I'm the "german guy" Rik mentioned in one of the replies (for those who read the mail exchange), and I had to pass on a speaker opportunity (read: serious money plus possible benefits such as building contacts in a multi-billion industry) for fear of becoming a 2nd Slyarov.
This is real. DMCA is real, and the DeCSS trial has been costing me real money and time.
taking a global tragedy and abusing it as a means to further unrelated and greedy personal agendas.
and I thought the music mafia had already reached MAXEVIL. today, just thinking of them makes me feel as if someone puked all over me. I don't think I'll buy music from a RIAA member again. ever.
> They demonize you and criminalize you and
> then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?"
and that surprises you? standard bait & switch, isn't it? put pressure on someone, then give him a way out to reconcile himself. CIA torture manual, page 2.
1) The US is the largest producer and exporter of sophisticated manufactured goods on the planet, not just guns.
3) See point 1. This is a silly straw man.
4) See point 1 again.
just because you do one thing right doesn't mean you are absolved of everything else you do. I'll be the first to agree that the US is doing a ton of good things, and not only inside their own country. but I'll also be the first to point out that you guys also do a ton of not-so-good and quite a lot of outright evil things.
2) When was the last time we used them on a civilian target?
when was the last time anyone else used them on any target, civilian or not?
you used "the bomb" (and twice, not once), and you'll have to live with that just like we over here (germany) have to live with being called nazis forever, even though the war was over long before most of us living today were born.
Eurotrolling has become absurdly common on Slashdot and its entirely uninteresting. Whiny leftist eurotrash drivel spewed all over the place does not make it any more correct. Come up with some real arguments next time.
any real argument that includes pointing out that the US may happen not to be the pinacle of civilisation and the earthly manifestation of pure goodness is quite easily commented on like you do.
PS: the original poster was british. most british aren't very comfortable in calling themselves "europeans".
I'm very worried. even though I'm using free systems exclusively, I am *still* a victim of the various microsoft worms.
all of my systems - both online system and the ADSL home machine - are constantly hammered with windos attacks. large parts of the net were noticeably slowed down during the recent worm attacks and at my day job, windos worms take up a considerable share of my time even though we don't use windos for anything serious (some office communication, but all the servers in my department are solaris or Linux).
I'm very worried that something (the windos OS) can be so widespread AND so vulnerable that even those who don't use it are affected by its unbelievable shortcomings.
worm authors: in the next one, please include a function that'll shut down the windos machine. put it into the autostart folder. instant internet cleaning. idiot-free net for a week or so.:-)
nice idea, but quite impractical in real life - your routers won't survive this load.
I work at an ISP, I know what I'm talking about. when code red ran rampant, we knew of a way to filter it out at the border routers, but the additional load would've killed them, so we didn't.
and I don't mean the bombings. I mean the chuzpe of people trying to profit from that. yes Mr. Congressman, I'm talking about you.
many people have pointed out that this was a low-tech attack and what the intelligence agencies need is more footwork instead of more high-tech toys to play with. that should be the rallying cry: stop playing with high-tech and do your work!.
I want to add that all background information on Bin Laden strongly suggests that all the talk about him being a crypto buff is very obvious bullshit.
the guy has had digital watches removed from his vicinity because he's afraid any and all pieces of high-tech might be used to pinpoint his position and/or kill him.
you should really make posession of a brain a mandatory requirement for your congresscritters.
"Bunner does not dispute that the DVD CCA is mad."
and neither does this other defendant in the case. I'd even phrase it differently, maybe "insane".
also take note of the organizational structure of DVD CCA. we haven't seen the last of Mr. Hoy yet. I'm fairly certain he'll be spending more time in court as his other systems get broken.
and remember: if you want to get anything out of this, call it a Windos Worm when you talk to non-free friends.
yes, I know Unix worms do exist. but last time I checked, <i>all</i> of the recent large-scale infections were windos-based, plus a Unix worm would by far not propagate that easily and quickly. bonus point: it wouldn't be in visual basic.
as I said: the free-sklyarov mailing list is a source of TONS of info. currently carrying around 300 messages per day. I think most of the organizers actually are on the list. there's also a low-volume announcement list if 300 msgs is a little heavy for you. I think links and info about both lists are on the boycott adobe webpage.
as for me - I'm several thousand miles away from all of this, but I do what I can by writing. to/., to my representatives and by talking to my friends and co-workers.
the question was asked and answered on the free-sklyarov mailing list - the logos on the webpage were made with Beos - no adobe software involved.
(the signs at the protests were obviously hand-drawn.)
in other news: adobe lost almost 1% at the stock exchange today.
xmovie does a good job at displaying quicktime movies. why not contribute to that project instead of using activex to do something that could be done much better in native code ?
while the merits of activex are surely a subject of personal taste (/me being on the "shove it up where it hurts" side) - unless I am horribly mistaken, one of the "features" of the thing is that it digs so deeply into the OS that it can allow a ton of things not usually available to whatever software accesses it.
which, in turn, leads to the nightmare of security and stability concerns most of us associate with activex.
so the question is - is this similiar for kde now? will a misbehaving activex element trash all of kde and/or X and/or the system?
I don't use kde, or I would've tested before posting. but I am very afraid of Linux going the same way of "let's integrate until everything is just one pile of crap" that windos has recently moved. boundaries between applications are GOOD. they stop misbehaving or malicious code from affecting areas it has no business in. kde (gnome, too) is already highly integrated. I do have serious concerns that the DOWNSIDES of integration have been overlooked.
that, and I do absolutely agree with the other posters that not everything is good just because it is compatable or because windos also does it. now that Linux is mature, we should stop emulating others and start moving above and beyond them. there's so much stuff that could be done in a better way in the same time it takes to mindlessly copy it.
since they are a GERMAN company, and (contrary to the DVD CCAs assumptions in that california lawsuit) germany is not an american state, they are pretty much immune from DMCA-like bullshitting.
there are two things that could make things ugly for Fully Licensed GmbH. one is a license agreement, but so far, the validity of click-through, shrink-wrap or similiar licenses is highly doubted in germany. AFAIK, none has ever been enforced in a court.
second, there is a provision against reverse-engineering in the german copyright law. however, it also allows for a number of exceptions.
one way or the other, since they are a GmbH, the worst that can happen is that they'll be sued out of business, but with no loss to their private capital. so they'll immediatly start a new company under a similiar name and harvest all the free publicity advantages.
because lastly, sueing them would be the equivalent of saying "yes, we feel guilty. yes, we've done wrong. and no, we can't stand that you found us with the hand in the cookie jar." - a pretty dumb publicity stunt, even for M$ standards.
speak about one-sided reporting. as a european, the anti-EU subtitles are sticking in my eye. yeah, sure - we have less refined laws than the US has. riiigghht. we have DIFFERENT laws. not everytime something is different, you, my dear american friends, own the superior version.
especially the "just being too big could be illegal" part is just ridiculous. and that from someone whose country has COPA, DMCA and retroactively-extending copyright terms.
that said, it is specifically BECAUSE of these differences that any EU investigation would be a Good Thing(tm). in your court jokes, M$ could have gotten off the hook by legalese and winding their way through the legal loopholes and restrictions. as a matter of fact, I think their arrogance cost them more than anything else.
over here, it won't do them much good specifically BECAUSE the investigators have more freedoms. they won't get away because they can piss off a judge so much that he makes the mistake to speak too much in the news.
and their "free software is a virus, a cancer" approach will only get them deeper into the shit given that pretty much every politician here has by now said something pro-variety and pro-free-software on TV. while politicians are readily available on the open market, they are known to not usually make immediate 180 degree turns on things they've said in public.
have you written your representative yet? not e-mail, I mean the old-fashioned way?
I have. the reply was worse than everything else. they don't get it. they don't get that they're signing away the rights of their citizen, and they don't get that they sign away THEMSELVES.
'cause let's face it, if your average multinational corp doesn't have to get it's DMCA or other private law enacted in your country anymore, but a small island kingdom where laws are cheap is sufficient, do you really think they will continue to line to coffers of the representatives so graciously?
one would've thought our business politicians would have thought at least about THAT.
I couldn't get to the article (/.ed, I guess), but I can answer your questions:
all video card tuning is done in-game, exactly as in the windos version. one thing you should know is that if you want to play in 32bit (instead of 16bit), you have to start your X with 32 or 24 bit depths (startx---depth24).
32bit is heavily recommended, because you get ugly z-buffer effects ("jaggy" shorelines, for example) in 16bit.
other than that, refer to the appropriate docs for installing the drivers for your card (e.g. there are readme's inside the nvidia packages.
network play is good and performance on the same machine is about equal (some say slightly better) to the windos version. I have both installed and there is no noticeable difference.
one difference between windos and Linux is that whereas in the windos version you put scripts and other add-ons into the main game directory, in Linux you have a ~/.loki/tribes2, so different people can actually use the same machine and have different scripts, soundpacks, etc. installed.
also, when it hangs (which it sometimes does, on both Linux and windos), you can ssh in an killall -9 tribes2 and almost always you get your machine back without a reboot. so in some OS specific ways, the Linux version is clearly superior to the windos one.
there should be little difference between distros, at least all loki games I've bought so far worked equally good on suse and debian and I would be surprised if T2 is any different.
that's quite a late review, don't you think? I've been playing T2 on my Linux box for weeks now. and yes, it absolutely rocks. if you have been waiting for an excuse to send some $$$ to loki, this is it.
as the site seems to be slashdotted - those interested in T2, go to any review you want. the installer and auto-updater are Loki gtk+ apps, but once you are inside the game, the windos and Linux versions look, feel and play 100% identical. unfortunately, down to the occasional crash ("unhandled exception" on windos, segfault on Linux).
does the gross difference between cyberspace and real world strike anyone beside me as odd?
in the real world, companies spend a lot of money to make their shops accessable to disabled people and to make it appeal to as many potential customers as possible and most of them spend huge amounts of money just to attract customers.
then, on the web, you suddenly see "you need IE 7.5, flash 8.4 and at least 3 TB of ram to visit this page".
in the real world, 1% of the customers counts enough to seriously think about them. on the web, people say "ah, only 10% of my visitors use lynx or opera, so why should I care?".
or maybe these are just the same people who put "no shirt, no service" posters into the windows of their beachside shop.
most of us (yes, I'm also on their hitlist) never bothered with lawyers.
reason: that's exactly where the MPAA/DVDCCA *will* win, no if's, when's or but's. there's not a single defendant in the DVDCCA suit who could not be sued to bancruptcy by the MPAA. spending a fortune on a lawsuit that's happening 5000 miles away just isn't worth it. I'll bother when they come to my *continent*.
otoh, this *is* a good thing. the jurisdiction issue is one of the most frivolous parts of the whole suit and has to be challenged. but instead of 20 people going broke because someone at MPAA had a bad day and decided to drag us through all possible instances and back, we hope that truth only needs to be proven once and can then be used for everyone else.
yours truly dedicated a considerable sum of money to matt's defense for precisely that reason.
I don't believe in copying windos, it's the primary reason I use neither KDE nor gnome - they're trying so hard to be windos-like that it sickens me.
I *do* believe in good user interfaces and in users appreciating them. it may take them a while, but let's be honest: there's a *lot* of windos software out there that works so totally different from all the other windos software, that it doesn't matter whether you learn to use that or windowmaker.
my money is on fear. people are afraid, that's all. they're especially afraid of things that are new to them. I still believe it's better to address those fears than trying to avoid them by looking like one of the worst user-interfaces that's ever seen the light of day.
MPAA is not suing for *music*, and MPAA is not suing for copying of anything.
MPAA *is* suing for removal of a software program from various websites (mine included). they are trying to make it *look like* piracy, but it's not. we may or may not be selling burglary tools, but even MPAA hasn't yet said we're burglars *in court*. what they're saying in their PR lies is a different matter.
third mistake: you can NOT define whether or not peacefire.org will work for you through your choice of ISP, because source-routing doesn't work reliably anymore and thus even if you change ISP your packets may still travel over the same MAPS-subscriber network.
fact is, Linux is just as useable as windos is. I make that statement with some background knowledge: I've installed Linux for several people with ZERO prior computer knowledge, and it works just fine. sure, I sometimes have to come over and set up this or that, but it's no more than with windos users. probably less, because Linux doesn't go on a self-destruct rampage every now and then.
the valid point in your argument, however, is the applications and games. e-mail and surfing is fine with mozilla or netscape. my sister (definitely a "user") uses LyX for her diploma work and other papers and she's quite happy about it. but the games landscape is still very thin, especially if you want to be part of some "in" crowd. same with many more specific applications.
but the problem isn't useability. as a matter of fact, windos is pretty shabby on the useability scale. it has gross inconsistencies, a marketing-designed user-interface with no clear boundary between eye-candy and functionality, etc, etc. it APPEARS useable merely because we're all used to it.
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He's absolutely, definitely *not* joking.
I'm the "german guy" Rik mentioned in one of the replies (for those who read the mail exchange), and I had to pass on a speaker opportunity (read: serious money plus possible benefits such as building contacts in a multi-billion industry) for fear of becoming a 2nd Slyarov.
This is real. DMCA is real, and the DeCSS trial has been costing me real money and time.
taking a global tragedy and abusing it as a means to further unrelated and greedy personal agendas.
and I thought the music mafia had already reached MAXEVIL. today, just thinking of them makes me feel as if someone puked all over me. I don't think I'll buy music from a RIAA member again. ever.
so what do you do if your wife starts work at your ISP? switch ISP? switch wife? :)
> They demonize you and criminalize you and
> then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?"
and that surprises you? standard bait & switch, isn't it? put pressure on someone, then give him a way out to reconcile himself. CIA torture manual, page 2.
1) The US is the largest producer and exporter of sophisticated manufactured goods on the planet, not just guns.
3) See point 1. This is a silly straw man.
4) See point 1 again.
just because you do one thing right doesn't mean you are absolved of everything else you do. I'll be the first to agree that the US is doing a ton of good things, and not only inside their own country. but I'll also be the first to point out that you guys also do a ton of not-so-good and quite a lot of outright evil things.
2) When was the last time we used them on a civilian target?
when was the last time anyone else used them on any target, civilian or not?
you used "the bomb" (and twice, not once), and you'll have to live with that just like we over here (germany) have to live with being called nazis forever, even though the war was over long before most of us living today were born.
Eurotrolling has become absurdly common on Slashdot and its entirely uninteresting. Whiny leftist eurotrash drivel spewed all over the place does not make it any more correct. Come up with some real arguments next time.
any real argument that includes pointing out that the US may happen not to be the pinacle of civilisation and the earthly manifestation of pure goodness is quite easily commented on like you do.
PS: the original poster was british. most british aren't very comfortable in calling themselves "europeans".
I'm very worried. even though I'm using free systems exclusively, I am *still* a victim of the various microsoft worms.
:-)
all of my systems - both online system and the ADSL home machine - are constantly hammered with windos attacks. large parts of the net were noticeably slowed down during the recent worm attacks and at my day job, windos worms take up a considerable share of my time even though we don't use windos for anything serious (some office communication, but all the servers in my department are solaris or Linux).
I'm very worried that something (the windos OS) can be so widespread AND so vulnerable that even those who don't use it are affected by its unbelievable shortcomings.
worm authors: in the next one, please include a function that'll shut down the windos machine. put it into the autostart folder. instant internet cleaning. idiot-free net for a week or so.
nice idea, but quite impractical in real life - your routers won't survive this load.
I work at an ISP, I know what I'm talking about. when code red ran rampant, we knew of a way to filter it out at the border routers, but the additional load would've killed them, so we didn't.
and I don't mean the bombings. I mean the chuzpe of people trying to profit from that. yes Mr. Congressman, I'm talking about you.
many people have pointed out that this was a low-tech attack and what the intelligence agencies need is more footwork instead of more high-tech toys to play with. that should be the rallying cry: stop playing with high-tech and do your work!.
I want to add that all background information on Bin Laden strongly suggests that all the talk about him being a crypto buff is very obvious bullshit.
the guy has had digital watches removed from his vicinity because he's afraid any and all pieces of high-tech might be used to pinpoint his position and/or kill him.
you should really make posession of a brain a mandatory requirement for your congresscritters.
"Bunner does not dispute that the DVD CCA is mad."
and neither does this other defendant in the case. I'd even phrase it differently, maybe "insane".
also take note of the organizational structure of DVD CCA. we haven't seen the last of Mr. Hoy yet. I'm fairly certain he'll be spending more time in court as his other systems get broken.
and remember: if you want to get anything out of this, call it a Windos Worm when you talk to non-free friends.
yes, I know Unix worms do exist. but last time I checked, <i>all</i> of the recent large-scale infections were windos-based, plus a Unix worm would by far not propagate that easily and quickly. bonus point: it wouldn't be in visual basic.
as I said: the free-sklyarov mailing list is a source of TONS of info. currently carrying around 300 messages per day. I think most of the organizers actually are on the list. there's also a low-volume announcement list if 300 msgs is a little heavy for you. I think links and info about both lists are on the boycott adobe webpage.
/., to my representatives and by talking to my friends and co-workers.
as for me - I'm several thousand miles away from all of this, but I do what I can by writing. to
> Anyway, I wish I had known there was a protest
> in St. Paul. That would have been "Stuff that
> Matters," at least for me.
several of us (i.e. members of the free-sklyarov mailing list) tried to submit stories, but mine was the only one accepted.
the question was asked and answered on the free-sklyarov mailing list - the logos on the webpage were made with Beos - no adobe software involved.
(the signs at the protests were obviously hand-drawn.)
in other news: adobe lost almost 1% at the stock exchange today.
xmovie does a good job at displaying quicktime movies. why not contribute to that project instead of using activex to do something that could be done much better in native code ?
while the merits of activex are surely a subject of personal taste (/me being on the "shove it up where it hurts" side) - unless I am horribly mistaken, one of the "features" of the thing is that it digs so deeply into the OS that it can allow a ton of things not usually available to whatever software accesses it.
which, in turn, leads to the nightmare of security and stability concerns most of us associate with activex.
so the question is - is this similiar for kde now? will a misbehaving activex element trash all of kde and/or X and/or the system?
I don't use kde, or I would've tested before posting. but I am very afraid of Linux going the same way of "let's integrate until everything is just one pile of crap" that windos has recently moved. boundaries between applications are GOOD. they stop misbehaving or malicious code from affecting areas it has no business in. kde (gnome, too) is already highly integrated. I do have serious concerns that the DOWNSIDES of integration have been overlooked.
that, and I do absolutely agree with the other posters that not everything is good just because it is compatable or because windos also does it. now that Linux is mature, we should stop emulating others and start moving above and beyond them. there's so much stuff that could be done in a better way in the same time it takes to mindlessly copy it.
since they are a GERMAN company, and (contrary to the DVD CCAs assumptions in that california lawsuit) germany is not an american state, they are pretty much immune from DMCA-like bullshitting.
there are two things that could make things ugly for Fully Licensed GmbH. one is a license agreement, but so far, the validity of click-through, shrink-wrap or similiar licenses is highly doubted in germany. AFAIK, none has ever been enforced in a court.
second, there is a provision against reverse-engineering in the german copyright law. however, it also allows for a number of exceptions.
one way or the other, since they are a GmbH, the worst that can happen is that they'll be sued out of business, but with no loss to their private capital. so they'll immediatly start a new company under a similiar name and harvest all the free publicity advantages.
because lastly, sueing them would be the equivalent of saying "yes, we feel guilty. yes, we've done wrong. and no, we can't stand that you found us with the hand in the cookie jar." - a pretty dumb publicity stunt, even for M$ standards.
speak about one-sided reporting. as a european, the anti-EU subtitles are sticking in my eye. yeah, sure - we have less refined laws than the US has. riiigghht. we have DIFFERENT laws. not everytime something is different, you, my dear american friends, own the superior version.
especially the "just being too big could be illegal" part is just ridiculous. and that from someone whose country has COPA, DMCA and retroactively-extending copyright terms.
that said, it is specifically BECAUSE of these differences that any EU investigation would be a Good Thing(tm). in your court jokes, M$ could have gotten off the hook by legalese and winding their way through the legal loopholes and restrictions. as a matter of fact, I think their arrogance cost them more than anything else.
over here, it won't do them much good specifically BECAUSE the investigators have more freedoms. they won't get away because they can piss off a judge so much that he makes the mistake to speak too much in the news.
and their "free software is a virus, a cancer" approach will only get them deeper into the shit given that pretty much every politician here has by now said something pro-variety and pro-free-software on TV. while politicians are readily available on the open market, they are known to not usually make immediate 180 degree turns on things they've said in public.
have you written your representative yet? not e-mail, I mean the old-fashioned way?
I have. the reply was worse than everything else. they don't get it. they don't get that they're signing away the rights of their citizen, and they don't get that they sign away THEMSELVES.
'cause let's face it, if your average multinational corp doesn't have to get it's DMCA or other private law enacted in your country anymore, but a small island kingdom where laws are cheap is sufficient, do you really think they will continue to line to coffers of the representatives so graciously?
one would've thought our business politicians would have thought at least about THAT.
all video card tuning is done in-game, exactly as in the windos version. one thing you should know is that if you want to play in 32bit (instead of 16bit), you have to start your X with 32 or 24 bit depths (startx---depth24).
32bit is heavily recommended, because you get ugly z-buffer effects ("jaggy" shorelines, for example) in 16bit.
other than that, refer to the appropriate docs for installing the drivers for your card (e.g. there are readme's inside the nvidia packages.
network play is good and performance on the same machine is about equal (some say slightly better) to the windos version. I have both installed and there is no noticeable difference.
one difference between windos and Linux is that whereas in the windos version you put scripts and other add-ons into the main game directory, in Linux you have a ~/.loki/tribes2, so different people can actually use the same machine and have different scripts, soundpacks, etc. installed. also, when it hangs (which it sometimes does, on both Linux and windos), you can ssh in an killall -9 tribes2 and almost always you get your machine back without a reboot. so in some OS specific ways, the Linux version is clearly superior to the windos one.
there should be little difference between distros, at least all loki games I've bought so far worked equally good on suse and debian and I would be surprised if T2 is any different.
that's quite a late review, don't you think? I've been playing T2 on my Linux box for weeks now. and yes, it absolutely rocks. if you have been waiting for an excuse to send some $$$ to loki, this is it.
as the site seems to be slashdotted - those interested in T2, go to any review you want. the installer and auto-updater are Loki gtk+ apps, but once you are inside the game, the windos and Linux versions look, feel and play 100% identical. unfortunately, down to the occasional crash ("unhandled exception" on windos, segfault on Linux).
does the gross difference between cyberspace and real world strike anyone beside me as odd?
in the real world, companies spend a lot of money to make their shops accessable to disabled people and to make it appeal to as many potential customers as possible and most of them spend huge amounts of money just to attract customers.
then, on the web, you suddenly see "you need IE 7.5, flash 8.4 and at least 3 TB of ram to visit this page".
in the real world, 1% of the customers counts enough to seriously think about them. on the web, people say "ah, only 10% of my visitors use lynx or opera, so why should I care?".
or maybe these are just the same people who put "no shirt, no service" posters into the windows of their beachside shop.
most of us (yes, I'm also on their hitlist) never bothered with lawyers.
reason: that's exactly where the MPAA/DVDCCA *will* win, no if's, when's or but's. there's not a single defendant in the DVDCCA suit who could not be sued to bancruptcy by the MPAA. spending a fortune on a lawsuit that's happening 5000 miles away just isn't worth it. I'll bother when they come to my *continent*.
otoh, this *is* a good thing. the jurisdiction issue is one of the most frivolous parts of the whole suit and has to be challenged. but instead of 20 people going broke because someone at MPAA had a bad day and decided to drag us through all possible instances and back, we hope that truth only needs to be proven once and can then be used for everyone else.
yours truly dedicated a considerable sum of money to matt's defense for precisely that reason.
I don't believe in copying windos, it's the primary reason I use neither KDE nor gnome - they're trying so hard to be windos-like that it sickens me.
I *do* believe in good user interfaces and in users appreciating them. it may take them a while, but let's be honest: there's a *lot* of windos software out there that works so totally different from all the other windos software, that it doesn't matter whether you learn to use that or windowmaker.
my money is on fear. people are afraid, that's all. they're especially afraid of things that are new to them. I still believe it's better to address those fears than trying to avoid them by looking like one of the worst user-interfaces that's ever seen the light of day.
MPAA is not suing for *music*, and MPAA is not suing for copying of anything.
MPAA *is* suing for removal of a software program from various websites (mine included). they are trying to make it *look like* piracy, but it's not. we may or may not be selling burglary tools, but even MPAA hasn't yet said we're burglars *in court*. what they're saying in their PR lies is a different matter.
third mistake: you can NOT define whether or not peacefire.org will work for you through your choice of ISP, because source-routing doesn't work reliably anymore and thus even if you change ISP your packets may still travel over the same MAPS-subscriber network.
fact is, Linux is just as useable as windos is. I make that statement with some background knowledge: I've installed Linux for several people with ZERO prior computer knowledge, and it works just fine. sure, I sometimes have to come over and set up this or that, but it's no more than with windos users. probably less, because Linux doesn't go on a self-destruct rampage every now and then.
the valid point in your argument, however, is the applications and games. e-mail and surfing is fine with mozilla or netscape. my sister (definitely a "user") uses LyX for her diploma work and other papers and she's quite happy about it. but the games landscape is still very thin, especially if you want to be part of some "in" crowd. same with many more specific applications.
but the problem isn't useability. as a matter of fact, windos is pretty shabby on the useability scale. it has gross inconsistencies, a marketing-designed user-interface with no clear boundary between eye-candy and functionality, etc, etc. it APPEARS useable merely because we're all used to it.