Your comment is somewhat disingenuous. For argument sake you can cite that there are probably an equal number of stupid people buying Macs and PCs, by percentage.
Now take a look at the architectures. A dozen years of Windows since Win95 has only progressively made Windows more secure, and while better than before, still full of a superfluity of exploits (for differing reasons, again, not counting user "stupidity"). You have to do a lot of work to iteratively get past the gatekeepers in both operating systems; it's not as trivial an exercise as it once was; all the really wide-open machines are 0w3d by someone by now.... as part of a botnet.
Given a 5-10% of the market for Apple, depending on whom you believe, you're only now seeing a MacOS ruse. Think about that for a moment. Think about both motive and opportunity. Motive we understand. Opportunity hasn't been very strong until now. The weapon? Two decades in to desktop operating systems (three if you count CP/M, UCSD Pascal and so on) we're only now seeing a MacOS exploit. A common denominator among the exploitable: stupidity. Now let's scratch off stupidity and talk about architecture. It's not Microsoft's fault that they used a root-level database (the 'Registry') that could be twigged by any user-mode app in pre-XP SP2? Hmmmm. Or the mindless ways that people found to explode IE? Or the TCP/IP stack? Or how long it took to get a WEP-128 parser and still longer for a WPA parser? Microsoft's sloppy code created an industry, one to fix the code, and another to exploit it. They didn't take security seriously, then paid it only lipservice. They're paying the price in disrespect for not being respectable!
There's an old aphorism that says locks keep your friends out, your enemies have pick tools.
The root of the problem is that the supply chains are inefficient to get from the content makers to the content consumers. The value chain is distorted by various elements that mandate draconian copy protection, through a further distortion of the concept of copyright.
Inventing a more efficient supply chain is in the making, and apps like iTunes and a hundred like it are a step in the right direction. Creators are those that should need the most protection, but instead, it's given to the EMI/RIAA/MPAA and so on, as ostensible 'agents' of the creators. Clearly, none of the techniques for protection are working, and the supply chain needs desperate re-alignment.
I take a picture of the Ford in my drive way. I own the camera, film, the vehicle. It's my image. Not Ford's. If I want to publish my Driveway Calendar 2008, in print or online, it's mine, not Ford's. Ford's logic otherwise is bereft of common sense. One would think that a calendar featuring Fords would be in Ford's best interest to promote, not attempt to shut down in some heinous attempt at copyright obfuscation.
Let's say I go out and buy a Scion xB. It's square boxy vehicle like the Honda Element. Then I fiberglass it up, making it round, but don't take off the xB or Scion logo. It's my addition to the 'work' of that vehicle.
I take a picture of it, like a million modders the world over might do, and post it, because I'm proud of my work. Let's say someone takes notice of it, and wants to include it in their calendar. Think of all the van and old pickup truck modders, the VW modders, and so on. Someone makes a buck from the calendar; after all, calendar makers aren't a not for profit group.
Or let's say I like old Jags and put together an old Jag calendar. Or perhaps a nice picture book of old Jensens, or Harleys or whatever.
It's not up to any of the aforementioned brand/trademark owners to claim anything. They ought to be blessed that we bought their pieces of crap to begin with. Invoking image ownership is a sure ticket to hell. I own the vehicle; I took the photo, and I'll do whatever I want to do with the photo, without the onus of some vendor's spin control hanging over me. It's mine, baby, no one else's.
Should a vendor cite a vendor for infringement of a trademark or marque (think of putting a Bentley grill on a BMW--whoops-- BMW owns Bentley so a Rolls grill on a Subaru) and there might be some contention were it to be problem.... then what of the Rolls grills that were put on VWs as an aftermarket add-on? I see them around now and again.
To reiterate: I own this stuff, and do what I want with it. If someone buys my image, so much the better. That trademark law should extend to contours is hilarious, but probably has been tested by some idiot judge somewhere. That Nike swoosh looks just like a check mark to me. Hmmmmm. These bonds are tenuous at best. Ford overstepped them with a big foot. Oh wait......
If you extend copyright and/or trademark to Ford for let's say, the Mustang, then the theory of estoppel trumps Ford.
Here's why and how:
google image search this term: "ford mustang for sale". Look at the mind-boggling number of hits.
Now tell me the use of a pic of a Mustang in a for-sale ad is different than putting them into a calendar on a website.
It is not. It's an image, used for the gain of the advertiser. In one case, to sell a used or new Mustang. In the other case, to exemplify the characteristics of ownership of the car. No diff. Estoppel says that 80-90 years ago, Ford should have made a claim
It's unbridled hubris. Out of control brand extension.
These cars aren't copyrighted. They may contain patents, but the image of them doesn't violate a patent, as images can't be patented. This is not a grey area in the copyright law.
They are being totally unreasonable here. I'm reposting my own Ford pics on my sight the very next thing I do. I eagerly await a DCMA take-down message, for with it, gives me the federal nexus to demonstrate my injury to a federal judge. What hubris.
You've proven my point by the choice of method you post by. Read a little history about how national ID systems 'empower' governments to further chew liberty, sometimes to the point of murder.
It's not inevitable; it's driven by irrational fear. Altho Jefferson would agree with you, Paine (and many others) would not.
At the risk of sedition, I'll predict that in November of this year, there'll be a lot of upheaval in elected office holders. We'll see the mettle and conviction then.
We have the case of SSNs being used for purposes that they were never intended for. Are there additional ways to get identification to suit a lender's needs? I believe there can be, but it's a separate issue from government mandated ID to fly.
The enemy is in fact, the federal government, by this mandate. If I choose to identify myself, for my whims and the needs of my relationship with a vendor, then it's my choosing. To now be required to carry a specific identification method for the purposes of satisfying the perceived security needs of the federal government, then I can no longer freely travel. The hate/hit list of the TSA is very well documented. So are the stars on the chests of clothes in the stacks at Buchenwald.
I don't for one minute believe that loan sharks aren't fraudulently approached all the time; the legality of their charade is for a different thread. It's a different issue than my right to freely travel, and the needs of the government to identify my offspring under 50 and document them. For what, I ask you? What is different today than on Sept 10/11, 2001, when various men in Manchester NH and Boston MA were able to get onboard four aircraft with box cutters in their immediate possession? I'll tell you: an excuse to injure so many liberties that slashdot can cite the ensuing madness nearly every single day.
No rubric of relating identity from government to a perceived financial sector is going to make the violence in loss of liberty equal to pay day loan fraud. Sorry. Many states have rejected the federal government's requests to harmonize their ID with this method. This death to liberty by a thousand cuts has to be stanched. Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Socialists, I don't care who they are: their birthright as citizens of the US are being snacked on here.
Bottom line: if the government forces uniform ID on the person seated next to you, you've been robbed of something very important: your liberty. Currently, they know that person. A national registry was also important to the Third Reich. Read about it. Maybe you'll need to wear a yellow star on your chest, because you're Jewish, or a gypsy, or a homosexual, or a Jehovah's Witness.... the list goes on.
No, the US (United States Government) does not need a way to prove who you are. Your friend, the loan shark, gets defrauded for reasons that are his/her own policy.
Liberty is not having to prove who you are, unless faced with a probable-cause affidavit. We have an additional presumption of being not-guilty; having mandatory ID thwarts that presumption based on identity.
Your presumption that the world of liberty is dead because you feel there's a need to finger everyone is fallacious. You deserve what you get.
"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" Ben Franklin. Fie on your suggestion.
of BES speaker fame. He used to make speakers out of styrofoam. They sounded great. His demo was using a door as a sound conductor. Honeycombs are nothing new at all. Look up 'geostats' to find them.
CES is a 'trade-only' event. That doesn't mean that a huge number of (international big box) retailers, installers, and other industry people don't go; it's just not as big as COMDEX (which was trade-only wink wink) was. COMDEX wasn't prepared for 9/11 and was killed by the industry down-turn and a bad chairman (IMHO).
Every big trade show needs industry strength to survive. In Europe, CeBIT is down, and while IFA and MobleWorld/3GSM are up, CES (even though it's a trade association show) must constantly re-justify itself and re-invent its value, otherwise it's a pricy proposition in an ever-pricier locale.
It's hard to think of a crappy simple WSYSIWYG editor today. As my work gets edited then scrunched into some PageMaker something, I don't get to dress it up. I have to get the facts right and referential, use good grammar, use the correct punctuation, and make it all sound compelling and even funny where it gets dry.
Most WPs allow outline mode, web mode, and so on. Those that must be highly organized top-down writers (think COBOL) may do better with structured/featured apps. Those that do mail runs use another type, etc. Were I to compare my personal style with a programming language, it might be C, which drives my editors berserk. It ends up looking more like Pascal, and when it's really dry, like Forth.
We agree that not every writer can just sit down and expectorate great content. Yet a journeyman/experienced writer can usually be expected to do well in many media.
While some may argue that race car driving takes great creativity, I'll add that much is luck and good physio-motor control and stress management. A nice car helps, especially if it's a Ferrari, Honda, or Porsche. I find that there are fabulously creative masons, landscapers, and others that use creative components constantly. In writing, the skill is communications. Do communications well and creatively, and most of the work is over. My editors will then knead the dough, let it rise, punch it down, put lipstick on it, and pass it on to a 'typesetter'. Then you read it. Chances are, you have. It's a living.
Long ago, far away, in what now seems like another universe, my guitar teacher did one of those 'eastern' lessons on his grasshopper student-- me. We went to a famous guitar store where he took seven different guitars, coupled to an MXR 10-band EQ, then asked me to rattle off the names of four famous guitar players. With each instrument, in about twenty seconds or so, he made each one of them do trademark chops from each of the four artists.
The lesson was: don't play the best guitar unless you have the money for it. Instead, play the best music on each instrument. I was both cowed and crushed, but also enlightened.
Today, decades later, I play a Telecaster with a humbucker in the bass position, and a fat-wound treble pickup. I can make that guitar talk many languages, many idioms, as my musical mouthpiece. Blind, you can't tell the difference. It's versatile, and a personal choice. Other people don't like playing a tree stump (perhaps ES-335 players, but that's a different thread).
Therein lays my point: yes, there are some widgets that help, but in the end, it's no substitute for content, and a journeyman can use most any 'modern' WP package and get the job done. Writing coherently is still another, allied discipline. If you want to venture into graphics composition packages, it's another story, and another discipline. When I pickup my son's Hamer SG clone, I can make it talk; this frustrates him but also makes him excel at wanting to best me. So be it. Tools are important, but a journeyman can make do. I'd like to eliminate the keyboard and go thought-to-screen one day. There would be a lot of 'backspacing' but a lot more output, too. Eloquence isn't font or word count; it just needs a medium.
Actually, he did do it on other guitars, including a Gibson Flying V, and a Firebird.
There is no doubt his mastery; the tool, while important (even more so to a musician, where the output is within his/her control, where a writer needs an editor and a graphics artist perhaps) didn't make the compositions, they were well-played tools. Hendrix (and others) composed the songs, played with others, and left the legacy. He probably sold a zillion Strats as a result. But it was the musician's creativity and content that's legendary. Ask a non-musician if a Strat's important to a legacy of Hendrix, and they'll look quizically at you, as they should. Should we find out what Vonnegut or Mailer used, then dash out and get their computer/WP combination? Maybe Isaac Azimov sold a few Trash-80's, but I know of no other endorsement of a specific kind of software of any variety these days that's analogous.
A guy with a brand new Fender Strat doesn't sound like Jimi Hendrix. Nor can you drive better in a Lotus than an xB.
What's more likely is that if you think you're doing better and that helps you, so much the better.
Document composers for mass mailings, labels, newsletters, all need different features that aren't part of the word processing function of creativity, rather its creative exposition. I'll write (a dozen books, thousands of articles so far) on whatever, and won't go to Jerry Pournelle's years of bitching about the nuances. It's the content, Jerry. It's the content. Word, Word Perfect, WordStar, Zedit, Joe, Vi, textedit, don't much matter. Grammar checkers, spell checkers, syntactical analyzers, pretty printers, code-indenting hoohaa, I don't care. Let me write. Grace and elegance are for those that need glitter and swan-like moves. They look pretty, but it's only style, and style will always be subjective. Content rules; fancy-assed WYSIWYG twelve-key-combo-crap drools.
You'll note my tongue was in my cheek..... helping to answer your question.
However, understanding the market and share is important. It's a vote, but with or without money. Make good software and they will come. It's an important lesson for hackers to learn, if they want to serve others.
Slashdot Mirror
Your comment is somewhat disingenuous. For argument sake you can cite that there are probably an equal number of stupid people buying Macs and PCs, by percentage.
Now take a look at the architectures. A dozen years of Windows since Win95 has only progressively made Windows more secure, and while better than before, still full of a superfluity of exploits (for differing reasons, again, not counting user "stupidity"). You have to do a lot of work to iteratively get past the gatekeepers in both operating systems; it's not as trivial an exercise as it once was; all the really wide-open machines are 0w3d by someone by now.... as part of a botnet.
Given a 5-10% of the market for Apple, depending on whom you believe, you're only now seeing a MacOS ruse. Think about that for a moment. Think about both motive and opportunity. Motive we understand. Opportunity hasn't been very strong until now. The weapon? Two decades in to desktop operating systems (three if you count CP/M, UCSD Pascal and so on) we're only now seeing a MacOS exploit. A common denominator among the exploitable: stupidity. Now let's scratch off stupidity and talk about architecture. It's not Microsoft's fault that they used a root-level database (the 'Registry') that could be twigged by any user-mode app in pre-XP SP2? Hmmmm. Or the mindless ways that people found to explode IE? Or the TCP/IP stack? Or how long it took to get a WEP-128 parser and still longer for a WPA parser? Microsoft's sloppy code created an industry, one to fix the code, and another to exploit it. They didn't take security seriously, then paid it only lipservice. They're paying the price in disrespect for not being respectable!
Didn't he and Judith Clark get sacked for something? Hmmmmm. And Novell might be in whose pockets these days? http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/08/01/01/0354229.shtml might shed some light.
There's an old aphorism that says locks keep your friends out, your enemies have pick tools.
The root of the problem is that the supply chains are inefficient to get from the content makers to the content consumers. The value chain is distorted by various elements that mandate draconian copy protection, through a further distortion of the concept of copyright.
Inventing a more efficient supply chain is in the making, and apps like iTunes and a hundred like it are a step in the right direction. Creators are those that should need the most protection, but instead, it's given to the EMI/RIAA/MPAA and so on, as ostensible 'agents' of the creators. Clearly, none of the techniques for protection are working, and the supply chain needs desperate re-alignment.
I take a picture of the Ford in my drive way. I own the camera, film, the vehicle. It's my image. Not Ford's. If I want to publish my Driveway Calendar 2008, in print or online, it's mine, not Ford's. Ford's logic otherwise is bereft of common sense. One would think that a calendar featuring Fords would be in Ford's best interest to promote, not attempt to shut down in some heinous attempt at copyright obfuscation.
Let's say I go out and buy a Scion xB. It's square boxy vehicle like the Honda Element. Then I fiberglass it up, making it round, but don't take off the xB or Scion logo. It's my addition to the 'work' of that vehicle.
I take a picture of it, like a million modders the world over might do, and post it, because I'm proud of my work. Let's say someone takes notice of it, and wants to include it in their calendar. Think of all the van and old pickup truck modders, the VW modders, and so on. Someone makes a buck from the calendar; after all, calendar makers aren't a not for profit group.
Or let's say I like old Jags and put together an old Jag calendar. Or perhaps a nice picture book of old Jensens, or Harleys or whatever.
It's not up to any of the aforementioned brand/trademark owners to claim anything. They ought to be blessed that we bought their pieces of crap to begin with. Invoking image ownership is a sure ticket to hell. I own the vehicle; I took the photo, and I'll do whatever I want to do with the photo, without the onus of some vendor's spin control hanging over me. It's mine, baby, no one else's.
Should a vendor cite a vendor for infringement of a trademark or marque (think of putting a Bentley grill on a BMW--whoops-- BMW owns Bentley so a Rolls grill on a Subaru) and there might be some contention were it to be problem.... then what of the Rolls grills that were put on VWs as an aftermarket add-on? I see them around now and again.
To reiterate: I own this stuff, and do what I want with it. If someone buys my image, so much the better. That trademark law should extend to contours is hilarious, but probably has been tested by some idiot judge somewhere. That Nike swoosh looks just like a check mark to me. Hmmmmm. These bonds are tenuous at best. Ford overstepped them with a big foot. Oh wait......
Thank you for the info. One day in a calm future, this madness goes away.
If you extend copyright and/or trademark to Ford for let's say, the Mustang, then the theory of estoppel trumps Ford.
Here's why and how:
google image search this term: "ford mustang for sale". Look at the mind-boggling number of hits.
Now tell me the use of a pic of a Mustang in a for-sale ad is different than putting them into a calendar on a website.
It is not. It's an image, used for the gain of the advertiser. In one case, to sell a used or new Mustang. In the other case, to exemplify the characteristics of ownership of the car. No diff. Estoppel says that 80-90 years ago, Ford should have made a claim
Fie.
Oh, great.
Let's black out the FORD in each picture.
And now that Ford no longer produces Jaguar and Land Rover, let's not worry about them, eh?
Fie.
It's unbridled hubris. Out of control brand extension.
These cars aren't copyrighted. They may contain patents, but the image of them doesn't violate a patent, as images can't be patented. This is not a grey area in the copyright law.
They are being totally unreasonable here. I'm reposting my own Ford pics on my sight the very next thing I do. I eagerly await a DCMA take-down message, for with it, gives me the federal nexus to demonstrate my injury to a federal judge. What hubris.
COMDEX tubed because of an ill-prepared chairman and the after-effects of 9/11. Many others still remain. CeBIT is still 400k+ attendance.
PCExpo died because of ownership mismanagement in the post-9/11 era, too.
CES is like NAMM-- a huge, trade association-driven show that waxes and wanes.
Will CES get smaller and more sane? We can only hope.
144K people and two of some of the largest halls in this hemisphere, not to mention hotel room suites, and so on were sold.
Last legs? Hardly.
You've proven my point by the choice of method you post by. Read a little history about how national ID systems 'empower' governments to further chew liberty, sometimes to the point of murder.
It's not inevitable; it's driven by irrational fear. Altho Jefferson would agree with you, Paine (and many others) would not.
At the risk of sedition, I'll predict that in November of this year, there'll be a lot of upheaval in elected office holders. We'll see the mettle and conviction then.
We have the case of SSNs being used for purposes that they were never intended for. Are there additional ways to get identification to suit a lender's needs? I believe there can be, but it's a separate issue from government mandated ID to fly.
The enemy is in fact, the federal government, by this mandate. If I choose to identify myself, for my whims and the needs of my relationship with a vendor, then it's my choosing. To now be required to carry a specific identification method for the purposes of satisfying the perceived security needs of the federal government, then I can no longer freely travel. The hate/hit list of the TSA is very well documented. So are the stars on the chests of clothes in the stacks at Buchenwald.
I don't for one minute believe that loan sharks aren't fraudulently approached all the time; the legality of their charade is for a different thread. It's a different issue than my right to freely travel, and the needs of the government to identify my offspring under 50 and document them. For what, I ask you? What is different today than on Sept 10/11, 2001, when various men in Manchester NH and Boston MA were able to get onboard four aircraft with box cutters in their immediate possession? I'll tell you: an excuse to injure so many liberties that slashdot can cite the ensuing madness nearly every single day.
No rubric of relating identity from government to a perceived financial sector is going to make the violence in loss of liberty equal to pay day loan fraud. Sorry. Many states have rejected the federal government's requests to harmonize their ID with this method. This death to liberty by a thousand cuts has to be stanched. Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Socialists, I don't care who they are: their birthright as citizens of the US are being snacked on here.
Sources say yours might be true; others sayeth naught. The intent is the same. Shall I start quoting Paine?
Bottom line: if the government forces uniform ID on the person seated next to you, you've been robbed of something very important: your liberty. Currently, they know that person. A national registry was also important to the Third Reich. Read about it. Maybe you'll need to wear a yellow star on your chest, because you're Jewish, or a gypsy, or a homosexual, or a Jehovah's Witness.... the list goes on.
No, the US (United States Government) does not need a way to prove who you are. Your friend, the loan shark, gets defrauded for reasons that are his/her own policy.
Liberty is not having to prove who you are, unless faced with a probable-cause affidavit. We have an additional presumption of being not-guilty; having mandatory ID thwarts that presumption based on identity.
Your presumption that the world of liberty is dead because you feel there's a need to finger everyone is fallacious. You deserve what you get.
"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" Ben Franklin. Fie on your suggestion.
of BES speaker fame. He used to make speakers out of styrofoam. They sounded great. His demo was using a door as a sound conductor. Honeycombs are nothing new at all. Look up 'geostats' to find them.
CES is a 'trade-only' event. That doesn't mean that a huge number of (international big box) retailers, installers, and other industry people don't go; it's just not as big as COMDEX (which was trade-only wink wink) was. COMDEX wasn't prepared for 9/11 and was killed by the industry down-turn and a bad chairman (IMHO).
Every big trade show needs industry strength to survive. In Europe, CeBIT is down, and while IFA and MobleWorld/3GSM are up, CES (even though it's a trade association show) must constantly re-justify itself and re-invent its value, otherwise it's a pricy proposition in an ever-pricier locale.
It's hard to think of a crappy simple WSYSIWYG editor today. As my work gets edited then scrunched into some PageMaker something, I don't get to dress it up. I have to get the facts right and referential, use good grammar, use the correct punctuation, and make it all sound compelling and even funny where it gets dry.
Most WPs allow outline mode, web mode, and so on. Those that must be highly organized top-down writers (think COBOL) may do better with structured/featured apps. Those that do mail runs use another type, etc. Were I to compare my personal style with a programming language, it might be C, which drives my editors berserk. It ends up looking more like Pascal, and when it's really dry, like Forth.
We agree that not every writer can just sit down and expectorate great content. Yet a journeyman/experienced writer can usually be expected to do well in many media.
While some may argue that race car driving takes great creativity, I'll add that much is luck and good physio-motor control and stress management. A nice car helps, especially if it's a Ferrari, Honda, or Porsche. I find that there are fabulously creative masons, landscapers, and others that use creative components constantly. In writing, the skill is communications. Do communications well and creatively, and most of the work is over. My editors will then knead the dough, let it rise, punch it down, put lipstick on it, and pass it on to a 'typesetter'. Then you read it. Chances are, you have. It's a living.
Long ago, far away, in what now seems like another universe, my guitar teacher did one of those 'eastern' lessons on his grasshopper student-- me. We went to a famous guitar store where he took seven different guitars, coupled to an MXR 10-band EQ, then asked me to rattle off the names of four famous guitar players. With each instrument, in about twenty seconds or so, he made each one of them do trademark chops from each of the four artists.
The lesson was: don't play the best guitar unless you have the money for it. Instead, play the best music on each instrument. I was both cowed and crushed, but also enlightened.
Today, decades later, I play a Telecaster with a humbucker in the bass position, and a fat-wound treble pickup. I can make that guitar talk many languages, many idioms, as my musical mouthpiece. Blind, you can't tell the difference. It's versatile, and a personal choice. Other people don't like playing a tree stump (perhaps ES-335 players, but that's a different thread).
Therein lays my point: yes, there are some widgets that help, but in the end, it's no substitute for content, and a journeyman can use most any 'modern' WP package and get the job done. Writing coherently is still another, allied discipline. If you want to venture into graphics composition packages, it's another story, and another discipline. When I pickup my son's Hamer SG clone, I can make it talk; this frustrates him but also makes him excel at wanting to best me. So be it. Tools are important, but a journeyman can make do. I'd like to eliminate the keyboard and go thought-to-screen one day. There would be a lot of 'backspacing' but a lot more output, too. Eloquence isn't font or word count; it just needs a medium.
Actually, he did do it on other guitars, including a Gibson Flying V, and a Firebird.
There is no doubt his mastery; the tool, while important (even more so to a musician, where the output is within his/her control, where a writer needs an editor and a graphics artist perhaps) didn't make the compositions, they were well-played tools. Hendrix (and others) composed the songs, played with others, and left the legacy. He probably sold a zillion Strats as a result. But it was the musician's creativity and content that's legendary. Ask a non-musician if a Strat's important to a legacy of Hendrix, and they'll look quizically at you, as they should. Should we find out what Vonnegut or Mailer used, then dash out and get their computer/WP combination? Maybe Isaac Azimov sold a few Trash-80's, but I know of no other endorsement of a specific kind of software of any variety these days that's analogous.
A guy with a brand new Fender Strat doesn't sound like Jimi Hendrix. Nor can you drive better in a Lotus than an xB.
What's more likely is that if you think you're doing better and that helps you, so much the better.
Document composers for mass mailings, labels, newsletters, all need different features that aren't part of the word processing function of creativity, rather its creative exposition. I'll write (a dozen books, thousands of articles so far) on whatever, and won't go to Jerry Pournelle's years of bitching about the nuances. It's the content, Jerry. It's the content. Word, Word Perfect, WordStar, Zedit, Joe, Vi, textedit, don't much matter. Grammar checkers, spell checkers, syntactical analyzers, pretty printers, code-indenting hoohaa, I don't care. Let me write. Grace and elegance are for those that need glitter and swan-like moves. They look pretty, but it's only style, and style will always be subjective. Content rules; fancy-assed WYSIWYG twelve-key-combo-crap drools.
Just my 2c worth.
The list was tongue-in-cheek.
The rest of your comment I agree with, but the differences demonstrated show how a little lipstick can cause rapid adoption.
You'll note my tongue was in my cheek..... helping to answer your question.
However, understanding the market and share is important. It's a vote, but with or without money. Make good software and they will come. It's an important lesson for hackers to learn, if they want to serve others.