Indeed. I'm not seeing too many comments addressing the fact that just because there's another cause doesn't mean it's not a concern. Besides that, I haven't seen any comment yet on the thought that human-produced CO2 may multiply the effect of the increased solar output. Wouldn't that make sense? The fact that the solar output is increasing seems to indicate that reducing greenhouse gasses is even MORE urgent.... and yet, there will be people who take this as a sign that humans can continue in their wasteful ways.
Yeah, I found it completely idiotic that a patch for a problem that prevents Windows from booting had to be installed from Windows. What were they thinking? The way I did it was to underclock the box with the motherboard jumpers to boot into windows, then set it back after the patch was applied. Was there a reason that didn't work for you?
Unique... hmm, by your capsule description, it sounds just like Applescript. I'll grant that there may be some amazing capability you didn't describe, but it doesn't seem unique to me.
Giving them a Heaping Pile of benefit of the doubt (which, honestly, I don't think they deserve, but only as a point of consideration)... Back in the days when printers came with both parallel and USB ports, it may have made some sense to let the consumer buy the cable separately and not stick them with extra unwanted cables. Of course, with USB only printers these days, it's totally moot.
Yeah, ditto comment. When I moved into my new place 2 years ago and got a land line, someone kept calling for "Natasha". I tried hanging up, I tried calling back the number they gave, I even said "yes" (or pressed 2 for "yes") and took the (computerized) message. It never stopped. I moved out of that place and no longer have the same number, but I bet they're still calling the poor chump who got that number after me.
Yeah, I've read about the reassigning techniques, but that wouldn't have helped the problem in question. I think the sequence was that I installed win2k on F: because I still had Win98 on C: (and various extended partitions on D and E), and booting from F: worked fine until one day I did something that caused the machine to assign C: to the boot drive.... hmm, I wish my memory weren't so fuzzy. In any case, the Win2k installer wouldn't have let me install onto a subdirectory of a C: drive that had Win98 on it (and that doesn't even address the fact that Win2k prefers to be on NTFS).
Also, too many programs (as of a few years ago) still assumed CD-ROMs were on a drive letter, giving you no option to specify something else upon install or CD presence check.
Furthermore, it doesn't address the oddness one gets with removables. One man's zip is G:, another man's M:. If you had a shortcut to a file on a removable, it wouldn't work just because you happenned to put your disk into a different drive. (e.g. multiple Zip drives or Compact Flash readers) If you assigned a removable drive letter to a directory, it would still be just as klunky. In other words, though reassigning partially remedied the aesthetic aspect of the drive letter mess, but it's still a lousy idea. If MS had gotten rid of it, one wouldn't have to work around it. It's not a useful concept any more (I don't think it ever was), and if MS had any sense, they would get rid of it in Vista.
I much prefer the way the old MacOS did volume handling. If you have a "Project X" Zip disk, it's a "Project X" disk no matter where you take it and which computer or drive you stick it into. Aliases to files on a removable always worked regardless of which drive the removable was in. That alias would work even if copied to a different computer. Startup drives were specified by an internal ID (with the User presented with volume names in a GUI), and there were no arbitrary restrictions on which partitions can boot the computer ("Only Primary partitions can be set Active" Ugh!). Moving a bootable drive to another computer or another SCSI chain did not break anything. Adding/subracting drives did not break anything. Vista could be made the same way, if they tried.
But I'm off-topic and I'm ranting. Ignore at will.
To second that other follow-up, I got my brand new pack of spare blades confiscated on a trip one time. The thing is, they didn't say anything on the way to my destination, so I figured it'd be OK. On the way back, they opened up my bag and said that I can't take the blades on my carry-on.
It's illogical because anyone trying to use those things as a weapon will shred his own fingers in the process before he can do a whole lot of damage. A pen/pencil is a way more effective weapon.... but I'm getting off-topic.
I'm probably veering off topic, but that has been my rant about Windows... why does it STILL use drive letters? I don't understand how anybody thought that was ever a good idea. (Unix-like systems or the old Mac never needed it) With Win95, they were changing so many things that they should have taken the opportunity to do away with that useless silliness. My Win2k install got hosed the same way when I did something that got the drive letters reassigned. How hard would it be to have the boot process just keep track of "the device I'm booting from" rather than the drive letter? Apparently, even a multi-billion dollar company can't hire someone who can figure that out.
They're keeping this stupid idea (drive letters) in Vista?
Profit? I thought they were legally required to break even. Not less, not more. I suppose any excess can just be turned over to the next year's budget to reduce the need to increase postage.
As for the "legal monopoly" comments, the post office was established in the Constitution, right? It was back when mailing letters was vital (and only) way to communicate across the nation. The founders thought it important enough to make sure such a vital service is not subject to the whims of private institutions. Yeah, things have changed, but at the time, they had a good reason.
Now now, don't be such a "rabid fanboy". In the context of this discussion, I thought it was pretty clear that he meant "bad for business" as in "it's so trouble free I don't have anything to do."
Being able to claim openness was one of the things I can tell the open source bigots about the Apple OS. (yes, it still wasn't open enough for some, but better than many other commercial competitors.) Just dumping that advantage wholesale seems silly to me.
veering off-topic, but the cool little jab I heard for this was "competitive multitasking". i.e. each app is fighting with all the other apps for CPU time with no central arbiter. I thought it was quite apt.
I would venture the answers are actually "Yes" (as much as applicable to your Windows example.) and "Maybe" (depends on the App--if the developer used Carbon and compiled it to be OS9 compatible.)
I can run ClarisWorks 5 on my OS X box, which is ca. 1994, I think. Pretty much anything that ran under System 7 should work OK under Classic in OS X. Stuff that's System 6 and earlier are iffy, but even System 7 had trouble with those. They are mostly games that tried to hit the Mac hardware directly.
On the OS's forward compability [or the App's backwards compatibility] front, I doubt Windows fares a whole lot better. The developer has to take heed to make sure it runs on ancient OS's. Quite a lot of games will no longer run under Win95. (What's the latest DirectX that runs on W95 Anyways?). Office 2k3 looks like it requires W2k. There are some apps that are written to be compatible that far back, just as there are apps that are written in OS9-compatible Carbon. I think your "most if not all" claim would be more correct if you dropped Win95 from your list. A lot of things seem to still be compatible with 98SE and up (though that seems to be changing rather rapidly). On the other hand, it's mostly moot, because trying to run Office 2003 on a P90 is an experience fit only for your worst enemies.
I actually saw one--or a box for one. It had the PowerPC logo and the IBM Logo, with possibly "ThinkPad" written somewhere else. I learned later that it was not a Mac clone, but rather a laptop version of an IBM workstation that ran AIX. It would be cool to get one of those to fiddle with. Given the time frame, it must have been a G2 (603/604).
I second that. Semi-offtopic, but this is a good place as any for a rant.
Not only is it not free any more, as of some time last year, eBay changed their policy so that a seller is not allowed to list Paypal as one of the payment methods unless he upgrades to the "business" account. The last time I read the TOS, a "business" account has a fee for every transaction, not just credit card. Because the junk I sell is typically less than $5, the fees will eat it up really quickly.
They delisted my listings, and when I asked for an explanation, the eBay support had the gall to tell me that the "free" (non-business) Paypal account was created so buyers can participate without signing up to the business account.
The sucky policy change, I can accept--it is their service after all--but revising history and lying to a long-time user just ticks me off to no end. Thankfully, I found Craigslist so I can take care of most of my junk jettisoning needs. Unfortunately, losing small potato like me doesn't bother eBay in the least, I bet.
Well, in TV Land, it's always true. Notice how the bad guys always "destroys" a computer by blasting the monitors with a shotgun (or a.44, or whatever), while generally leaving the box under it intact? I guess computers in TV/Movie land are useless if they can't output the gratuitous graphics and sounds. And of course, if it's on TV, it must be true!
I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that there will be plenty of other x86 OEMs who will make a Core Duo based system using the same chipset. Unlike Apple, they'll need to support the currently shipping version of XP, and therefore, will have to create the BIOS compatibility module for their machines. Because the Intel Mac is mostly standard Intel design, I'd take that compat module from a different machine and somehow shoehorn it into the Mac. Then, it should be just a matter of installing XP on it as you would with the other OEM's machine.
If anyone uses this method, please give me a cut of the prize.:)
Are you complaining about the grammar? I had to read the posting several times to parse it as well.
...a German hacker and phreaker - is trying to force Wikipedia.de from removing the family name from his entry."
I was trying to figure out what they meant, and, after reading several of the postings, eventually came to the conclusion that the intended meaning is:
...a German hacker and phreaker - is trying to force Wikipedia.de into removing the family name from his entry."
A typo/spelling error is one thing, mixing up homonyms is another, but picking a completely wrong word that doesn't even sound correct conversationally is an impressive feat of slashdot-ism. In this case, it does a particularly good job of confusing the meaning of the sentence.
But, in the context of Apple users, which is what the article is about, this is nothing new. Apple had built-in SCSI in their laptops back to the earliest Powerbooks (and possibly even the Mac Portable). They got rid of SCSI only when USB and Firewire were available on their laptops.
I again take the opportunity to lament the failure of SCSI in the market place. If it had become the standard that gets integrated into the chipset/motherboard instead of cheesy parallel ports, everyone would have had great expansion options on laptops and desktops, and it would be cheap.
I was curious about this, too, so I spent a good hour on the intel Powerbooks (I refuse to call it the MacBook Pro... horrible name) trying to stress test it, including word and excel.
I came to the conclusion that the new hardware is so much flabbergastingly faster than the old one that there is no perceptible performance hit in user-limited tasks like office apps. Word showed no lag to speak of. I intentionally created a thousand-ish cell spreadsheet with deep inter-cell dependencies to try to slow it down, but all calculations were nearly instantaneous. Certainly good enough for home use.
The big stress test was the 1080p HD movie trailer I got off of the quicktime site. It was able to play TWO of the things simultaneously without quite maxing out the CPUs. I later had the opportunity to try it on the current top of the line 15" in the SF apple store, and it choked on 1 movie.
The Blizzard rep was pretty informative, too. The had to decide which games to port to OSX Intel, and it turns out Diablo II, Starcraft would run fine under Rosetta, and Warcraft III would be on the fence. I think that's plenty good.
I would point out that in some (most?) U.S. jurisdictions, using a crosswalk ON a bike is not legal, as the cyclist has the same status as a vehicle, and a vehicle is not allowed to use a crosswalk. If a cyclist wants to use a crosswalk, he is supposed to get off and walk the bike, thus making him a pedestrian. That in no way diminishes the idiocy of the hit and run driver, however.
Hmm... this thread is veering off topic, but I would like to just vent on this stupid legacy left by the dominance of MS. Three-letter extensions. As indicated by the parent post, it's a badly limited namespace, and muddles the distinction between "file type" designation and "preferred application". Apple had something saner (separate file and creator types, as well as much greater name space for each [4-byte codes, registered with apple to avoid conflicts]). Now even they are encouraging the use of extensions to remain compatible with the lowest common denominator of computing.
I think BeOS had something even better, but it will never be in a position to influence the computing world at large.
If a sane system existed, it would have been simple to specify a file as an "executable" file type, and use the application type field to specify what kind of executable it is, thus making filtering easier.
It's lame lame lame! There.... all vented. Now back to your regularly scheduled slashdot pedantry.
I second this. I think people should realize that Linux, though MUCH improved from a few years ago, is still nowhere near "easy to install/use" as it should be.
When I first tried RH5.2 back in the day, the default install supported neither my sound card nor my network card. Without the network card working, it would be pain in the butt to look up information on the web, go back to linux, try something, fail, and go back on the web in Windows to look for more information. In the end, it looked like I had to compile the kernel module for my network card. This would have lost most newbies right away. I tried to give it a shot, but it looked like the version of libc or something was incompatible with the source code I got. (I don't remember the details)...
...So, fast forward 8 years. Everything is better now, right? Ubuntu seems to be the darling distro of choice these days, so I tried to install it on the PC I was preparing to sell off. Now that I think of it, rather coincidentally, it had exactly the same sound card (OPTI931) and the same network card (RTL8029) as the machine I was trying to get working so long ago....
Ubuntu seemed to autodetect the network card during install, but apparently did not enable it by default after it finished installing. This had me scratching my head for a while, as ifconfig didn't even show the interface. At this point, it would probably be too much to ask the "average" user to lsmod to make sure the module is loaded, determine which of the init scripts or configuration files in the/etc corresponded to enabling the network interface, determine which keyword needed to be added ('auto') in the ifup script, invoke the appropriate editor and with the right priviledges ('sudo') and save the changes.... I would not call this "easy" by any stretch of the imagination. Even nominally 'smart' people in an unrelated field would probably find it not worth the time, espeicially if Windows is 'working' for them.
On the sound card front, there was no sound on first boot. One had to know that the sound card is an OPTI931 chipset, to edit the/etc/modules file, and the name of the module to load to get it working. Again, non-trivial for non-computer geeks.
Trying to get my Intel 740 card to work was a pain. When I first installed Hoary, the X server will only run in 640x480. Despite my several attempts to muck with the Xorog.conf or run the autoconfiguration script, it STILL refused to run in anything higher. I eventually got it to work by re-installing using Breezy.
Not to make it too much of a bitch-fest, both versions of Ubuntu also insisted on trying to configure the mouse on the PS/2 port despite it being disabled in the BIOS. (the port is shot, so I'm using a serial mouse). Again, I had to go into Xorg.conf to tell it to use the Serial port and the "Microsoft" protocol. How is the newbie going to react when the first thing he sees is the mouse doesn't work?
None of these is particularly obscure hardware--stuff like the RTL8029 is practically everywhere. Serial mice aren't exactly extinct, either.
A newbie trying Linux on the same computer would probably have gone back to Windows immediately. No FUD needed.
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Indeed. I'm not seeing too many comments addressing the fact that just because there's another cause doesn't mean it's not a concern. Besides that, I haven't seen any comment yet on the thought that human-produced CO2 may multiply the effect of the increased solar output. Wouldn't that make sense? The fact that the solar output is increasing seems to indicate that reducing greenhouse gasses is even MORE urgent.... and yet, there will be people who take this as a sign that humans can continue in their wasteful ways.
Yeah, I found it completely idiotic that a patch for a problem that prevents Windows from booting had to be installed from Windows. What were they thinking? The way I did it was to underclock the box with the motherboard jumpers to boot into windows, then set it back after the patch was applied. Was there a reason that didn't work for you?
Unique... hmm, by your capsule description, it sounds just like Applescript. I'll grant that there may be some amazing capability you didn't describe, but it doesn't seem unique to me.
Giving them a Heaping Pile of benefit of the doubt (which, honestly, I don't think they deserve, but only as a point of consideration)... Back in the days when printers came with both parallel and USB ports, it may have made some sense to let the consumer buy the cable separately and not stick them with extra unwanted cables. Of course, with USB only printers these days, it's totally moot.
Yeah, ditto comment. When I moved into my new place 2 years ago and got a land line, someone kept calling for "Natasha". I tried hanging up, I tried calling back the number they gave, I even said "yes" (or pressed 2 for "yes") and took the (computerized) message. It never stopped. I moved out of that place and no longer have the same number, but I bet they're still calling the poor chump who got that number after me.
Yeah, I've read about the reassigning techniques, but that wouldn't have helped the problem in question. I think the sequence was that I installed win2k on F: because I still had Win98 on C: (and various extended partitions on D and E), and booting from F: worked fine until one day I did something that caused the machine to assign C: to the boot drive.... hmm, I wish my memory weren't so fuzzy. In any case, the Win2k installer wouldn't have let me install onto a subdirectory of a C: drive that had Win98 on it (and that doesn't even address the fact that Win2k prefers to be on NTFS).
Also, too many programs (as of a few years ago) still assumed CD-ROMs were on a drive letter, giving you no option to specify something else upon install or CD presence check.
Furthermore, it doesn't address the oddness one gets with removables. One man's zip is G:, another man's M:. If you had a shortcut to a file on a removable, it wouldn't work just because you happenned to put your disk into a different drive. (e.g. multiple Zip drives or Compact Flash readers) If you assigned a removable drive letter to a directory, it would still be just as klunky.
In other words, though reassigning partially remedied the aesthetic aspect of the drive letter mess, but it's still a lousy idea. If MS had gotten rid of it, one wouldn't have to work around it. It's not a useful concept any more (I don't think it ever was), and if MS had any sense, they would get rid of it in Vista.
I much prefer the way the old MacOS did volume handling. If you have a "Project X" Zip disk, it's a "Project X" disk no matter where you take it and which computer or drive you stick it into. Aliases to files on a removable always worked regardless of which drive the removable was in. That alias would work even if copied to a different computer. Startup drives were specified by an internal ID (with the User presented with volume names in a GUI), and there were no arbitrary restrictions on which partitions can boot the computer ("Only Primary partitions can be set Active" Ugh!). Moving a bootable drive to another computer or another SCSI chain did not break anything. Adding/subracting drives did not break anything. Vista could be made the same way, if they tried.
But I'm off-topic and I'm ranting. Ignore at will.
To second that other follow-up, I got my brand new pack of spare blades confiscated on a trip one time. The thing is, they didn't say anything on the way to my destination, so I figured it'd be OK. On the way back, they opened up my bag and said that I can't take the blades on my carry-on.
It's illogical because anyone trying to use those things as a weapon will shred his own fingers in the process before he can do a whole lot of damage. A pen/pencil is a way more effective weapon.... but I'm getting off-topic.
5 blades is just too silly.
I'm probably veering off topic, but that has been my rant about Windows... why does it STILL use drive letters? I don't understand how anybody thought that was ever a good idea. (Unix-like systems or the old Mac never needed it) With Win95, they were changing so many things that they should have taken the opportunity to do away with that useless silliness. My Win2k install got hosed the same way when I did something that got the drive letters reassigned. How hard would it be to have the boot process just keep track of "the device I'm booting from" rather than the drive letter? Apparently, even a multi-billion dollar company can't hire someone who can figure that out.
They're keeping this stupid idea (drive letters) in Vista?
Profit? I thought they were legally required to break even. Not less, not more. I suppose any excess can just be turned over to the next year's budget to reduce the need to increase postage.
As for the "legal monopoly" comments, the post office was established in the Constitution, right? It was back when mailing letters was vital (and only) way to communicate across the nation. The founders thought it important enough to make sure such a vital service is not subject to the whims of private institutions. Yeah, things have changed, but at the time, they had a good reason.
Now now, don't be such a "rabid fanboy". In the context of this discussion, I thought it was pretty clear that he meant "bad for business" as in "it's so trouble free I don't have anything to do."
Take it easy.
I'm surprised that you're the only one to make a reference to that movie. I thought of it immediately when I read the summary. Oh well.
Being able to claim openness was one of the things I can tell the open source bigots about the Apple OS. (yes, it still wasn't open enough for some, but better than many other commercial competitors.) Just dumping that advantage wholesale seems silly to me.
veering off-topic, but the cool little jab I heard for this was "competitive multitasking". i.e. each app is fighting with all the other apps for CPU time with no central arbiter. I thought it was quite apt.
I would venture the answers are actually "Yes" (as much as applicable to your Windows example.) and "Maybe" (depends on the App--if the developer used Carbon and compiled it to be OS9 compatible.)
I can run ClarisWorks 5 on my OS X box, which is ca. 1994, I think. Pretty much anything that ran under System 7 should work OK under Classic in OS X. Stuff that's System 6 and earlier are iffy, but even System 7 had trouble with those. They are mostly games that tried to hit the Mac hardware directly.
On the OS's forward compability [or the App's backwards compatibility] front, I doubt Windows fares a whole lot better. The developer has to take heed to make sure it runs on ancient OS's. Quite a lot of games will no longer run under Win95. (What's the latest DirectX that runs on W95 Anyways?). Office 2k3 looks like it requires W2k. There are some apps that are written to be compatible that far back, just as there are apps that are written in OS9-compatible Carbon. I think your "most if not all" claim would be more correct if you dropped Win95 from your list. A lot of things seem to still be compatible with 98SE and up (though that seems to be changing rather rapidly). On the other hand, it's mostly moot, because trying to run Office 2003 on a P90 is an experience fit only for your worst enemies.
I've been saying this for a while. I guess I'm not the only one to have that idea. If they're part of the problem, they should go help out.
I actually saw one--or a box for one. It had the PowerPC logo and the IBM Logo, with possibly "ThinkPad" written somewhere else. I learned later that it was not a Mac clone, but rather a laptop version of an IBM workstation that ran AIX. It would be cool to get one of those to fiddle with. Given the time frame, it must have been a G2 (603/604).
I second that. Semi-offtopic, but this is a good place as any for a rant.
Not only is it not free any more, as of some time last year, eBay changed their policy so that a seller is not allowed to list Paypal as one of the payment methods unless he upgrades to the "business" account. The last time I read the TOS, a "business" account has a fee for every transaction, not just credit card. Because the junk I sell is typically less than $5, the fees will eat it up really quickly.
They delisted my listings, and when I asked for an explanation, the eBay support had the gall to tell me that the "free" (non-business) Paypal account was created so buyers can participate without signing up to the business account.
The sucky policy change, I can accept--it is their service after all--but revising history and lying to a long-time user just ticks me off to no end. Thankfully, I found Craigslist so I can take care of most of my junk jettisoning needs. Unfortunately, losing small potato like me doesn't bother eBay in the least, I bet.
Well, in TV Land, it's always true. Notice how the bad guys always "destroys" a computer by blasting the monitors with a shotgun (or a .44, or whatever), while generally leaving the box under it intact? I guess computers in TV/Movie land are useless if they can't output the gratuitous graphics and sounds. And of course, if it's on TV, it must be true!
I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that there will be plenty of other x86 OEMs who will make a Core Duo based system using the same chipset. Unlike Apple, they'll need to support the currently shipping version of XP, and therefore, will have to create the BIOS compatibility module for their machines. Because the Intel Mac is mostly standard Intel design, I'd take that compat module from a different machine and somehow shoehorn it into the Mac. Then, it should be just a matter of installing XP on it as you would with the other OEM's machine.
:)
If anyone uses this method, please give me a cut of the prize.
I was trying to figure out what they meant, and, after reading several of the postings, eventually came to the conclusion that the intended meaning is:
A typo/spelling error is one thing, mixing up homonyms is another, but picking a completely wrong word that doesn't even sound correct conversationally is an impressive feat of slashdot-ism. In this case, it does a particularly good job of confusing the meaning of the sentence.
But, in the context of Apple users, which is what the article is about, this is nothing new. Apple had built-in SCSI in their laptops back to the earliest Powerbooks (and possibly even the Mac Portable). They got rid of SCSI only when USB and Firewire were available on their laptops.
I again take the opportunity to lament the failure of SCSI in the market place. If it had become the standard that gets integrated into the chipset/motherboard instead of cheesy parallel ports, everyone would have had great expansion options on laptops and desktops, and it would be cheap.
I was curious about this, too, so I spent a good hour on the intel Powerbooks (I refuse to call it the MacBook Pro... horrible name) trying to stress test it, including word and excel.
I came to the conclusion that the new hardware is so much flabbergastingly faster than the old one that there is no perceptible performance hit in user-limited tasks like office apps. Word showed no lag to speak of. I intentionally created a thousand-ish cell spreadsheet with deep inter-cell dependencies to try to slow it down, but all calculations were nearly instantaneous. Certainly good enough for home use.
The big stress test was the 1080p HD movie trailer I got off of the quicktime site. It was able to play TWO of the things simultaneously without quite maxing out the CPUs. I later had the opportunity to try it on the current top of the line 15" in the SF apple store, and it choked on 1 movie.
The Blizzard rep was pretty informative, too. The had to decide which games to port to OSX Intel, and it turns out Diablo II, Starcraft would run fine under Rosetta, and Warcraft III would be on the fence. I think that's plenty good.
I doubt the performancw would be an issue.
I would point out that in some (most?) U.S. jurisdictions, using a crosswalk ON a bike is not legal, as the cyclist has the same status as a vehicle, and a vehicle is not allowed to use a crosswalk. If a cyclist wants to use a crosswalk, he is supposed to get off and walk the bike, thus making him a pedestrian. That in no way diminishes the idiocy of the hit and run driver, however.
Hmm... this thread is veering off topic, but I would like to just vent on this stupid legacy left by the dominance of MS. Three-letter extensions. As indicated by the parent post, it's a badly limited namespace, and muddles the distinction between "file type" designation and "preferred application". Apple had something saner (separate file and creator types, as well as much greater name space for each [4-byte codes, registered with apple to avoid conflicts]). Now even they are encouraging the use of extensions to remain compatible with the lowest common denominator of computing.
I think BeOS had something even better, but it will never be in a position to influence the computing world at large.
If a sane system existed, it would have been simple to specify a file as an "executable" file type, and use the application type field to specify what kind of executable it is, thus making filtering easier.
It's lame lame lame! There.... all vented. Now back to your regularly scheduled slashdot pedantry.
When I first tried RH5.2 back in the day, the default install supported neither my sound card nor my network card. Without the network card working, it would be pain in the butt to look up information on the web, go back to linux, try something, fail, and go back on the web in Windows to look for more information. In the end, it looked like I had to compile the kernel module for my network card. This would have lost most newbies right away. I tried to give it a shot, but it looked like the version of libc or something was incompatible with the source code I got. (I don't remember the details)...
Ubuntu seemed to autodetect the network card during install, but apparently did not enable it by default after it finished installing. This had me scratching my head for a while, as ifconfig didn't even show the interface. At this point, it would probably be too much to ask the "average" user to lsmod to make sure the module is loaded, determine which of the init scripts or configuration files in the /etc corresponded to enabling the network interface, determine which keyword needed to be added ('auto') in the ifup script, invoke the appropriate editor and with the right priviledges ('sudo') and save the changes.... I would not call this "easy" by any stretch of the imagination. Even nominally 'smart' people in an unrelated field would probably find it not worth the time, espeicially if Windows is 'working' for them.
On the sound card front, there was no sound on first boot. One had to know that the sound card is an OPTI931 chipset, to edit the /etc/modules file, and the name of the module to load to get it working. Again, non-trivial for non-computer geeks.
Trying to get my Intel 740 card to work was a pain. When I first installed Hoary, the X server will only run in 640x480. Despite my several attempts to muck with the Xorog.conf or run the autoconfiguration script, it STILL refused to run in anything higher. I eventually got it to work by re-installing using Breezy.
Not to make it too much of a bitch-fest, both versions of Ubuntu also insisted on trying to configure the mouse on the PS/2 port despite it being disabled in the BIOS. (the port is shot, so I'm using a serial mouse). Again, I had to go into Xorg.conf to tell it to use the Serial port and the "Microsoft" protocol. How is the newbie going to react when the first thing he sees is the mouse doesn't work?
None of these is particularly obscure hardware--stuff like the RTL8029 is practically everywhere. Serial mice aren't exactly extinct, either. A newbie trying Linux on the same computer would probably have gone back to Windows immediately. No FUD needed.