactly the wrong approach to pass the time. You might as well just put them in a light coma instead. On the other hand, I would pay for 520-day sabbatical from the world during which I could write and illustrate a graphic novel, or some other creative pursuit that's otherwise frustrated by the distractions of Life On Earth. Also give me some ebooks to read, and maybe a limited quantity of mindless passive entertainment for seasoning, and I'd be happy.
Because anonymity doesn't give you any guarantees of protection either. Hiding behind it gives you a false sense of security... while undercutting your ability to effect change. Susan B. Anthony, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr accomplished so much more than MassSuffragette, NonViolentMahatma, and NegroDreamer ever could have. The Anonymous Coward dies many times before his death; the valiant never tastes of death but once.
Windows (which was never a niche, as another commenter points out)
Sure it was. What's the first version of Windows you bought? If it was 3.0 or later, you're just another mainstream johnny-come-lately. Before that, Microsoft had to literally give it away, by bundling a "run-time" version of it with apps like PageMaker, which were themselves only used by a small segment of the PC-using market. I don't often play the Old-Timer card (because it requires me to point out that I was born during the Johnson administration)*, but I clearly remember when Windows was a niche operating environment, and if you don't... either you're not old enough to know what you're talking about, or... you don't know what you're talking about for other reasons.
(Citation for approaching double-digit share?)
Gartner puts them at 8.8% for 2009Q03, up 8.6% from 2008Q03. IDC puts them at 9.4%. Dell and HP lead Apple comfortably, and Acer/Gateway is still out of its reach, but Apple has lately surpassed Toshiba (and any other PC vendor) in unit sales in the US. If Win7 turns out to be less of a turkey than Vista, and people turn back to PCs with Windows, that could easily deny Apple an actual 10% market share, but the historical delta is on Apple's side: they are approaching 10%.
Either Amiga users can say they're cool and thinking different by not using Windows or a Mac - or I as a Windows user can make joke about the few Mac users and how little it's used compared to Windows.
Actually both are permissible; you're welcome to be as uninformed and in denial or reality as you want to be. It's a free world, after all.:)
When was Windows a niche? The first year of Windows 3.0 sales...
The fact that you start by talking about Win3.0 pretty much demonstrates my point. That's the first version that most people (at least those old enough) ever used, because that's when it hit the mainstream. I used to have "Windows 1.04 thru current" on my resume, and I had interviewers ask if I was kidding, because they'd never heard of "Windows 1". And these were people who were already adults in 1985. But they never used it. Most people didn't.
Throughout the 1980s, DOS ruled. Even after Windows was prematurely pushed out the door. I used a PC at my summer office job, and was a cutting-edge technodweeb who convinced my boss that this new GUI from Microsoft was worth buying for its task-switching capabilities. It was not. In fact, it was pretty much useless. Hardly any native apps (Write, Reversi, Clock... um....?), feeble support for DOS apps, lack of drivers, resource hungry, and... it didn't even have the BSOD yet; it just rebooted a lot. Like most other people who bought it, I didn't actually use it.
Then Win2.0 came out, and I upgraded (the first of many times). It was... better, and had a few good apps such as PageMaker and WinWord becoming available for it, though its multitasking still sucked and it locked up a lot (still no BSOD). It was good enough though that a niche of people emerged who actually used it productively on a day-to-day basis for things like DTP. But still just a niche. The WordPerfect-, 1-2-3-, and dBASE-using masses found it didn't meet their needs.
Win3.0 changed all that, with the sales figures you cite, because it finally had usable multitasking, a wide array of apps (e.g. Lotus, dBase, and WordPerfect had finally been ported, and Microsoft Office was even better), universal driver support, etc. More importantly, it came preinstalled on most new PCs, so you no longer needed to seek it out and figure out how to install it.That's when it stopped being a niche operating environment. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either A) an ubergeek who didn't realize at the time what an isolated early-adopting outlier he was, or B) too young to remember any of this.
I have a Mac, and to be honest it doesn't have a single app I use that makes me want to buy the machine over anything else.
As long as you have a Mac, you might want to explore a little more to see what else is out there. You risk cutting yourself off from the option of switching (back) to Windows by using Mac-only apps, but there are quite a few developers out there doing nifty stuff for OS X.
So it turns out you're an Apple user - I do find it funny when we get these arguments between users of niche platforms.
Um, one of those "niches" is approaching double-digit market share in the US. By comparison, the Amiga is a "microniche". Which doesn't mean that the Amiga isn't worth talking about, of course. There was a time when Windows was a niche product, after all (I was there, I remember), and will be again some day.
"We have had anonymous speech in the United States for over 200 years."
Of course we have, and it's a valuable tool to keep. But the notion I was answering, that it's the essential foundation on which free speech was built is the kind of idiocy that only a child who grew up hiding his identity on the internet would believe. I've been using my real name to express unpopular opinions both offline and online since the 1980s, and the mewling cowards who claim they can only do that when hiding behind the anonymity of the internet ought to grow a spine. At least Kaspersky has the courage to express his laughable ideas with his name attached. That's why he's influential, and they aren't.
"Anonymity has nothing to do with cowardice or irresponsibility. It has everything to do with being able to speak against the more powerful foe and hopefully survive any retribution for speaking out."
That's what "courage" means, AC. Change doesn't happen because anonymous people call for it. Change happens because people put their identities - and sometimes their safety - on the line for it. I'm against police surveillance, internet licenses, or any chilling restraint like that. Anonymity is a worthwhile option. But if the only way someone is willing to express himself is anonymously, yeah... that's cowardice.
Don't be a dolt; that's not what I said. I was rebutting the clueless assertion that free speech can't exist without anonymity. There's a reason for the term "anonymous coward": anonymity is the coward's favorite approach to free speech.
Anonymity is prone to abuse, sure, but it is vital for free exchange of ideas.
Bullshit. The only thing you really need for free exchange of ideas is a society where that its respected, and a government that protects it rather than prosecutes it. Oh... and the courage to speak up and own your own words. Anonymity is a fallback tactic for use in oppressive societies, needed only in extreme circumstances. We managed to freely exchange ideas long before the internet gave everyone an anonymous soapbox, kids.
He may be correct that the internet shouldn't have been opened up like it was. I've been online long enough to remember when you could assume (perhaps wishfully) that nearly anyone obviously misbehaving badly on it could be identified with a couple e-mails or phone calls to the right sysadmins, and the notion of banning a user or cutting off a rogue node was plausible. I kind of miss the relative safety and decorum of that internet. But the ship of general unrestricted access set sail a couple decades ago, and that horse has long since left the barn. If you want an internet with the kind of accountability that Kaspersky is taking about... it can't be the internet that everyone's already hooked up to. That bell can't be unrung... and if you need any more metaphors for this, I can supply them.:)
I actually don't trust the power company to provide electricity 24x7, because they don't... at least not reliably. In addition to a 3-day outage in the middle of winter several years ago, I lose power for more than a minute - often several hours - at least half a dozen times each year. So yes: in addition to a UPS for my TiVo and other electronic essentials, I have a generator big enough to run my servers, router, etc. as long as I keep feeding it gasoline.
What third-world country do I live in that requires such measures? Michigan.
Yeah, if they're behaving irrationally, expecting them to respond rationally to a device telling them that seems... optimistic. "Calm down!? Don't f*^&ing tell me to calm down!"
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Vodka and martinis are a good metaphor. Whatever "brand" of Windows you're taking about, it just isn't relevant to anyone who's gone on the wagon and left it behind for OS X and/or Linux.
If it's self-referential, it's branding. If it refers to other products, it's advertising.
While it is possible for branding to be just as obnoxious as advertising (e.g. a logo on the shirt bigger than the wearer's head), they are different beasts.
You need to buy the new 27" iMac. :)
So coin a new word for what you believe in.
The self-described libertarians who oppose free software and other radically egalitarian concepts aren't really libertarians in the sense of Ron Paul or the Libertarian Party. They're Capitalists or Plutocratics who simply want to be free of external restrictions on their ability to make money. But in our society's not-terribly-nuanced way of speaking about politics, anybody who is opposed to the State but isn't trying to replace it with the Church, gets labeled "libertarian".
My creative batteries hold more of a charge than that.
But how would you measure that in freefall? :)
Mindlessly addictive games seem like exactly the wrong approach to pass the time. You might as well just put them in a light coma instead. On the other hand, I would pay for 520-day sabbatical from the world during which I could write and illustrate a graphic novel, or some other creative pursuit that's otherwise frustrated by the distractions of Life On Earth. Also give me some ebooks to read, and maybe a limited quantity of mindless passive entertainment for seasoning, and I'd be happy.
Because anonymity doesn't give you any guarantees of protection either. Hiding behind it gives you a false sense of security... while undercutting your ability to effect change. Susan B. Anthony, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr accomplished so much more than MassSuffragette, NonViolentMahatma, and NegroDreamer ever could have. The Anonymous Coward dies many times before his death; the valiant never tastes of death but once.
Sure it was. What's the first version of Windows you bought? If it was 3.0 or later, you're just another mainstream johnny-come-lately. Before that, Microsoft had to literally give it away, by bundling a "run-time" version of it with apps like PageMaker, which were themselves only used by a small segment of the PC-using market. I don't often play the Old-Timer card (because it requires me to point out that I was born during the Johnson administration)*, but I clearly remember when Windows was a niche operating environment, and if you don't... either you're not old enough to know what you're talking about, or... you don't know what you're talking about for other reasons.
Gartner puts them at 8.8% for 2009Q03, up 8.6% from 2008Q03. IDC puts them at 9.4%. Dell and HP lead Apple comfortably, and Acer/Gateway is still out of its reach, but Apple has lately surpassed Toshiba (and any other PC vendor) in unit sales in the US. If Win7 turns out to be less of a turkey than Vista, and people turn back to PCs with Windows, that could easily deny Apple an actual 10% market share, but the historical delta is on Apple's side: they are approaching 10%.
Actually both are permissible; you're welcome to be as uninformed and in denial or reality as you want to be. It's a free world, after all. :)
*Lyndon, not Andrew
The fact that you start by talking about Win3.0 pretty much demonstrates my point. That's the first version that most people (at least those old enough) ever used, because that's when it hit the mainstream. I used to have "Windows 1.04 thru current" on my resume, and I had interviewers ask if I was kidding, because they'd never heard of "Windows 1". And these were people who were already adults in 1985. But they never used it. Most people didn't.
Throughout the 1980s, DOS ruled. Even after Windows was prematurely pushed out the door. I used a PC at my summer office job, and was a cutting-edge technodweeb who convinced my boss that this new GUI from Microsoft was worth buying for its task-switching capabilities. It was not. In fact, it was pretty much useless. Hardly any native apps (Write, Reversi, Clock... um....?), feeble support for DOS apps, lack of drivers, resource hungry, and... it didn't even have the BSOD yet; it just rebooted a lot. Like most other people who bought it, I didn't actually use it.
Then Win2.0 came out, and I upgraded (the first of many times). It was... better, and had a few good apps such as PageMaker and WinWord becoming available for it, though its multitasking still sucked and it locked up a lot (still no BSOD). It was good enough though that a niche of people emerged who actually used it productively on a day-to-day basis for things like DTP. But still just a niche. The WordPerfect-, 1-2-3-, and dBASE-using masses found it didn't meet their needs.
Win3.0 changed all that, with the sales figures you cite, because it finally had usable multitasking, a wide array of apps (e.g. Lotus, dBase, and WordPerfect had finally been ported, and Microsoft Office was even better), universal driver support, etc. More importantly, it came preinstalled on most new PCs, so you no longer needed to seek it out and figure out how to install it. That's when it stopped being a niche operating environment. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either A) an ubergeek who didn't realize at the time what an isolated early-adopting outlier he was, or B) too young to remember any of this.
As long as you have a Mac, you might want to explore a little more to see what else is out there. You risk cutting yourself off from the option of switching (back) to Windows by using Mac-only apps, but there are quite a few developers out there doing nifty stuff for OS X.
...it turns out that at least 1/3 of all people are over the age of 25.
Um, one of those "niches" is approaching double-digit market share in the US. By comparison, the Amiga is a "microniche". Which doesn't mean that the Amiga isn't worth talking about, of course. There was a time when Windows was a niche product, after all (I was there, I remember), and will be again some day.
I ride a scooter, so I'm not very good with car analogies, but I'll try:
That Yugo has already cleared the Mackinac Bridge railing.
No one offers absolute guarantees of anything. Grow up and get over it.
"We have had anonymous speech in the United States for over 200 years."
Of course we have, and it's a valuable tool to keep. But the notion I was answering, that it's the essential foundation on which free speech was built is the kind of idiocy that only a child who grew up hiding his identity on the internet would believe. I've been using my real name to express unpopular opinions both offline and online since the 1980s, and the mewling cowards who claim they can only do that when hiding behind the anonymity of the internet ought to grow a spine. At least Kaspersky has the courage to express his laughable ideas with his name attached. That's why he's influential, and they aren't.
"Anonymity has nothing to do with cowardice or irresponsibility. It has everything to do with being able to speak against the more powerful foe and hopefully survive any retribution for speaking out."
That's what "courage" means, AC. Change doesn't happen because anonymous people call for it. Change happens because people put their identities - and sometimes their safety - on the line for it. I'm against police surveillance, internet licenses, or any chilling restraint like that. Anonymity is a worthwhile option. But if the only way someone is willing to express himself is anonymously, yeah... that's cowardice.
Don't be a dolt; that's not what I said. I was rebutting the clueless assertion that free speech can't exist without anonymity. There's a reason for the term "anonymous coward": anonymity is the coward's favorite approach to free speech.
Godwin's Law, triggered already?
Sorry, dude, but you just lost the debate.
Bullshit.
The only thing you really need for free exchange of ideas is a society where that its respected, and a government that protects it rather than prosecutes it. Oh... and the courage to speak up and own your own words. Anonymity is a fallback tactic for use in oppressive societies, needed only in extreme circumstances. We managed to freely exchange ideas long before the internet gave everyone an anonymous soapbox, kids.
He may be correct that the internet shouldn't have been opened up like it was. I've been online long enough to remember when you could assume (perhaps wishfully) that nearly anyone obviously misbehaving badly on it could be identified with a couple e-mails or phone calls to the right sysadmins, and the notion of banning a user or cutting off a rogue node was plausible. I kind of miss the relative safety and decorum of that internet. But the ship of general unrestricted access set sail a couple decades ago, and that horse has long since left the barn. If you want an internet with the kind of accountability that Kaspersky is taking about... it can't be the internet that everyone's already hooked up to. That bell can't be unrung... and if you need any more metaphors for this, I can supply them. :)
I actually don't trust the power company to provide electricity 24x7, because they don't... at least not reliably. In addition to a 3-day outage in the middle of winter several years ago, I lose power for more than a minute - often several hours - at least half a dozen times each year. So yes: in addition to a UPS for my TiVo and other electronic essentials, I have a generator big enough to run my servers, router, etc. as long as I keep feeding it gasoline.
What third-world country do I live in that requires such measures? Michigan.
There, I fixed the spelling for you.
Yeah, if they're behaving irrationally, expecting them to respond rationally to a device telling them that seems... optimistic. "Calm down!? Don't f*^&ing tell me to calm down!"
So someone has invented an OFF switch for their computers?
Just call it the Large Magellanic Cloud