I believe you got a few levels higher. Interestingly, I enjoyed Baldur's Gate I far more than any of the second ones. Partly because you really DO feel like you're starting out at "nothing"... and getting *gasp* TWO Magic Missiles when you cast it is amazing.
Plus, the story was enticing. You had no idea what was happening... at least I didn't (and it was the first RPG I'd ever played).
Now, it seems like having a "weak" character makes a "boring" game to most people.
I remember it as well. Oblivion had more moments of "fighting with others" than most RPG's that I have played, anyways, at least offhand. However, the lack of change that occurs was dissapointing, and the game was primarily "solo." Those rare group moments were far more exhilarating though - perhaps it is because there seems to be more at stake than just you reloading if you have to...:)
Interesting comment, asking whether or not rewarding players is because there isn't enough in the gameplay or story to keep them playing.
Also interesting was the question about a level 50 warrior's gleaming sword being nothing really more changing than a level 1 character stabbing at a giant rat. This is something that I have felt often in games - as you progress, nothing changes much except the prowess of your enemies. This requires some interesting story mechanics - why didn't the level 35 people just come down and kill you right off the bat if you were so important? Some stories can overcome this difficulty because the story is otherwise so good (e.g., Baldur's Gate, a personal favourite).
I have also tended to think of what would happen if instead of you and enemies becoming so ultra-powerful that you could essentially wipe out an entire town in on spell, would there be a way to instead have your power come from being able to deal more quickly/efficiently with multiple enemies at once? Let's face it, you can train all you want, but it still takes only a few slashes with a sword to kill you. Battle skill comes in killing the other person before he can kill you. The better you are, the faster you can do that while taking fewer hits.
With this approach, "tanks" would not really be in existence anymore; battles would be seen more as a part of a larger scale battle, not you+4 verses 60, and you just have "that much health." Magic, unfortunately, throws a wrench into the equation.
Another interesting RPG comment, this time by me - I have always felt that the most pleasing RPG experiences, with regard to story and gameplay, are those in which I was part of a larger battle, not fighting on my own. Example would be in Baldur's Gate II when you defend your "keep" (Nalia's family's castle). You defend it along with the keep's guards. Seemed much more realistic.
The point isn't whether or not they deserve people not liking them, the point was that even potentially good ideas become bad because people have a preconception that anything coming from MS is necessarily going to be bad. Earned or not, having the standard of "good idea" or "bad idea" different for two companies does not seem to be rationally honest.
The same is true for Apple, Google, etc. People's perception of the company tints their reaction to what the company comes out with.
No, actually the CS department was not part of the math department and was a separate major, not a focus in the math department.
Also, though I'm working as a software engineer/tester, my main interest in music, hence the liberal arts school.
As for "most liberal arts majors," I wonder what you mean exactly. I was a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Science double major. On the whole, the communications department was the "party" major. Interestingly, I believe (and I was in both majors, so I think I have a relatively good say in it), at least at my school, I had a much higher workload in the music department than in the computer science department. Granted, it helps to be able to do homework/assignments quickly, especially when it comes to math and whatnot, but with regard to both units and hours, the music major was much harder. However, with regard to... how shall I put it - mental processing time?... the CS major (upper division math, algorithms, computer design/architecture, etc) was more difficult.
As a closing comment, with regard to partying for four years and wasting money, I took 215+ units in 5 years full time/one year part time college and double majored with a 3.94 GPA. Some of those units were one unit courses that involved 7+ hours each week (music department units are very different...) plus performances...
Last comment: unusual liberal arts school, yes it is... you may think even more so if I were to tell you that I actually never did "party" in the usual sense of the word (e.g., I don't drink).
Brief comment - thinking can be not "fun" in the way "fun" is thought of these days. Most kids would rather play World of Warcraft. "Thinking" isn't fun. But that doesn't mean school should become something "as fun" as mindlessly playing World of Warcraft. (WoW is just an example, there are many others... TV is another good one)
I almost agree. And by the way, that was a very long post for being first, I was impressed.
Regarding the difference in something like PC Gamer magazine. I never used to get the magazine but I saw ones occasionally. It's true, I used to go "whoa, I can't wait to see that game." Now it's more like, if anything, "That looks like it has really good graphics." That's about it. There were games that I played way back when (and I'm still young) that I loved because of the game mechanics, the story, the graphics, etc., all combined, and could not wait until I could play the next one in the series. Examples that come to mind are Baldur's Gate (I completely fell in love with it - and I first played it from the library, which had a copy!) and Monkey Island (the first Monkey Island is amazing). Another series that started out great was Age of Empires, IMO, and even something like the original Red Alert.
But now, not being a FPS fan in the first place... the games coming out are usually pretty generically boring. They basically all appeal to two things: amazing graphics and more impressive violence. I have played a few recent games that I actually liked - Crysis was pretty cool, as was World in Conflict; in fact, World in Conflict was really cool and surprisingly impacting as far as thinking about real life.
What am I saying... I'm saying that ingenuity in developing games seems to be lost. Re-hash the same things that seem to work (bigger and better graphics, more violence) and hope it sells enough to pay to produce the next one.
Time is a huge issue now for me as well, I barely play any games at all. Married, graduate school, working full time and music as my main hobby... games are not big in my life. But I play some small things still. I am playing Avernum 5, a small shareware game (which I bought) made by Jeff Vogel. It's completely story-driven, it's even in 2D, but the series has a history of story-driven adventure/RPG that I first found in Exile II back in 1995 or something.
With regard to consoles, I actually still resist having one... mainly because I don't think the games there are really any better, just "easier" to get going. Plug it in and boom. But the same problem with the games themselves exist.
As for not caring about DRM, I don't care about DRM either, because I don't play enough games to care, and those that DO play enough games to not care probably don't care eithre because they constantly play games and spend all their money and gaming computers...
Even at the college I went to, a small, private liberal arts college that highly values education, sports achievement is made more visible by school. I was a music major, and computer science major; music majors are very busy with extra-curricular activities, but there is no Music Major Academic Achievement award. On the other hand, the school honors all athletes with high GPAs, because of the difficulty in balancing sports and academics.
I think even this trite example shows the sports-focus in a lot of schools. It's an achievement to be involved in sports on top of being a good student; it's a lesser achievement to be involved in music on top of academics.
Fixes for this? I don't know if it's just money. I think a focus does need to come away from sports. Part of that would be money (grants/scholarships for sports), but I think part of it is a culture that values entertainment and physical activity over, well, *thinking.* Even history seems to be going out the window because of fear of being politically incorrect or offending some people group or minority. Math and science are not taught because, IMO, kids don't "like" the as much, by default, as arts or sports (this coming from a half music major, mind you). This has definite effects on "thinking." "Thinking" is NOT always fun, but I think kids need to be taught that not everything that is necessary and good is "fun."
But that doesn't go over well in an entertainment-focused culture/society/world... nor an educational system that is more designed to please the kid than teach the kid, and more designed to push a worldview or agenda than real knowledge and the ability to think and come to conclusions based on factual knowledge, not interpreted evidence.
As many have brought up, it is nearly impossible to say exactly what is going on minutely in a huge operation. So what should Bush have said? "We have no way of knowing whether or not we are spying on individuals."
Isn't this sort of statement more or less a statement of non-condoning of an activity? The same as if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs said "We will not pirate software" but then some of their employees DO pirate software, and they don't know about it. So when we find out, are Gates or Jobs the ones in trouble for saying it? Because obviously, they should know about every single thing their employees are doing.
Oh, wait, sorry, I shouldn't compare governments to people's organizations, because governments can be made perfect, as long as we give them more control...
I'm conservative, Bush wasn't very conservative, and I disagree with a lot of what he has done, but it is interesting that it seems the upcoming election features an "agent of change" that is really no different or even worse with the whole deception thing than people easily think about the ENTIRE Bush administration... and yet Obama and possibly McCain both support larger and more controlling government than Bush did or at least said he did, so I don't understand. Many are so upset at Bush that they are doing a pendulum vote for someone that wants government to be involved in pretty much everything, including your commute to work and what car (or at least, what that car's technology can be) you drive. But of course, he won't spy on anyone. He won't HAVE to. [[[ -5 Troll for "Conservative Viewpoints":) hehe ]]]
*sigh* I love linux, but the "Linux is way more compatible than Microsoft" silliness can really get to someone eventually. Linux does not have better game support. Yeah, Wine is great, but it does not work as well as Windows does at running Windows programs, despite all the marketing that it has attempted to do. In fact, I couldn't get any version of iTunes to work in wine on my only-linux laptop (Dell E1505) - eventually did a virtualbox XP install for my two necessary Windows programs.
Additionally, some people like playing computer games, not console games. I hate using a console, I love playing computer games... consoles don't work for everyone.
As for devices, some devices have issues with Linux (or the other way around). I have had trouble getting my wireless card to work (still can't get it to go into monitor mode and work correctly). Even something as basic as hibernate/suspend sometimes doesn't work too well (though SuSE 10.3 does work with that, now). I actually had a horrendous time getting my ATI x1400 Mobility to work on my laptop - turns out that the graphical console bootup in SuSE 10.3 totally messes it up.
As much as I love Linux, I have to say, from my own geeky experience and my experience with getting my parents' older laptop to work with PuppyLinux (they only had 240mb or whatever the power of 2 is (not 256) of RAM), Linux is simply not as compatible as Windows, still.
*invites "troll" mods* Unfortunately, anything remotely pro-microsoft or anti-Linux (even though I am really neither) tends to get modded badly. Oh well.:) (and, obviously, I am hoping that by mentioning it, I won't get modded:D)
Having a large portion of the market isn't necessarily a monopoly. I don't think Intel is really that close to having a monopoly. As someone else said, everyone else has more or less cloned Intel... I don't think Intel should be punished for making a good product that no one else has competed with yet. But, I realize this isn't really about a monopoly, it seems... unfair business practices, should probably be looked into.
That said, IMO, there's a huge thing nowadays to be anti-big-corporation... but when it comes to me wanting to go buy a chip, I usually will buy the best quality at the cheapest price, right? Nobody goes out of their way to spend more. With big corporations usually comes cheaper prices... it's a hard balance to make sure there isn't a monopoly or unfair business practices without seriously meddling with the basic idea of a free market...
To a purist fencer (something I'd love to get into, as an aside), or to a gamer?
I'm sure the original SNES "Duck Hunt" with the little gun thing wasn't the most accurate simulation, either, but it was more fun than shooting with a mouse...
I have always wondered why good swordfighting games have never come out... it's always been just the default moves, combo moves, blah blah blah. Hopefully, since it would use the wii controllers, this will be cool:)
But the server is never going to be a browser. The browser is always connecting to a server, so it still holds that the browser is not going to be receiving a ton of requests...
Except for the people that posted about the stupidity of trying to protect the children... as if the Chinese government was actually being honest when they said what they were doing it for *blinks*
But it's using the same... basic, fundamental operating system. As do Windows 2000 and XP, although XP changed significantly in that it became a user-oriented system instead of server-oriented.
My point is that, in the "Windows stunk until it got updated" debate, Linux has had a ton of time to get things right, but there are still many versions that go on.
Further more, for Windows to be as compatible as it is with pretty much ANY hardware you throw at it (whereas Linux definitely has issues with a lot of hardware).. well, it seems there are two standards. We don't EXPECT Linux to work well with a ton of hardware; rather, we like it because it is usually stable, it's free and open source, and it works well with the hardware that it does support (and thus, if we throw hardware at it that it doesn't, it doesn't affect our opinion of it). On the other hand, Windows was built to be compatible with basically everything, so we have a different set of qualifications for calling it "buggy" or "not buggy." If it crashes on ANY system, we count that against it and not the individual piece of hardware or software; whereas with Linux, if it crashes because of hardware (or software, for that matter), it's usually not Linux's fault, it's that piece of hardware or software.
Not to say that Windows doesn't have bugs, it definitely does; I am simply saying that our expectations are significantly higher for Windows than for Linux. (and, by the way, I love Linux).
More secure/having to be superuser... to some extent, Windows is that way as well. It's just that, for the most part, people choose to be part of the Administrator group (or their computers are set up that way).
As with any system, if you have physical access, your computer isn't really that secure. However, it does run on lower spec machines and is more flexible at setup, I agree with that (except, however, that there ARE older versions of Windows, and I wouldn't expect to run SuSE 11 with KDE 4 on an old computer).
I don't think Amarok is necessarily better than anything in Windows, iTunes is actually pretty good (except playback sound quality for anything more than 2 speakers or headphones, rar). GIMP does work pretty well as a replacement for Photoshop though. Games are hugely lacking on Linux, agreed... as well as video capture/editing (and, while we're at it, Blender isn't really that great in terms of usage, I've heard... although I think Maya is available on Linux?)
IMO, the only reason they released it for Windows is because they know most of the world uses Windows. Then, with the iPod, they NEEDED iTunes to be on Windows, or they'd likely only get a small percentage of people buying an iPod. It seemed to work, everyone (except me) has an iPod.
Windows doesn't lock everything on Windows platforms either (e.g., MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc)
Not necessarily. Microsoft knows that some people (many?) hate Windows and won't use it; releasing quality cross-platform software and technologies can be profitable.
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I believe you got a few levels higher. Interestingly, I enjoyed Baldur's Gate I far more than any of the second ones. Partly because you really DO feel like you're starting out at "nothing" ... and getting *gasp* TWO Magic Missiles when you cast it is amazing.
Plus, the story was enticing. You had no idea what was happening... at least I didn't (and it was the first RPG I'd ever played).
Now, it seems like having a "weak" character makes a "boring" game to most people.
I remember it as well. Oblivion had more moments of "fighting with others" than most RPG's that I have played, anyways, at least offhand. However, the lack of change that occurs was dissapointing, and the game was primarily "solo." Those rare group moments were far more exhilarating though - perhaps it is because there seems to be more at stake than just you reloading if you have to... :)
Interesting comment, asking whether or not rewarding players is because there isn't enough in the gameplay or story to keep them playing.
Also interesting was the question about a level 50 warrior's gleaming sword being nothing really more changing than a level 1 character stabbing at a giant rat. This is something that I have felt often in games - as you progress, nothing changes much except the prowess of your enemies. This requires some interesting story mechanics - why didn't the level 35 people just come down and kill you right off the bat if you were so important? Some stories can overcome this difficulty because the story is otherwise so good (e.g., Baldur's Gate, a personal favourite).
I have also tended to think of what would happen if instead of you and enemies becoming so ultra-powerful that you could essentially wipe out an entire town in on spell, would there be a way to instead have your power come from being able to deal more quickly/efficiently with multiple enemies at once? Let's face it, you can train all you want, but it still takes only a few slashes with a sword to kill you. Battle skill comes in killing the other person before he can kill you. The better you are, the faster you can do that while taking fewer hits.
With this approach, "tanks" would not really be in existence anymore; battles would be seen more as a part of a larger scale battle, not you+4 verses 60, and you just have "that much health." Magic, unfortunately, throws a wrench into the equation.
Another interesting RPG comment, this time by me - I have always felt that the most pleasing RPG experiences, with regard to story and gameplay, are those in which I was part of a larger battle, not fighting on my own. Example would be in Baldur's Gate II when you defend your "keep" (Nalia's family's castle). You defend it along with the keep's guards. Seemed much more realistic.
The point isn't whether or not they deserve people not liking them, the point was that even potentially good ideas become bad because people have a preconception that anything coming from MS is necessarily going to be bad. Earned or not, having the standard of "good idea" or "bad idea" different for two companies does not seem to be rationally honest.
The same is true for Apple, Google, etc. People's perception of the company tints their reaction to what the company comes out with.
No, actually the CS department was not part of the math department and was a separate major, not a focus in the math department.
Also, though I'm working as a software engineer/tester, my main interest in music, hence the liberal arts school.
As for "most liberal arts majors," I wonder what you mean exactly. I was a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Science double major. On the whole, the communications department was the "party" major. Interestingly, I believe (and I was in both majors, so I think I have a relatively good say in it), at least at my school, I had a much higher workload in the music department than in the computer science department. Granted, it helps to be able to do homework/assignments quickly, especially when it comes to math and whatnot, but with regard to both units and hours, the music major was much harder. However, with regard to... how shall I put it - mental processing time? ... the CS major (upper division math, algorithms, computer design/architecture, etc) was more difficult.
As a closing comment, with regard to partying for four years and wasting money, I took 215+ units in 5 years full time/one year part time college and double majored with a 3.94 GPA. Some of those units were one unit courses that involved 7+ hours each week (music department units are very different...) plus performances...
Last comment: unusual liberal arts school, yes it is... you may think even more so if I were to tell you that I actually never did "party" in the usual sense of the word (e.g., I don't drink).
Brief comment - thinking can be not "fun" in the way "fun" is thought of these days. Most kids would rather play World of Warcraft. "Thinking" isn't fun. But that doesn't mean school should become something "as fun" as mindlessly playing World of Warcraft. (WoW is just an example, there are many others... TV is another good one)
No, sorry... unclear sentence construction on my part. The school honors the athletes IF they have a high GPA.
"Does it need to be an original idea for them to implement it?"
Only if it is Microsoft - the bar is higher for them because nobody likes the company.
I almost agree. And by the way, that was a very long post for being first, I was impressed.
Regarding the difference in something like PC Gamer magazine. I never used to get the magazine but I saw ones occasionally. It's true, I used to go "whoa, I can't wait to see that game." Now it's more like, if anything, "That looks like it has really good graphics." That's about it. There were games that I played way back when (and I'm still young) that I loved because of the game mechanics, the story, the graphics, etc., all combined, and could not wait until I could play the next one in the series. Examples that come to mind are Baldur's Gate (I completely fell in love with it - and I first played it from the library, which had a copy!) and Monkey Island (the first Monkey Island is amazing). Another series that started out great was Age of Empires, IMO, and even something like the original Red Alert.
But now, not being a FPS fan in the first place... the games coming out are usually pretty generically boring. They basically all appeal to two things: amazing graphics and more impressive violence. I have played a few recent games that I actually liked - Crysis was pretty cool, as was World in Conflict; in fact, World in Conflict was really cool and surprisingly impacting as far as thinking about real life.
What am I saying... I'm saying that ingenuity in developing games seems to be lost. Re-hash the same things that seem to work (bigger and better graphics, more violence) and hope it sells enough to pay to produce the next one.
Time is a huge issue now for me as well, I barely play any games at all. Married, graduate school, working full time and music as my main hobby... games are not big in my life. But I play some small things still. I am playing Avernum 5, a small shareware game (which I bought) made by Jeff Vogel. It's completely story-driven, it's even in 2D, but the series has a history of story-driven adventure/RPG that I first found in Exile II back in 1995 or something.
With regard to consoles, I actually still resist having one... mainly because I don't think the games there are really any better, just "easier" to get going. Plug it in and boom. But the same problem with the games themselves exist.
As for not caring about DRM, I don't care about DRM either, because I don't play enough games to care, and those that DO play enough games to not care probably don't care eithre because they constantly play games and spend all their money and gaming computers...
Even at the college I went to, a small, private liberal arts college that highly values education, sports achievement is made more visible by school. I was a music major, and computer science major; music majors are very busy with extra-curricular activities, but there is no Music Major Academic Achievement award. On the other hand, the school honors all athletes with high GPAs, because of the difficulty in balancing sports and academics.
I think even this trite example shows the sports-focus in a lot of schools. It's an achievement to be involved in sports on top of being a good student; it's a lesser achievement to be involved in music on top of academics.
Fixes for this? I don't know if it's just money. I think a focus does need to come away from sports. Part of that would be money (grants/scholarships for sports), but I think part of it is a culture that values entertainment and physical activity over, well, *thinking.* Even history seems to be going out the window because of fear of being politically incorrect or offending some people group or minority. Math and science are not taught because, IMO, kids don't "like" the as much, by default, as arts or sports (this coming from a half music major, mind you). This has definite effects on "thinking." "Thinking" is NOT always fun, but I think kids need to be taught that not everything that is necessary and good is "fun."
But that doesn't go over well in an entertainment-focused culture/society/world... nor an educational system that is more designed to please the kid than teach the kid, and more designed to push a worldview or agenda than real knowledge and the ability to think and come to conclusions based on factual knowledge, not interpreted evidence.
As many have brought up, it is nearly impossible to say exactly what is going on minutely in a huge operation. So what should Bush have said? "We have no way of knowing whether or not we are spying on individuals."
Isn't this sort of statement more or less a statement of non-condoning of an activity? The same as if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs said "We will not pirate software" but then some of their employees DO pirate software, and they don't know about it. So when we find out, are Gates or Jobs the ones in trouble for saying it? Because obviously, they should know about every single thing their employees are doing.
Oh, wait, sorry, I shouldn't compare governments to people's organizations, because governments can be made perfect, as long as we give them more control...
I'm conservative, Bush wasn't very conservative, and I disagree with a lot of what he has done, but it is interesting that it seems the upcoming election features an "agent of change" that is really no different or even worse with the whole deception thing than people easily think about the ENTIRE Bush administration... and yet Obama and possibly McCain both support larger and more controlling government than Bush did or at least said he did, so I don't understand. Many are so upset at Bush that they are doing a pendulum vote for someone that wants government to be involved in pretty much everything, including your commute to work and what car (or at least, what that car's technology can be) you drive. But of course, he won't spy on anyone. He won't HAVE to. [[[ -5 Troll for "Conservative Viewpoints" :) hehe ]]]
*sigh* I love linux, but the "Linux is way more compatible than Microsoft" silliness can really get to someone eventually. Linux does not have better game support. Yeah, Wine is great, but it does not work as well as Windows does at running Windows programs, despite all the marketing that it has attempted to do. In fact, I couldn't get any version of iTunes to work in wine on my only-linux laptop (Dell E1505) - eventually did a virtualbox XP install for my two necessary Windows programs.
Additionally, some people like playing computer games, not console games. I hate using a console, I love playing computer games... consoles don't work for everyone.
As for devices, some devices have issues with Linux (or the other way around). I have had trouble getting my wireless card to work (still can't get it to go into monitor mode and work correctly). Even something as basic as hibernate/suspend sometimes doesn't work too well (though SuSE 10.3 does work with that, now). I actually had a horrendous time getting my ATI x1400 Mobility to work on my laptop - turns out that the graphical console bootup in SuSE 10.3 totally messes it up.
As much as I love Linux, I have to say, from my own geeky experience and my experience with getting my parents' older laptop to work with PuppyLinux (they only had 240mb or whatever the power of 2 is (not 256) of RAM), Linux is simply not as compatible as Windows, still.
*invites "troll" mods* Unfortunately, anything remotely pro-microsoft or anti-Linux (even though I am really neither) tends to get modded badly. Oh well. :) (and, obviously, I am hoping that by mentioning it, I won't get modded :D)
Hmmm. Maybe it'd have to be a two player game then. ;)
Having a large portion of the market isn't necessarily a monopoly. I don't think Intel is really that close to having a monopoly. As someone else said, everyone else has more or less cloned Intel ... I don't think Intel should be punished for making a good product that no one else has competed with yet. But, I realize this isn't really about a monopoly, it seems... unfair business practices, should probably be looked into.
That said, IMO, there's a huge thing nowadays to be anti-big-corporation... but when it comes to me wanting to go buy a chip, I usually will buy the best quality at the cheapest price, right? Nobody goes out of their way to spend more. With big corporations usually comes cheaper prices... it's a hard balance to make sure there isn't a monopoly or unfair business practices without seriously meddling with the basic idea of a free market...
To a purist fencer (something I'd love to get into, as an aside), or to a gamer?
I'm sure the original SNES "Duck Hunt" with the little gun thing wasn't the most accurate simulation, either, but it was more fun than shooting with a mouse...
I have always wondered why good swordfighting games have never come out... it's always been just the default moves, combo moves, blah blah blah. Hopefully, since it would use the wii controllers, this will be cool :)
But the server is never going to be a browser. The browser is always connecting to a server, so it still holds that the browser is not going to be receiving a ton of requests...
Except for the people that posted about the stupidity of trying to protect the children... as if the Chinese government was actually being honest when they said what they were doing it for *blinks*
I think the only expectation for DNF was that it would never be released. Duke Nukem ForNever.
Does that mean Starbucks is a monopoly?
But it's using the same ... basic, fundamental operating system. As do Windows 2000 and XP, although XP changed significantly in that it became a user-oriented system instead of server-oriented.
My point is that, in the "Windows stunk until it got updated" debate, Linux has had a ton of time to get things right, but there are still many versions that go on.
Further more, for Windows to be as compatible as it is with pretty much ANY hardware you throw at it (whereas Linux definitely has issues with a lot of hardware).. well, it seems there are two standards. We don't EXPECT Linux to work well with a ton of hardware; rather, we like it because it is usually stable, it's free and open source, and it works well with the hardware that it does support (and thus, if we throw hardware at it that it doesn't, it doesn't affect our opinion of it). On the other hand, Windows was built to be compatible with basically everything, so we have a different set of qualifications for calling it "buggy" or "not buggy." If it crashes on ANY system, we count that against it and not the individual piece of hardware or software; whereas with Linux, if it crashes because of hardware (or software, for that matter), it's usually not Linux's fault, it's that piece of hardware or software.
Not to say that Windows doesn't have bugs, it definitely does; I am simply saying that our expectations are significantly higher for Windows than for Linux. (and, by the way, I love Linux).
Why would somebody be ON a cactus in the first place? :P
More secure/having to be superuser... to some extent, Windows is that way as well. It's just that, for the most part, people choose to be part of the Administrator group (or their computers are set up that way).
As with any system, if you have physical access, your computer isn't really that secure. However, it does run on lower spec machines and is more flexible at setup, I agree with that (except, however, that there ARE older versions of Windows, and I wouldn't expect to run SuSE 11 with KDE 4 on an old computer).
I don't think Amarok is necessarily better than anything in Windows, iTunes is actually pretty good (except playback sound quality for anything more than 2 speakers or headphones, rar). GIMP does work pretty well as a replacement for Photoshop though. Games are hugely lacking on Linux, agreed... as well as video capture/editing (and, while we're at it, Blender isn't really that great in terms of usage, I've heard... although I think Maya is available on Linux?)
IMO, the only reason they released it for Windows is because they know most of the world uses Windows. Then, with the iPod, they NEEDED iTunes to be on Windows, or they'd likely only get a small percentage of people buying an iPod. It seemed to work, everyone (except me) has an iPod.
Windows doesn't lock everything on Windows platforms either (e.g., MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc)
Not necessarily. Microsoft knows that some people (many?) hate Windows and won't use it; releasing quality cross-platform software and technologies can be profitable.
Have you ever seen Microsoft Office on a mac?