Actually, users who know what they are doing don't need NoScript, we just don't visit shitty sites in the first place, but hey, whatever makes you feel superior to... well whoever you think NoScript makes you better than.
As various ad sites that legitimate businesses use have had repeated reports of malware embedded in their flash, graphical, or other payloads, I wish you the best of luck, and promise not to say I told you so when you become one of the millions of zombies out there that help infect the rest of the world.
Sadly enough, it's people like you who tend to be the highest point of people who get infected. You know, the ones who say 'it won't be me'.
Arrogance tends to be the easiest weakness for virus attacks.
There's value there. Glue, meat, bone marrow for black market bone marrow transplants... human? We don't need no stinking human...
Why, they can get tripple the value with the horse being dead than alive!!
Maybe MPAA were the ones who actually RELEASED the code, in order to make more money by charging people for using the code that they themselves released. Sounds like a perfect dead horse money maker.
It seems? So you're basing these comments off of something, rather than blowing hot air? I would love to see some examples of these mysterious and unexpected UAC prompts. SInce you've never used Windows 7, I'm sure this will be a hard request.
I find a lot of games and some applications (mostly window tool applications like spybot search & destroy) always brings up the UAC. It'd be nice to be able to tag it saying 'yes, I know this application will bring up this prompt, now ignore this one application' without having to raise or lower the security operating system wide, but that's my personal beef with Win 7.
What's the difference? So they have to click instead of entering "123" and you've slowed them down a 10th of a second. And seriously, this is the Linux user's solution to a user problem? Modify the behavior by making the UI a pain in the ass and pissing the user off? No wonder no one uses your OS.
And I'm assuming you've used this OS to compare what he's saying or are you taking someone else's word for something without first hand experience? You know, like you've accused the other guy of doing? Just curious.
I'm sorry, root can do absolutely ANYTHING to a Linux machine. If a user is convinced (through way of enticing screensaver) to give a malicious piece of code root access, what exactly is stopping it from destroying the system? Also for most users destroying home is equivalent to destroying the system.
You've obviously not used Linux. LIDS, ACL's, SELinux, and many other tools, including, but not limited to chroot jails, allows you to lock down a system, even from root, from specific areas. While I'm sure Windows has similiar 'tools', especially in a networked environment where you can set up security policies, the fact that you said Linux can be configured to allow 'root to do absolutely ANYTHING to a Linux machine' is a fallacy and you need to retract that statement. Your opinion is flawed. Perhaps because like you accused someone else, you've not used Linux enough to draw conclusions?
Because we all know Linux is bug free
This was a stupid statement. Nothing is bug free. You're obviously trolling, but at least Linux seems to address bugs, generally (but not always) faster than the Windows counterpart. And yes, there's several links to confirm that, and no, I'm not going to bother repeating other slashdot topics to feed you.
If you had even bothered to use Windows 7, you wold know it's stable, fast, secure, and a pleasure to use. At least that's the general consensus. Of course you should actually, I don't now, USE the software before you critique it. I still can't believe you're basing these assertions from your experience with pre-SP1 XP
Oh agreed, it's more stable than XP, but as I've had it bluescreen a few times, sometimes with similiar screens as XP (like the NOT_LT_OR_EQ bs), or have explorer crash on me asking me kindly if I want to send the bug report to Microsoft (I do of course), the fact your global comment of 'stable' is flawed. More stable than XP, yes. Stable globally? No.
Fast, yes, it's faster. But on the same hardware that XP ran 'fast' on it's actually a touch slower. It needs better video and better CPU to actually run 'faster'. Does this obviously by better threading, better memory management, and streamlined I/O. Only took them 20 years to do it right (or at least 'better'). So while overall, yes, it IS faster, this is also bias based on the hardware you run it on.
Secure? The security is about equal to Win 2008 server for security, which while a great improvement over other windows, is still, frankly broken at the object layer allowing viruses (like flash viruses, email viruses, etc) to propigate quite nicely. The fact that other operating systems have less (or no) real viruses, while enjoyable, is moot. The fact is Windows still does, thus, shoots th
Sad how people are always ready to blame Religion or some other group (religious or otherwise) where more than one individual organizes together for a common goal as their 'cause' or their 'reason' for how they do things.
I mean, heaven forbid that the actual cause is on the individual doing the crime. Why, that'd be too obvious.
We live in a wonderful world. Regardless of what we do, we never have to take responsibility, because there's always someone else to blame.
Americano, I think they're talking more on your apparent attitude more than your actual facts.
Also, you can't judge a person and categorize them into pre-fabricated slots just on your initial thoughts and whims. While it's most assuredly the human thing to do, it's not entirely logical or frankly tactful.
Let's run some things through.
First, if someone younger than me came up to me and tried to categorize me into either the 'old worthless fossil' or 'hipster well hung old man' for the IT industry, I'd first wonder what background the person came from to ever assume there was ever a total black and white definition. That would immediately put me in question on what else this person thinks that could be black and white, will they automatically pre-judge code or other situations in a similar fashion? Will they think and dismiss out of context things they just have a sudden humor or thought on?
Secondly, you brought up fresh ideas, fresh knowledge. How do you know its fresh? Because it wasn't brought up at a meeting? Because it was never implemented? Because it was never mentioned? Maybe your idea was previously tried and decided against? Not every single past idea will be documented or brought up onto the table. Frankly, if every single failure and method was documented, we'd have no time to do our work. This is where that experience comes in. So while I'm sure some of those 'old bastards' who say stuff like 'If you were around as long as me, you'd know it'd not work' are saying it to be bastards, I'd wager the majority of them are saying it because 'hey, it won't work, no, I don't want to spend the entire day to explain to you WHY it won't work, because I actually want to get my shit done and go home and drink my scotch, not convince some new kid on why something I know won't work won't work'. Maybe they're grumpy because they're frankly tired of repeating themselves. Hell, in my career I know I am.
I know you said in your post that you will take well argued points as correct/incorrect. But it doesn't help matters if you walk into these meetings with preconceived notions. I think the 'old guy' was frankly calling you on the rug with your preconceived notions, which despite your (giving you the benefit of the doubt) honest earmark into wanting the best method for IT solutions, you vigorously tainted such immediately upon your start of the post with your preconceived thoughts and commentary.
It's the perceived presumption and attitude of the younger people coming in (as a whole, there are exceptions) that tend to piss off the older generation, not the fact they may actually know more or less.
Want to know a secret? Most older people don't really care if you know more or less than we do. We just want someone who can fit in, work well, bring up new ideas, and become part of a working environment, not try to spend their time proving themselves. You got the job, you proved yourself, now how about doing the job and stop trying to impress?
I could repeat the results provided in the article, but I noticed that how 'sweaty' or 'oily' your finger is effects the results, as well as how fast you move your finger.
If I move my finger lethargically slow it gets more wiggles. If I zip my finger across the screen, the lines are nearly perfectly straight, every single time. It seems to show that the Droid tends to have different algos for their autocorrection. Maybe they have more corrections a second going on than the iphone. No idea. Hard to tell without ripping the logic of both the drivers to see how it does autocorrection. But I think this may be more a software/driver issue than hardware.
It seems the results are baked entirely on how you happen to test it, just like any other statistic, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Sounds a lot like that machine in 5th Element that recreated the entire body, bones and all, just from a genetic sequence marker left on a burned off hand.
Have them listen on a new port. But honestly, if they want to run telnet, the security violations alone regarding it should cause them to cut off their own fingers.
--> sendmail and postfix installations
mail sysadmin@yourbox Subject: Request Dear sir/madam. I would like to have sendmail and/or postfix installed so that I can (blah blah blah) Thank you. .
--> 1G of maps and other crap 1. Do you have the quota? yes? Good, home directory it. 2. You do not have the quota? mail sysadmin@yourbox Subject: More Quota Dear sir/madam. I would like to have more quota to install maps and/or some random game. Thank you. .
--> Updating packages that the admin knows will generate a conflict with other applications? 1. This brings up why you need this 'conflicting' application to begin with. A lot of times you don't even need it. 2. The solution will either run it yourself on a different port for your own use (which sounds like would be the issue) or... mail sysadmin@yourbox Subject: Application Dear sir/madam. I would like to have package X installed. I know this conflicts with package Y. If this is not feasible can you give me working alternatives? Thank you. .
There's reasons systems are ran by, system administrators. The same is said for windows servers. They don't allow users to install 'confliction applications' either or other centralized applications that require system access. Why should Linux be different?
If it's a workstation, you should already have root access, being said workstation owner.
If it's a friend's workstation and he was generious enough to grant you user access, assume it's a server, and your friend is the system adminstrator you need to contact.
And yet, many thousands of years ago, the existence of planets, stars, celestial bodies, and most of the science we take for granted was also a 'wacky belief'.
The inability of proof is not the same as the ability to disprove.
Not entirely true. I've put in comments and sidelines in code when you had to put in code to get around anomalies in compilers, or sadly still, poor design decisions on 3rd party software you don't have time to work around or don't have the authority or decision to work around that you're forced to include as an API or maybe a subset library.
For example, in an older glib if you had time_t defined before a char * pointer, you could mess up with the stack on the linker.
Other platforms have certain library calls and/or function calls that are slightly different and require different methods to attack with various #ifdefs or autoconf changes. Having a bit of rhetoric to define why you did something the way you did, guarantees that the next person to pick up your code won't spend unnecessary time digesting code that a simple 20 second read followed by an 'oh yea, that's right' would solve.
In today's world, making things as fast as possible to do 'catch up' could make the difference between 'make' and 'break' in the corporate model.
Microsoft also had 20ish years to build out their marketing model.
Corporate America, nay, the world is entrenched into Microsoft. And it makes sense because it's what you can guarentee business X that you will work with will have. You can't guarentee they'll have Solaris, Mac, Linux, BSD, Other.
As for the updates and drivers automatically installed? Redhat does that. CentOS does that. Debian does this. SuSE does this.
There is even models for Zen and other built-in packages for remote desktop solutions, auto building/mirroring, and pretty much everything else that Microsoft currently does.
I'll grant you however that Microsoft has a great lead on Linux, Mac, Sun Solaris, and many other systems. That's in their (again) marketing, and support. They have a multibillion dollar model around it afterall.
And while Vista failed miserably, they still sold significant amounts of them soley based on the fact when you bought new computers you rarely had a choice. Corporate america had a bit more leeway because of support contracts, but walking into a store, when you bought PC's, it came preinstalled with Vista. Most people, being lazy, bought these systems. So while Vista 'sucked', it was still used because it was 'available'.
It's all about fighting an upstream battle.
When you take the bare OS, and cut out the marketing crap, the support crap, and everything else, frankly, while one has pluses the other does not, and visa versa, they are, at the core, similiar to what they can do.
What Linux doesn't have that Windows does have is:
1) A huge budget on Support contracts 2) Corporate america buying into them on workstations 3) An existing business model with existing centered applications that you're guarenteed other corporations will have. 4) A phone number you can bitch at someone if a driver you downloaded or a piece of hardware you installed won't work. 5) A large supporting group of software, including games, photo/video editing, and authoring tools that are considered a corporate standard. 6) A single environment that you know if you go next door to cousin Vinny's your software will work 'out of the box' on his system.
Linux has a long way to go, I'm not debating that point at all.
What I am getting into is that the reason Windows is at the current point is because of Marketing and a stranglehold. That was my original comment, which frankly is the truth. The fact that Linux does not have the marketing or a stranglehold is rather obvious:)
As for the Dell selling, let's reread part of my post that you intended to slaughter...
--> If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.
That would be Dell. Some other small time companies also sell Linux installed systems or bare-bone systems.
Now, a counter to your point. Can a family enter Bestbuy and get a large selection of systems with Linux installed? No? Hum. How about Frys? No? hum. Oh wait, maybe Target or Walmart? No again? hum.
People 'like Windows' because they are 'used to windows'. Again, because of Microsoft's excellent marketing and being able to corner the market on them.
Mac has a larger window than Linux because they have dedicated storefronts with Macs as well as pushing some systems to Bestbuy and other chains. Their marketing is also quite nice, they're just playing a huge game of catchup.
I have no intention of modding you anyway you want. What others do is their own business. But if you're going to say the Truth, at least get it right.
Slashdot Mirror
Shove it in the mouth of a tuna and head out to sea to chum the waters for great white sharks.
Actually, users who know what they are doing don't need NoScript, we just don't visit shitty sites in the first place, but hey, whatever makes you feel superior to ... well whoever you think NoScript makes you better than.
As various ad sites that legitimate businesses use have had repeated reports of malware embedded in their flash, graphical, or other payloads, I wish you the best of luck, and promise not to say I told you so when you become one of the millions of zombies out there that help infect the rest of the world.
Sadly enough, it's people like you who tend to be the highest point of people who get infected. You know, the ones who say 'it won't be me'.
Arrogance tends to be the easiest weakness for virus attacks.
... with a post-it note on her navel 'viruses at your own risk', and 'beware, she may be remote controlled'...
Sorry, the MPAA can not let the dead horse go.
There's value there. Glue, meat, bone marrow for black market bone marrow transplants... human? We don't need no stinking human...
Why, they can get tripple the value with the horse being dead than alive!!
Maybe MPAA were the ones who actually RELEASED the code, in order to make more money by charging people for using the code that they themselves released. Sounds like a perfect dead horse money maker.
It seems? So you're basing these comments off of something, rather than blowing hot air? I would love to see some examples of these mysterious and unexpected UAC prompts. SInce you've never used Windows 7, I'm sure this will be a hard request.
I find a lot of games and some applications (mostly window tool applications like spybot search & destroy) always brings up the UAC. It'd be nice to be able to tag it saying 'yes, I know this application will bring up this prompt, now ignore this one application' without having to raise or lower the security operating system wide, but that's my personal beef with Win 7.
What's the difference? So they have to click instead of entering "123" and you've slowed them down a 10th of a second. And seriously, this is the Linux user's solution to a user problem? Modify the behavior by making the UI a pain in the ass and pissing the user off? No wonder no one uses your OS.
And I'm assuming you've used this OS to compare what he's saying or are you taking someone else's word for something without first hand experience? You know, like you've accused the other guy of doing? Just curious.
I'm sorry, root can do absolutely ANYTHING to a Linux machine. If a user is convinced (through way of enticing screensaver) to give a malicious piece of code root access, what exactly is stopping it from destroying the system? Also for most users destroying home is equivalent to destroying the system.
You've obviously not used Linux. LIDS, ACL's, SELinux, and many other tools, including, but not limited to chroot jails, allows you to lock down a system, even from root, from specific areas. While I'm sure Windows has similiar 'tools', especially in a networked environment where you can set up security policies, the fact that you said Linux can be configured to allow 'root to do absolutely ANYTHING to a Linux machine' is a fallacy and you need to retract that statement. Your opinion is flawed. Perhaps because like you accused someone else, you've not used Linux enough to draw conclusions?
Because we all know Linux is bug free
This was a stupid statement. Nothing is bug free. You're obviously trolling, but at least Linux seems to address bugs, generally (but not always) faster than the Windows counterpart. And yes, there's several links to confirm that, and no, I'm not going to bother repeating other slashdot topics to feed you.
If you had even bothered to use Windows 7, you wold know it's stable, fast, secure, and a pleasure to use. At least that's the general consensus. Of course you should actually, I don't now, USE the software before you critique it. I still can't believe you're basing these assertions from your experience with pre-SP1 XP
Oh agreed, it's more stable than XP, but as I've had it bluescreen a few times, sometimes with similiar screens as XP (like the NOT_LT_OR_EQ bs), or have explorer crash on me asking me kindly if I want to send the bug report to Microsoft (I do of course), the fact your global comment of 'stable' is flawed. More stable than XP, yes. Stable globally? No.
Fast, yes, it's faster. But on the same hardware that XP ran 'fast' on it's actually a touch slower. It needs better video and better CPU to actually run 'faster'. Does this obviously by better threading, better memory management, and streamlined I/O. Only took them 20 years to do it right (or at least 'better'). So while overall, yes, it IS faster, this is also bias based on the hardware you run it on.
Secure? The security is about equal to Win 2008 server for security, which while a great improvement over other windows, is still, frankly broken at the object layer allowing viruses (like flash viruses, email viruses, etc) to propigate quite nicely. The fact that other operating systems have less (or no) real viruses, while enjoyable, is moot. The fact is Windows still does, thus, shoots th
Dealing with a multi woman relationship, I doubt he'll need the extra periods.
Sad how people are always ready to blame Religion or some other group (religious or otherwise) where more than one individual organizes together for a common goal as their 'cause' or their 'reason' for how they do things.
I mean, heaven forbid that the actual cause is on the individual doing the crime. Why, that'd be too obvious.
We live in a wonderful world. Regardless of what we do, we never have to take responsibility, because there's always someone else to blame.
Bravo world. Bravo.
Twilight Zone episode. Fairly good one actually.
Episode was called (if memory serves) Probe 7, over and out.
Oh, and people forgot a classic: It's a cook book... a cook book!!!
Americano, I think they're talking more on your apparent attitude more than your actual facts.
Also, you can't judge a person and categorize them into pre-fabricated slots just on your initial thoughts and whims. While it's most assuredly the human thing to do, it's not entirely logical or frankly tactful.
Let's run some things through.
First, if someone younger than me came up to me and tried to categorize me into either the 'old worthless fossil' or 'hipster well hung old man' for the IT industry, I'd first wonder what background the person came from to ever assume there was ever a total black and white definition. That would immediately put me in question on what else this person thinks that could be black and white, will they automatically pre-judge code or other situations in a similar fashion? Will they think and dismiss out of context things they just have a sudden humor or thought on?
Secondly, you brought up fresh ideas, fresh knowledge. How do you know its fresh? Because it wasn't brought up at a meeting? Because it was never implemented? Because it was never mentioned? Maybe your idea was previously tried and decided against? Not every single past idea will be documented or brought up onto the table. Frankly, if every single failure and method was documented, we'd have no time to do our work. This is where that experience comes in. So while I'm sure some of those 'old bastards' who say stuff like 'If you were around as long as me, you'd know it'd not work' are saying it to be bastards, I'd wager the majority of them are saying it because 'hey, it won't work, no, I don't want to spend the entire day to explain to you WHY it won't work, because I actually want to get my shit done and go home and drink my scotch, not convince some new kid on why something I know won't work won't work'. Maybe they're grumpy because they're frankly tired of repeating themselves. Hell, in my career I know I am.
I know you said in your post that you will take well argued points as correct/incorrect. But it doesn't help matters if you walk into these meetings with preconceived notions. I think the 'old guy' was frankly calling you on the rug with your preconceived notions, which despite your (giving you the benefit of the doubt) honest earmark into wanting the best method for IT solutions, you vigorously tainted such immediately upon your start of the post with your preconceived thoughts and commentary.
It's the perceived presumption and attitude of the younger people coming in (as a whole, there are exceptions) that tend to piss off the older generation, not the fact they may actually know more or less.
Want to know a secret? Most older people don't really care if you know more or less than we do. We just want someone who can fit in, work well, bring up new ideas, and become part of a working environment, not try to spend their time proving themselves. You got the job, you proved yourself, now how about doing the job and stop trying to impress?
That's what we 'old dinos' are saying.
Often it seems that project management is just a job title, not a skill...
I usually see the term 'project management' as part of the title of books in the field 'top oxymorons in America'
I could repeat the results provided in the article, but I noticed that how 'sweaty' or 'oily' your finger is effects the results, as well as how fast you move your finger.
If I move my finger lethargically slow it gets more wiggles. If I zip my finger across the screen, the lines are nearly perfectly straight, every single time. It seems to show that the Droid tends to have different algos for their autocorrection. Maybe they have more corrections a second going on than the iphone. No idea. Hard to tell without ripping the logic of both the drivers to see how it does autocorrection. But I think this may be more a software/driver issue than hardware.
It seems the results are baked entirely on how you happen to test it, just like any other statistic, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
SpaceShip2 will be rechristened to Jupiter2 once the new drive system is installed.
A family has volunteered for the first manned flight. The child appears to own a Robosapien named 'Robot'.
They're still waiting for the paranoid sociopathic doctor who is expected to arrive shortly...
Sounds a lot like that machine in 5th Element that recreated the entire body, bones and all, just from a genetic sequence marker left on a burned off hand.
Yea, I tend to eat that quality meat quite a lot at the nearby Brazilian steakhouse.
Meat coma good.
--> What about installing finger/telnet/etc?
Have them listen on a new port. But honestly, if they want to run telnet, the security violations alone regarding it should cause them to cut off their own fingers.
--> sendmail and postfix installations
mail sysadmin@yourbox
Subject: Request
Dear sir/madam. I would like to have sendmail and/or postfix installed so that I can (blah blah blah)
Thank you.
.
--> 1G of maps and other crap
1. Do you have the quota? yes? Good, home directory it.
2. You do not have the quota?
mail sysadmin@yourbox
Subject: More Quota
Dear sir/madam. I would like to have more quota to install maps and/or some random game.
Thank you.
.
--> Updating packages that the admin knows will generate a conflict with other applications?
1. This brings up why you need this 'conflicting' application to begin with. A lot of times you don't even need it.
2. The solution will either run it yourself on a different port for your own use (which sounds like would be the issue) or...
mail sysadmin@yourbox
Subject: Application
Dear sir/madam. I would like to have package X installed. I know this conflicts with package Y.
If this is not feasible can you give me working alternatives?
Thank you.
.
There's reasons systems are ran by, system administrators. The same is said for windows servers. They don't allow users to install 'confliction applications' either or other centralized applications that require system access. Why should Linux be different?
If it's a workstation, you should already have root access, being said workstation owner.
If it's a friend's workstation and he was generious enough to grant you user access, assume it's a server, and your friend is the system adminstrator you need to contact.
I don't see a problem here.
You forget. Microsoft doesn't deal with doors, they deal with Windows. Sadly, they'll be installed next Tuesday...
And yet, many thousands of years ago, the existence of planets, stars, celestial bodies, and most of the science we take for granted was also a 'wacky belief'.
The inability of proof is not the same as the ability to disprove.
Not entirely true. I've put in comments and sidelines in code when you had to put in code to get around anomalies in compilers, or sadly still, poor design decisions on 3rd party software you don't have time to work around or don't have the authority or decision to work around that you're forced to include as an API or maybe a subset library.
For example, in an older glib if you had time_t defined before a char * pointer, you could mess up with the stack on the linker.
Other platforms have certain library calls and/or function calls that are slightly different and require different methods to attack with various #ifdefs or autoconf changes. Having a bit of rhetoric to define why you did something the way you did, guarantees that the next person to pick up your code won't spend unnecessary time digesting code that a simple 20 second read followed by an 'oh yea, that's right' would solve.
In today's world, making things as fast as possible to do 'catch up' could make the difference between 'make' and 'break' in the corporate model.
If you attacked a pacemaker, they'd wind up pretty heartless as well.
Microsoft's behavior is not a shadow...
I think Microsoft see themselves more as Vorlons, personally...
Well damn. I knew I shouldn't have bought SCO's version...
sudo: command not found: Microsoft has just charged your account for attempting to access 'bill' to make 'sandwich'.
Microsoft also had 20ish years to build out their marketing model.
Corporate America, nay, the world is entrenched into Microsoft. And it makes sense because it's what you can guarentee business X that you will work with will have. You can't guarentee they'll have Solaris, Mac, Linux, BSD, Other.
As for the updates and drivers automatically installed? Redhat does that. CentOS does that. Debian does this. SuSE does this.
There is even models for Zen and other built-in packages for remote desktop solutions, auto building/mirroring, and pretty much everything else that Microsoft currently does.
I'll grant you however that Microsoft has a great lead on Linux, Mac, Sun Solaris, and many other systems. That's in their (again) marketing, and support. They have a multibillion dollar model around it afterall.
And while Vista failed miserably, they still sold significant amounts of them soley based on the fact when you bought new computers you rarely had a choice. Corporate america had a bit more leeway because of support contracts, but walking into a store, when you bought PC's, it came preinstalled with Vista. Most people, being lazy, bought these systems. So while Vista 'sucked', it was still used because it was 'available'.
It's all about fighting an upstream battle.
When you take the bare OS, and cut out the marketing crap, the support crap, and everything else, frankly, while one has pluses the other does not, and visa versa, they are, at the core, similiar to what they can do.
What Linux doesn't have that Windows does have is:
1) A huge budget on Support contracts
2) Corporate america buying into them on workstations
3) An existing business model with existing centered applications that you're guarenteed other corporations will have.
4) A phone number you can bitch at someone if a driver you downloaded or a piece of hardware you installed won't work.
5) A large supporting group of software, including games, photo/video editing, and authoring tools that are considered a corporate standard.
6) A single environment that you know if you go next door to cousin Vinny's your software will work 'out of the box' on his system.
Linux has a long way to go, I'm not debating that point at all.
What I am getting into is that the reason Windows is at the current point is because of Marketing and a stranglehold. That was my original comment, which frankly is the truth. The fact that Linux does not have the marketing or a stranglehold is rather obvious :)
Thanks I guess for the sarcasm on the +5.
As for the Dell selling, let's reread part of my post that you intended to slaughter...
--> If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.
That would be Dell. Some other small time companies also sell Linux installed systems or bare-bone systems.
Now, a counter to your point. Can a family enter Bestbuy and get a large selection of systems with Linux installed? No? Hum.
How about Frys? No? hum.
Oh wait, maybe Target or Walmart? No again? hum.
People 'like Windows' because they are 'used to windows'. Again, because of Microsoft's excellent marketing and being able to corner the market on them.
Mac has a larger window than Linux because they have dedicated storefronts with Macs as well as pushing some systems to Bestbuy and other chains. Their marketing is also quite nice, they're just playing a huge game of catchup.
I have no intention of modding you anyway you want. What others do is their own business. But if you're going to say the Truth, at least get it right.
Windows XP ... http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-30966-XP-boot-failure-after-using-windows-update.html
Or Windows Vista ... http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/769242-failure-boot-right-after-windows.html
Or Windows 7 ... http://windowsfixup.com/2009/04/latest-windows-7-updates-cause-bsod-fix/