The linux kernel just starts slower. I still think it's better than the Windows Kernel, since everyone can pool knowledge and add features, but boot time is one of Linux's weaknesses.
Booting the linux kernel is not slow. Maybe you are confusing init scripts with the kernel booting. The kernel boots in seconds. The slowest part of a Linux boot are the init scripts because they are serialized on most distros instead of starting in parallel. There are solutions to this but none have been universally adopted.
Then Linux would be as simple as installing the minimalist distro, then doing "apt-get install smartphone-system" for a distro customized for smartphones, or "media-system" for a distro customized for mediacenter PCs, etc.
That's not going to work. Most distros use patched kernels. The patches are depenedent on the type of systems they are going to be run on. Also a number of embedded systems don't use glibc, some don't use bash.
Linux's strength is being open source. The full benefits of this are that you don't have to rely on one unaltered, monolithic system. Changing this isn't going to help Linux, it will only hurt it.
You can try and dress it up in flowery language and intellectual masturbation if you want, but at the end of the day that's what it boils down to - the sellers wants to extract as much money as possible out of the buyer, and the buyer wants to pay the least amount he can.
I guess you've never sold anything before. People pay for better service despite higher costs. Cost is not the end all be all.
To be explicit: the point here, is that CPU makers have spent $X, to produce a CPU capable of a given maximum speed. However, they are now taking the same product, making minor changes, and selling it at different price points, and multiple speeds.
You missed the point. I didn't really want to defend CPU binning and I did kind of go off on a tangent because you led me there. This was never about your principal of "pay more, get more". This was about your lack of options. You either pay the big bucks to get that one feature or you don't get it. It's not even like that in the CPU world. It was a bad analogy when you first said it and it's still a bad analogy. An atom processor doesn't have the ability to be scaled up to a 3Ghz processor but every version of Windows is really just Ultimate with features turned off.
However, in the interests of humour, and following on from the prior example, do you similarly castigate Intel because they won't offer you hundreds of different CPU options in 10Mhz clock speed increments ? Or L2 cache sizes in 512kb increments ? Would you argue the toss with Brocade because you can only enable ports on an FC switch in blocks of 8, rather than individually ? Do you refuse to buy a car because the engine options are only 1.6, 2 and 3 litres, rather than 0.1L increments from 1.6 to 3 ?
More bad comparisons? Come on. You cannot compare software and physical products. I can buy an Intel Atom, or a Core 2 Duo, which are not even remotely the same and a lot of extra R&D went into those processors by themselves. Microsoft sells ONE operating system under 6 different SKUs all at different price points. I don't want to go off on another tangent here though because the comparison is a bad one no matter how many times you want to reiterate it.
I work with a few dozen Americans. I have a reasonable idea of their attitudes towards these things, and they're further right wing than any of the Europeans, Australians, NZers, Canadians, or pretty much everyone else I've ever met - and most of them consider themselves to be relatively left-wing Americans.
You must be right then. After all a dozen Americans can surely represent the entire US. Give me some credit here. I LIVE here.
Once again, you are trying to change the subject to the semantics (how the pricing is segmented) rather than the principle (that pricing is segmented in the first place). Red Hat (for example) segment their pricing along support options. Microsoft do it along software features. The semantics are different, but the principle is the same - pay more, get more.
No you're still wrong. I can enable whatever I want on ANY linux distro without paying more, commercial or not.
So much for not conflating culture and politics.
Well you did bring it up anyway so I thought I should defend against your ludicrous claims.
However, it does make the point. I mentioned religion specifically because the general attitudes towards religion (and religious belief) in American culture are so different to those "enshrined" in the principles it was founded on.
How so? Just because there is a loud group of evangelical christians in this country doesn't make it popular opinion.
In your opinion. They still seem to be turning quite a profit and selling quite a lot of their product.
No, my comparison is fine. You're trying to setup a straw man argument. The kernel is the same in all versions of Windows, it's the extra features (basic doesn't have the good multimedia support, only Ultimate and Enterprise have BitLocker, etc). Only the Starter edition has a limit that does something close to what you suggest.. and that's not even sold in the US.
I don't think you know what a strawman argument is and no, your comparison is not fine. You're comparing a physical product with software, which is never going to work as an argument. Physical products require different parts, different assembly, and sometimes different plants to build them. This is all cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. Microsoft made Vista Ultimate, then stripped out parts to make Basic, Home Premium, etc. It's completely different and a terrible argument. Even without taking that into account your argument is still bad. Most car companies allow you to pick and choose options. Just go to any manufacturer's website. You can upgrade just the audio, or just get a sunroof, or just get the alloy wheels. There are packages but you can get most options by themselves.
Of course you may not know that simply adjusting some engine settings can dramatically alter horsepower.. but I'm sure no car manufacturer would ever just do that..
Are you a ricer? You can't dramatically alter horsepower by just "adjusting some engine settings". The only scenario where this is even remotely possible is when you have a turbo and you can adjust the computer for a higher PSI. Dramatic horsepower increases are only possible with serious work, unless you consider boring, stroking, porting, new heads, new cam, and completely new exhaust "adjustimg some engine settings".
Which has what, exactly, to do with my comment ? You might want to consider what you mean by "screwing you" and come up with some sort of definition, before you continue.
You implied that capitalism is about screwing people, which is the exact opposite of the intent of a free market economy.
So CPUs with different clock speeds (to pick but one obvious example of a typically artificial hardware restriction) don't exist in your world ?
I knew you would pick this example but your argument doesn't hold water. Overclocking isn't illegal. Upgrading your version of Windows without a license is.
Then please explain what "the principle" is, because from the arguments given thus far it sure as hell doesn't seem to be any more complicated.
You don't just pay more to get more. Like I said before, I can't pay to just get bitlocker support. I have the option of paying an exorbitant amount for an operating system (more than some computers cost!) or deal with crippleware. The problem is with bundling, and lack of options.
es, yes it is. Gun control, health care, corporate regulation - these are just a few things where the general attitudes of the people are far more right-wing in the US than pretty much anywhere else in the First World. This is before even going into cultural attitudes towards sex, violence, religion (or lack thereof), and the like.
I guess I just have to call rank here. I am an American and I know a shitload more about this country than you do. Gun control, health care, and corporate regulation are all political issues that are completely out of whack with the culture. The majority of Americans support more gun control, more coporate regulation, and government sponsored healthcare. The laws of a country don't reflect cultural attitudes.
It's actually kind of funny that you brin up religion. While the US is much more religious in general than other first world countries, religious freedom in the US is far beyond most first world countries. Laws forbid institutionalizing religion but religious symbols and dress are not denied on a personal level like they are in some other first world countries (take a look at France's and the Netherlands' strict anti-Muslim attitudes). Gay marriage is even legal in two states, whereas most first world countries only recognize civil unions between gays if they even allow them any benefits of straight couples.
Yes we Americans are more right wing in some areas but we are more left wing in others. To say that America is culturally right wing is just ignorant and probably something you shouldn't be espousing when you know so little about the country other than when you seen on TV.
And I was trying to point out that there are also significant differences in commercial Linux pricing, although that segmentation is generally built around support contracts rather than features.
The principal, however, is the same.
No, it isn't. You don't have to pay more for installing the server version, and you don't have to pay more if you want to install server tools on a workstation. It's completely different.
All companies are only looking at profit. Don't kid yourself otherwise.
Reread what I said. They are looking at ONLY profit, not satisfying their customers. Customer-oriented solutions, instead of profit-oriented solutions always win out in the end.
Of course they do. And ultimately all companies want to be able to charge the customer a fortune without having to do any work. So we work under the princpal that this inevitable and unending tug of war will produce a system that has reasonable outcomes for both sides.
Agreed, but my point is that Microsoft is now tugging too hard and there is going to be blowback.
If a centre-left party from pretty much anywhere outside the US suddenly materialised in US politics, they'd be considered raging socialist extremists, if not flat-out communists.
I'll repeat myself. The US does not have a right-wing culture, politics is another realm. There is a serious disconnect between people's attitudes in this country and their political affiliations. The book "What's the matter with Kansas" is a good example of this.
Everybody who sells you stuff is "screwing you". If they weren't, they wouldn't be making a profit.
That's not how capitalism works. Competition drives prices down unless they are artificially inflated due to monopoly status.
That is to say, for most people it's just like every other aspect of buying a computer.
Hardware and software are two completely different things. It doesn't take more R&D to turn on features that already exist.
Most non-business buyers end up with Home Premium. Most business buyers end up with Business.
If that's the case isn't it unecessary to have 5 additional versions? Just sell Home Premium and Business. It worked pretty well before as Home/Professional.
Why ? Pay more, get more. That is the principal being discussed here. How is it not comparable ?
That is not not the principle being discussed. You are oversimplifying it to suit your argument.
The *point* is that there's nothing whatsoever unusual, unexpected, or unethical in what Microsoft is doing. Every company does it with every product they can. Childish whinging is not going to change one of the fundamental tenets of capitalism, and I sincerely doubt the inherently right-wing US culture is ever going to produce government regulations limiting corporate profit margins.
Wow. I don't know what planet you came from but US culture is not inherently right-wing. The governement may be but the culture certainly isn't. Currently the government does prosecute price-gouging although this isn't price gouging there are limits on profits. This isn't unethical, unusual, or unexpected and I never said it was so don't put words in my mouth. I was orginally just making the point that there is a huge difference between the Workstation/Server options when installing Linux and the current selection of Windows builds. Commercial Linux vendors manage to get this right but Microsoft is only looking at profit. Ultimately people want a solution that is customer oriented not profit oriented.
You can look at the Civic DX vs. EX, pick one and only one feature on the EX that you want... but you can't get it in the DX.. you have to move up at least to the next level... possibly all the way to EX.
If you really want to compare the Windows OS (despite cars and operating systems being completely different things) I would say a more apt comparison would be if Honda just made one Civic but the computer limited it to 15MPG and 50MPH unless you bought the higher edition where they just unlock the features already present. It's a huge ripoff. Honda would save a ton on R&D because they wouldn't have to design different engines for different models but it would still be a ripoff.
Oddly, there are a lot of people that seem to feel this way toward Microsoft. I know several people that I feel are rather honest law abiding type citizens that do. They are totally against any kind of software piracy, except for Microsoft products. They will gladly give out copies of any Microsoft products that they own or accept pirated copies. It's actually a little odd now that I think about it.
It's not so odd when you think that most people think that Windows and Office are the computer, and without them it's just a pile of circuit boards. They don't expect the two to be separate. To a degree it is understandable. What other device do you have to purchase the operating system for? Your phone, PDA, and music player all offer free software upgrades and just work out of the box. Microsoft's market penetration with Office has made people expect Office to be installed by default. You wouldn't believe the number of people that ask me where Word is on their computer and are dumbfounded when I ask them if they bought Office.
See, for example, any car manufacturer charging $500 for a GPS unit or stereo when equivalent (if not better) models be bought off the shelf for 1/4 the price (but won't be quite as "integrated").
Just because other comapanies do it doesn't make it acceptable. They're doing the same thing, screwing you. There is a bigger problem with your comparison though. Most people have no idea what the difference is between the Windows versions and don't really know what they want. It is an OS after all. It's just a platform for running applications.
Heck, even Red Hat does it. They have at least 3 different licensing tiers. Any company that can do this, will do it, because they'd be stupid not to.
Tiered support contracts are a completely different animal. Comparing the two makes no sense.
The idea that consumers would specially pick out Microsoft for criticism, when basically everyone does it, is laughable.
This is "News for Nerds" right? You'll hear plenty of bitching about non-standard stereos and expensive GPS options on car forums.
There is a huge difference. I could understand if Windows had an install option that optimized the system for a particular setup like a workstation or a server but that's not what happens. The different Windows versions are different prices and have different features. You can't have some features without upgrading. What if all you need is bitlocker support but Windows Basic is enough for you otherwise? As it stands now you have to buy Vista Ultimate.
Again this is all hypothetical, and an exercise in proving the law is idiotic. The point is, there are plenty of ways to silence a cell phone, even without a menu item.
This is my point exactly. The pervs won't stop taking pictures because of this law. They will find a way around it but it makes life more difficult for the average consumer who doesn't want some hokey clicking noise. It's like DRM music, it makes life very difficult for the average consumer who wants to move their music from their old PC to their new one, or from their PC to a portable device but it hasn't stopped the proliferation of ripped music.
This is a good point. While IE7 isn't nearly as bad as IE6, it still sucks compared to any of the other major browsers. There are still some things that are not implemented in IE7 that are in all the other browsers and they JS implementation is by far the worst of the bunch.
Personally, I want to know what happened to the CFC scare. Supposedly our air conditioners were going to rip a hole in the Ozone layer and cook us all to death. Apparently, the CO2 we were ignoring is far more insidious.
CFCs were phased out a long time ago. They are still used in some applications but they are heavily regulated by the EPA to insure minimal impact on the environment.
Come live out in small-town Saskatchewan, Canada. Average winter day is -25C... coldest being -46C (so far this year, anyway).
My sister lives out in Minnesota and I have an aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins living in North Dakota and its no picnic there in the winter. They get down to about -40F. The really shitty part is that the summers are just as extreme in the other direction. I was in ND a few years ago for my cousins wedding and it was over 100F every day I was there. I don't know how anyone deals with those kinds of extremes. As a New Englander myself we have more whacky weather than extreme weather. A couple of years ago on a trip to Boston the temperature was near 60F in January. I've also seen it snow in late April, early May. As a side note, living in the city during the winter always sucks because the wind is ten times worse in a city than it is in the burbs or the sticks. It's like walking around in a giant wind tunnel.
I swear this was already a law as pretty much everything that takes a pictures already *does* this.
Both my digital camera and the camera on my phone DEFAULT to making a click noise when you take a picture but it can be turned off. The click noise is just hokey and annoying, I can't believe you won't be able to turn it off in the future. That's just ludicrous.
I have to use both as well, I recommend turning on ClearType fonts for the font rendering and why not use OpenOffice?
I'll probably get flamed for this but ClearType sucks. Native linux font rendering is so much better, especially with light text on a dark background. Cairo now has the ability to use cleartype-like rendering the the output is awful compared to native rendering. It looks ok with black text on a white background but as soon as you reverse the color scheme the light text becomes a multicolored mess. You can clearly see the the red, green, and blue subpixels. The native Linux algorithm does a much better job in these situations. This isn't just a cairo issue either. You can see the same issues with IE on a webpage that uses light text against a dark background.
Banshee's pretty good once you disable that "automatically open Banshee when any goddamn thing at all happens" behavior. I will not use Rhythmbox.
I agree with you there. It's the only annoying aspect of Banshee. At some point after I upgraded Banshee it decided it wanted to open all my video files. No thanks. I'll stick with mplayer for video. It was an easy fix though.
Re: Evolution, here's one tiny example. In Kmail, I can specify a custom trash folder. As a Gmail user, I find this feature indispensable. To have my delete key actually do something useful is pretty nice. Also, I find Evolution's endless parade of configuration wizards to be a useless waste of time. Just give me the damn configuration dialog and leave me alone, I know what I'm doing.
The trash is still an issue for GMail, I'll give you that. I would have thought it would be fixed by now because I keep hearing that it is being worked on. As it stands now I have to "move" my deleted emails to the GMail trash. I don't understand why they don't just map deleting GMail to moving it to GMail trash when IMAP is being used. It doesn't seem that hard. As far as the configuration wizard I think it only starts when you start Evo for the first time. Adding additional accounts or changing settings doesn't require the wizard. Maybe it's a preference because I haven't seen a wizard in years.
1) Winamp (version ??? to ???, the new version was full of bugs unlike the old one)
Although I believe that Winamp 2.x was the best version of Winamp it's quite an old paradigm now for music players and would have been overtaken by other media players anyway becaues of the lack of features.
2) Apache 1.3 -> 2.0 (I bet Slashdot is still running 1.3)
2.x is better. Adoption was slow in the beginning and a lot of people are still running 1.3 but 2.x is more featureful and I don't see any advantages 1.3 has over 2.x. It took a while but 2.x is the future and I don't think many people are going to switch from 1.3 to something other than Apache 2.x if and when they do switch so in the end it was a good upgrade.
3) Netscape (huge factor in killing the company)
The company was already going down the toilet when they rewrote Netscape. Again, in the end it became much better software despite the company's demise.
4) Perl 5.0 -> 6.0
This one is harder. Perl6 is just taking forever. It remains to be seen what impact Perl6 will have, although as more time that passes Perl6 becomes less and less relevant.
The KDE dev-team clearly communicated to the world that 4.0 and the next few releases would not be a full alternative to the 3.5-series.
I don't think they were clear as evidenced by the versioning. They pretty much came out and said that more people would try a 4.0 version than a 3.99something version which seems deceitful to me. Why else would you name a developer release as.0? It really doesn't make sense any other way.
5. The KDE application suite knocks the shit out of Gnome's across the board, all day every day. I mean, Rhythmbox? Evolution? Nautilus, for cryin' out loud? Pfft.
Hmmm. While I realize that both Evo and Nautilus have had issues in the past they have been excellent for quite some time, especially Evo. I can understand some of the nitpicking with Nautilus but what exactly is wrong with Evo? I don't use Rythmbox anymore so I can't comment on that but Banshee is awesome and I really think KDE fucked up Amarok's interface with the newest version. Maybe it's good when you use it but it looks awful from screenshots.
Yes, most OSes operate with click-to-focus; that's what I was referring to by mouse management. But for most users, they'll expect mouse focus stuff to be tied in with mouse focus. That's how it is on Windows (anything mouse-related goes under Mouse in the control panel) and, IIRC, OS X does similarly. That covers something like 99% of users. And you expect them to change to accomodate you?
You cannot change focus on Windows (at least with XP) and although I'm not sure about OSX I doubt you can do it there either so your point is moot. Just having focus options is different. It seems like you want the change to accomodate you. I know I said it before but I'll say it again, most environments are not strictly click-to-focus, windows forces focus on some dialog boxes whether you click or not and alt-tab also changes focus but has nothing to do with the mouse. I'm sorry but you're just wrong here. I really don't understand why a window management preference should be located under the mouse settings. It doens't make logical sense, except maybe to you.
I've got no problem with your OS acting weird if that's your bag, but I hope you don't expect other people to give it more than a cursory look if you're intentionally bucking the trend that 99% of the market uses. Seeing as how GNOME is in theory about the user rather than the geek.
99% of users don't even have focus options so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that GNOME is bucking the trend here.
Alt-tab task switching is essentially something that I don't feel really needs to be configured at all, but if it does--sure, put it in with keyboard options. That's the logical place, from a user POV, to look. Ask yourself this--how many users even know what "focus" means? Putting stuff under that heading makes sense?
Alt-tab can be changed by focus rules. Do you want alt-tab to just bring the window to the front or do you want it to be focused also? Focus is a very difficult thing to get right and having configuration options for it all over the place will only make it more difficult to configure.
I'm not sure if you noticed it yet but someone posted the solution to your problem and it works for me although I never even looked for the option until it was mentioned here. Check/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/cursor_blink. Its an override available for gnome-terminal exclusively which should solve your problem, which apparently never was a problem.
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Booting the linux kernel is not slow. Maybe you are confusing init scripts with the kernel booting. The kernel boots in seconds. The slowest part of a Linux boot are the init scripts because they are serialized on most distros instead of starting in parallel. There are solutions to this but none have been universally adopted.
That's not going to work. Most distros use patched kernels. The patches are depenedent on the type of systems they are going to be run on. Also a number of embedded systems don't use glibc, some don't use bash.
Linux's strength is being open source. The full benefits of this are that you don't have to rely on one unaltered, monolithic system. Changing this isn't going to help Linux, it will only hurt it.
I guess you've never sold anything before. People pay for better service despite higher costs. Cost is not the end all be all.
You missed the point. I didn't really want to defend CPU binning and I did kind of go off on a tangent because you led me there. This was never about your principal of "pay more, get more". This was about your lack of options. You either pay the big bucks to get that one feature or you don't get it. It's not even like that in the CPU world. It was a bad analogy when you first said it and it's still a bad analogy. An atom processor doesn't have the ability to be scaled up to a 3Ghz processor but every version of Windows is really just Ultimate with features turned off.
More bad comparisons? Come on. You cannot compare software and physical products. I can buy an Intel Atom, or a Core 2 Duo, which are not even remotely the same and a lot of extra R&D went into those processors by themselves. Microsoft sells ONE operating system under 6 different SKUs all at different price points. I don't want to go off on another tangent here though because the comparison is a bad one no matter how many times you want to reiterate it.
You must be right then. After all a dozen Americans can surely represent the entire US. Give me some credit here. I LIVE here.
No you're still wrong. I can enable whatever I want on ANY linux distro without paying more, commercial or not.
Well you did bring it up anyway so I thought I should defend against your ludicrous claims.
How so? Just because there is a loud group of evangelical christians in this country doesn't make it popular opinion.
I'm never going swimming again!
Huh? Was there ever a time when IIS had more market share than Apache?
I don't think you know what a strawman argument is and no, your comparison is not fine. You're comparing a physical product with software, which is never going to work as an argument. Physical products require different parts, different assembly, and sometimes different plants to build them. This is all cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. Microsoft made Vista Ultimate, then stripped out parts to make Basic, Home Premium, etc. It's completely different and a terrible argument. Even without taking that into account your argument is still bad. Most car companies allow you to pick and choose options. Just go to any manufacturer's website. You can upgrade just the audio, or just get a sunroof, or just get the alloy wheels. There are packages but you can get most options by themselves.
Are you a ricer? You can't dramatically alter horsepower by just "adjusting some engine settings". The only scenario where this is even remotely possible is when you have a turbo and you can adjust the computer for a higher PSI. Dramatic horsepower increases are only possible with serious work, unless you consider boring, stroking, porting, new heads, new cam, and completely new exhaust "adjustimg some engine settings".
You implied that capitalism is about screwing people, which is the exact opposite of the intent of a free market economy.
I knew you would pick this example but your argument doesn't hold water. Overclocking isn't illegal. Upgrading your version of Windows without a license is.
You don't just pay more to get more. Like I said before, I can't pay to just get bitlocker support. I have the option of paying an exorbitant amount for an operating system (more than some computers cost!) or deal with crippleware. The problem is with bundling, and lack of options.
I guess I just have to call rank here. I am an American and I know a shitload more about this country than you do. Gun control, health care, and corporate regulation are all political issues that are completely out of whack with the culture. The majority of Americans support more gun control, more coporate regulation, and government sponsored healthcare. The laws of a country don't reflect cultural attitudes.
It's actually kind of funny that you brin up religion. While the US is much more religious in general than other first world countries, religious freedom in the US is far beyond most first world countries. Laws forbid institutionalizing religion but religious symbols and dress are not denied on a personal level like they are in some other first world countries (take a look at France's and the Netherlands' strict anti-Muslim attitudes). Gay marriage is even legal in two states, whereas most first world countries only recognize civil unions between gays if they even allow them any benefits of straight couples.
Yes we Americans are more right wing in some areas but we are more left wing in others. To say that America is culturally right wing is just ignorant and probably something you shouldn't be espousing when you know so little about the country other than when you seen on TV.
No, it isn't. You don't have to pay more for installing the server version, and you don't have to pay more if you want to install server tools on a workstation. It's completely different.
Reread what I said. They are looking at ONLY profit, not satisfying their customers. Customer-oriented solutions, instead of profit-oriented solutions always win out in the end.
Agreed, but my point is that Microsoft is now tugging too hard and there is going to be blowback.
I'll repeat myself. The US does not have a right-wing culture, politics is another realm. There is a serious disconnect between people's attitudes in this country and their political affiliations. The book "What's the matter with Kansas" is a good example of this.
That's not how capitalism works. Competition drives prices down unless they are artificially inflated due to monopoly status.
Hardware and software are two completely different things. It doesn't take more R&D to turn on features that already exist.
If that's the case isn't it unecessary to have 5 additional versions? Just sell Home Premium and Business. It worked pretty well before as Home/Professional.
That is not not the principle being discussed. You are oversimplifying it to suit your argument.
Wow. I don't know what planet you came from but US culture is not inherently right-wing. The governement may be but the culture certainly isn't. Currently the government does prosecute price-gouging although this isn't price gouging there are limits on profits. This isn't unethical, unusual, or unexpected and I never said it was so don't put words in my mouth. I was orginally just making the point that there is a huge difference between the Workstation/Server options when installing Linux and the current selection of Windows builds. Commercial Linux vendors manage to get this right but Microsoft is only looking at profit. Ultimately people want a solution that is customer oriented not profit oriented.
If you really want to compare the Windows OS (despite cars and operating systems being completely different things) I would say a more apt comparison would be if Honda just made one Civic but the computer limited it to 15MPG and 50MPH unless you bought the higher edition where they just unlock the features already present. It's a huge ripoff. Honda would save a ton on R&D because they wouldn't have to design different engines for different models but it would still be a ripoff.
It's not so odd when you think that most people think that Windows and Office are the computer, and without them it's just a pile of circuit boards. They don't expect the two to be separate. To a degree it is understandable. What other device do you have to purchase the operating system for? Your phone, PDA, and music player all offer free software upgrades and just work out of the box. Microsoft's market penetration with Office has made people expect Office to be installed by default. You wouldn't believe the number of people that ask me where Word is on their computer and are dumbfounded when I ask them if they bought Office.
Just because other comapanies do it doesn't make it acceptable. They're doing the same thing, screwing you. There is a bigger problem with your comparison though. Most people have no idea what the difference is between the Windows versions and don't really know what they want. It is an OS after all. It's just a platform for running applications.
Tiered support contracts are a completely different animal. Comparing the two makes no sense.
This is "News for Nerds" right? You'll hear plenty of bitching about non-standard stereos and expensive GPS options on car forums.
There is a huge difference. I could understand if Windows had an install option that optimized the system for a particular setup like a workstation or a server but that's not what happens. The different Windows versions are different prices and have different features. You can't have some features without upgrading. What if all you need is bitlocker support but Windows Basic is enough for you otherwise? As it stands now you have to buy Vista Ultimate.
This is my point exactly. The pervs won't stop taking pictures because of this law. They will find a way around it but it makes life more difficult for the average consumer who doesn't want some hokey clicking noise. It's like DRM music, it makes life very difficult for the average consumer who wants to move their music from their old PC to their new one, or from their PC to a portable device but it hasn't stopped the proliferation of ripped music.
This is a good point. While IE7 isn't nearly as bad as IE6, it still sucks compared to any of the other major browsers. There are still some things that are not implemented in IE7 that are in all the other browsers and they JS implementation is by far the worst of the bunch.
CFCs were phased out a long time ago. They are still used in some applications but they are heavily regulated by the EPA to insure minimal impact on the environment.
My sister lives out in Minnesota and I have an aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins living in North Dakota and its no picnic there in the winter. They get down to about -40F. The really shitty part is that the summers are just as extreme in the other direction. I was in ND a few years ago for my cousins wedding and it was over 100F every day I was there. I don't know how anyone deals with those kinds of extremes. As a New Englander myself we have more whacky weather than extreme weather. A couple of years ago on a trip to Boston the temperature was near 60F in January. I've also seen it snow in late April, early May. As a side note, living in the city during the winter always sucks because the wind is ten times worse in a city than it is in the burbs or the sticks. It's like walking around in a giant wind tunnel.
Both my digital camera and the camera on my phone DEFAULT to making a click noise when you take a picture but it can be turned off. The click noise is just hokey and annoying, I can't believe you won't be able to turn it off in the future. That's just ludicrous.
I'll probably get flamed for this but ClearType sucks. Native linux font rendering is so much better, especially with light text on a dark background. Cairo now has the ability to use cleartype-like rendering the the output is awful compared to native rendering. It looks ok with black text on a white background but as soon as you reverse the color scheme the light text becomes a multicolored mess. You can clearly see the the red, green, and blue subpixels. The native Linux algorithm does a much better job in these situations. This isn't just a cairo issue either. You can see the same issues with IE on a webpage that uses light text against a dark background.
I agree with you there. It's the only annoying aspect of Banshee. At some point after I upgraded Banshee it decided it wanted to open all my video files. No thanks. I'll stick with mplayer for video. It was an easy fix though.
The trash is still an issue for GMail, I'll give you that. I would have thought it would be fixed by now because I keep hearing that it is being worked on. As it stands now I have to "move" my deleted emails to the GMail trash. I don't understand why they don't just map deleting GMail to moving it to GMail trash when IMAP is being used. It doesn't seem that hard. As far as the configuration wizard I think it only starts when you start Evo for the first time. Adding additional accounts or changing settings doesn't require the wizard. Maybe it's a preference because I haven't seen a wizard in years.
Although I believe that Winamp 2.x was the best version of Winamp it's quite an old paradigm now for music players and would have been overtaken by other media players anyway becaues of the lack of features.
2.x is better. Adoption was slow in the beginning and a lot of people are still running 1.3 but 2.x is more featureful and I don't see any advantages 1.3 has over 2.x. It took a while but 2.x is the future and I don't think many people are going to switch from 1.3 to something other than Apache 2.x if and when they do switch so in the end it was a good upgrade.
The company was already going down the toilet when they rewrote Netscape. Again, in the end it became much better software despite the company's demise.
This one is harder. Perl6 is just taking forever. It remains to be seen what impact Perl6 will have, although as more time that passes Perl6 becomes less and less relevant.
I don't think they were clear as evidenced by the versioning. They pretty much came out and said that more people would try a 4.0 version than a 3.99something version which seems deceitful to me. Why else would you name a developer release as .0? It really doesn't make sense any other way.
Hmmm. While I realize that both Evo and Nautilus have had issues in the past they have been excellent for quite some time, especially Evo. I can understand some of the nitpicking with Nautilus but what exactly is wrong with Evo? I don't use Rythmbox anymore so I can't comment on that but Banshee is awesome and I really think KDE fucked up Amarok's interface with the newest version. Maybe it's good when you use it but it looks awful from screenshots.
You cannot change focus on Windows (at least with XP) and although I'm not sure about OSX I doubt you can do it there either so your point is moot. Just having focus options is different. It seems like you want the change to accomodate you. I know I said it before but I'll say it again, most environments are not strictly click-to-focus, windows forces focus on some dialog boxes whether you click or not and alt-tab also changes focus but has nothing to do with the mouse. I'm sorry but you're just wrong here. I really don't understand why a window management preference should be located under the mouse settings. It doens't make logical sense, except maybe to you.
99% of users don't even have focus options so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that GNOME is bucking the trend here.
Alt-tab can be changed by focus rules. Do you want alt-tab to just bring the window to the front or do you want it to be focused also? Focus is a very difficult thing to get right and having configuration options for it all over the place will only make it more difficult to configure.
I'm not sure if you noticed it yet but someone posted the solution to your problem and it works for me although I never even looked for the option until it was mentioned here. Check /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/cursor_blink. Its an override available for gnome-terminal exclusively which should solve your problem, which apparently never was a problem.